Strangeness in post-Brexit Britain: migrant communities in North Essex connected through theatre. 

Considering the effect of the Brexit referendum, the ‘human side of migration’ has involved migrant communities (Syrian, Polish, Filippino and Chinese) from the North Essex region, in the research process that informed the writing of Priority Seating, a new stage play, which uses both verbatim and non-verbatim theatre. This had a staged reading at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester in November 2017. The project has not only helped these communities to see their voices represented on stage but has also helped develop new thinking around the experiences of migration, displacement and how they see themselves as ‘strangers’ in a place they call now their own home. The human side of migration has been working closely with communities considering the idea of belonging and displacement as connected to the life of minority groups in UK. By considering the concept of home, this paper will address strangeness by contending that the figure of the migrant as the ‘stranger’ is one that can contested by theatrical practices where familiarity, created through story-telling and testimonials, can counter the process of strangeness that affects much of the migrants’ experience.  By further exploring the premises of this project, and in particular the process and the impact of the research and writing of Priority Seating, there will be an attempt to re-define what strangeness within the context of migration means in post-Brexit Britain where transnational and transcultural spaces and places have been challenged.
Biographical Note
Mary Mazzilli is Lecturer in Drama and Literature at University of Essex. She also worked at Goldsmiths College and at Nanyang Technological University - Singapore. Her monograph Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays: Transnationalism and Postdramatic Theatre is published with Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. Mary is, also, a playwright and was awarded Arts Council funding and University of Essex funding for her new play Priority Seating (2017).