Location: Roger Bishop Theatre
Abstract:
Since 2020, Canada’s arts and culture sector has undergone radical infrastructural change. The COVID-19 pandemic, the murder of George Floyd, and the discovery of gravesites at former residential schools forced a reckoning with the systemic inequities and unsustainability of many systems, structures, and ways of working. This reckoning spurred long overdue changes in leadership models, artistic practices, and attitudes towards built, social, and administrative infrastructure. Now, in a moment of geopolitical instability, brazen authoritarianism, rising inflation, and the existential threat of AI, new questions have arisen alongside renewed infrastructure investment (Kho and Michalyshyn 2025).
T&PS scholars have long recognized how different infrastructures support artistic production, investigating everything from proscenium stages to sprung floors, ticketing systems to funding schemes, training programs, and international networks (Jackson 2011, Schweitzer 2015, McKinnie 2013, Knowles 2004, Johnson 2022). But the current moment demands renewed attention to how the infrastructural inheritances of theatre and performance in Canada shape artistic practice and cultural production today. To that end, this CATR 2026 roundtable asks: what infrastructures have we inherited and what do we do with them? How can artists and cultural workers subvert, resist, remake, or remold these infrastructures to reveal the inequities and barriers embedded within them? In what ways can we work within and around existing infrastructures, making art despite systems that may not provide the robust support needed to enable creative work? What infrastructural futures can we imagine from here?
Biographies:
Session organizers: Megan Johnson (Dalhousie) and Marlis Schweitzer (York)
Moderator: Marlis Schweitzer
Dr. Marlis Schweitzer is Professor and Chair in the Department of Theatre, Dance & Performance at York University.
Organizer: Megan A. Johnson
Dr. Megan A. Johnson is Research Facilitator and Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Dalhousie University.
Roundtable Participant bios
Logan Swain is a storyteller with a burning desire to make a difference in the world by telling stories that value truth and honesty while remaining playfully curious. Logan is Métis with Scottish, English, and European heritage, born and raised on the traditional unceded territory of the Quw’utsun First People (Cowichan Tribes). He is passionate about bringing live performance to the stage while helping his fellow artists reach their highest artistic potential. Logan is an MFA candidate in Design/Production at the University of Victoria, studying Lighting and Set Design. Logan has held various roles at Theatre SKAM since joining the company in 2019, helping expand the organization’s physical footprint to 7,500 sq. ft. of performance, creation, and administrative space in downtown Victoria. After 28 years as a founder-led company, SKAM completed a multi-year succession process in April 2023, with Logan transitioning to an artistic leadership role as part of a cohort of four early-career IBPOC artists. Logan took on the combined roles of Artistic & Managing Director in spring 2025 after steadying the company through a difficult 2024, during which the annual operating budget decreased by over 50%.
Amiel Gladstone is a West Coast based writer and director. As a director, his productions have been both site specific in unusual venues and in traditional theatres, with companies such as Alberta Theatre Projects, Arts Club, Belfry, Caravan Farm, Factory, Firehall, the Guild in Whitehorse, Opera Kelowna, Musical Stage Co, Pacific Opera Victoria, Theatre Replacement, Theatre Calgary, Theatre Conspiracy, Theatre SKAM, Tarragon, Vancouver Opera, Vancouver Playhouse, and the PuSh Festival.
As a playwright, his plays have been produced by Alberta Theatre Projects, Belfry, Touchstone, Caravan Farm, the National Arts Centre, Solo Collective, Western, Theatre SKAM, as well as internationally in the United States, France, and Romania. He is a founding member of Theatre SKAM, and has held artistic positions at Caravan Farm, Belfry and Touchstone Theatre. He has been Director of Theatre Arts at Banff Centre since 2023.
Valerie Sing Turner is a multidisciplinary artist who performs, writes, directs, and dramaturges. Her writings for the stage include a political satire, Breaking Parity; the interdisciplinary Confessions of the Other Woman; the libretto for a comic operetta, Did I Just Say That?; and In the Shadow of the Mountains, a dramedy for 10 actors about three generations of an Indigenous/Chinese/Japanese-Canadian family. A former artist-in-residence with National Arts Centre and Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, Valerie is currently founder/Co-Artistic Producer of Visceral Visions; founder/Co-Director of CultureBrew.Art; a member of Equity, UBCP/ACTRA, and Playwrights Guild of Canada; and an alumnus of the Banff Cultural Leadership program. A recipient of the Enbridge playRites Award, John Moffat + Larry Lillo Prize, and a BC Lieutenant Governor’s Platinum Jubilee Arts & Music Award in recognition of her “exceptional contributions to the arts”, Valerie is currently co-directing the animated film adaptation of Did I Just Say That?
Sarah Garton Stanley (SGS) is a director, dramaturg, and cultural leader whose work spans creation, curation, and institution-building across Canada. She co-owns and operates the historic Birchdale. Other recent and current projects include The Recombining with Owais Lightwala with the Yukon Arts Centre, How to Talk with Dylan Robinson at the 2026 Hold On and Let Go Festival in Vancouver, dramaturgy on Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland’s new musical Man of the Year and a movement-based Faust-inspired work, directing Paradise Lost at NTS in fall 2026, and directing and dramaturge for Tracey Erin Smith’s Mandelbaum, touring Canada in 2027. She is the former VP Programming at Arts Commons in Calgary and Artistic Producer for the National Creation Fund at the NAC, where she also served as Associate Artistic Director of English Theatre, creating The Collaborations and The Cycle. She was Artistic Director at Buddies in Bad Times, the inaugural Artistic Associate of The Magnetic North Theatre Festival, and co-founder of SWS, FOLDA, and The Baby Grand Theatre. SGS holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from Queen’s University and is co-author of Manifesto for Now and Create Canada. She serves on the board of The Canadian Theatre Museum and the National Advisory for the National Creation Fund. Sarah and Owais Lightwala are co-authoring a new book Trust Falls, forthcoming in 2028.