ABSTRACT
In this chapter the authors examine how people from different social worlds and cultural backgrounds come together and create a hybrid community of artistic expression inside a national theatre institution. They describe a documentary theatre project entitled Other Home, focusing especially on one artist, Iraqi actor Bakr Hasan. During the project he navigated through the labyrinth of the Finnish migration system, encountering severe difficulties convincing the Immigration Service that he is a professional actor under persecution. His story is one of many, since hundreds of artists—such as actors, musicians, poets, dancers, and circus artists—were among more than 32,000 asylum seekers that Finland received in 2015. The authors depict how taking part in this project supported Bakr’s career as an artist; it offered him a sense of belonging and hope, and how his experiences as asylum seeker in Finland became integrated in the artistic process of Other Home. They also describe the special features of a hybrid community of artistic expression, and the process of its members moving from being refugees to artists, or from artists to civil activists.
