Abstract

This paper explains how the collective collaboration of a group of migrants and refugees allowed them to explore their perceptions of self, belonging, and social and cultural connectivity and memory through the play ‘Remembering the Cherry Tree’. I will explain how this community theatre project engaged the participants to discover and develop their own understandings of the work and incorporated their understandings about lived experiences of identity, isolation, memory, stigmatization, racism, harmony, and hope. Furthermore, I will discuss how the production of the play in Persian to a largely mixed Iranian and non Iranian speaking audience was used as a platform for engaging the artists, the Persian community as well as the wider community to open a conversation about how they perceived themselves , how they are perceived by others and co-exist in the society. An art project such as this play I argue can assist us to talk more freely and comfortably about these issues.