Moderator: Robin Whittaker
Location: Room 1411 – Pavilion André Aidenstadt – 2920 chemin de la tour – Université de Montréal
(Building 19 on the UdM Map)
In-Person Session
Compounding Injustice: How School Musicals Exacerbate Social Inequities
Musicals are an integral part of many drama programs in Canadian secondary schools. Lauded for the ways that they bring students and faculty together, from across disciplinary and social boundaries, musicals enable schools to showcase youth talent, connect with local communities, and often raise money for drama programs. However, in whose image are these productions made? When understood as a form of public pedagogy (Galella, 2020), what do musicals say about the ways that schools imagine their communities, and how do representational practices interact with mandates for the curriculum to be widely inclusive of diversity? This paper presents data collected during a case study on representations of race, class, gender, and sexuality in secondary musical theatre productions in a prairie town. The objective was to gain insight into the factors influencing teachers’ decision-making processes. Using a lens informed by critical race studies (Dei, 2006; James, 2015; Leonardo, 2013; St. Denis, 2007) and Black feminism (hooks, 2015; Morrison, 1992), this paper analyzes how teachers’ entanglements with white supremacy, cisheteropatrichy, and colonialism enable them to justify reproducing harmful stereotypes in musical theatre productions – even though some feel trapped by the constraints imposed on them by external factors. Educators who choose not to produce musicals appear to be more directly guided by the principles of diversity, inclusion, and equity. Most participants believe that racially minoritized students do not seem themselves adequately represented in highschool musicals, suggesting that their perennial presence on drama calendars compounds the social injustice that these students confront in schools.
Sara Schroeter, University of Regina
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, literacy, arts and anti-racist education classes in French and English.
Courtroom Character Assassination: The unravelling of Maria Butina
This paper addresses how the dialectic of success and failure manifests in espionage during the post-modern era. The paper utilizes the trial of the Russian foreign agent, Maria Butina–and event that is rife with theatricality–to articulate this concept. As the presentation will address, central to this performative event are the efforts undertaken by the United States government that amount to an initiative of, to borrow a term from Elinor Fuchs, character killing. These instances of character assassination reveal the United States’ orientalist approach to foreigners, as well as its patriarchal framing of relationships, that are used to undermine the credibility of Butina and others on trial. The paper will then continue on to break down instances from the Butina trial to establish how both the Russian and United States governments might find success in the failure and failure in success in this performative iteration of ‘justice’. The court-room proceedings against Butina are then reframed by Sarah Jane Bailes’ research that addresses the failure of representation. This is a particularly important consideration given that the case-study is concerned with the various characters that espionage agents employ.
Fraser Stevens, Sheffield Hallam University
Fraser Stevens is a lecturer in Performance at Sheffield Hallam University. His writing has appeared in both peer-reviewed journals and edited anthologies. He is the co-director of the experimental theatre company, Almost Human, and has produced work in North America, Europe, and the Middle East. Fraser’s most recent research looks to reposition secrets as theatrical undertakings.
Cue the Wrecking Ball: Political Theatre Ripped From the Headlines
The Wrecking Ball was a unique form of political theatre produced in English Canada from 2006 -2013. Founded in Toronto by Volcano Theatre Artistic Director Ross Manson and playwright Jason Sherman, the model engaged a specific producing structure for theatre to respond to moments of political need: One week to commission volunteer playwrights to prepare works responding to a specific political event, one week to cast scripts and attach directors to them, one week to rehearse the scripts.
This format was replicated in other Canadian cities in the lead up to the 2008 and 2011 Federal elections where Wrecking Balls occurred on the same night in many large Canadian cities, with the events using onstage technology and a joint communications strategy. Canadian Actors’ Equity amended contracts to allow members to waive regular rates of compensation to participate in a “Wrecking Ball” and leadership of the Toronto Wrecking Ball passed through the hands of many prominent arts leaders including current Why Not Artistic Director Ravi Jain, Soulpepper Artistic Director Weyni Mengesha, and National Arts Centre English Theatre Artistic Director Nina Lee Aquino.
As a previous Wrecking Ball participant, I will investigate the forces that caused Wrecking Balls to be created, gain national significance, and eventually fade away. These forces are situated within the work of Filewod, Levin and Wright; and analyses the conventions and opportunities for political theatre in English Canada during this period (2006-14) via PACT, Indie, and ad-hoc productions and the context they created for grassroots political works on a short producing timeline. Finally, the paper will reflect on the lessons that can be extrapolated for future creators of theatre striving to respond quickly to political events.
Michael Wheeler, Queen’s University
Michael Wheeler is an Assistant Professor in The DAN School of Drama and Music and Coordinator of the graduate Arts Leadership program at Queen’s University. He is a co-founder of FOLDA where he is co-curator of the Festival of Live Digital Art, and serves as the organization’s Director of Artistic Research.