Staging Europe Adrift: The Trope of "Europe" in Theatrical Representations of the Migrant Experience

Abstract

International audience ; Theatrical works staging Europe through the prism of human trafficking and European-bound migration across the Mediterranean have situated the Italian island of Lampedusa in the public imagination as the geographic symbol of Europe's failure to respond adequately to humanitarian needs. A wide range of performance pieces on the subject of Lampedusa use different media to explore how migration and human trafficking call into question the authenticity of the European Union and European culture's commitment to integration, human rights, and diversity. Engagement with what can arguably be termed the artistic trope of migration in the first decade of the 21st century, and notably those focused on Lampedusa, are key to understanding how the trope of Europe and its symbolic representations are constructed and deployed. This paper juxtaposes an analysis of a select corpus of theatrical works by Lina Prosa, Marco Martinelli, Anders Lustgarten, and Zentrum für Politische Schönheit with a selection of political cartoons in order to sketch the key tropes in the broader spectrum of symbolic figures of Europe in the early 21st century and to consider the stakes and consequences in how artists and artistic institutions engage with tropes of Europe and the political reality of Europe in the early 21st century. ; Les œuvres dramatiques qui mobilisent la traite des êtres humains et la migration trans-méditerranéenne vers l'Europe comme éléments structurant pour une mise en scène de l'Europe ont réussi à fixer l'île italienne de Lampedusa dans l'imaginaire public comme symbole géographique de l'échec de l'Europe à tenir ses engagements humanitaires. Les praticiens des arts du spectacle vivant se servent de plusieurs médias pour créer des œuvres consacrées au sujet des naufrages au large de Lampedusa pour démontrer que la migration et la traite des humains remet en cause l'authenticité de l'engagement de l'Union européenne et de la culture européenne en matière d'intégration, de droits humains et de ...