Moderator: Barry Freeman
Location: Room 4275 – 3200 rue Jean-Brillant – Université de Montréal
(Building 27 on the UdM map)
In-Person Session
Sponsored by the Department of English, Theatre, Film & Media – University of Manitoba
Housing Justice and the Contemporary Urban Playhouse
Juliet Rufford has noted that both theatre and architecture are “practices based on a central image of the house” (55). She cites Marvin Carlson’s etymological explanation of the origins of the theatrical “house” as a contraction of the early modern “playhouse” (Carlson, “H”). The contemporary housing justice movement is based on the idea that housing is a human right and shouldn’t be narrowly defined as a commodity. However, urban playhouses are subject to the same economic and real estate forces that are increasingly making affordable housing an unreachable goal in many Canadian cities. Discussing the idea of “home” as a foundational trope of modern drama, Kim Solga and Joanne Tompkins suggest that “the more precious home becomes to us at the theatre, the further it recedes from our everyday grasp” (77). This paper explores the connections between housing justice and the contemporary urban playhouse through a case study in Vancouver’s downtown. Westbank’s Vancouver House condominium tower, designed by starchitect Bjarke Ingels to resemble a theatre curtain, is startlingly ghosted by the collapse of the Vancouver Playhouse Theatre Company in 2012. I show how Vancouver House correctly identifies the development of Vancouver’s downtown as a theatrical spectacle that performatively impacts the citizens and is invested in framing and generating affect. The building effectively shifts the site of performance from the interior of performing arts venues to the city as a whole, the roles of author and director are usurped by developer and architect, and both performers and spectators are played by a tacit citizenry cast in a participatory happening not of their own explicit choosing.
Works Cited
Carlson, Marvin. “H is for House.” Contemporary Theatre Review, vol. 23.2, 2013, pp. 29-31.
Rufford, Juliet. Theatre & Architecture. Red Globe Press, 2015.
Solga, Kim and Joanne Tomkins. “The Environment of Theatre.” A Cultural History of Theatre in the Modern Age, Edited by Kim Solga, Methuen Drama, 2019.
Katrina Dunn, University of Manitoba
Katrina Dunn is an Associate Professor in the University of Manitoba’s Department of English, Theatre, Film & Media where she teaches in the Theatre Program. Her scholarly work explores the spatial manifestations of theatre as well as ecocritical theatre. In 2022, she was awarded the Richard Plant Award for the best long form English-language article on a Canadian theatre or performance topic by the Canadian Association for Theatre Research. She is currently adapting her dissertation, “Empty House: Real Estate and Theatricality in Vancouver’s Downtown”, into a monograph for UBC Press. Katrina’s long career as a stage director and producer has had considerable impact on the performing arts in western Canada and has been recognized with numerous awards.
Unjuried, Uncensored, Uncurated: Rethinking the Fringe Festival Mandate in the 21st Century
One of the central principles of nearly every Fringe festival is that the content is non-curated. Whether participation is decided by a random lottery, or if the festival simply allows everyone to participate, this spirit of non-censorship and openness is central to Fringe. While this creates an opportunity for radical and innovative performance works, it also comes with practical issues concerning the safety and accessibility of the festival for artists. For example, while a lack of censorship may allow artists to take more risks, this lack of censorship may also lead to things like hate speech or the platforming of artists who are known for creating hostile or abusive environments. These issues can then prevent others from participating safely. Is the festival truly “open” if the acceptance of some means that others can’t participate?
As an artist, volunteer, and staff member for the Montreal Fringe Festival, I have seen this discussion emerge almost every year. Community discussion spaces such as the Fringe Artists’ Hive Facebook group have been the sites of discourse surrounding the festival’s responsibility for keeping artists safe, even when that might conflict with their responsibility to keep the festival uncensored. Looking at incidents from the 2023 Montreal Fringe Festival and the context of the larger role of Fringe festivals in contemporary theatre, this paper hopes to spur discussion about how Fringe can maintain its independent and open spirit while still taking seriously the concerns of participants who have felt unsafe within the environment that this can create.
Steven Greenwood, Concordia University
Steven Greenwood is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Concordia University and an Adjunct Lecturer at McGill University. He is also the Artistic Director and co-founder of Home Theatre Productions, and is actively working as a playwright and director in Montreal.
Performing (In)Justice in Cultural Policy
One significant “P” word that is absent from the theme “Staging Justice: People, Places, Planet, and Practice” is Policy. Moves towards justice within cultural work and the creative industries—including in theatre and performance—are heavily impacted by cultural policies and the ways they allocate and distribute resources across the sector. In addition, policy frameworks are themselves informed by ideas of how cultural work is contributing to a more just world. For example, participatory art and social performance are often understood as cultural forms that can highlight injustice or articulate desires for justice, and this perspective can influence how support for these cultural forms is articulated in policy.
As art and culture is increasingly instrumentalized within neoliberal capitalism, there is a need to understand how cultural policies are positioning the relationship between art and justice, and how this positioning is materialized into specific cultural programming and support within the sector. In this presentation, I focus on federal and sub-national cultural policies to specifically investigate the ways that art, performance, and cultural work is tasked with addressing social and economic injustices. Situating cultural policy as its own discursive performance—a performance that is highly contextual and has specific material impacts—I query how the rhetoric and effects of these discursive performances reveal ideas of cultural value that can, paradoxically, prevent movement towards true “creative justice” (Banks 2017). To counter this, I offer possibilities for more justice-centered cultural policy frameworks.
Megan Johnson, University of Guelph
Dr. Megan A. Johnson (she/her) is a performance scholar, singer, arts administrator, and dramaturg. Currently a Mitacs postdoctoral fellow at The Re•Vision Centre for Art and Social Justice at the University of Guelph, Megan’s research centers on disability art and culture, critical access studies, infrastructural politics, public and cultural policy, and environmental studies. Megan’s writing has been published in Performance Matters, Theatre Research in Canada, Performance Research, Canadian Theatre Review, Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, and PUBLIC.