Abstract
This chapter examines forced migration and asylum in Finland during the period 2011–2020 and the Finnish National Theatre’s mission of addressing refugee subjects on the country’s principal stage. The theatre co-produced three productions with refugees: Paperiankkuri (2011), Toinen koti (2017), and Undocumented Love (2020). During this period, the position of refugees in Finnish society underwent significant changes, and the 2015 refugee crisis impacted Finnish theatres by strengthening the pro-refugee messaging of its productions. At the Finnish National Theatre, refugee performers started off as witnesses, slowly shifted to agents, and finally emerged as fully fledged members of the artistic community. This evolution and its premise mirrors Alison Jeffers’s arguments in Refugees, Theatre and Crisis (2012): on-stage encounters draw attention to refugees, making them visible and enabling us to welcome strangers without asking for reciprocity.
This article was translated from Finnish by Kayleigh Töyrä.
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Koski, P. (2023). The Finnish National Theatre, Refugees, and Equality. In: Meerzon, Y., Wilmer, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre and Migration . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20196-7_50
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