Leader: Rebecca Harries & Heather Lawford
Location: Room 7-270, 7th Floor – John Molson Building, 1450 Rue Guy
Concordia University
In-Person
This 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.
Rebecca Harries, Bishop’s University
Rebecca Harries is a Full Professor and Chair of Drama at Bishop’s University, where she has most recently directed The Children’s Hour. She re-engaged with Forum theatre about 10 years ago and has led forum theatre-inspired workshops on professional boundaries.
Heather Lawford, Bishop’s University
Heather Lawford is a tier-2 Canada Research Chair in Youth Development at Bishop’s University and a Full Professor of Psychology, where she founded the Knowledge Mobilization program and certificate.