Rehearsal for Liminality: Devising Performance and Crafting Solidarity with Asylum Seekers in the In-Between

Abstract: What does it mean to rehearse liminality, to practice being in-between? Through examining two years of applied, devised theatre work with asylum seekers—henceforth, the Storytellers—in the Washington, DC, area, I argue that this theatremaking process raised important questions of what it means to be in-between, build solidarity, and find peace in the unknown. The power and crux of the devising process lie in creating a space in which the Storytellers both found meaning in the social and political uncertainty of their situations and built solidarities as a counterpublic act. Rehearsing liminality created opportunities to rearticulate personhood, rebuffing colonial impulses that encourage dispossession, isolation, and fear.