Moderator: Roberta Barker
Location: Room 409, Dalhousie Arts Centre
Sponsored by the University of Ottawa, Department of Theatre
Signalling Through the Flames: Pyroturgs and Theatromancy
At what point, what ancient Germano-Greek crossroads of language, did the intellectualization of theatre as a field of knowledge and inquiry become dramaturgy (the work of drama, the doing of dran), with its subtext of urgency and urges? Might we have been theatromancers instead, prophets who behold? Theatromancers might thus have been keepers of the mysteries, as the Bacchantes or the medieval guilds conceived them, the sacred flames that light a ritual theatre and render it legible and potent.
This swirls up with the eye-stinging smoke on a chill October night as I sit in Mi’kma’ki by the firepit of shalan joudry’s Elapultiek, the second in Two Planks and a Passion’s “by fire” series I have seen. What is the ritual connection between the fire and the stage, and how does it play out
with audiences who may view theatre as cordoned off from spiritual and political praxis? How does this variety of theatre in the round create communities through spatial inclusion and exclusion? How does it render us complicit? In what sense are campfires like islands, natural community structures, and defence combining the human and the elemental. What is the dramatic work of the fire – its pyroturgy? In Joudry’s play, we find two biologists – one a settler scholar and one Mi’kmaw – in awkward observation of endangered chimney swifts. Our huddle around their campfire in the rising dark and cold means that spectatorship is a new kind of work:
the work of making space for the actors to move. It requires of us not to forget immersion or illusionism but the self-consciousness to know how your body occupies a space that is needed, and that pre-exists you and how to give way before the urging of an Indigenous theatrical world.
Dr. Ariel McClanahan Watson, Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Drama Saint Mary’s University Department of English
Bio: Ariel Watson is Associate Professor of English at Saint Mary’s University. Her research covers metatheatre, documentary theatre, psychotherapy on stage, national theatre, and the influence of gaming on theatrical performance. She has published articles in journals that include Modern Drama, Canadian Theatre Review, Text and Presentation, Breac, and Theatre History Studies. Her creative non-fiction has appeared in From Band-Aids to Scalpels (“Untrustworthy Bodies,” about obstetric violations of the consent) and won the H.R. (Bill) Percy Prize (“Beasts of Prey”).
Finding Holiness in the Mundane: Ceremony as a Dramaturgy of Participatory Theatre
A ceremony is an embodied and enacted practice in which a congregation of people comes together for a shared, collective purpose—usually to bring about a change through the performance of a prescribed set of actions or a “showing of doing” (Schechner, 456). A ceremony is a process that facilitates transition and growth and serves as a marker for moments of significant change. Similarly, participatory theatre invites participants to take action and interact with the play, engaging in meaningful play. They perform not just for audiences but with them, allowing participants to engage with the work in a way that is more ‘real.’
Drawing on the work of scholars such as Yvette Nolan, Richard Schechner, Victor Turner, and Gareth White, this paper will focus on Jarin Shexnider’s Holy Moly, presented as part of rEvolver Festival 2022. Holy Moly borrows the form of ceremony to explore themes and ideas relevant to Shexnider’s own childhood. Throughout the show, she guides us through a series of holy and sacred moments to her and, therefore, to us as audience members as well. How does an invented theatrical ceremony like Holy Moly use familiar structures found in a ceremony to create an experience for the audience congregants? What can we learn about participatory theatre if we look at it through the lens of ceremony? What do our mundane rituals say about what is valuable and comforting to us? How does integrating ceremony into theatre pieces help audience participants better understand themselves and how we connect?
Charlotte Dorey, Queen’s University
BIO: Charlotte is a graduating 4th-year student from Queen’s University, having studied Drama and English. She works under Dr. Jenn Stephenson and Mariah Horner on their project play/PLAY: Dramaturgies of Participation. Charlotte’s own undergraduate thesis project involved studying moments of ritual and ceremony in theatre, specifically participatory performance.
Affluents pédagogiques dans le théâtre de Robert Lepage
Le théâtre de Robert Lepage est connu dans de nombreux pays sur différents continents, d’un bout à l’autre du monde. Ses spectacles se sont répandus à l’autre bout du monde, comme des branches de la culture québécoise, pour mettre en lumière les chocs culturels de notre monde
contemporain. Bien que ses créations aient gagné en sophistication technologique et en diversification des genres et des formats au cours des dernières décennies, les caractéristiques méthodologiques de ses processus créatifs remontent au début de sa carrière professionnelle et sont les héritiers d’une formation théâtrale aux influences culturelles et pédagogiques en provenance des deux côtés de l’océan, comme le théâtre-création d’Alain Knapp, les Cycles Repère de Jacques Lessard (basés sur les RSVP Cycles de Lawrence Halprin) ou la pédagogie de Jacques Lecoq à travers du professeur Marc Doré. Ces œuvres originales sont liées à une
pédagogie de la création théâtrale centrée sur le jeu de l’acteur et sa capacité créative telle qu’elle se manifeste, entre autres, par le biais de l’improvisation. Sa conception de l’acteur se comprends non seulement comme un interprète mais aussi comme le narrateur et l’auteur de
ses propres histoires. Ces affluents pédagogiques marqueront plus tard le parcours professionnel de Robert Lepage et, dans cette perspective, cela nous interroge sur ce que devraient être les fondements pédagogiques de l’enseignement du théâtre aujourd’hui, afin de continuer à créer et développer un théâtre qui touche, émeut et communique, dans un monde global, notre société contemporaine.
Benjamin Alonso Barreña, Université Dalhousie
Bio: Benjamin Alonso Barreña est chercheur postdoctoral à l’UQTR, au CRILCQ et à l’Université du Pays Basque (Espagne). Il est titulaire d’une maîtrise en histoire de l’art, d’un master en études théâtrales et d’un doctorat avec une thèse sur le théâtre de Robert Lepage, pour laquelle il a obtenu la Bourse d’excellence Gaston-Miron 2015. Dans les années 1990, il a étudié auprès du maître Jacques Lecoq à son École Internationale de Théâtre à Paris. Il a travaillé au théâtre professionnel comme acteur, metteur en scène et professeur de théâtre. Entre autres, il a enseigné à l’Institut del Teatre de Barcelone et a dirigé l’Aula de Teatre de l’Université Polytechnique de Catalogne. Il a écrit quelques pièces de théâtre et des articles autour des arts de la scène. Ses recherches portent sur les processus de création, les langages du corps, la communication avec le public, la mise en scène et la pédagogie du théâtre.
