Location: Design Room
Moderator: Robin Whittaker
Yasmine Agocs, “Nuestro Hogar (Our Home): Collective Memory and Belonging in Latina/o Canadian Playtexts”
The looming presence of home for exiles, migrants, and refugees invokes an ambivalent, complex blend of familial warmth and alienating coldness. In Latina/o narratives in Canada, ‘home’ is often depicted as a distant and disconnected concept, presenting both utopian and dystopian images that challenge Canadian policies, economy, intercultural relations, and community. It is crucial to observe that these narratives are typically anchored in personal memory, historical events, and collective experiences within communities.
Memory and community are two themes in Latina/o Canadian theatre and performance that offer a distinct perspective on the concept of home for Latina/o immigrants and refugees. Themes such as dedication to family, resistance to Canadian cultural hegemony, and the preservation of language are woven into these stories through the usage of memory and community, drawing links between Latina/o personal and collective identity.
This paper examines the role of memory and collectivity as counter-archival engagements in three Latina/o Canadian playtexts. I will conduct a close reading of three Latina/o Canadian playtexts, The Refugee Hotel by Carmen Aguirre and Fronteras Americanas (American Borders) by Guillermo Verdecchia, along with my original play Quiltro, which debuted at the 2025 Toronto Fringe Festival. All three plays use memory and collectivity as thematic tools to explore the depths of Latina/o Canadian collective consciousness, cross-generational community, and a desire to belong.
Dale MacDonald, “Dark Silence: Sounding Gertrude Stein’s Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights”
The goals for this research project are activated by Sara Bey-Cheng’s assertion, “that Gertrude Stein’s drama deserves consideration on its own terms, as drama and as theater” (3). My study is a departure from the ‘dramatic’ analysis Bey-Cheng provides and instead foregrounds the ‘theatrical’ via the sonic within Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights. To do so, I offer a reading of Stein’s play as score as opposed to script and compose a possible soundscape for the play. Engaging with research-creation methodology, my intention is to manifest Hans-Thes Lehmann’s assessment: that Stein’s text “emancipates the clause from the sentence, the word from the clause, the phonetic from the semantic potential and the sound from the cohesion of meaning” (63). This approach brings to light and subverts the academic inclination towards literary analysis, even when Stein’s work is considered “performable”. Sounding Doctor Faustus results in a unique realization of the play and offers a method for “un-closeting” any of Stein’s theatrical texts.
Zach McKendrick, “Virtual Performance Practice: Translating The Nether into mixed reality”
This paper investigates a performance-creation methodology for translating a traditional stage script into a hybrid mixed-reality production. Using Jennifer Haley’s The Nether as the case study, the project explores how a text written for live theatre can be reimagined across two interdependent performance planes: the physical stage and a bespoke, real-time virtual environment. Working with actors, designers, and technologists, the creative team probes how and what it means to translate scenes conceived initially for a representational stage into digital form. This includes examining how virtual avatars, embodied perspectives, and networked presence function as performative materials rather than mere technical affordances. Instead of treating VR as an add-on or spectacle, our process positions it as a dramaturgical partner: a site where blocking, gesture, proximity, and scenic transitions must be rediscovered through iterative experimentation. Our interpretation reframes the script’s virtual scenes not as metaphors for digital space, but as playable architectures that shape action and rhythm while investigating the tension of corporeal life in digital societies.
The resulting hybrid performance invites two audiences, co-located and online, to experience the production through distinct but interwoven dramaturgies. Physical spectators watch actors navigate material and virtual worlds, while remote spectators inhabit the fictional environment directly through VR avatars. This dual staging raises questions about liveness, embodiment, and representation. By charting the creative, technical, and dramaturgical decisions that inform this work, our paper articulates a practical framework for adapting scripted theatre to mixed-reality performance.
Biographies:
Yasmine Agocs is a trained actor and PhD student at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies. Her current research explores the connections between Latin American communities and theatre in Canada, with a particular interest in community-building and intersectionality in Chilean Canadian feminist playtexts.
Dale MacDonald is a writer, educator, and artist working in so-called Vancouver since 2016. Currently working towards a PhD at the University of British Columbia, Dale’s research examines settler corpse-performances, ethical rot, and interspecies collaboration.
Zach McKendrick‘s work sits at the nexus of Drama, Technology, and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). With a background as a director (MFA), actor, and technician, he has investigated ethnographic shifts towards immersive and extended virtual reality in the live performance sector and broader HCI research community.