Cirrus@Austlit

'A note of defiance draws these two new editions on refugee theatre together: both are reaffirmations of the significance of theatre, stage and performance in the politics and aesthetics of protest and refugee resistance now. This collection of plays is the second Staging Asylum anthology. The first was published by Currency Press and edited by Emma Cox in 2013, and it presented a collection of six plays from refugee-related theatre in response to the Howard-era Pacific Solution. This return to staging asylum includes a history of the significance of the stage in the resistance to Operation Sovereign Borders. It is, the editors argue, both terrible and incredible that another anthology is needed. Staging Asylum, Again presents a theatrically adventurous and formally diverse second generation of plays and their new genres: a “decolonial” theatre that places the experiences of asylum seekers and refugees alongside those of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, and theatre made by, with and about children.' (Introduction)