Shattered narratives: performing refugee selves in the past, present and future

Refugee experience is underpinned by ongoing waiting. This essay explores how non-linear narrative representations might provide agency and ultimately hope to refugee narratives. It analyses two productions by Phosphoros Theatre, Pizza Shop Heroes and All the beds I have slept in, and positions performances of refugee selves as a mode of resistance to prevailing asylum narratives. Specifically, it considers how the figure of the ‘unaccompanied minor’ refugee can be reimagined through a temporal engagement with past, present and future. In doing so, refugee actors staging lived experience embody the radical possibility of futurity despite the uncertainty of the asylum system.