Curator: Yasmine Kandil
Location: Room 0030 – Pavilion de la Faculté de l’aménagement – 2940 ch. de la Côte Ste-Catherine– Université de Montréal
(Building 36 on the UdM Map)
In-Person Session
Sponsored by the Department of Theatre – University of Regina
The members of this group collaborated on a Research in Drama Education special themed issue with Drs. Tim Prentki (Winchester University) and Yasmine Kandil (University of Victoria), which was published in August 2023. Some contributors from this special themed issue are coming together in this curated panel to discuss the developments with their research topics on the theme of race, representation, and empathy in Applied Theatre.
The topic of race, representation and their implications on empathy and creative imagination have been on the minds of many scholars and practitioners in Applied Theatre and Drama in Education, and since the #metoo movement and the resurgence of the Black Livers Matter movement in 2020. Ways of engagement with race and representation have shifted in classrooms and community halls, and issues of accountability, authenticity, identity politics and woke culture have collided and converged as participants and practitioners have attempted to salvage the value of creative play in their work. This curated panel brings together several of these contributors to reflect on their research as published and to offer more insight that has emerged since then.
Curriculum Violence in Drama Education
This article examines a concept called ‘curriculum violence’ that offers a contribution to the field of curriculum studies, in deepening both teachers’ and scholars’ awareness of the ways in which our best intentions in the drama classroom may lead to potential harm for our students. We present two drama structures, both Canadian; the first by Carole Miller and Juliana Saxton and the second by Larry Swartz and Debbie Nyman. We then discuss what we view as a High risk issue; a new provincial curriculum to be implemented in Alberta, that we view as causing potential curriculum violence to students.
Robyn Shenfield, University of Victoria
Robyn Shenfied is a PhD candidate in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction in the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria. In 2021 she was awarded a Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS Doctoral Scholarship from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Monica Prendergast, University of Victoria
Monica Prendergast is Professor of Drama/Theatre Education, Department of Curriculum & Instruction at the University of Victoria. Her research interests include drama-based curriculum and pedagogy, drama/theatre in community contexts, and arts-based qualitative research methods.
“Theatre Beyond Culture Wars: why we need to get over ourselves”
A meditation on drama practice from an artist in Canada. My university students are preoccupied with damage and trauma. There are paralyzing obstacles to working across differences that were useful for a time but no longer serve a robust solidarity. The stories we collect, tell and re-tell ourselves to prepare for a ‘never again’ are stifled if the collisions between the evident and the imagined – and between suffering and joy – are reduced to their limits and not probed for their possibilities. I ponder this via an applied theatre project with my students and injured workers from across Ontario.
Julie Salverson, Queen’s University
Professor Julie Salverson is a writer, scholar and teacher. Her work embrace the relationship of imagination and foolish witness to risky stories. Books include Lines of Flight, an atomic memoir and 7 Canadian Libretti (editor). She runs workshops for groups practicing resiliency through drama. She is librettist for the opera Shelter.
“Race & representation in applied theatre: walking a fine line to salvage empathy & creative imagination”
This paper examines the evolving nature of how race and difference are represented in creative applied theatre work in classroom and community-based settings. The author uses several examples of performances and workshops she’s attended to ask important questions that point to the tensions percolating in our discipline around who gets to tell a story, how, and in what way this telling shapes perceptions and notions of the Other. At the heart of this inquiry is a desire to salvage creativity, play, and imagination in an environment that is increasingly fraught with cancel culture, virtue signalling, and identity politics.
Yasmine Kandil, University of Victoria
Yasmine Kandil is Associate Professor at the Department of Theatre at the University of Victoria. Her work has engaged with communities who are under-represented, through Theatre for Development, scenario training for de-escalation strategies for police officers, and most recently through Celebratory Theatre.
“Trans/Queer representation and drama: engendering new forms of empathy and relationality”
Through dialogue between Taylor, a trans male Turkish-Canadian theatre student and Kathleen, a queer, cis-gendered female Scottish-Canadian theatre researcher, Kathleen considers some questions that queerness and trans identities in the drama classroom invite. Based on their mutual engagement in a virtual drama club in a Toronto high school in the 2020–2021 school year, they recall together experiences of performance, performative writing, and the strangely intimate relationality provoked by a global health pandemic. They are interested in the possibility of distinct individuals forming powerful collectives in art-making and in life through a reconsideration of the idea of ‘empathy’ newly imagined as relational.
Kathleen Gallagher (University of Toronto)
Dr. Kathleen Gallagher is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Distinguished Professor, and Director of the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Toronto. Her scholarly articles have appeared in a wide range of journals. Her latest book is titled Hope in a Collapsing World: Youth, Theatre, and Listening as a Political Alternative (UTP 2022).
‘And yet’ … Critical questions, complicated conversations: curating a TYA curriculum
Can critical questions and complicated conversations addressing issues of representation, difference, and witnessing be positioned at the centre of a TYA curriculum? This paper examines contemporary, issue-based and culturally specific TYA scripts. In addition, a collection of aesthetic representations are offered as dynamic prompts to help further provoke dialogue across difference, and to invite different forms of knowing and knowledge into our shared TYA spaces. These curated sources are considered alongside the wisdom of Elie Wiesel, Johnston’s ‘Slow Curation’, Lauzon’s ‘Cultural Intimacy’, and Rothberg’s ‘Multidirectional Memory’ concepts in the effort to welcome and sustain relationships across multiple and challenging contexts.
Belarie Zatzman, York University
Dr. Belarie Zatzman’s research and teaching focus on performing memory and memorial, and Canadian Theatre for Young Audiences. Publications include: ““And yet”… Critical questions, complicated conversations: curating a TYA curriculum” (2023); and “Applied Theatre Encounters at Canada’s National Holocaust Monument” (2020).
The fear of cultural appropriation is the beginning of wokeness in learning? reflections from teaching in Canada
The current heightened sensitivity around history, colonisation and the aftermath of the socio-political and cultural ethos of the world can create in many people the fear of cultural appropriation and misrepresentation. This fear can affect the ability to imagine and play in certain learning settings, especially in devising performances, socially engaged theatre, and other arts-based explorations. However, what happens when participants choose not to engage due to the abovementioned fears? This paper considers the differing ways in which fear of cultural appropriation and misrepresentation deterred students from learning while teaching in Canada.
Taiwo Afolabi, University of Regina
Taiwo Afolabi is an Associate Professor at the University of Regina. His research foci include applied theatre and its engagement in a variety of contexts such as justice, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the cultural and creative sector. He is the Director of the Centre for Socially Engaged Theatre (C-SET).
To Represent or Not to Represent: Choice or Excuse?
This reflection considers the nuances of white theatre teacher/practitioners confronting race and racism in educational drama and theatre spaces. The author invites her white peers to reflect on theory and individual and collective praxis given discrete and shared identity markers. The author shares lessons learned through a variety of experiences, including as a guest at an arts-based youth programme focused on Indigenous identity reclamation.
Roxanne Schroeder-Arce, University of Texas
Roxanne Schroeder-Arce is Associate Professor of Theatre Education in the Department of Theatre & Dance and Associate Dean of Fine Arts Education at The University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on arts education and representation in theatre for young audiences. Her plays are published by Dramatic Pubishing.