Performing Statelessness in Europe is an ambitious project that seeks to explore the ways in which European theatre- and performance-makers and organizations have engaged with questions of migration, human rights and dispossession. The examples discussed in the book are organized around different performance strategies, and as such the book engages with debates around statelessness as well as the literature around performance practices and genres.

This study engages with a high volume of diverse (both in content and form) examples that, as Wilmer suggests, ‘provide a resource and inspiration for future artistic and political creativity to address what is a global issue of increasing importance’ (p. 211). In doing so, it draws on and contributes to a growing and important field of research that revolves around the implications of dispossession as a mode of being in the contemporary world. Moreover, this book also questions Europeans’ complicity in the reproduction of such modes of being. The book's particular value, then, lies in that it documents the breadth of practices and strategies that have addressed the question of statelessness and offers future researchers a valuable resource. In addition, it addresses important questions, particularly in relation to the responsibility of theatre- and performance-makers in addressing statelessness.

The book's scope and the sheer volume of examples (signs of the project's ambition) are at the same time its strength and its limitation, as they render the task of detailed engagement with the case studies difficult. Moreover, the book would have benefited from a clearer framing of key terms (such as ‘statelessness’ and ‘Europe’) and of the various historical contexts it engages with. In relation to the first, there is limited consideration of legal frames outlining statelessness. Subsequently, and as most examples discussed relate to forced migration, more explanation was needed to justify the discussion of representations of the confinement of unwed mothers in Ireland or the exploration of nomadism in relation to the Fluxus artists and Théâtre du Soleil as additional articulations of statelessness. In relation to the question of Europe, as the majority of examples come from Western Europe (most notably Ireland, the United Kingdom and Germany) and there is little engagement with work originating in places where migration is most visible (such as the Mediterranean countries), the book seems to offer a fairly restricted view of the complexities and specificities of the European contexts. It often rehearses narratives whereby Europe appears by and large as a singular social, political and historical entity; narratives that need to be scrutinized, particularly within the critical circumstances in which the European project finds itself at the current moment. This is further emphasized by the temporal scope of this study: the examples discussed span a period from the 1960s to the present day, and there is little discussion in the way of distinguishing between the different historical, social and political conditions at play. For example, although migration in the 1990s when plays such as O'Kelly's Asylum Asylum were staged was a significant phenomenon (particularly considering migration from Eastern Europe after 1989), in the 2010s, when plays such as Lustgarten's Lampedusa was presented, its scale and political and environmental implications are different. On the one hand, the acceleration of climate change in the last thirty years and the eruption of new armed conflicts after 9/11 have created new waves of migration and exacerbated already existing ones; and on the other, the expansion and further integration of the European project (including the abolishment of the EU's internal borders) have altered the policing of its external borders and the terms of internal migration.

Overall, despite its limitations, this project provides ample evidence that, in trying to grasp and respond to an important matter of our times (such as the growing number of human subjects whose existence is defined by the condition of statelessness), theatre- and performance-makers in Europe have employed a wide range of performance strategies working within and outside institutional spaces. As such, this book offers a useful resource for scholars whose work revolves around theatre and migration, theatre and dispossession, European theatres, theatre and adaptation, documentary theatre and performance art, while it may also be of interest to scholars working in the field of European studies.