The book Refugees, Theatre and Crisis: Performing Global Identities, recipient of the 2012 TaPRA award in the category New Career Research in Theatre/Performance, is a timely and valuable addition to the growing field of exilic and refugee theatre studies. The book maps a previously underexamined territory of social, political, communal, cultural and personal performance that often defines the lives of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK, Australia, Europe and the United States. It presents a wide and balanced account of the refugees’ performative practices in their everyday lives and artistic interventions. Chapter 1 focuses on what Jeffers calls a ‘bureaucratic performance’, when the asylum seekers are forced to ‘perform’, as convincingly as possible, their stories of war, torture and flight in the courtrooms of their host countries (p. 16). Chapter 2 critically engages with the ways refugees are portrayed by the artists/representatives of these host cultures. It addresses the ‘complex question of the aesthetic representation of suffering’ (p. 72). Jeffers rightly warns her reader that the over-aesthetization of suffering might lead a theatre-maker into the ‘traps of voyeurism’ (pp. 72–4). Chapter 3 looks at the refugees’ own performative interventions, when they ‘stop outside the expectations of silence and invisibility that are often imposed upon them’ (p. 14) and thus act upon their own ‘wishful performatives’ (p. 93). Using the communal/performative acts of political manifestations and the personal/performative acts of lip-sewing and (re)wounding of bodies, refugees call the audience's attention to their marginal and hushed presence in the new country (pp. 96–106). In her last chapter, Jeffers studies the refugees’ ‘cultural expressions’ (p. 110), specifically how they are manifested through folk/arts festivals marked by the notions of togetherness and authenticity (pp. 118–29), solo performances of refugee artists (pp. 137–40), and the participatory performative projects or ‘applied-theatre’ practices, whose creative objective is to put the participant/the refugee in the centre of this performative and therapeutic experience (pp. 137–47). Jeffers concludes her study with the statement that it is only the ‘shoulder-to-shoulder’ experience of doing theatre together (participatory model) – when the artists/representatives of the host country share the risk of creating a performative intervention with the refugees, providing them with an opportunity to speak up their stories and making sure that the story is heard – that the idea of a ‘hospitable stage’, a true hospitality, can be manifested (p. 162).

In her description of her own role as theatre academic ‘from a wealthy British institution’ (p. xii), prepared to participate in the ‘act of listening to refugee stories [that] constitutes a form of commitment through an act of trust and generosity on our part as listeners’, Jeffers outlines the methodological framework that informs her research project (p. 162). This position identifies Jeffers's eager proximity to her subject and outlines her critical stance towards the institutions of power (be it social or artistic) with which the refugees must comply in their everyday and creative practices. Her humility and a desire for objectivity and accuracy in her descriptions and conclusions define the tone of Jeffers's book, thus creating the sense of trust that, according to her, any refugee lacks in his/her everyday and artistic experience in the host country. Jeffers's use of Austin's theory of performative speech acts as it applies to the social and political aspects of refugees’ lives is very elegant. In her clear and accessible writing style Jeffers is able to convey and clarify some complex legal and social issues that mark the daily lives of refugees and their social, cultural and existential dilemmas. All the aforementioned qualities make this book a vital addition to the studies of global theatre today and an important reference source in theatre and performance studies, cultural studies and public history.