Theatre and migration

Average project titles: “Cultural luggage”, “Family separation through Immigration: Dramatising anecdotal European History”, “Promised lands”, “Europe Grand Central, Voices of Solidarity”, “Shakespeare in and beyond the Ghetto”. The titles address the concepts of "segregation, migration, ghetto and solidarity". They assign theater an awareness-raising role in illuminating the personal dramas behind migration and creating a welcoming culture for migrants.

The proclamed aim of these projects is to develop a sense of ‘common belonging’ between the refugees and the local ‘population’, which on the one hand has reduced the sense of isolation that many refugees have, and on the other hand has increased the acceptance of refugees by local communities"[1]. Despite their idealised approach to the coexistence between refugees and the so-called local communities, some projects also assume problems caused by migration. Nonetheless they do so blaiming the native population in a preventive way: 'Mass migration is associated with a rise in xenophobia, racism and chauvinistic nationalism'. This assumption then leads to a surprising conclusion in one of the projects: "Next to a heterosexual white Christian who's been here 'since the beginning' and tries to hide his anti-Semitic and homophobic feelings, Islamophobia is presented as a historical inevitability"[2].

How to build a sense of common belonging between refugees and heterosexual white Christians who are guilty of having “occupied” their own country for “too long” and who try in vain to hide their anti-Semitic and homophobic feelings, but in vain, as these will nevertheless culminate in Islamophobia? The proliferation of such demagogic diction in the language of theatre is a step towards isolating culture both from reality and meaning.

Terminology and idioms:

• White heterosexual Christian who has been here "from the beginning” ;
• Islamophobia as a historical inevitability

1. Theatre and climate

Average project titles: “Creative Climate Leadership”[3], “Urban Heat, Feed the Future”, “Art & Ecology, possible futures”, “Empathy and Sustainability: The Art of Thinking like a Mountain”[4]. Climate, heat, food, ecology and sustainability, linked to art and empathy, are the signposts of the titles in this  project cluster.

The involvement of theatre in the EU's climate debate may seem unusual, but Creative Europe rises to the challenge and offers expressive ways to bring the issue to the fore. Here are some examples of linguistic ingenuity in combining thematically unrelated terms from different related project summaries: “Vision for the space is a creative oasis that is run according to sustainability principles, bringing ‘communities’ together and providing space for projects and exhibitions that value and explore the relationship between ‘people’ and their environments” (briefly: raising environmental issues in the creative and cultural sector catalyses the debate)[5].

The same project also aims “to explore the cultural dimensions of climate change and take action with impact, creativity and resilience, tailored for participants to reach their full potential and maximise action on climate change within the creative and cultural sector, with help and support to test and scale ideas through sharing best practice and discussion. An in-depth exploration of what climate change means for the arts, how we can take effective environmental action, and what ‘creative climate leadership’ looks like in practice”[6] (briefly: The project explores how the creative and cultural sector, including theatre, is responding to the climate change debate).

Another project in the theater category broaches “the empathy-sustainability relationship through the arts and theatre”. This relationship, according to the project “can bring significant advances to the promotion of sustainability actions and pro-environmental behaviours: understanding of the ways in which empathy-related arts contribute to individual sustainability orientations and broader environmental sustainability” [7] (briefly: arts and theatre have the potential to sensitise people to environmental issues).

This kind of linguistic practice, involving the association of unrelated terms, not only distorts the meaning of worlds. It also instrumentalizes the emotional power of culture (and theater) to alter public attitudes towards central political and economic issues.

Terminology and idioms:

• Creative climate leadership
• Individual sustainability orientation
• Empathy and Sustainability: Empact
• Empathy-related art