This dissertation investigates how applied theatre can function as both a pedagogical medium and transformative practice within a literacy and French-as-a-second-language program for migrants in suburban Paris. Amid rising linguistic requirements for residency in France and intensifying state control over language learning through integration contracts, grassroots educators often operate in ideological and implementational margins. This study examines how one such educator, in partnership with two social workers and a professional theatre director, designed a year-long theatre project, Aux Temps des Mayattes, centered on gender equality and based on participants’ lived experiences. The resulting performance drew on verbatim theatre and oral storytelling traditions, creating a powerful space for linguistic, social, and personal transformation.Using ethnographic and discourse-based methods—including participant observation, interviews, and close textual, intertextual, and discourse analysis of policy documents and theatrical scripts—this research documents how the theatre project reconfigured the typical dynamics of literacy instruction. The analysis draws from language policy and planning (LPP), particularly practiced language policy, and proposes a tripartite heuristic to trace how national policy discourses are interpreted, instantiated, and appropriated in local practice. The study also analyzes the semiotics of performance, narrative transformation, and the multimodal nature of learning in theatre. Findings demonstrate that theatre opened a third space that unsettled normative classroom hierarchies and offered participants opportunities to rehearse new voices, linguistic repertoires, and social identities. Participants not only gained confidence and fluency, but also formed a community of practice that extended beyond the classroom through shared rehearsal, mutual support, and post-performance reflections. The dialogic nature of the myth-like play—rooted in ancestral storytelling and structured around collective voice—generated audience engagement and sparked conversations that continued well after the performance, planting seeds of transformation throughout the broader community. These outcomes challenge deficit-based models of migrant education and reveal how theatre can serve as a practiced response to restrictive top-down language policies. Grounded in community-based research, this project also seeks to elevate the work of literacy centers like the one studied—often under-resourced yet pedagogically rich—and to contribute insights that may support advocacy and reflection among practitioners navigating similarly constrained institutional settings.