Moderator / Animé par: Jennifer Nikolai Location: Silver Room, Atlas Hotel
• Mike Griffin, “Staging the Internal: An Exploration of Brain Injury Through Physical Theatre”
This presentation will examine the research and development of The Mysterious Mind of Molly McGillicuddy, a new play that explores brain injury and related mental health issues through the styles of mask and physical theatre. How can we dramatize the internal experience, bringing the medical and the theatrical together? My presentation will discuss my interaction with this question as I crafted this play with a student ensemble at Brock University. Firstly, I will share how I used the physical properties of the brain and the physiological impacts of a concussion on a brain as a springboard for a series of movement-based inquiries. I will discuss how through working with a chorus for these “internal scenes” we translated moments of breakdown and recovery, amplifying and theatricalizing what happens internally into visceral and expressionistic movement sequences. Secondly, I will outline my examination of the signs and symptoms of concussions through character-mask improvisations, which helped build much of the storyline of the play. Connected to this is the non-linear nature of the healing process, a major influence on the play’s structure. Finally, I will wrap up with an explanation of why approaching the subject of brain injury through non-verbal and physical theatrical techniques was the best choice for this project, sharing how this opened the doors into a world of imagination and whimsy.
• William MacGregor, “Documentary Performance Pathography: Reflections on Staging Illness, the Limitations of Scholarship and Praxis, and the Potential of a New Method”
This research presentation outlines Documentary Performance Pathography, a new method developed by the author during a research-creation project as part of the completion of their MA in Theatre and Performance Studies at York University. Quietus, a play for two performers, is comprised primarily of transcribed sections from journals kept during the author’s near-decade long experience with severe chronic pain and disability, staging their struggles with illness, sickness, impairment, and the Canadian health and social care systems. However, during Quietus’s initial development as performance autoethnography, the author’s growing discontent with the limitations and artistic trade-offs of the method, as well as how conventional expectations for illness narratives, of triumphal plot and cathartic resolution, clashed with their own illness experience (as well as the ambivalence that accompanied an eventual but unlikely recovery), led to the genesis of a new approach: Documentary Performance Pathography. Positioned at the intersection of documentary theatre, performance autoethnography, and illness narratives, this method combines the reflexive and systematic strengths of performance autoethnography, the affective power of theatrical performance, and the verifiability of documentary theatre. The presentation will outline the scholarship and artistic works that influenced the conception and development of this method, the practical theatrical considerations that shaped the play-text, before ending with the author’s reflections and insights specifically addressed to a performance-oriented audience, with the hopes that this new form can offer new opportunities for artists, scholars, and ideally everyone the means to tell more verifiable stories about illness and health experiences.
Biographies
Mike Griffin
Mike Griffin is an Assistant Professor at Brock University and teaches acting, directing, devising, movement, mask, and Commedia dell’Arte. He is currently a Faculty Fellows in Accessibility at Brock and recently won the Faculty of Humanities’ 2023 Excellence in Teaching Award. Additionally, Mike is an accomplished playwright and director.
William MacGregor
William MacGregor (he/him) is a Theatre Artist and PhD Student in the Health Policy and Equity Graduate Program at York University. His SSHRC funded research, informed by his own experience with disability, chronic illness, and chronic pain, critically examines disability-related policies and programs and poverty for PWDs in Canada.
