ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an overview of key critical discussions within the field of community theatre. It explores the extent to which these discussions have influenced the work of community theatre practitioners engaging refugee participants. In doing so, the chapter aims to build a meaningful dialogue with similar critical debates regarding leisure and forced migration. There is a clear and undeniable value to participatory community theatre projects with refugee participants. However, good will is not enough, and there’s a danger in accepting that the good intentions underpinning theatre-with-refugees initiatives make them immune to critique. From an overview of existing and predominant approaches to creating theatre with refugee participants, the discussion moves on to reflecting on the author’s experience of creating such work, as well as his personal experience as a refugee who is a theatre practitioner and academic in the UK. The chapter concludes with suggestions for how to approach creating theatre with refugee participants, and an implicit invitation to academics and practitioners to consider this approach as part of a critical engagement, with the assumptions, ethics and methodologies related to the enactment of expressive and leisure practices with, by or for refugees.
