Location: Chief Dan George Theatre
Abstract
Convened by Jessica Riley and Heather Davis-Fisch, this roundtable considers the formation of Canadian theatre studies as a discipline, with emphasis on the values that informed its founding and foundations. Like the foundations of a house, the formative values and assumptions of our discipline are often invisible, only apparent when they break down and cause damage. Investigating spaces of both/and, participants will explore such questions as: What, in hindsight, makes you wince? When, in pursuit of one agenda or set of goals, were other interests or identities devalued? What value-based assumptions or beliefs shore up the field, and what values were rejected or overlooked in these constructions? What canonical or celebrated moments in our discipline’s history need to be excavated and re-examined with new perspectives today? How can we, in retrospect, trace our way back to misogynist, racist, colonial, or otherwise flawed and damaging assumptions that went unexamined in the formative years? What is the value in excavating these skeletons from the disciplinary closet of Canadian theatre studies? What are the pitfalls of such excavations? What do we risk, in exposing these formative failings—and what do we stand to gain? Responding to the invitation to “investigate our field’s inheritances and, in the process, rehearse new futures,” the goal of this roundtable is to foster deeper understanding of how our discipline was formed, to expose the fault lines in its foundation, and to ask how this might inform the ongoing (re)construction of our field.
Topics will be curated, with each participant examining a specific record linked to focus areas such as: early anthology tables of contents (canon formation), course outlines (pedagogy), mandates of theatre companies or organizations (institutionalization), theatre reviews (theatre criticism), and early works of theatre history (historiography in progress).
Co-Convenors: Heather Davis-Fisch (University of Lethbridge) and Jessica Riley (University of Winnipeg)
Confirmed Participants:
Kailin Wright, St Francis Xavier University
Kim Solga, Western University
Michelle MacArthur, University of Windsor
Amanda Attrell, Unaffiliated Scholar
Jessica Riley, University of Winnipeg (Convener and Participant)
Heather Davis-Fisch, University of Lethbridge (Convener and Participant)
Roberta Barker, Dalhousie University
Biographies
Dr. Jessica Riley is Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre and Film at the University of Winnipeg. Her research focuses on theatre history and historiography, dramaturgy, and Canadian drama. Jessica is co-editor of Theatre Research in Canada/Recherches théâtrales au Canada. Her work has been published in the Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature, Canadian Performance Histories and Historiographies, Theatre Research in Canada, Canadian Theatre Review and elsewhere.