UCLA

This dissertation, “Performing Displacement: Precarious Encounters, Hospitality Events, and theTheater of Migration,” is a study of early modern drama and its present afterlives in relation to migration and mobility. Drawing from premodern critical race studies, performance, theories of migration, and the field of Shakespeare and social justice, its temporal arc spans from the 16th to the 21st centuries, which reflects the broader challenge I pose to make use of early modern drama for a theater commensurate with the moment—a Shakespeare of the present. The introduction provides context, key terms, and a chapter overview, while the four core chapters examine dramatic texts and performances that focus on the figure of the refugee and the conditions of forced migration, drawing connections between histories of early modern displacement and case studies of refugee representation on stage in the 21st century. While deeply grounded in early modern literature and culture, the project also reflects my engagement with playwrights, directors, actors, and other theater ii practitioners in the present, as part of a larger method of fostering collaboration between the worlds of performance, the university, and the community. As a sustained work of activist scholarship, this study considers the state of Shakespearean drama and adaptation as the catastrophes of global climate change and geopolitical instability continue to drive increased migration. Including studies of performances from a Syrian refugee camp and the U.S. / Mexico border, as well as readings of The Tempest, Pericles, Cymbeline, As You Like It, Merchant of Venice and other early modern dramas of displacement. “Performing Displacement” aims to contribute to the fields of Shakespeare, performance, and migration by bringing their varied methodologies and knowledge practices together to examine the creative, activist potential of Shakespearean theater and dramatic response in the present. In so doing, the dissertation demonstrates the ways in which a theater of migration that draws from early modern precedents challenges a prevailing global order that implicates those of us with privileged social identities—as audiences, teachers, scholars, or citizens—in larger regimes of exclusion that depend on the violence of borders.