Location: Zoom Room 3
Zoom Link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/4791764100
Abstract:
The CATR 2026 conference invites us to reflect on the inheritances of our field at a moment of profound political and cultural transition, marked by rise of right-wing nationalisms, climate change, polarizing technologies, forced displacement, and shifting geopolitical power. Theatre, dance, and performance practitioners engaging with questions of migration have long negotiated inherited traditions and national belongings, while simultaneously rehearsing new futures and (re)making communities.
The Performance, Migration, and Nationalism Working Group responds to this call by focusing our 2026 sessions on practices and dramaturgies of migration. Performance has historically functioned as a space where lived experience intersects with artistic form. In migration contexts, rehearsing for the future becomes a process of embodied negotiation, adaptation, and cultural exchange across borders. By foregrounding the practice of rehearsal, we seek to illuminate the creative labour, ethical stakes, and collaborative methodologies that inform performance-making in migration contexts, and to consider how such practices intervene in the politics of mobility, belonging, and representation.
Proposals may address, but are not limited to, the following:
- Explorations of intersections and tensions between artistic and academic pedagogies, particularly with respect to artist-researcher identities
- Reflections on creating or participating in performance projects concerning migration
- Analyses of collaborative processes involving migrant, displaced, or refugee communities
- Considerations of how performance challenges nationalist or exclusionary narratives and fosters inclusive imaginaries of community and belonging
- Studies of dramaturgy, aesthetics, and politics in site-specific, community-based, or participatory works
- Methodological approaches to researching, documenting, and archiving migration-related performance practices
Biographies:
Yana Meerzon is a Professor of Theatre at the University of Ottawa.
Sheetala Bhat is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at York University.
Stephen Wilmer is Professor Emeritus at Trinity College Dublin, where he served as Head of the School of Drama, Film and Music.