Staging (in)justice: Theatre and Asylum Hearings

A seminar by Prof Em Stephen Wilmer (Department of Drama, TCD) as part of the School of Creative Arts Research Forum.

Refugees around the world have been undergoing interviews, hearings, and court cases to determine their rights to enter or reside in a particular country. In many instances this process is less than transparent, and many countries seek to render the process invisible. Theatre and film, on the other hand, have opened a window on the process and allowed the public to view what has been kept hidden. In this paper I want to contrast different national policies for immigration and consider specific case studies of theatre and film productions that represent the judicial practices of asylum hearings and court cases in these countries. Amongst others, I will consider the performance of Tribunal 12 in Stockholm in 2012, Illegal Helpers in Potsdam in 2016, the documentary film  A Well Founded Fear in 2000, as well as Michelle Castañeda’s recent book on Disappearing Rooms (2023) to focus on the  performance of credibility by asylum seekers, the accountability of those deciding such cases, and how theatre and film have illuminated, made more transparent, or borne witness to the asylum process.
 
Steve Wilmer is Professor Emeritus at Trinity College Dublin, where he was Head of the School of Drama, Film, and Music. He has served on the executive committees of the American Society for Theatre Research and the International Federation for Theatre Research, and as a visiting professor at Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley, and as a research fellow at the Freie Universität Berlin. He also taught in doctoral summer programmes for many years at the University of Helsinki and the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. He co-edited a special topic on Theatre and Statelessness in Europe forCritical Stages in 2016 with Azadeh Sharifi. Recent books are Performing Statelessness in Europe (Palgrave, 2018), Deleuze, Guattari and the Art of Multiplicity (2020), Life in the Posthuman Condition (2023), and The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre and Migration (2023) which he co-edited with Yana Meerzon. He is co-editing  a book series for Palgrave Macmillan on “Performance and Migration” with Yana Meerzon.

The School of Creative Arts Research Forum meets weekly on Mondays from 10am-11am in the Neill Lecture Theatre in Trinity Long Room Hub. The aim of the Forum is to provide a space for School researchers, both staff and postgraduate students, to share their ideas in an informal and supportive environment. It is also an opportunity for the School to hear about the research of colleagues both from within TCD and from outside the university who share our research interests. In line with the research agenda of the School, talks encompass traditional research and practice-based research.

Please indicate if you have any access requirements, such as ISL/English interpreting, so that we can facilitate you in attending this event. Contact: weiyi@tcd.ie