In February of this year, I was fortunate to attend Bodies in/and Asian Theatres, a regional conference of the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR, the scholarly organization with which this journal is affiliated). It was held at the University of the Philippines Diliman under the aegis of the IFTR Asian Theatre working group. Toward the end of a plenary panel on contemporary South East Asian dance on the final day, a debate arose over the work of one of the speakers, Eisa Jocson. A dancer and choreographer, Jocson's work explores the aesthetics of local and transnational performative labour, and is often based on forms she learns from Filipinos working in the entertainment industry. For example, Macho Dancer (2013) is based on a distinctive style of erotic male nightclub performance, Host (2015) on the work of Filipinas in Japanese hostess clubs, and the HAPPYLAND series (2017) on the high number of Filipinos employed at the Hong Kong Disneyland. In response to her presentation on these and other works, some scholars from the Philippines asked Jocson, who mainly performs in Manila and on the international contemporary performance circuit, why she did not tour nationally. After all, they reasoned, since Jocson's performances are inspired by the work of entertainers who often come from regional cities and rural areas, is it not right to present the work ‘back’ to such a workforce and their communities? Such questions are, of course, complex and loaded. In so far as Jocson's performances address the exploitation of Filipino entertainers’ affective labour, is there any risk that Jocson compounds that exploitation for her own benefit? And in so far as those performances explore the choreographies of entertainment capital and commodified desire, should Filipino audiences not be informed and perhaps educated about such things? Jocson countered that while wider local exposure for her work was desirable, it was wrong to presume that it could readily be presented in such circumstances. She makes her work within a specific critical and discursive context, she explained, and as part of a long-term thematic and aesthetic enquiry. To present it outside such contexts would benefit neither the audience, nor the artist, nor the work. If anything, she seemed to be suggesting, the work is not made for the producers of such performance forms, but for their consumers, and those who elsewhere participate in and benefit from such economies. She recounted making the ‘mistake’ of asking the owners of a ‘macho dancer’ nightclub if she could perform Macho Dancer there, as part of their regular line-up, late at night. They offered her an early slot, so as not to disrupt business as usual.

The Palestinian National Theatre's production of Roses and Jasmine presents an uncommon occurrence: Palestinians performing a Jewish-majority story on Palestinian and world stages. The play opened to divergent audience reactions in East Jerusalem, igniting controversy, and leading to the expression of opinions that ranged from absolute support to clear opposition. This article discusses the play's intervention into an orientalist rhetorical context, showing how reversing traditional orientalist ventriloquisms can be employed as a key strategy of cultural resistance. An analysis of the production's choices and the critical responses it generated suggests that by consciously representing Jewish characters who struggle with their own religious and national identities through Palestinian performers, the play opens up the possibility of breaking the perception of balance between the occupier and the occupied. Extended to a larger context, a resistant ventriloquism can reveal systemic oppression, rendering injustices visible in cases where systemic racism prevents the colonizer from seeing the condition of the colonized.

The Europa Europa anti-nationalist cabaret was created in the run-up to the 2014 Swedish elections by the Ful collective in collaboration with ‘house band’ the Knife. Part rally and part concert, Europa Europa responds to the Sweden Democrats party's anti-immigrant propaganda specifically and the migration policies of the European Union more generally, by enacting a kind of ‘no-borders’ politics in a moment of rising nationalisms. The cabaret aims to build a temporary coalition between different but like-minded audiences as an aim distinct from changing minds. This solidarity is also practised by the performers onstage, who use the ambiguous theatrical positioning of migration stories to challenge conventional imaginaries of heroes and criminals. Through Europa Europa and its inheritances, from historical agitprop to the Macarena, this essay extends performance's repertoire as a form in which to practise strategic anti-nationalism, and to engage with friction in the process.

At the height of the 2015–16 ‘refugee crisis’, how were immigrants and refugees portrayed and self-portrayed on Finnish and Swedish stages? The production and reception of two plays translated from Arabic – Karim Rashed's I Came to See You (2015) and Hassan Blasim's The Digital Hats Game (2016) – reveal a complex politics of representation in both scripting and staging. Reading Blasim and Rashed's works in light of Arab–Nordic literary studies and migration theatre studies, we also set them against two other migration-themed plays staged in Stockholm: Swedish writer Jonas Hassen Khemiri's groundbreaking Invasion! (2006) and British playwright Anders Lustgarten's more recent Lampedusa (2015). Blasim and Rashed, we argue, had to navigate three traps or boxes endemic to Arab diasporic theatre: the audience expectations of biographical voyeurism, orientalism and the allegory of collective worthiness. Both aimed to reject the first two expectations and embrace the third, seeking to define new directions in Nordic–Arab theatre.

Protesting against the Marcos regime in 1985, farm workers and other activists and their supporters from multisectoral groups are ‘massacred’ in front of the Escalante town hall by state police and paramilitary troops, resulting in the death of twenty persons. A year later, Teatro Obrero, the ‘cultural arm’ of the Negros Federation of Sugar Workers, stages a re-enactment of the massacre. Thirty-two years later, in 2017, the theatre group performs the re-enactment for the thirty-second time; the group has been doing the re-enactment every year since 1986. What is the reason for this fidelity to the restaging of a traumatic event? What is the logic of the repetition that happens relentlessly in the same way every year? Drawing from a co-performative engagement with Teatro Obrero and its re-enactment theatre, I argue that the reason may be found by looking at the long history of the sugar workers’ oppression, which spans centuries, and which is about more than Marcos and his repressive regime. The theatre has not changed because the social conditions that birthed it have not changed. It has become an intergenerational resource for the Escalante survivors who have once again lost their trust in promised change under the current national leadership.

This article demonstrates that José Pérez Ocaña's political performances open up the possibility of questioning the narrative of the transition to democracy in Spain as one resulting from political consensus. Using sources available in documentaries and in the archives of the counterculture, the essay studies Ocaña as a political subject of the transition. Among his public acts, the essay considers his street performances, his sexually explicit performance in the Canet Rock music festival and in International Anarchist Days in 1977, and his problematic participation in gay pride parades in Barcelona. In his public appearances, Ocaña eroded the distinction between public and private while asserting his right to appear. Despite his prominence in countercultural realms, gay activists and anarchist organizations rejected him. I argue that Ocaña opted to disidentify with all labels as he confronted both gender norms and the countercultural public sphere.