CATR Conference 2024:
Call for Session Participants
1) Digital Humanities in Performance Research – Intertwining DH Projects in Theatre and Performance Research (Roundtable)
Co-Conveners: Sasha Kovacs, Heather Davis-Fisch, Matthew Tomkinson, and Laurel Green
In-Person (June 17-20)
In the recent article “Digital Humanities and Theatre Studies: From Fragility to Stability” Zafiris Nikitas notes that “Theatre and digital humanities face the same challenge: the entropy of transience.” Drawing on Nikitas’ proposal that performance-related DH research projects might better stand the test of time if developed within “intertwined research matrixes,” this roundtable invites theatre and performance scholars and artists, whose work engages digital tools and technologies, to collaboratively share the lessons learned from their past or future projects, and to engage in open discussion concerning opportunities and challenges of DH work in the context of our discipline. The roundtable will invite each participant to offer a brief 5-min. lightning-round contribution, followed by a facilitated group discussion that considers possibilities for collaboration and cross-pollination, moving forward.
Through this roundtable, we’re interested in bringing together members of the CATR/ACRT community to:
- Amplify and network current digital humanities projects: we want to share knowledge about our field’s present engagement of digital tools in performance scholarship. With these presentations, we hope to cross-fertilize knowledge about a range of projects in our field that employ DH for diverse approaches to: knowledge mobilization, research networking, performance mapping, archival research, exhibition, equity, pedagogy, advocacy, inclusion, anti-racism, decolonization, community bridging, partnership, and other aims.
- Create a space for supportive co-sharing and co-learning: we want to hear about challenges and opportunities researchers have faced through their own engagement with digital tools and methods –topics here include, but are not limited to: responses to concerns about obsolescence and trascience, approaches to peer-review structures for online (digital) publication, challenges through the design and technical development process.
- Imagine possibilities for support of developing and future DH projects: Discussions of potential futures or emerging projects that engage DH in theatre and performance research. We want to bring together scholars and artists that are imagining new possibilities for digital humanities approaches, informed by work outside and beyond the discipline. We are keen to also hear about how DH learning is being incorporated into the theatre and performance studies classroom, and how DH can inform the transformation of pedagogy at the undergraduate and graduate level..
We encourage participation from scholars that have established projects which employ DH, as well as scholars/artists that might be new to or interested in engagement with DH practices. If you would like to participate in our roundtable please send a 250-word description of your potential contribution, and a 50-word biography to to Laurel Green, roundtable organizer, at laurelgreen@uvic.ca by April 19, 2024.
2) Performance, Migration and Nationalism Working Group / Groupe de travail sur la performance, la migration et le nationalisme
Online (June 5-6)
This working group aims to bring together Canadian and international specialists in theatre and performance studies and other disciplines to examine the complex impact of global migration and to critique the practices of rising nationalisms. Focusing on questions of representation, public discourse and the language of laws and legislation, this group will develop a collaborative approach for coherent interdisciplinary research to assess these practices.
In the CATR 2024 conference, the group will focus its online meeting on the interconnections between migrant justice, nationalism, and decolonization practices in Canada and internationally. In relation to the Canadian context, for example, we aim to discuss what decolonization means to the study of migration when we center Indigenous sovereignty, as well as the ways theatre/performance scholarship addresses the role of settler colonialism in migrant justice. In relation to the global context, we propose to discuss staging justice in relation to “theatrics” of interactions between different practices and discourses of nationalisms and migration, including the interplay between newcomers’ ideas of nationalism and the host country’s existing and emerging forms of nationalism, and the changes in legislative systems of asylum seeking and immigration, border control, and activism. Among the questions we ask is how theatre and performance arts approach the context-specific and multidimensional relations between migrant justice, nationalism, and decolonization.
Proposals for contributions should be directed to Yana Meerzon (ymeerzon@uottawa.ca), Sheetala Bhat (bsheetal@yorku.ca), and Stephen Elliot Wilmer (SWILMER@tcd.ie) by April 19, 2024.
Ce groupe de travail vise à rassembler les spécialistes canadiens et internationaux en études du théâtre et de la performance, et d’autres disciplines, pour examiner l’impact de la migration planétaire dans toute sa complexité et pour critiquer les pratiques liées à la montée des nationalismes. Se concentrant sur les questions de représentation, sur le discours public ainsi que sur la langue des lois et de la législation, ce groupe de travail développera une approche collaborative favorisant une recherche interdisciplinaire cohérente pour évaluer ces pratiques.
Au colloque 2024 de l’ACRT, la rencontre en ligne du groupe de travail portera sur les connexions entre la justice pour les personnes migrantes, le nationalisme et les pratiques de décolonisation au Canada et à l’étranger. Dans le contexte canadien, nous aimerions discuter, par exemple, de ce que la décolonisation signifie pour l’étude de la migration lorsqu’on se penche sur la souveraineté autochtone et sur les façons utilisées dans les études théâtrales pour parler du rôle du colonialisme de peuplement dans la justice pour les personnes migrantes. Pour le contexte international, nous proposons des discussions sur la mise en scène de la justice en relation avec les « théâtralités » des interactions entre différentes pratiques et les différents discours des nationalismes et de la migration, incluant l’interaction entre les perceptions qu’ont les nouveaux arrivants du nationalisme et les formes de nationalisme existantes et émergentes du pays d’accueil, ainsi que les changements législatifs concernant les demandes d’asile et l’immigration, le contrôle des frontières et l’activisme. Nous nous demandons notamment comment le théâtre et les arts de la scène abordent les relations multidimensionnelles et spécifiques au contexte entre la justice pour les migrants, le nationalisme et la décolonisation.
Les personnes intéressées à contribuer à cette activité doivent faire parvenir leurs propositions à Yana Meerzon (ymeerzon@uottawa.ca), Sheetala Bhat (bsheetal@yorku.ca) et Stephen Elliot Wilmer (SWILMER@tcd.ie).
3) Gatherings: Archival and Oral Histories (Working Group)
Online (June 5-6)
Gatherings: Archival and Oral Histories is seeking participants for a new CATR Working Group. Gatherings—a SSHRC-funded research Partnership focusing on the care and keeping of archival and oral histories of performance in Canada, has been in existence since 2018. It is a pan-Canadian and cross-institutional partnership of universities and non-academic organizations with the goal of creating a national community of scholars, artists, archivists and students who can meet on equal footing to discuss the preservation of performance traditions in the country, in all its complexity.
The Working Group follows one of our initiatives, the ‘Roadshow Series’ of online gatherings, during which individuals—along the lines of the ‘Antiques Roadshow’—make a brief presentation of an object or document that raises questions, or a question that has arisen from individual research projects, about the research goals, the relationship with the archival repository, or the processes of interviewing. We will pay attention to issues of access, of collection and reproduction, of the influence of technology, and the relationships we all forge (and need to forge) among and between archivists and with artists. This will be an open and expansive discussion, providing time and space to talk about the process of historical research.
The Working Group will meet in an online forum during CATR’s meeting in early June. Prior to this, Gatherings will be hosting monthly on-line ‘Roadshow’ Presentations beginning in March. These will be publicly announced, inviting open application, in the lead up to the online segment of the CATR conference. The existing members of our Working Group include the individuals who are listed on our website as involved in the full project.
We welcome CATR members at any stage of their career to apply to join.
Interested applicants, please email Gatherings a brief proposal for a 10-15 min presentation of an object or document related to performance, to be shared at an upcoming monthly working group ‘Roadshow’ meeting (dates TBD) or in early June at CATR.
For more information about the project, and to view pilot ‘Roadshow’ presentations, please visit our website: gatheringspartnership.com
Emails should be addressed to Dr. Sarah Robbins, Project Manager, Gatherings sarah.robbins@alum.utoronto.ca, by April 19, 2024.
4) Curriculum Strategies: Building BA Theatre Programs in a Climate of Constraint (Seminar)
Session organizers: Kimberley McLeod (University of Guelph) and Jenn Stephenson (Queen’s University)
In-Person (June 17-20)
In the face of financial constraint, arising from government underfunding of the postsecondary sector, it is essential that we continue to deliver high-quality student academic experiences. Purposeful, values-driven attention to curriculum structures is central to achieving this goal.
This seminar centres on the questions: Why study and teach theatre now? How do we decide what is most important in the wake of decreasing resources? The session will provide a forum not only for sharing local contexts and challenges, but more importantly, will offer practical strategies and frameworks for curriculum decision-makers.
Topics will include:
- Preparing for, participating in, and responding to cyclical quality assurance processes
- Establishing alignment between program learning outcomes and curriculum architecture
- Using data to produce metrics of curriculum efficiency
- Creating short-term and long-term staffing/hiring plans that are aligned with curriculum
- Integrating and differentiating programs in the disciplinary landscape
- Communicating academic program visions to internal stakeholders like Deans, Provosts, Admissions and Recruitment to ensure necessary resourcing
This session is intended for faculty members who have (or expect to have in the future) roles concerned with curriculum development and revision, including Undergraduate Advisors, Undergraduate Chairs, Chairs of departmental academic planning or curriculum committees, Department Heads/Chairs, and Deans. Note that this session is specifically focused on undergraduate Bachelor of Arts (Honours) programs in theatre/theatre studies and drama, deliberately setting aside graduate programs as well as ‘conservatory’ Bachelor of Fine Arts programs.
Participants will respond to a series of self-reflexive questions and also participate in a shared document that breaks down different aspects of BA Theatre curricula across the country. Participants will also prepare short remarks on specific topics (dependent on what areas of curricula they have experience with).
To apply, please write a short statement (300-400 words) about your role with regard to curriculum. What are the challenges you and your unit are currently facing? What do you hope to get out of this session? What can you contribute to this session? Send your statement to Kimberley McLeod at kimberley.mcleod@uoguelph.ca by April 19, 2024.
5) CATR Website Charette
Leader: Taylor Marie Graham
In-Person (June 17-20) & the charette will require one online meeting prior to the conference.
Help the CATR Communications Committee reimagine the CATR website! Prompted by a need for a new CATR website and an influx of new members, the CATR Communications Committee is conducting a website charette. Charettes are working sessions often conducted by architects to reimagine the possibilities of new spaces and explore ideas in collaboration with others. Using this model, the committee will bring groups of interested parties together to explore, analyze, and reimagine the digital space of the CATR website. We would like to know: What would you like our website to be? How could it be more useful to you? How could the website better function in the current theatre academic and artistic environment in Canada? What problems could it help address? What accessibility measures should be implemented? How can grad students, precarious scholars, and other members of CATR benefit from the redesign of the website?
Aidez le Comité de communication de l’ACRT à réimaginer le site web de la ACRT ! Suite au besoin d’un nouveau site web et à l’arrivée de nouveaux membres, le Comité de communication du CATR organise une charette sur le site web. Les charettes sont des sessions de travail souvent menées par des architectes pour réimaginer les possibilités de nouveaux espaces et explorer des idées en collaboration avec d’autres. En utilisant ce modèle, le comité réunira des groupes de parties intéressées pour explorer, analyser et réimaginer l’espace numérique du site web de la ACRT. Nous aimerions savoir : Que souhaiteriez-vous que soit notre site web ? Comment pourrait-il vous être plus utile ? Comment le site pourrait-il mieux fonctionner dans l’environnement académique et artistique actuel du théâtre au Canada ? Quels sont les problèmes qu’il pourrait contribuer à résoudre ? Quelles mesures d’accessibilité devraient être mises en œuvre ? Comment les étudiants diplômés, les chercheurs précaires et les autres membres de l’ACRT peuvent-ils bénéficier de la refonte du site Web ?
We invite all inquiries and are especially interested in hearing from grad students, precarious scholars, theatre artists, accessibility experts, and BIPOC scholars.
Please send short expressions of interest to catr.communications@gmail.com, by April 19, 2024.
6) Enlivening Justice-Oriented Methodologies in Performance-Based, Ethnographic Research (Praxis Workshop)
Leader: Christine Balt
In-Person (June 17-20)
This workshop asks how drama-based methodologies can advance more justice-oriented modes of inquiry in community-based, ethnographic research. Specifically, the workshop will grapple with the tensions that exist regarding the role of drama-based research in communities: should, for instance, performance be leveraged as a tool of primarily critique and analysis, particularly through critical ethnographic work that seeks to “engage, interpret, and record the social meanings, values, structures, and embodiments within a particular domain, setting, or field of human interaction” (Madison, 2020)? Or, should researchers eschew critique for more generative work that produces, rather than examines, new realities, according to a performative paradigm of research invested in world-making (Denzin, 2001)? This workshop will turn to autotopography (Heddon, 2007) as a justice-oriented methodology that can hold onto both critique and performativity in community-based research. Specifically, ‘autotopography’ emerges as a practice that attends to both the ‘roots’ and ‘routes’ (Heddon, 2007) of communities: their histories and socio-political (raced, gendered) inheritances via a critical ethnographic approach, and also, the ‘elsewheres’ of their imaginations as per a performative research methodology. Participants will engage in a series of writing and performance prompts to produce their own autotopographies – these will function as research artifacts that will mobilize criticality and performativity in ‘frictional’ ways (Puar, 2012). The autotopographies will also be examined as examples of ‘wondrous’ data (MacLure, 2013) that exert what I call ‘critical fascination’ through their “capacity to animate further thought” in data analysis (p. 228). Participants (26 max.) need no prior performance experience to attend this workshop.
Please send expressions of interest to christine.balt@utoronto.ca by April 19, 2024.
7) Horizontal processes in scenography / Processus horizontaux en scénographie (Praxis Workshop)
Leader: Cassandre Chatonnier
In-Person (June 17-20)
Theatrical design is often taught with a traditional, hierarchical approach. In such a process, the scenographic creation of a theatrical production consists of thinking and designing the design elements even before the actors begin rehearsals, or in parallel with them, and according to the director’s unique vision. This model generally leaves less room for co-creation or exploration by the students. The other gap that affects theater education is the lack of participation of different voices of diversity, whether those of LGBTQIA+ people, people from culturally diverse backgrounds, or aboriginal people.
We believe that a greater diversity of approaches would be beneficial to the student’s educational journey, both in terms of personal engagement and preparation for the workplace. Last school year, Cassandre was fortunate enough to obtain funding for teacher mobility for the “horizontal processes in scenography” pedagogical project. She went to the Quadriennale in Prague to learn about other processes in scenographic creation, more participative towards all team members and more inclusive towards diversity. In this workshop, she will propose different practices for creating and teaching scenography in a more collaborative way, thanks to various exercises drawn from her own practice as well as her experiences at the Quadriennale, including ecoscenography, feminist scenography and queer scenography.
Participants may be scenographers, scenography teachers, directors, researchers or actors interested in the practice of scenography. No prior preparation is required.
Maximum number of participants: 15.
No observers.
Please send expressions of interest to cassandre.chatonnier@gmail.com by April 19, 2024.
L’enseignement de la conception théâtrale se fait souvent avec une approche traditionnelle et hiérarchique. Dans un tel processus, la création de la scénographie d’une pièce de théâtre consiste à penser et à concevoir les éléments de la mise en scène avant même que les actrices et acteurs commencent à répéter, ou en parallèle avec eux, et en fonction de l’unique vision de la personne responsable de la production. Ce modèle laisse généralement peu de place aux personnes étudiantes pour la cocréation ou pour l’exploration. Une autre lacune de la formation en théâtre est l’absence des points de vue issus de la diversité, que ce soit ceux de la communauté LGBTQIA+, des personnes provenant de différents milieux culturels ou des Autochtones.
Nous croyons qu’une plus grande diversité d’approches serait bénéfique dans le parcours de formation des étudiantes et étudiants, à la fois en termes d’engagement personnel et de préparation au marché du travail. Lors de la dernière année universitaire, Cassandre a eu la chance d’obtenir des fonds de mobilité enseignante pour le projet pédagogique « processus horizontaux en scénographie ». Elle a participé à la Quadriennale de Prague pour découvrir d’autres processus de création scénographique, suscitant davantage la participation de tous les membres de l’équipe et de personnes issues de la diversité. Dans cet atelier, elle proposera différentes pratiques pour créer une scénographie et pour enseigner la scénographie d’une manière plus collaborative, grâce à différents exercices tirés de sa pratique et de ses expériences à la Quadriennale, incluant l’écoscénographie, la scénographie féministe et la scénographie queer.
Les personnes participantes peuvent être des scénographes, des professeures ou professeurs de scénographie, des responsables de production, des chercheuses ou chercheurs, des actrices ou acteurs intéressés par la pratique de la scénographie. Aucune préparation n’est requise.
Nombre maximum de personnes participantes : 15
Pas d’observatrices ni d’observateurs
Veuillez envoyer votre déclaration d’intérêt à cassandre.chatonnier@gmail.com au plus tard le 19 avril 2024.
8) Ethical Relationality of Rehearsal Practice: A Live Experimentation (Praxis Workshop)
Leader: Peter Farbridge
In-Person (June 17-20)
Many performing arts organizations have recognized a need for more diversity and equity in practice and to incorporate marginalized experiences and voices in performance to be more relevant to the communities to whom they perform. However, the challenge remains: Once representation of diverse communities is achieved, how do we cultivate ongoing ethical relationships in creation and rehearsal spaces?
We propose an approach aligned with the concept of ethical relationality that could be used in performing arts creation and rehearsal spaces to enable ethical co-creation by inviting and relating with diverse beliefs, perspectives, knowledge and experiences to contribute to more representative arts culture. Ethical relationality is an ecological understanding of human relationality that does not deny difference, but rather seeks to understand more deeply how our different histories and experiences position us in relation to each other. It requires the ability to recognize and hold the tension between different perspectives, allowing them to exist in and enrich the same space, while not attempting to force consensus or sameness.
One possible tool of ethical relationality in rehearsal practice is called an “ethical tapestry”, a dynamic multimedia document that reveals at specific points in time what behaviours and contexts are conducting the intersubjective relationships in a rehearsal practice. The approach we suggest is intended to be a starting point that can be fully developed and tailored to each specific context. They are not simply principles to state at the beginning of a rehearsal or to include in policy, but guidance for ongoing conscious interaction with the people, artifacts, and spaces in and of rehearsal.
We will co-lead a 90-min praxis workshop with 8-12 participants to co-create an iteration of the ethical tapestry in conjunction with a theatrical scene in rehearsal.
Please send expressions of interest to peter.farbridge@concordia.ca, by April 19, 2024.
9) Deep Play Praxis Workshop
Leader: Thea Fitz-James and e. clayton scofield
In-Person (June 17-20)
This workshop explores collaborative performance methods in creative research though the idea of “deep play”. Facilitated by collaborators Clay and Thea, who co-run the Deep Play Artist Residency annually, this workshop explores how deep play can enhance artist creativity and invite interdisciplinary approaches to creative research and pedagogy.
The title is inspired by anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s concept of “deep play,” where questions of social ritual are explored through a deep or ‘risky’ commitment to play. By applying this concept to academic research / pedagogy, we aim to create opportunities for researchers/ educators to inhabit the role of the jester in relation to their own research of the social (Augusto Boal). The Deep Play Workshop explores deep play as a methodological approach for creative research and performance-as-research, exploring the possibility of creative risk in controlled and care-based environments.
Clay and Thea run a summer live-in artist residency where they explore these concepts; for CATR, we’d like to adapt some of our concepts into a 90-min workshop. This workshop combines theory (Thea) and practice (Clay) by (1) introducing our care-driven deep play methodology, (2) inviting participants into activities and games that create opportunities for play and risk and (3) reflect on how this impacts different approaches to creative research and arts pedagogy.
Please send expressions of interest to afj1@queensu.ca by April 19, 2024.
10) Cultivating Post-Realist Perception via Performative Practices (Praxis Workshop)
Leader: Paolo Gruni
In-Person (June 17-20)
Capitalist Realism is the all-encompassing, colonizing, infinitely plastic and adaptable conception of reality intertwined with systemic injustice (Fisher, 2009). By ‘post-realist perception’, I mean an embodied sense of being-in-the-world corrosively leaking through and magnifying the cracks of Capitalist Realism. Perception can be cultivated via performative praxis that engages the embodied consciousness in its wholeness, intersubjectivity, and relational embeddedness in the world (Zarrilli, 2019). Perception can also be conceived as a spiritually activist aesthetic practice when fostered via writing and performance to transform human cognition and relation to others, the self, and the world(s) (Li, 2021). Post-realist perception is, therefore, a practical, embodied, ongoing, ever-renewing, poetic project/process of creative re-definition (ambiguation) of reality.
This workshop explores strategies to access post-realist perception by manifesting dream-knowledge into reality (Shawanda, 2020). The approach developed primarily from my Grotowskian theatre background and is informed by Indigenous epistemology and studies on expanded consciousness. In the first section of the workshop, the participants will undertake a physical and vocal warm-up highlighting the intersubjective and relational nature of vocality and embodiment. The second activity will combine rhythmical exercises, social dreaming as inspired by Gordon Lawrence (2018), and performative writing. In conclusion, the ensemble will engage in a collective creative experiment.
REQUIREMENTS: Maximum 15 participants; Studio space allowing free movement and loudness; No previous experience required; Observers not welcome
INFORMATION: The work requires physical engagement, but each participant can adapt their effort to their possibilities.
Please send expressions of interest to paolo.gruni@yahoo.com by April 19, 2024.
11) Hearing Unheard Moments: Interdisciplinary Work with Forum Theatre and Youth Engagement (Praxis Workshop)
Leader: Rebecca Harries
In-Person (June 17-20)
The proposed praxis session is both an introduction to and a conversation about the techniques, challenges and rewards of interdisciplinary collaboration. The praxis session will introduce the work of an ongoing project, Hearing Unheard Moments through practice of similar exercises and discussion with the participants.
Hearing Unheard Moments, organized through the Students Commission of Canada, aims to develop creative products to promote anti-hate. The project culminated in a 4-day workshop in Jouvence, Quebec. The workshop brought together 18 youth participants from three different locations. Two creative activities were introduced: I led the forum theatre activity, and Priyank Mathur led a comedic writing workshop.
The workshop arose from my ongoing collaboration with Dr. Heather Lawford. This partnership began when Dr. Lawford asked me if I would be willing to lead a forum theatre activity in a conference about preventing violent extremism. I answered yes. Moving from a one afternoon conference session involving international experts and University students to a 4-day workshop meant that the nature of the project radically changed in both predictable and unpredictable ways. Some of the youth participations had never done any theatre. Also, some of the concepts and information around violent extremism required introduction. While skill-building was predictable, what was unpredictable was where the youth participations would take the forum theatre framework. An emerging theme was the desire to role play negative authority figures, coaches in particular.
In Forum Theatre, it is the oppressed who is the agent of change. The development of the scenarios moved in the opposite direction. Is there power and agency for youth participants in this creative practice? This session is an opportunity to explore these questions with us.
Please send expressions of interest to rharries@ubishops.ca by April 19, 2024.
12) AI and Reminiscence Theatre: Crafting Ethical and Inclusive Narratives for Social Justice (Praxis Workshop)
Leader: Shannon Hughes
In-Person (June 17-20)
Rationale:
This praxis workshop aims to blend academic inquiry with creative practice, exploring the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and Reminiscence theatre in the creation of scripts that focus on social justice narratives. Participants will engage actively in a structured, hands-on format, involving themselves in activities that not only highlight how AI can amplify voices from underrepresented perspectives but also encourage a thoughtful examination of the ethical considerations associated with integrating technology into performance. In essence, the workshop will delve into the collaborative process of using AI and Reminiscence theatre techniques to craft narratives that resonate with personal and collective histories, emphasizing and questioning ethical storytelling in the context of justice-oriented performances.
Framework:
The workshop will begin with a brief overview of AI’s role in contemporary storytelling and reminiscence theatre as a tool for community engagement. Participants will actively contribute to the creation of justice-themed prompts, leveraging both personal stories and AI-generated content. Special emphasis will be placed on ethical considerations, such as privacy, consent, and cultural sensitivity. The session will conclude with collaborative script readings, demonstrating how AI and reminiscence theatre can be harnessed while questioning the ethics of such an undertaking.
Preparation/Training Level:
No prior experience with AI or reminiscence theatre is required. The workshop is designed to be inclusive, accommodating participants with varied levels of expertise. Basic guidelines on AI scriptwriting tools will be provided at the beginning of the session, with a specific focus on ethical practices.
Minimum and Maximum Number of Participants:
Minimum: 10 participants (to facilitate diverse group discussions)
Maximum: 30 participants (depending on space)
Please send expressions of interest to shnnnhughes@gmail.com by April 19, 2024.
13) Biopsychosocial Somatic Dance/Theatre Training (Praxis Workshop)
Leader: Suzanne Liska
In-Person (June 17-20)
Somatic communities are at a crossroad in their attempts to address the lack of equity, diversity and inclusion awareness among practitioners and participants. Social somatic dance scholars, also known as “politicized” (Fortin 2017) somatic scholars, are pushing practitioners and participants to contextualize their practices within Indigenous and Asian cultural and spiritual forms (Eddy 2016). Given my teaching, choreographic and performing experience, and my perspective as a diasporic mixed-Asian Canadian, I believe I have a relevant perspective to contribute to the conference on deepening justice-informed somatic dance/theatre training. Through an MFA in Dance Choreography, I’ve established a research praxis anchored in East Asian dance/theatre history and form, social somatics dance ethnography, practice-based-research, and cultural theory.
Dance scholars have identified the primary focus in the majority of somatic forms as kinesthetic (Buckwater 2010; Eddy 2011; Foster 2010; Martin 2007, 2013; Novack 1990) and that other factors such as emotion, cognition and socioculture are secondary. I propose that East Asian practices and theories have the potential to dissolve binary oppositions of the body, mind, emotions, and socioculture.
My proposed workshop intertwines theories and practices of the Alexander Technique, Butoh and Contact Improvisation in order to foster an embodied biopsychosocial methodology and pedagogy. The material will activate sensation, imagination, and memory, using images from nature where scenes/characters may emerge, to expand how we respond biopsychosocially to interactions with others.
Requirements:
All levels
Open studio
Capacity of 5 – 30 people
Participatory
Please send expressions of interest to suzliska@yahoo.com by April 19, 2024.
14) Practicing Spaciousness: Making room for Contemplation and Collective Resilience in Performance Training (Praxis Workshop)
Leader: Gabriela Petrov
In-Person Hybrid (June 17-20)
For over seven years I have been investigating how contemplative practices can support artists in performance training. In order to contemplate, we have no choice but to slow down and make space for our experience. This “slowing down” has become integral to my pedagogy as I teach artists in and outside of universities. I have taught this approach at Concordia’s Centre for Teaching and Learning to faculty from around the world and have collaborated with contemplative practice pioneers Wendell Beavers and Erika Berland. It is my experience that a contemplative or “spacious” approach allows room for an artist’s process to breathe and also fosters collectivity and resilience among students because of the solidarity required to truly sit with our own body/mind in this present moment. With the workshop, I will give participants a lived experience of this spacious pedagogy as I currently practice it. Participants will encounter rituals, a conscious approach to “time” in facilitation, contemplative movement practices and guided discussions that encourage collectivity and individual somatic awareness. I would consider this workshop a continuation of my inquiry about this approach and would make conscious space for comments to be shared. The workshop will include movement exploration, but this should not discourage anyone who isn’t experienced to participate. Folks can simply observe, or participate at whatever scale they are comfortable. I aim to be flexible and curious to incorporate anyone who shows up with an interest to participate.
Please send expressions of interest to gabriela.petrov@concordia.ca by April 19, 2024.
15) Intimacy & Consent-based Practices for Educators & Artists (Praxis Workshop)
Leader: Emily Rollie
In-Person (June 17-20)
The field of intimacy choreography and direction has evolved and veritably exploded in recent years as more and more theatre artists, companies, and institutions recognize the import and necessity of creating a culture of consent in rehearsal spaces. While much of the attention in the field of intimacy direction and education is necessarily on working with actors in rehearsal spaces, there’s an increasing need to expand conversations and training in consent-based practices to include theatre artists in other areas and across academic programs.
Indeed, Theatrical Intimacy Education’s selection of best practices are guided by two key ideas: to protect the most vulnerable in the room and to train everyone in the room. Thus, this praxis session takes up the idea of “training everyone in the room” to offer a sense of the ways that intimacy protocols and consent-based practices can be incorporated into the academic class room and across training programs. Drawing on my own work in creating and leading workshops across our department (as well as for faculty in disciplines beyond theatre) in addition to my work as an associate faculty member with Theatrical Intimacy Education, this praxis session examines and offers tools for the application of consent training and intimacy work as a way to continue to revolutionize the theatrical industrial complex and our training models.
Please send expressions of interest to erollie@gmail.com by April 19, 2024.
16) ¡Unsettling! Playing With Purpose (Praxis Workshop)
Leader: Lib Spry
In-Person (June 17-20)
As a practical, playful way to look at how to activate settlers to think about justice here on Turtle Island, I am proposing the playing of ¡Unsettling! which was my research-creation thesis in Cultural Studies at Queens and built on during my post-doctoral fellowship at Concordia, supervised by Algonquin artist and scholar Nadia Myre. It is a live, interactive, board game that adapts techniques used in community arts, game-playing, popular theatre, and social practice. As the players move around the life-sized board the aim is to help them learn about the myriad realities that create, and created, settlers’ relationships to the original peoples of this land by asking a series of questions which are a mixture of fact, opinion and feelings, interwoven with teachings from the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe traditions. The game is designed to be played by the non-Indigenous who have settled on Turtle Island, exploring our history and relationships with the original peoples and the land. Indigenous people are welcome but may find some of the material all too familiar and triggering. Each game is followed by a group discussion.
Please send expressions of interest to lib.spry@gmail.com by April 19, 2024.
17) Dogs, Gods, and City Hall: The Racialized Legacy Of The Displaced Africville Community And The Unconscionable Actions At City Hall (Praxis Workshop)
Leader: Cyrus Sundar Singh
Dogs, Gods and City Hall is a collaborative 50-minute co-creative presentation that engages practice, theory and performance in the framing of the narrative. The participants are immersed in experiential learning that places them inside Canadian history thereby complicit in creating, disseminating, and archiving the narrative. It is a participatory-performative-liveness that is based on the author’s ongoing research with the community of Africville. The presentation contains verbatim transcripts from interviews conducted by the author. All audio elements of this presentation were also captured by the author on multiple research trips to Africville, Nova Scotia spanning five years.
Please send expressions of interest to csundars@torntomu.ca by April 19, 2024.
18) Embodied Research and Knowledge in Performing Arts: The Indigenous, Canadian and Quebec Perspectives / Coresponsables : Art Babayants et Carlos Rivera Martinez (Praxis Workshop)
Co-leaders: Art Babayants and Carlos Rivera Martinez
In-Person (June 17-20)
Inspired by the IFTR Embodied Knowledge Working Group, we propose a space of exchange of embodied practices, training, research and knowledge as they pertain to performing arts in what is now called Canada. Participants will be welcome to draw from their own identities, hybridities, abilities, schools of embodied training, sources of knowledge and worldviews in order to share their embodied research enquiries, paradigms, methodologies and findings.
In an attempt to reimagine and decolonize the academic conference, we will place more value on experiencing and exploring participants’ embodied research through doing/acting rather than language, especially written language. We will invite proposals in a wide range of embodied forms including but not limited to ceremony, ritual, dance, chant, contact improvisation, movement exploration, training exercises, tango, etc. One of the goals of this sharing circle (panel) will be to explore commonalities and differences in embodied knowledge and training as it is applied to general actor/dancer/circus performer education as well as advance the understanding of how embodied research, specifically artistic or pedagogical research can be conducted and shared. Another goal is the inclusion of Land-based performance and/or theatre practices by Indigenous artists, members of racialized communities and immigrants, with special focus on how those practices or methodologies. Additionally, we will encourage reflections on teaching movement techniques from a diversity of movement approaches and methodologies.
Proposals accepted in English and French. The sharing circle (90 min) will meet online during the first part of the CATR conference for discussing the process of sharing our practices. The actual in-person embodied sharing circle (3 hours) will happen during the offline part of the conference.
Please send expressions of interest to babayants.art@gmail.com, by April 19, 2024.
Inspirés par le groupe de travail sur le savoir incarné de la Fédération internationale de recherche théâtrale, nous proposons une tribune pour échanger des idées sur les pratiques, la recherche et le savoir incarnés dans le domaine des arts de la scène, au sein de ce qui est aujourd’hui appelé le Canada. Les personnes participantes pourront puiser dans leurs identités, leurs hybridités, leurs habilités, leurs écoles de pensée, leurs sources de connaissance et leurs points de vue sur le monde, afin de faire connaître leurs questions de recherche, leurs paradigmes, leurs méthodologies et leurs résultats incarnés.
Dans le but de réimaginer et de décoloniser le colloque, nous accorderons plus d’importance à l’expérimentation et à l’exploration de la recherche incarnée réalisée par les personnes participantes par le biais de l’action/du jeu plutôt que par le langage, plus spécialement la langue écrite. Nous sollicitons des propositions qui touchent un large éventail de formes d’intégration, incluant mais ne se limitant pas au cérémonial, au rituel, à la danse, au chant, à l’improvisation, aux mouvements exploratoires, à des exercices d’entraînement, au tango, etc. Un des objectifs de ce cercle de partage (panel) est d’explorer les points communs et les différences dans le savoir et l’enseignement incarnés en vue de la formation générale de l’acteur, du danseur ou de l’artiste de cirque. Elle vise aussi à mieux comprendre comment la recherche incarnée, plus spécifiquement la recherche artistique ou pédagogique, doit être menée et diffusée. Nous désirons aussi inclure les pratiques liées aux territoires des artistes autochtones, des membres de communautés racisées et des personnes immigrantes dans le domaine de la performance et du théâtre, en mettant l’accent sur la façon dont ces pratiques pourraient transformer les façons de faire actuelles dans le domaine du théâtre et de la performance. De plus, nous encouragerons la réflexion sur les techniques d’enseignement du mouvement issues d’une diversité d’approches et de méthodologies.
Les propositions seront acceptées en anglais et en français. Le cercle de partage (90 min.) aura lieu en ligne durant la première partie du colloque de l’ACRT pour discuter du processus de partage de nos pratiques. L’activité en personne (3 heures) se tiendra pendant la partie du colloque qui sera en présentiel.
Veuillez envoyer votre déclaration d’intérêt à babayants.art@gmail.com au plus tard le 19 avril 2024.