Location: Barbara McIntyre Theatre
Moderator: Yasmine Kandil
Emilia Hillyer, “The Fantasy of Antiseptic: Performing Rubbish Theory and Critiquing Monumental History via Community-Engaged Gender-Diverse Puppetry Practices”
The “negative privilege” of low art forms like puppetry call out to the scapegoats of the modern moment: gender-diverse people. At a time when community-engagement is in vogue, how can the disenfranchised transgender community best be served? This paper proposes that the inclusion of puppet bodies— objectified bodies made from trash— in such an endeavour is a successful accessibility measure, a generative aesthetic invitation, and a prompt to consider critical histories/rubbish theory. Working with garbage puppet bodies (cardboard, recycled plastics, etc) when transgender bodies are being ‘cleaned up from the streets’ is an effort the ensemble of The Fantasy of Antiseptic has undertaken. Through Boal’s Image Theatre, Schumann-informed aesthetics, and dance improvisation (Snelling’s Rewriting Distance/Zaporah’s Action Theater) the ensemble devised a puppet show, providing a community space for transgender people in a city with one gay bar and offering critical performative lenses to examine anti-trans fascism of the Albertan UCP and the USA. The politics of refusal/unwelcome as expounded upon by Dylan Robinson were integral to our creation process; how do we create without typical narratives of pain surrounding trans bodies? When are cisgender audiences consuming our representations of trans life welcome and when are they refused access? We found puppetry offered innovative ways to imagine queer utopias and manifest new communal/performative ecologies; the lens of rubbish theory clarified our positions in the political climate; and community-engaged work created a celebratory transgender community, flourishing in the face of a world which would prefer we didn’t exist.
Makayla and Mariah Madill, “Stepping Into Connection and Out of Patriarchy”
We inherit our family’s and society’s unspoken, unconscious, and sometimes overt patriarchal rules, beliefs, and ways of being. Our collective wellness requires that we assess these embedded values that may not serve individuals or communities. More specifically, patriarchy contributes to theatre hierarchy, which is a system of domination that gives the creative power to specific roles within the theatre world, like the director. While theatre does require a certain level of leadership, this workshop offers an alternative approach to theatre creation that disperses power amongst more people to encourage a collaborative and inclusive theatre space. The workshop will use applied theatre, which is a community-based approach with the goal of social change and education that can bring awareness to, and alleviate suffering around, the impact of patriarchy. This workshop will provide a supportive community for the participants to share about their experiences with patriarchy, while also offering them the tools, awareness, and confidence to disrupt patriarchal practices and values. In addition, this workshop will model an alternative way of disrupting patriarchy in theatre and provide a space to slow down, reflect, and question some of those inherited patriarchal influences on theatre creation. Theatre can, and should be, creating spaces for diverse opinions and perspectives to build towards more equality, collective thinking, and compassion so that societal and global issues can be addressed constructively.
Keren Zaiontz, “The ‘Extraordinary Gesture’ of Collectivity in Ukraine”
A Ukrainian theatre group dismantles their public art installation in a Düsseldorf city park, a simple A-frame structure used for gatherings, and travel from Germany to a Kyiv suburb, where they use the wood beam materials to rebuild a family home destroyed by Russian rocket fire. The theatre artists hand the original photographs, maps, and drawings of the 2022 reconstruction to another group—ist publishing—an art collective. The ist collective catalogues, and later curates the events in the park, reaching audiences in global art biennales even as they shelter from drone missiles in a war bent on reducing Ukraine to a Russian colony. This paper examines the emergence of networked artist groups and collectives in Ukraine as an antidote to Russia’s rapacious invasion and occupation. It focuses on performances, installations, and texts that emphasize democratic ways of being together in the face of war and threats to bodily and cultural sovereignty. Such groups have created their own artistic commons to address the collective traumas and ongoing crises they navigate both at home and as exiles and expatriates abroad. In the words of ist publishing and its collaborators: “Commonality and community become a trope of the struggle for simply being together—when bodies are in the same place they form an extraordinary gesture that possesses resistance” (Our Years 2023, 17). This paper will end with a consideration of Ukrainian-Canadian Maria Reva’s Booker nominated novel, Endling (2025)–a meta-fictional account of experiencing the 2022 full-scale war in Ukraine from Canada. It was this very distance that prompted Reva to imagine a feminist collectivity in the pages of her novel, offering her female protagonists a means of survival in a time of terror.
Biographies:
Originally from Massachusett and Wampanoag land, Emilia Hillyer is an Scottish/English/Irish/Italian first-generation settler in amiskwaciy-wâskahikan. She is a performer, puppeteer, facilitator, and member of Boston’s Fork & Shoe Theatre Cooperative. Emilia is currently pursuing her MFA in Theatre Practice at the University of Alberta.
Makayla Madill is an MA student at the University of Victoria studying the power of applied theatre for disrupting patriarchal hierarchy. She continues to engage in applied theatre projects and endeavors that inspire her craft and fuel her curiosity for people and their world views.
Mariah Madill is pursuing her MA at the University of Victoria. Her research focuses on the experiences and challenges of immigrants and refugees and uses applied theatre to offer community, voice, and representation. She is driven by the endless possibilities of drama and pedagogy.
Keren Zaiontz is assistant professor at the University of British Columbia. She is the author of Theatre & Festivals and co-editor of Sustainable Tools for Precarious Times: Performance Actions in the Americas, winner of the ATHE Award for Excellence in Editing. Her current book project is a cultural examination of global north authoritarian power from the perspective of dissident artists who risk everything and model perseverance in the face of repressive rule.