Location: Zoom Room A
Online Session
Sponsored by the Canada Research Chair in Socially Engaged Theatre and the Centre for Socially Engaged Theatre, C-SET
Joel’s presentation will explore the potential of verbatim theatre to be used as a community development tool. It examines how social capital might be re-envisioned as a network of place-based relations, with the view of community as process; one which must be constantly and consistently repeated and maintained. The central argument is: verbatim theatre can be used as a way to create a non-literal place for ‘communing’ where humanization can occur. The conceptual framework is inspired by Indigenous knowledge, and critical discussion of the creation of place including race, dehumanization, and humanization. Indigenous knowledge offers non-colonial ways of conceptualizing how we understand, measure, and value spaces, places, and the interconnected relationship between all things. Social capital can be seen as sociality, or networks of relations between people and spaces that become places when they are endowed with meaning. This meaning is produced through relationships between people, which can only happen in place. Theatre arts have the potential to create places where ‘systematic humanizing’ can occur.
Joel Bernbaum
Joel Bernbaum is theatre artist and journalist. He is a graduate of the Canadian College of Performing Arts and Carleton University, where he did his Master’s Thesis on Verbatim Theatre’s Relationship to Journalism. Joel’s produced plays includeOperation Big Rock, My Rabbi (with Kayvon Khoshkam), Home Is a Beautiful Word, Reasonable Doubt (with Yvette Nolan and Lancelot Knight) and Being Here: The Refugee Project (with Michael Shamata). Joel is the founding artistic director of Sum Theatre, for which he directed/co-directed thirteen plays seen by over 60,000 people. Joel is currently an interdisciplinary PhD student at the University of Saskatchewan, investigating the potential of verbatim theatre to be used as a community development tool. He lives in Saskatoon with his eight year old son, Judah.