Location: Roger Bishop Theatre
Sponsored by the Centre for Socially Engaged Theatre (C-SET) and St. Thomas University with support from SSHRC Connections program
Moderator: Dr. Sasha Kovacs
Abstract: This plenary panel looks to advance conversations around censorship, cancellation, and artistic freedom within Canadian theatre and performance by examining the institutional, artistic, and community dynamics that emerge when productions become sites of public contestation. Bringing together celebrated scholars and arts leaders who study and navigate these issues in practice, the panelists will build nuance into urgent conversations surrounding artistic censorship and cancellation in contemporary theatre production.
Biographies:
Alan Filewod is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Guelph, and a foundational theatre and institutional historian whose scholarship critically interrogates Canadian theatre’s structural development. His landmark works-including Performing Canada: The Nation Enacted in the Imagined Theatre (2002) and Committing Theatre: Theatre Radicalism and Political Intervention in Canada (2011)-offer powerful frameworks for understanding how political theatre has been marginalized by national cultural institutions, canon conventions and funding ideologies. As longtime editor of Canadian Theatre Review (1988-2002), and former president of the Canadian Association for Theatre Research, Filewod shaped institutional discourse and historiography from within the disciplinary infrastructure. His long history of scholarship on institutional critique, paired with his more recent (2025) contributions to the Palgrave Handbook of Theatre Censorship, position him as a vital voice in this session.
Signy Lynch is Assistant Professor in English and Drama at the University of Toronto Mississauga, and a graduate faculty member at the Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies. Her areas of research and teaching specialization include contemporary intercultural, diasporic, and Black theatres in Canada; interdisciplinary/intermedial and participatory performance; audience research; and theatre criticism. Her peer-reviewed and public-facing articles appear in publications including Theatre Research in Canada, Contemporary Theatre Review, Canadian Theatre Review, and New Theatre Quarterly, alt.theatre, Cdn Times, and Intermission Magazine. She is co-editor of Canadian Theatre Review volume 186, “Theatre After the Explosion” (Spring 2021). She is currently developing a book manuscript based on her SSHRC-funded dissertation, which won York University’s Barbara Godard Prize for best dissertation in Canadian Studies (2021), and helped her to secure a Governor General’s Gold Academic Medal (2022). She also works as a critical dramaturg, where she seeks to push the boundaries of traditional theatre criticism to imagine critical and creative practices that can reflect our digital and intercultural present and futures. She has facilitated the Toronto Fringe’s New Young Reviewers program for three years, and her essay “Performing at Home in the Pandemic” (Canadian Theatre Review vol. 191) was named runner-up for Outstanding Critical Essay by the Canadian Theatre Critics Association (2022). She is co-director of the Centre for Spectatorship and Audience Research (centreforspectatorship.com), and co-chair of the board of directors of Toronto’s Cahoots Theatre. Lynch’s background investigating the politics of representation, audience engagement, and institutional power in contemporary Canadian theatre support this panel’s aim to crtically investigate the discourse of “cancellation” in contemporary Canadian theatre.
Isaac Thomas is a key figure in conversations on equity and inclusion in the Canadian arts scene, and a leader in Victoria’s theatre community. He currently serves as Executive Director of The Belfry Theatre in Victoria, and has previously held leadership roles including Managing Director of Toronto’s Native Earth Performing Arts, as well as leadership positions with Rising Tides, a national initiative advancing IBPOC arts managers. Thomas has been centrally involved in navigating a range of productions at the Belfry Theatre between 2023–2025 that were publicly contested. Drawing from these experiences, he brings an institutional producing perspective to conversations about how arts organizations respond when community concerns prompt calls for cancellation, accountability, or shifts in production processes. His perspective is grounded in the practical realities and ethical complexities involved in decision-making from within cultural institutions.
Dr. Philip Howard is an influential scholar whose award-winning book Performing Postracialism: Reflections on Antiblackness, Nation, and Education was recently recognized with the prestigious CATR Ann Saddlemyer Award (2024). His research critically examines contemporary Canadian blackface and institutionalized antiblackness, asking how educational, cultural, and theatrical infrastructures continue to normalize racial violence. As principal investigator of SSHRC-supported outreach initiatives like Arts Against Postracialism, which directly respond to blackface controversies, Howard offers praxis-oriented models of institutional accountability.
