Moderator:
Location: Room 1175 – Pavilion André Aidenstadt – 2920 chemin de la tour – Université de Montréal
(Building 19 on the UdM Map)
In-Person Session
Sponsored by the Department of Theatre – York University
Performative Activism and the Anti-theatrical Prejudice
The question of what constitutes legitimate expressions of progressive activism is of significant concern to those pursuing equity-seeking agendas. A key metric of legitimacy for current equity-seeking activist practice is that of authenticity – often framed in terms of whether expressions of outrage, critique, and solidarity are ‘performative’ or not, whether one is capably supporting a cause as a legitimate ally or simply increasing one’s cultural capital. This paper investigates a central tension of such considerations, namely that when ‘performative’ is used in its adjectival mode (relating to or marked by public, often artistic performance) as a derogation implying lack of authenticity, a long history of suspicion of the theatrical, of Barish’s (1980) notion of the anti-theatrical prejudice, is invoked. Using examples drawn from contemporary activist practice around decolonization and climate justice, I will explore how a reality implied by such a designation is the possibility of a diametrically opposed, essential, and unmediated expression of solidarity, resistance, and/or concern, necessarily moored in a structurally analogous essentialized subject – itself also available for capture into immaterial economies of personal cultural capital. Additionally, there is something curiously discordant about the term ‘performative activism’ for those of us in theatre and performance circles insofar as what follows from this statement is that activism employing conscious use of public, often artistic performance is necessarily relegated to a subsidiary and ontologically inferior status than other modes of activism. The paper wonders if the notion of ‘performative activism’ can be recuperated through further elaboration of the various lineages of what the term ‘performative’ can mean and do.
David Fancy, Brock University
David Fancy, PhD in Professor in the Department of Dramatic Arts at Brock University. He publishes in areas of performance and philosophy, performance and climate justice, and performance and equity.
Activating the ‘Hypersurface’: Building Community With(in) and Across Virtual Spaces
With the emergence of virtual reality (VR), the concept of ‘theatricality,’ and the potential for immersive storytelling within theatrical frameworks is being challenged, questioned, and explored anew. Among the many innovations afforded by VR, the element that I will explore in this paper is the political/dramaturgical potential of what Gabriella Giannachi calls the “hypersurface”, to establish sites of disability activism. According to Giannachi, the “hypersurface” is a liminal site of exchange produced through entanglements between the “real” and the virtual, and that enables the spectator to simultaneously be “present in the work [of art] and verfremdt estranged from it” (95). While some attention has been paid to the design and storytelling possibilities afforded in VR, few have considered how VR’s unique capacity to facilitate social exchanges across the “real” and the virtual has the potential to subvert ableist structures of power, or to produce alternate modes of participation within immersive performance. In my paper, I will examine the political possibilities, as well as limitations of VR spectatorship in Joe Jack et John’s 2018 VR installation: VIOLETTE, which engages neurodiverse, female-identifying artists to explore how VR might function, not only as a medium for immersive storytelling, but also as a powerful site of transgression and community-building. In my analysis, I will consider the following: How might spectatorial engagements with the “hypersurface” offer more inclusive modes of structuring immersion? In what ways does the “hypersurface” enhance or create other barriers? How might it offer new ways of thinking through collective/individual identity with(in)/across virtual and “real” environments?
Jayna Mees, York University
Jayna Mees (she/her) is an artist-scholar whose current doctoral research at York University examines access aesthetics, practices, and politics within digital and virtual forms of immersive performance. Some recent projects include: accessibility coordinator for the SummerWorks Performance Festival (2021 -22), and assistant dramaturg for SpiderWebShow’s VR production of You Should Have Stayed Home (2022).
Beware PERFORMANCE: Radical transparency, anti-theatricality, and the (im)possibility of staging truth
Building on recent conversations about theatricality and theatre of the real, this paper traces the long history of radical transparency as a both material practice and performance strategy that promises to make “dangerous” secrets public, without the consent of the exposed organization (government, corporation, etc.), in the interests of serving justice and the “greater good.” It begins with a series of transparency prints produced in 1760s London at the height of John Wilkes’ radical campaign to expose (what many believed to be) the corruption of then-Prime Minister Lord Bute and his romantic and political partnership with the Dowager Princess Augusta, mother to George III. In print after print, Bute and Augusta are represented as performers – puppeteers, musicians, showmen, mountebanks – hiding behind screens or curtains to conduct their manipulative acts. Attending to the scriptive materiality of these prints, specifically to the way they guide viewers to hold the print up to a light source to discover the “secrets” beneath, this paper considers the complicated links between the promise of radical transparency (as modeled by Wilkes’ campaign), the prints’ deployment of anti-theatrical tropes, and, paradoxically, their reliance on the techniques of the lantern show to achieve their magical effect. From here, the paper turns to contemporary examples of plays that likewise trade in the language of radical transparency (e.g. Tina Satter’s “Is This a Room,” based on transcripts from the FBI’s interrogation of Reality Winner) to engage with larger questions about the (im)possibility of staging truth in pursuit of justice.
Marlis Schweitzer, York University
Marlis Schweitzer is Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at York University and a Tier 2 York Research Chair in Theatre and Performance History. Her 2020 book, “Bloody Tyrants and Little Pickles: Stage Roles of Anglo-American Girls in the Nineteenth Century,” received the George Freedley Memorial Award from the Theatre Library Association.