Return to the Nile: Celebratory theatre as cultural resistance

Abstract This article explores celebratory applied theatre initiatives to reckon with what Prentki and Pammenter (2014) describe as the erosion of our values and integrity as educators and practitioners caught in a capitalist neoliberal labyrinth. The authors use their Return to the Nile project, a community-based theatre initiative implemented with immigrant and refugee communities, to discuss a model of participatory research that redefines the role of student co-creators in staging a reimagined version of this community's narratives of struggle and trauma. At the heart of this exploration is an understanding of the creative team's implication in these narratives, and an ability to grapple with how to become 'foolish witnesses' (Salverson 2006).