Panel: Prairie Performance

Moderator / Animé par: Jess Riley
Location: Imperial Room, Atlas Hotel

• T. Erin Gruber, “Liminal Scenographies in Solo- Performance”

Imaginative scenic environments ask an audience to engage deeply with the inner landscape of their own experience and rely less on literal scenic context. In solo performer productions one actor becomes the focal point for an entire audience and this actor’s ability to embody a multitude of characters and experiences often becomes the defining feature of such a performance. Visual dramaturgical practices offer support for these individual performers and enrich these productions. Designers, directors, and playwrights collaborate in the visual world to create emotional and highly personal landscapes on which audiences can project their own lived experiences. By weaving such a container, a solo performer production can be transformed into a breathing co-created experience which subverts audience expectations. Using three case studies from my practice of original Canadian productions I will share the techniques and dramaturgical considerations which have enabled me and my collaborators to build sophisticated emotional spaces which move beyond the literal. Whether it’s including the presence of a character’s lost mother as a link to her buried cultural birth-right, bringing the voice of the landscape into dialogic relation with the onstage characters, or conjuring the heated memories of childhood to create a Middle Eastern spark within a Canadian blizzard, I will demonstrate how liminal scenic environments conjured through the integration of projected media and solo performers can allow the intimate exploration of deeply personal topics and make them emotionally accessible for audiences. These case studies deal intimately with the intersection of land, identity, and (prairie) culture.

• Hope McIntyre, “Tearing Down Walls Between Inside and Outside: Theatre in Rural Prison Settings”

The Walls to Bridges program is a unique national initiative which brings students from campus into carceral settings to learn alongside incarcerated students. We refer to them as outside students and inside students to negate any us versus them mentality. In this way everyone is a co-learner in the space. In relation to the conference theme, the definition of inside and outside takes on additional meaning in a situation where certain individuals are often excluded from participation. Prisons are also intentionally removed from urban centres and separated geographically from access to participation in society. I teach at Stony Mountain Institution a 20-minute drive from Winnipeg and the Women’s Correctional Centre 10 minutes from the perimeter of Winnipeg but clearly outside the city limits.  Courses such as Applied Theatre and Playwriting, have been characterized by the students as life changing. This is due to the experience of learning and creating theatre in this unique environment. Exploring other uses of theatre in prisons in Canada is part of current research work to find a model to sustain ongoing theatre practices within the reality of correctional centres located in a rural prairie location.  This paper will present information on the work to remove barriers and create a liminal space where theatre is used to bring together those generally separated by both physical barriers as well as social bias. How do we create an oasis of creativity within a political institution? How can theatre and theatrical learning create a brave space where divisions are dismantled?

• Sara Schroeter and j skelton, “Seen Elsewhere: Queer and Trans Identities as a Place of Liminal Belonging on the Prairie Stage”

There is of course queer and trans theatre here, in Saskatchewan. There are drag shows, an Imperial Court, stage performances such as Creepy Boys (2024) and artists such as The Care Bois who use the whole public buildings as their stage (2023). Art Babayants’ multilingual play Bros / Les gars / Ախպերներ was staged by La troupe du jour in 2022, the same year Sâkêwêwak the Indigenous Storytelling festival’s chosen theme was two-spirit identities. There is an insider quality to the queer and trans theatre of here – we are telling our stories to each other, insisting on our own belonging, comforting ourselves. And, there are queer and trans stories of here that are perhaps too big for here. Too queer, too trans, too ready to tell a prairie audience about itself. Theatre that to be successful becomes multiply outsider theatre, telling queer and trans prairie stories to audiences of mixed sexual orientations and gender identities in the metropolis (places like Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, Montreal). Plays like Ayache’s The Hooves Belonged to the Deer, that debuted at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre, in 2023, telling the tale of a queer Muslim boy on the prairies.  Queerness, transness, and prairie already hold each other in tension. There is already a liminality there, always, already on the horizon (Muños, 2009), always already becoming other. This paper will explore this tension, the challenges of needing to travel elsewhere to see queer and trans prairie stores writ large, the possibilities for critique that come with distance, and the possibilities for queer and trans futurity here.

Biographies

T. Erin Gruber

T. Erin Gruber is an award-winning set, lighting, costume and projected media designer. She is an Assistant Professor in Theatre Design (Lighting) at the University of Alberta and works professionally across Canada and around the world. In June 2019 her work was featured in the Canadian National Exhibition at the Prague Quadrennial.

Hope McIntyre

Hope McIntyre is an award winning playwright/director and Associate Professor at the University of Winnipeg. She has a BFA in performance and an MFA in directing. She was Artistic Director of Sarasvàti Productions for 22 years. She is a certified Walls to Bridges instructor teaching theatre in carceral settings.

Sara Schroeter

Sara Schroeter is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Arts Education program in the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina, where she teaches drama, art, and anti-racist education classes in French and English.

J Skelton

J Wallace Skelton is Assistant Professor of Queer Studies in Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina. J’s scholarship is and activism is about creating climates for people of all sexual orientations and gender identities to thrive.