Claiming their voice: foreign memories on the post-Brexit British stage

Lech explores responses to Brexit by multilingual UK-based EU and non-EU theatre practitioners. Situating the paradox of simultaneous hyper- and in-visibility of immigrants in the UK, the chapter insists that the migrant perspective is crucial for the debate on Brexit as part of the broader European Union’s crisis of commonality and solidarity. Lech examines three productions performed in the UK immediately after the referendum: Bubble Revolution, Rosaura, and An Evening with an Immigrant, in which migrant artists claim agency over their representation within public spaces and create a platform for a new social imagination that can facilitate transnational and trans-local encounters, multicultural democratic spaces, sense of commonality, and solidarity. Reflecting on how transnational actors mediate their identities through individual, collective, and cultural memories facilitating encounters between multiple communities, cultures, places, and histories, Lech opens new and urgent frames for studying migrant experience and reshaping broader political discourses.