Migrations:
Harbour Europe
A performance & community outreach project featuring three contemporary plays on migration by emerging international playwrights, and a series of conversations and debates.
In February 2019, we were thrilled to co-produce Migrations: Harbour Europe that took place at the Arcola Theatre in London. After receiving 157 play submissions from across Europe, three plays were chosen, workshopped and presented in collaboration with LegalAliens Theatre.
The aim was to find plays that addressed the theme of migration in an original and non clichéd manner, and each of the plays did just this: Genesis by Chiara Boscaro (Italy), The Sea is My Nation by Hala Moughanie (Lebanon/France) and Closed Lands by Simon Grangeat (France).
The event provided a forum for encounters with members from a variety of sectors, practitioners and academics, and the lively Q&As and public debate (curated by Dr Szabolcs Musca) offered a space for debate and interchanges drawing from themes within the plays. Several of our members were involved in the event including Dr Vicky Angelaki, Dr Graça P Correa, Dr Bernadette Cochrane, Dr Alison Jeffers and Dr Roxanna Paire.
Listen to the conversations on Soundcloud
It has given me huge optimism that complex human realities can still be done justice through art.
Audience Feedback: Day 2
In much of the audience’s feedback, we saw that the original aim of this project allowed audiences to look beyond this single story that is so often commonly prevalent in general perception and media outlets related to migration.
Yes, certainly for me it was the individual characters and their lives/relationships rather than the media presentation of migrants/refugees ‘en masse’ as an anonymous group.
Audience Feedback on what they enjoyed: Day 1
Through the diverse representations in these works and nuanced, contradictory and human narratives seen through the portrayal of the characters and their respective narrative arcs, these plays countered the concept of the singular stories and offered the opportunity for points of connectivity and understanding.
The complexity of the plays themselves. The visceral communication of trauma-related emotional reality.
Audience Feedback on what they enjoyed: Day 2