Dramaturgy of Migration: Staging Multilingual Encounters in Contemporary Theatre

Dramaturgy of Migration: Staging Multilingual Encounters in Contemporary Theatre examines the function of dramaturgy and the role of the dramaturg in making a theatre performance situated at the crossroads of multiple theatre forms and performative devices.

This book explores how these forms and devices are employed, challenged, experimented with, and reflected upon in the work of migrant theatre by performance and dance artists. Meerzon and Pewny ask: What impact do peoples’ movement between continents, countries, cultures, and languages have on the process of meaning production in plays about migration created by migrant artists? What dramaturgical devices do migrant artists employ when they work in the context of multilingual production, with the texts written in many languages, and when staging performances that target multicultural and multilingual theatregoers? And, finally, how do the new multilingual practices of theatre writing and performance meet and transform the existing practices of postdramatic dramaturgies? By considering these questions in a global context, the editors explore the overlapping complexities of migratory performances with both range and depth.

Ideal for scholars, students, and practitioners of theatre, dramaturgy, and devising, Dramaturgy of Migration expresses not only the practicalities of migratory performances but also the emotional responses of the artists who stage them.

Yana Meerzon is Professor of Theatre Studies in the Department of Theatre, University of Ottawa. She has published on theatre of exile and migration, as well as cultural and interdisciplinary studies. Her books include A Path of the Character: Michael Chekhov’s Inspired Acting and Theatre Semiotics (2005) and Performing Exile - Performing Self: Drama, Theatre, Film (2012); she has also co-edited several book collections and special issues of journals on these topics.

Katharina Pewny is a Berlin-based yoga teacher and independent researcher of movement studies, who was previously Professor of Performance Studies at Ghent University. Her publications include the monograph Das Drama des Prekären (2011) and other publications on performance and the creation of diverse communities.