Graça Correa

This book presents a transdisciplinary approach to the Gothic-Romantic legacy in different artistic media, revealing how theatre, performance, lm, literature, visual arts and architecture intersect in the construction of theoretical and aesthetic landscapes. Through an ethical-political and ecophilosophical assessment, it contributes towards a much-needed reevaluation of the Gothic-Romantic mode in the eld of Art Studies, at a time of widespread popularity of Gothiclike imagery in global contemporary cultural production. The Gothic-Romantic tradition mapped here is broad, addressing philosophical concepts and devised theatre experiences; literary works by Alexandre Herculano, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Edgar Allan Poe, J. W. Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Percy Shelley and Alexandre Dumas père; lms by Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Lars von Trier, David Lynch, Alejandro Amenábar and Guillermo del Toro; architectural and visual design by Horace Walpole, William Beckford and Luigi Manini.

This article by Graça P. Corrêa and Szabolcs Musca follows the production process of Passajar, an immersive participatory theatre project collaboratively created by four theatre-makers and refugees from Congo, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Zimbabwe. Developed under the curatorship of Portuguese choreographer Madalena Victorino for Festival Todos in Lisbon, this multilingual experimental work focused on representing migrant experiences through a postdramatic artistic gaze. The production refused the forms of testimonial theatre and with it the contradictory role of facilitators, opting instead for a multidimensional fictional aesthetics practice. In this article the authors explore how Passajar performance and dramaturgical processes address difference in actual creative practice; and what are the ‘refugeedom’ aesthetics and ethical affects being generated by working with refugee participants. Similar to a growing number of non-verbatim migrant theatre initiatives, Passajar switched from the real to the fictitious via non-realistic representations and processes of abstraction. Arguably, this practice went against victimhood narratives, but does suspending traditional means of identification and empathy help develop new understandings on migration, or, on the contrary create detachment in audiences? What are the ethical consequences to audiences and refugee participants alike? Drawing upon philosophical concepts by Henri Bergson, Baruch Spinoza and Gilles Deleuze, the article examines how they critically contribute towards a discussion of the dramaturgies of alterity and empathy that were deployed in Passajar. By reflecting on both rehearsal process and final production, it reveals the ethical affects of Passajar, as well as transformative alternatives for migrant representation beyond the stage.