CATR Conference 2022

Performing Emergence: RePlay, ReCollect, ReExist

"Dragon Big Bang" [detail] photograph by Candace Dueck, University of Lethbridge

St. Thomas University

Act 1 - Online May 27-28

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University of Toronto, Scarborough

Act 2 - Online June 6-7

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University of Lethbridge

Act 3 - In-Person/Online June 12-14

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Keynote Speakers

Dylan Robinson

Stó:lō scholar and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Arts at Queen’s University

Dylan Robinson is a Stó:lō scholar who holds the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Arts at Queen’s University, located on the traditional lands of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples. His research has been supported by national and international fellowships at the Faculty of Music at the University of Toronto, in the Canadian Studies Program at the University of California Berkeley, the Indigeneity in the Contemporary World project at Royal Holloway University of London, and a Banting Postdoctoral fellowship in the First Nations Studies Program at the University of British Columbia.

Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu

Obsidian Theatre’s Artistic Director

Tara Beagan

Article 11’s Ntlaka’pamux / Irish cofounding Artistic Director

Dear CATR 2022 Delegates,

It is my greatest pleasure to welcome you to this year’s gathering. After two years of isolation, working at a distance, and endless fears for the health and safety of our families, our students and ourselves, we finally can start moving to what we do best in performance arts: public and in-person gatherings. The CATR 2022 is a hybrid conference with two Acts taking place fully online and one Act in-person and online at the University of Lethbridge. I would like to express my sincere thanks and gratitude to all organizers of this event, and specifically our local hosts St. Thomas University, University of Toronto Scarborough, and University of Lethbridge. There are more than 50 people who have been working diligently behind the scenes to bring this event into life. I am grateful to every person on the CATR 2022 team for their enthusiasm, loyalty, work ethic, and faith in this event and our organization. Without this work this event would not be possible. I would also like to thank our sponsors, academic and artistic agencies, publishers and individual donors who have provided funds for this event.

My special thank you goes to the Wolastoqiyik, Wəlastəkewiyik / Maliseet, the Mi’Kmaq / Mi’kmaw and Passamaquoddy / Peskotomuhkati people, on whose land St. Thomas University is located, the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit people, on whose lands University of Toronto Scarborough stands, and the Blackfoot people, on whose territory University of Lethbridge is situated. We are grateful to the keepers of the land for this opportunity to gather on their territories.

My last and special thank you goes to each delegate of the conference: without your work, academic and practical, this organization and this conference would not have come together. I wish everybody the most fruitful, pleasant and happy time at Performing Emergence: RePlay, ReCollect, ReExist.

Yana Meerzon - President, CATR

Chers délégués de l’ACRT 2022,

J’ai le plus grand plaisir de vous accueillir au rassemblement de cette année. Après deux ans d’isolement, de travail à distance et de craintes sans fin pour la santé et la sécurité de nos familles, de nos élèves et de nous-mêmes, nous pouvons enfin commencer à passer à ce que nous faisons le mieux dans les arts de la scène : des rassemblements publics et en personne. L’ACRT 2022 est un colloque hybride dont deux actes se déroulent entièrement en ligne et un acte en personne et en ligne à l’Université de Lethbridge. J’aimerais exprimer mes sincères remerciements et ma gratitude à tous les organisateurs de cet événement, et plus particulièrement à nos hôtes locaux, à l’Université St. Thomas, à l’Université de Toronto Scarborough et à l’Université de Lethbridge. Il y a plus de 50 personnes qui ont travaillé avec diligence dans les coulisses pour donner vie à cet événement. Je suis reconnaissant à tous les membres de l’équipe de l’ACRT 2022 pour leur enthousiasme, leur loyauté, leur éthique de travail et leur foi en cet événement et en notre organisation. Sans ce travail, cet événement ne serait pas possible. Je tiens également à remercier nos commanditaires, les agences académiques et artistiques, les éditeurs et les donateurs individuels qui ont fourni des fonds pour cet événement.

Je remercie particulièrement tous les Wolastoqiyik, Wəlastəkewiyik / Maliseet, les Mi’Kmaq / Mi’kmaw et passamaquoddy / Peskotomuhkati, sur les terres desquels se trouvent l’Université St. Thomas, les Hurron-Wendat, les Seneca et les Mississaugas du Credit, sur les terres desquels se trouve l’Université de Toronto Scarborough, et les Pieds-Noirs, sur le territoire desquels se trouve l’Université de Lethbridge. Nous sommes reconnaissants aux gardiens de la terre pour cette occasion de se rassembler sur leurs territoires.

Mon dernier et spécial remerciement va à chaque délégué du colloque ACRT : sans votre travail, académique et pratique, cette organisation et ce colloque ne se seraient pas réunies. Je souhaite à tout le monde le moment le plus fructueux, agréable et heureux à Réaliser l’émergence : Rejouer, rappeler, réexister.

Yana Meerzon - Président de l’ACRT

Dear CATR 2022 Delegates,

In the framework of emergence, the whole is a mirror of the parts. Existence is fractal—the health of the cell is the health of the species and the planet—adrienne maree brown (2017).

Our scholarship is managing in a pandemic. We are managing in a pandemic. COVID-19 has made social and environmental problems more explicit and urgent than ever. We are challenged to reimagine drama, theatre, dance, and performance, and the means by which we gather to discuss them.

Performing Emergence: RePlay, ReCollect, ReExist is dedicated to creating space for scholarly, artistic, and activist exchange after the ‘before times.’

What can we learn about the concept of “emergence” as it influences and reflects theatre practices? How does theatre scholarship and practice respond to the ways in which Indigenous and racialized experiences, sexual orientation, and gender identity continue to be impacted by the pandemic, climate change, health care crises, and economic barriers and inequities? To borrow from Adolfo Albán Achinte’s concept of “re-existence” as it pertains to racialized, excluded, and marginalized people, how can we propel re-existence and empower identities, bodies, and ways of knowing at a moment when decolonizing efforts are a matter of survival?

Our Programming Committee has sought inclusivity and breadth in curating a conference that showcases the range of CATR members’ work in pandemic-related study and far beyond. Our Accessibility Committee has deftly guided us in making our sessions more accessible than ever. Our Digital Dramaturgy Committee has moved terabytes to achieve myriad immersive online and hybrid conference experiences. Our In-Person Host Committee is eager to welcome you to Lethbridge.

While CATR has a 45-year history of organizing the annual conference in large urban centres, for the first time we convene a hybrid conference across three small- and mid-sized campuses in three different provinces through our online hosts St. Thomas University and the University of Toronto Scaborough, and our hybrid in-person/online host the University of Lethbridge. Another first is that our 70+conference sessions run across seven full days!

With enthusiasm, we invite you to explore this conference program and thank the dozens of people who have made your annual CATR conference experience possible. And we look forward to seeing many of you in person (hurray!) in Lethbridge as we emerge, and perform our emergences.

Robin C. Whittaker - Conference & Programming Chair, CATR 2022

Chers délégués de l’ACRT 2022,

Dans le cadre de l’émergence, le tout est un miroir des parties. L’existence est fractale – la santé de la cellule est la santé de l’espèce et de la planète – adrienne maree brown (2017).

Notre bourse est gérée pendant la pandémie. Nous gérons en temps de pandémie. La COVID-19 a rendu les problèmes sociaux et environnementaux plus explicites et urgents que jamais. Nous sommes mis au défi de réinventer le théâtre, la scène, la danse et la performance, ainsi que les moyens par lesquels nous nous réunissons pour en discuter.

Réaliser l’émergence : Rejouer, rappeler, réexister se consacre à la création d’un espace d’échange savant, artistique et militant après le « temps d’avant ».

Que pouvons-nous apprendre sur le concept d'«émergence » tel qu’il influence et reflète les pratiques théâtrales ? Comment l’érudition et la pratique du théâtre réagissent-elles à la façon dont les expériences autochtones et radicalisées, l’orientation sexuelle et l’identité du genre continuent d’être touchées par la pandémie, les changements climatiques, les crises des soins de santé, les obstacles et les inégalités économiques ? Pour emprunter au concept de « réexistence » d’Adolfo Albán Achinte en ce qui concerne les personnes radicalisées, exclues et marginalisées, comment pouvons-nous propulser la réexistence et renforcer les identités, les corps et les modes de connaissance à un moment où les efforts de décolonisation sont une question de survie ?

Notre comité de programmation a recherché l’inclusivité et l’étendue dans la tenue d’un colloque qui présente l’éventail des travaux des membres de l’ACRT dans les études liées à la pandémie et bien au-delà. Notre comité de l’accessibilité nous a habilement guidés pour rendre nos séances plus accessibles que jamais. Notre comité de dramaturgie numérique a déplacé des téraoctets pour réaliser une myriade d’expériences du colloque immersives en ligne et hybrides. Notre comité d’accueil en personne est impatient de vous accueillir à Lethbridge. Bien que l’ACRT organise le colloque annuel dans les grands centres urbains depuis 45 ans, pour la première fois, nous organisons un colloque hybride dans trois universités de petite et moyenne taille dans trois provinces différentes par l’intermédiaire de nos hôtes en ligne, de l’Université St. Thomas et de l’Université de Toronto Scaborough, et de notre hôte hybride en personne / en ligne de l’Université de Lethbridge. Une autre première est que nos sessions 70+ du colloque se déroulent sur sept jours complets !

Avec enthousiasme, nous vous invitons à explorer ce programme des colloques et remercions les dizaines de personnes qui ont rendu possible votre expérience annuelle du colloque de l’ACRT. Et nous avons hâte de vous voir nombreux en personne (hourra !) à Lethbridge alors que nous émergeons et réalisons nos émergences.

Robin C. Whittaker - Président du colloque et de la programmation de l’ACRT 2022

Access Information

The Accessibility Committee has prepared a number of resources to facilitate access to the conference. Follow the links below for their guides. For specific questions about access, please get in touch with Accessibility Coordinator Becky at catr.accessibility@gmail.com.

Asynchronous Paper

Check out the Asynchronous paper, "The Rhythm of Technology in the BMO Lab’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui" by Sebastian Samur

Virtual Book Table

Browse the list of publications that are currently available for purchase.

Browse Books

St. Thomas University

Online May 27-28

St. Thomas University is situated on the traditional territory of the Wolastoqiyik, Wəlastəkewiyik / Maliseet whose ancestors along with the Mi’Kmaq / Mi’kmaw and Passamaquoddy / Peskotomuhkati Tribes / Nations signed Peace and Friendship Treaties with the British Crown in the 1700s.

Friday, May 27th

10:15-12:30 AST

Welcoming Remarks and Keynote - Dylan Robinson

Keynote- Dylan Robinson

House | Hall

Indigenous artists and performers are increasingly approached to contribute to the work of institutional decolonization, as arts institutions recognize the need (or feel pressure) to make their spaces more welcoming and hospitable for Indigenous audiences and community engagement. Within this work, it is sometimes assumed that the more Indigenous artwork/performance that enters a space, the more that space will re-emerge as decolonized. And yet, to program Indigenous work, as important as this shift in representation is, leaves institutional infrastructure intact. Moreover, even in the large-scale projects to rebuild institutions, we may find that infrastructure remains guided by normative values that do not at their foundation (their walls, ceilings, windows and stairs) prompt decolonial and non-normative forms of perception. This keynote video work, a collaboration between Dylan Robinson and Neven Lochhead, improvises around the recurrent demand to “decolonize this space”; it seeks a form through which the institution might be turned toward and away from; it plays with a process for institutional avowal and derangement. It is offered as a prelude for renewed conversation about how Indigenous and allied artistic practices might take (a)part in institutional abolition and structural change without falling into the trap of mere visibility and representation.

Maison | Salle

Les artistes et les interprètes autochtones sont de plus en plus sollicités pour contribuer au travail de décolonisation institutionnelle, car les institutions artistiques reconnaissent le besoin (ou ressentent de la pression) de rendre leurs espaces plus accueillants et hospitaliers pour le public autochtone et l’engagement communautaire. Dans cette œuvre, on suppose parfois que plus il ya d’œuvres d’art ou de performances autochtones qui entrent dans un espace, plus cet espace réapparaîtra comme décolonisé. Et pourtant, programmer le travail autochtone, aussi important que soit ce changement de représentation, laisse l’infrastructure institutionnelle intacte. De plus, même dans les projets à grande échelle de reconstruction des institutions, nous pouvons constater que les infrastructures restent guidées par des valeurs normatives qui, à leur fondation (leurs murs, plafonds, fenêtres et escaliers), ne suscitent pas des formes de perception décolonisées et non normatives. Cette vidéo d’ouverture, une collaboration entre Dylan Robinson et Neven Lochhead, improvise autour de la demande récurrente de « décoloniser cet espace » ; il cherche une forme par laquelle l’institution pourrait être tournée vers et loin de; il joue avec un processus d’aveu et de dérangement institutionnel. Il est offert comme prélude à une conversation renouvelée sur la façon dont les pratiques artistiques autochtones et alliées pourraient prendre (un)part à l’abolition institutionnelle et au changement structurel sans tomber dans le piège de la simple visibilité et de la représentation.
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From 2010-2013 Dylan led the SSHRC-funded “Aesthetics of Reconciliation” project with Dr. Keavy Martin that examined the role that the arts and Indigenous cultural practices played in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on the Indian Residential Schools. This research led to a second collaborative project, “Creative Conciliation”, supported by a SSHRC Insight grant, to explore new artistic models that move beyond what many Indigenous scholars have identified as reconciliation’s political limitation. Dr. Robinson’s current research project documents the history of contemporary Indigenous public art across North America, and questions how Indigenous rights and settler colonialism are embodied and spatialized in public space. Funded by the Canada Research Chair program, this project involves working with Indigenous artists and scholars to collaboratively imagine new forms of public engagement and create new public works that speak to Indigenous experience. Dr. Robinson is also an avid Halq'eméylem language learner. Yú:wqwlha kws t'í:lemtel te sqwá:ltset!

Dylan Robinson est un chercheur Stó:lō, titulaire de la Chaire de recherche du Canada en arts autochtones à l’Université Queen’s, située sur les terres traditionnelles des peuples Haudenosaunee et Anishinaabe. Ses recherches ont été soutenues par des bourses d’études ainsi que des postes nationaux et internationaux à la faculté de musique de l’Université de Toronto, dans le programme d’études canadiennes de l’Université de Berkeley en Californie, au sein du projet Indigeneity in the Contemporary World du collège Royal Holloway à l’Université de Londres, et par une bourse postdoctorale Banting dans le programme d’études des Premières Nations de l’Université de la Colombie-Britannique.

De 2010 à 2013, Dylan a dirigé, avec le Dr Keavy Martin, le projet « Esthétique de la réconciliation », financé par le CRSH, et qui a examiné le rôle que les arts et les pratiques culturelles autochtones ont joué au sein de la commission de vérité et de réconciliation sur les pensionnats indiens. Cette recherche a mené à un deuxième projet de collaboration, « Réconciliation créative », soutenu par une subvention Insight du CRSH, afin d’explorer de nouveaux modèles artistiques qui dépassent ce que de nombreux chercheurs autochtones ont identifié comme étant les limites politiques de la réconciliation. Le projet de recherche actuel du Dr Robinson porte sur l’histoire de l’art public autochtone contemporain en Amérique du Nord et s’interroge sur la façon dont les droits des Autochtones et le colonialisme sont incarnés et intégrés dans l’espace public. Financé par le programme de la Chaire de recherche du Canada, ce projet comprend une collaboration avec des artistes et des universitaires autochtones afin d’imaginer de nouvelles formes d’engagement public et de créer de nouvelles œuvres publiques qui reflètent le vécu des Autochtones. Le Dr Robinson est également un fervent adepte de la langue Halq'eméylem. Yú:wqwlha kws t’í:lemtel te sqwá:ltset !

12:30-12:45 AST

Break / Pause

12:45-14:15 AST

Indigenous ReExistence in Practice (Paper Panel)

Moderator Kailin Wright. Papers by Sara Schroeter and Virginie Magnat.

Live captioning provided.

More info

Food for thought: Collaborative Devising on Treaty 4 Territory

Sara Schroeter(University of Regina)

This presentation focuses on the pedagogical approach and creative process behind the creation of Food for Thought, a performance devised by five undergraduate students in education programs at the University of Regina and the First Nations University of Canada (FNUniv) in collaboration with their professor. Exploring how the collaborators were encouraged to critically examine their positionalities as Indigenous, settler, and immigrant women in the courses that led to this collaboration, this paper examineshow this site-specific performance might be understood as a form of Indigenous Métissage. Indigenous Métissage is understood as a reinterpreting of past and present interactions between Indigenous peoples and settler Canadians in a way that engages geographic locations with contested histories (Donald, 2012). The concept does not exclusively refer to Indigenous stories and perspectives, but the interweaving of different stories on a particular site and the ways that they interact with Fort Logics (Donald, 2012). Engaging with the land as an Indigenous and settler sentient artifact, Food for thought enabled the collaborators to explore their complex and divergent relationship to Treaty 4 territory, while examining their concerns about climate disaster, knowledge production, and human and more-than-human interconnection. This devised performance marked a departure from the kinds of mainstream, Western theatre practices that most students were familiar with, and had training in. The creation process demonstrated the kind of deep, collaborative learning that can emerge when teaching and performance move beyond the metaphorical and real walls of the institution.

Donald, Dwayne. “Indigenous Métissage: a decolonizing research sensibility.” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 25, no. 5 (2012): 533-555

“(K)new Materialisms: Honouring Indigenous Perspectives.” Virginie Magnat (University of British Columbia)

This paper foregrounds the Indigenous ethical principles of respect, reciprocity, relationality, and responsibility that bind human and other/more-than-human agents, a non-anthropocentric conception of agency that may be said to offer a truly radical, if not “new,” eco-critical approach to the crucial questions raised by new materialist and posthumanist scholars. I argue that what distinguishes this understanding of agency from Karen Barad’s influential theory of agential realism is the non-separability of matter and spirit posited by Indigenous scholars Vine Deloria Jr., Gregory Cajete, Manulani Aluli-Meyer, and Shawn Wilson, among others. I contend that holding space for Indigenous philosophy, which values orally transmitted embodied ways of knowing, contributes to decentering/unsettling/decolonizing Eurocentric paradigms that still inform dominant knowledge systems in the academy, and I suggest that the scholarship of Dylan Robinson and Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning, who critically engage with materialism/posthumanism, is opening up possibilities for much needed cross-cultural dialogue

App, Paper, Scissors: Dramaturgies of Emergence in Participatory Performance (Curated Panel)

Moderator Jenn Stephenson. Papers by Mariah Horner, Jenn Stephenson, and Hamish Hutchison-Poyntz

Curated Panel Moderator Jenn Stephenson

Participatory theatre works where audiences are more like players and the performances are more like games place a high value on the contributions of those audience-players to generate aesthetic meaning (Bishop, White, Bourriaud, Kester, Murray). Distinct participatory dramaturgies leverage formal choices to communicate understanding. A play with a choose-your-own adventure structure like Zuppa Theatre’s Archive of Missing Things (Halifax) invites meditation on what it is to be a seeker, especially when thething being sought is gone forever. A play with a fill-in-the-blanks structure like Seji’s Perfect Day produced by Popcorn Galaxies (Vancouver) is a reflection on how we can be bound by commonality in togetherness even as we express our myriad unique variability. A play built as a dérive or a drift like B-Side by Molly Johnson and Meredith Thompson (Toronto) is an exercise in ostranenie, encouraging us to go slow and to notice the ordinary world in new ways. This panel will focus specifically on participatory dramaturgies of emergence. Emergence arises when aleatory audience contributions are structured as autopoietic feedback loops. Iteration fosters relation between networked elements (Stephenson, Fischer-Lichte, Salen and Zimmerman). These iterations make formal patterns. Looking at three different performances from 2020-2021--one online, one by mail, one in-person, these three papers will demonstrate how a different particular algorithmic shape of iteration driven by participation creates meaning in each play. The research presented was developed by the play/PLAY: Dramaturgies of Participation (dramaturgiesofparticipation.com) group at Queen’s University and represents the work of three “cross-generational” scholars who work together (professor, graduate student, undergraduate student).

“Empathy, Agency, Culpability and Care: Abolitionary Dramaturgies of Sébastien Heins’ The Itinerary.” Mariah Horner (Queen’s University)

In Outside the March’s The Itinerary by Sébastien Heins, four audience-players peer through a peephole at a character sleeping soundly in a barely furnished room. Participating on Zoom with Jacob Niedzwiecki’s interactive app “Cohort” in hand, the four “lucid dreamers” take turns selecting actions from a dropdown menu to prescribe to our sleeper --wake up, write a song, do push ups, play trashketball. As the character awaits our instructions, players realize The Itinerary is built like a dream or a nightmare --actions don’t necessarily relate to consequences, the rules are unveiled aswe play, aesthetics shift constantly, and unless one of the players emancipates the character by inviting him to sleep, the character could be stuck in a loop taking cues from the audience forever. If understood as a metaphor for abolition, The Itinerary asks audience-players to reckon with their own participation in racial capitalism, control, and ultimately liberation. Participation is a kind of abolitionist dramaturgy. Participatory dramaturgies complicate the space between empathy and agency, opening questions of culpability. How does Heins’ invitation to instruct the actor to complete tasks speak to the player’s complicated desire to both be a good audience member and to be a good person, complicating the power imbalance present in empathy generation?(Duttman, Boler, Robinson). How does this piece flirt with the kind of liberatory theatre that acts as what Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Wang call a “move to innocence,” deflecting responsibility in the face of decolonization and abolition? Or does this show provide a space to “rehearse the revolution”? (Boal) If the question of abolition, as Mariame Kaba theorizes, can be understood as “what can we imagine for ourselves and the world?”, how do shows like The Itinerary map out emergent paths not yet travelled? Byrelying on game as a form, how does relationality within The Itinerary speak to abolition as emergent (brown)? Ultimately this paper asks, how are abolitionary dramaturgies emergent?

Mariah Horner is a site-specific theatre creator and 2nd year PhD student in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University

“A Recipe for Asynchronous Togetherness by Mail in Amanda Sum’s New Age Attitudes: Live in Concert. A Lo-Fi Listen.” Jenn Stephenson (Queen’s University)

“Do this.” is a core dramaturgical strategy for participatory theatre. When called upon to participate we need to be told what to do (and where and when and how. And what not to do). Keen to take up the invitation to become players but similarly keen not to “break” the play, audience-players rely on both explicit instructions and implicit cues as we navigate unfamiliar territory. Even for devoted rule followers, participatory theatre structures sometimes deliberately keep those parameters loose, matching low control with a high degree of randomness. As Claire Bishop notes, a serendipitous richness arising from randomness of input generated by an aleatory audience is a prime aesthetic benefit for this kind of work. Performance recipes in the mode of a Fluxus event score (“Make a salad.”) or a Situationist dérivethat provide minimal direction are prime examples. New Age Attitudes: Live in Concert. A Lo-Fi Listen by Vancouver theatre creator and composer Amanda Sum is another example, presented in January 2021 as part of PuShOFF. Arriving in the mail in a brown paper envelope about the size of a CD (but it isn’t a CD), New Age Attitudes is an asynchronous autonomous experience. (Is it even a performance?) This paper will consider not only how audience-participation is managed remotely but also how the work establishes a meaningful relation between the temporally and physically distant artist-audience pair. Specifically, how do dramaturgies generated by ‘theatre by mail’ align with the thematic threads developed in performance to generate relation? How can Amanda and I see/hear each other? How do we cooperate to create a truly collaborative work? How does autopoietic emergence arise despite (or indeed because of) our separation? In the context of pandemic distancing and isolation, New Age Attitudes speaks to how performance might foster mutual care, and how we can be together apart.

Jenn Stephenson is a Professor in the Dan School of Drama and Music at Queen’s University.

“Emergent Objects: Worktable and the Constructive Agency of Theatrical Generation.” Hamish Hutchison-Poyntz (Queen’s University)

Adrienne maree brown (Emergent Strategy) says that “relationships are everything.” In emergent participatory performances, relationships manifest as networks of people—audience and artists—working together in a decentralized mode of iterative collaboration. With algorithmic dramaturgies to guide them, this autopoietic participant network generates the aesthetic and experiential aspects of the performance, and distinguishes emergent dramaturgies from other forms. By distributing the act of generating performance, it decentralizes agency over that creative process, distributing it throughout the networked participants. Kate McIntosh’s Worktable complicates our usual understanding of interactive performance by forcing us to consider the role of objects in this generative act. In this show, isolated solo participants move between a series of rooms. First, they select and deconstruct an object such as an apple, a typewriter, or a watch. Then they give this away, only to receive the remains of another’s deconstruction to rebuild however they choose, using tape, glue and a few tools. Finally, they place the object in a gallery of others like it, able to see the combined results of their and others’ work. Unlike other performances built around emergent dramaturgies, Worktable features an iterative network where human participants never directly interact. Instead, their interactions and generative iterations are mediated by objects.Jane Bennett’s concept of an “agency of assemblages” lets us explore the ways non-human intermediaries and mediators (Latour) interact to determine a performance’s outcomes beyond strictly human choices. Understanding the “thing-power” (Bennett) of Worktable’s objects shows us how these apparently unconscious pieces of matter work to shape our actions. By examining the influence of Worktable’s objects on their own transformation, we can see how unconscious materials can have agency through their unpredictable relationships with the people interacting with them. This in turn lets us better understand how agency can be actively dispersed throughout emergent relationships. By interacting and iterating in a decentralized network, humans and objects alike become co-responsible agents in the creative generation emergence fuels.

Hamish Hutchison-Poyntz is a 4th year student in the Dan School of Drama and Music at Queen’s University.

14:15 - 14:30 AST

Break / Pause

14:30-16:00 AST

Performing Care: Gender and Labour in Precarious Times (Curated Panel)

Moderator Robin Whittaker. Papers by Morgan Johnson, Alexandra Simpson & Peyton Lebarr, and Lisa Marie DiLiberto & Susie Bupree

Live captioning provided.

More info

Curated Panel Moderator Robin Whittaker

The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated the gendered nature of care work, and has blurred the boundaries between work and personal life. This panel presentation explores this phenomena and its histories in order to draw out the performative qualities of carework and the ways trans and cis women, two spirit, and gender diverse “carers” have navigated the complex terrain of care work during precarious times. On the one hand, care work proceeds much like Diana Taylor’s (2003) understanding of the repertoire; care “enacts embodied memory” and “both keeps and transforms choreographies of meaning” (20). Care work doesn’t end when she comes home from work or puts her family to bed, but rather has everlasting effects on the culture of gender and meaning which carry through our lives in often indiscernible ways. Further, like the repertoire, care work requires presence and relies on a relational exchange between the carer and the cared for. On the other hand, care work is inarguably bound to the material world and takes part in a series of complex and messy material exchanges. Despite this, care work is often undervalued and made invisible in a patriarchal and capitalist world. This panel presentation uses feminist theory and praxis to understand the connection between performance, gender, and care work, and seeks to unearth the ways social precarity unevenly effects those touched by womanhood

“Creating and Performing Care.” Morgan Johnson, Alexandra Simpson, and Peyton Lebarr

This paper will be a co-presentationbetween Alexandra Simpson (artistic leader of Animacy Theatre Collective and PhD candidate at York University in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change), Morgan Johnson (artistic leader of Animacy Theatre Collective and PhD candidate at York University in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change) and Peyton LeBarr (Artistic Director of Grassboots Theatre) on their recent research-creation project Care; a collectively created play using mask and clown to explore the gendered labour of care work during the pandemic. Performed as part of Public Energy’s Erring Project with the support from Ontario Arts Council in May 2022, Care is a dark comedy which tells the story of several individuals who are involved in different kinds of care work including education, health care, parenting and/or social work. The characters meet for the first time to attend the 2021 Care Awards; a newly established post-pandemic (fictional) foundation that aims to “recognize” the passion of care workers across Ontario. Part fiction, part based on research and interviews with trans and cis women, two spirit, and gender diverse care workers, Care looks at the ways that the Covid-19 pandemic has made care workers into global heroes while at the same time doing relatively little to change their day-to-day lives. Our presentation explores the research and creation process used to develop Care, and with one of our collaborators becoming a new mom, how the care work required of us in our personal lives bleeds into this process. This paper will explore our creation process and the ways that our own care work as three female identifying artists influenced the creation of the piece. It will also include excerpts from the show itself and showcase the masks (designed by Alexandra Simpson) that were developed during the process.

“Balancing Act.” Lisa Marie DiLiberto and Susie Burpee

This presentation will be a co-presentation by Lisa Marie DiLiberto (Artistic Director of Theatre Direct, Founder of Balancing Act and PhD student in Theatre and Performance Studies at York) and Susie Burpee (Artistic Producer of Balancing Act, MA University of Toronto). Susie and Lisa Marie will discuss the national roll out of Balancing Act’s newest program, Level UP!, a 3-year project that will collaborate with 70 organizations across the country to pilot supportive strategies for artist caregivers in the performing arts.

Lisa Marie will draw on her article entitled Balancing Act, published in the University of Toronto Press Theatre Research in Canada Volume 41 Issue 2, Fall 2020. This article discusses the challenges of being a professional artist and parent working in the performing arts industry and the measures being taken to create increased accessibility in the sector. The article introduces the national initiative Balancing Act being developed by Theatre Direct, which aims to support artist caregivers in Canada and concludes with a personal reflection from the author, herself a professional artist, scholar, and mother.

Susie Burpee will link the presentation to research she conducted with dancing artist mothers, leading to the publication of Disappearing Act: Dance Artist Mothers in the Gig Economy of the Performing Arts in Canada published as part of an anthology Demeter Press 2021: Mothers, Mothering, and Covid-19: Dispatches from the Pandemic.

Sh!t-Disturbers: Contract Instructors as Disruptors & Change-Makers Phase I (Seminar)

Led by Neil Silcox. Participants: Rebecca Comer, Rosanna Saracino, Steffi Santhana Mary, Leah Cherniak, Mandy Roved, Nicole Wilson, Kevin Hobbs, and Matt Jones.

Note: this session is open to pre-accepted participants only / Remarque: cette session est ouverte aux participants préacceptés seulement.

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Seminar Organizer: Neil Silcox (Contract Instructor, Artist)

Canadian theatre training continues to reckon with its history of racism, colonialism, and misogyny (among several other problems).While tenured faculty and program staff work to change the structures and cultures of theatre departments and programs, the fact remains that much –if not most –teaching is done by teachers working as sessional, guest artists, short-term fellowships, and TAs. While these instructors lack institutional power and protections, they are nonetheless drivers of the move toward more socially just theatre education. This pair of sessions aims to bring together these untenured, precarious instructors to share actionable, concrete strategies for improving social justice in the theatre classroom. Not structural changes we hope the people in power will make, but real changes we can bring to a classroom if we’re only there for a year, a term, or even a single day.

Phase one two of this seminar will take place in Act 2 of the conference (June 6 and 7th)

16:00-16:15 AST

Break / Pause

16:15-17:45 AST

Strengthening Structures, Freeing Art Practice: An International Theatre Collaboration Roundtable (Roundtable)

Led by Deneh'Cho Thompson. Participants: Jack Patterson, Makram Ayache, and Vanka Salim

CONTINUED / CONTINUÉ: Sh!t-Disturbers: Contract Instructors as Disruptors & Change-Makers Phase I (Seminar)

Led by Neil Silcox. Participants: Rebecca Comer, Rosanna Saracino, Steffi Santhana Mary, Leah Cherniak, Mandy Roved, Nicole Wilson, Kevin Hobbs, and Matt Jones

Note: this session is open to pre-accepted participants only / Remarque: cette session est ouverte aux participants préacceptés seulement.

More info

Seminar Organizer: Neil Silcox (Contract Instructor, Artist)

Phase one two of this seminar will take place in Act 2 of the conference (June 6 and 7th)

17:45-18:00 AST

Break / Pause

18:00-19:30 AST

Wreckonciliatory Acts (Roundtable)

Led by Jill Carter. Participants: Spy Dénommé-Welch, Lindsay Lachance, and Monique Mojica

Roundtable/Longtable Organizer Jill Carter (Anishinaabe/Ashkenazi, University of Toronto)

Roundtable Participants: Spy Dénommé-Welch (Algonquin-Anishnaabe, Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair, Tier II,in Indigenous Arts, Knowledge Systems, and Education, Western University), Lindsay Lachance (Algonquin-Anishnaabe, University of British Columbia), Monique Mojica (Guna and Rappahannock nations, Playwright, Instructor)

Researcher and theatre-worker Dr. Jill Carter (Anishinaabe/Ashkenazi) will lead the roundtable/longtable Wreckonciliatory Acts, an Indigenous Dramaturgy Lab facilitating the development of dramatrugical frameworks firmly rooted in land-based embodied processes, Nation-specific cultural aesthetics and story narratives, ancestral knowledge systems, Indigenous languages, and what Nehiyaw scholar Karyn Recollet terms “kinstellatory relations.”The 90-minute event, which begins as a roundtable discussion, will open into a “longtable”for the final 30 minutes when witnesses will be invited to sit and actively participate. We anticipate that generative conversation will ensue. Lois Weaver's “Long Table Model”will frame our engagement and graphic recording will take place throughout. Collaborators will convene to reflect upon some of the key work accomplished thus far and to consider future inroads into work yet to be accomplished within/despite the context of summer 2021 and the conditions with which we all will have to contend.

19:30-19:45 AST

Break / Pause

19:45 AST

Ice Age Coming (Performance)

By Corenski Nowlan

Note: There are separate Zoom links for the performance and the Q & A; Live captioning provided.

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An online play by Corenski Nowlan

As the world awakens, the pandemic seems but a fever dream to some. To others, the problems that were there before are not only still present, but are amplified. The urgency of the climate crisis has never been so immediate. Our MC (main character) is a proxy for Generation Z. Tasked with the impossible, they are bursting with anxiety as various bureaucrats and activists demand more and more from them, while at the same time hindering their efforts with red tape and science denial. A hybrid of contemporary headlines and poetry, Ice Age Coming is a five-actor online performance that follows our MC through this existential nightmare as he struggles to dethrone Nihilism as the top ideology of the age

Corenski Nowlan, a New Brunswick born and raised playwright, poet, and photographer/visual artist, is the founding artistic director of Herbert the Cow Productions. Recent creations include the immersive Swipers/Virex(2019 with Theatre St. Thomas), The Fifth Wall (2020), Dinner and a Show: “Know Brunswick”(2020,commissioned by the Crowne Plaza Hotel), and The Fifth Wall 2 (2021 with Nasty Shadows Theatre). Pasteurized in 1999, Herbert the Cow Productions generates “theatre that breaks the fourth wall, abolishes conventions, and shatters hearts!”Herbert has staged 8 full length original productions, presented 7 Reader's Theatre shows, co-produced 6 plays, and contributed the Herbert logo to zines, chapbooks, poetry readings, writers' workshops, and art shows. Corenski also works with other Fredericton companies as a director, actor, and stage manager, including Theatre St. Thomas, Theatre UNB, NotaBle Acts, The Next Folding Theatre Company, and Nasty Shadows Theatre Co.

Saturday, May 28th

10:30-11:00 AST

Get together in Kumospace

11:00-12:30 AST

ReCollecting Settler Encounters: Motherhood, Nationhood, Minstrelsy (Paper Panel)

Moderator Jess Riley. Papers by Kailin Wright, Roberta Barker, and Taylor Graham

Paper Panel Moderator Jess Riley (University of Winnipeg)

“The Emergence of Radical Motherhood: ReCollecting the Sixties Scoop in Indigenous Theatre.” Kailin Wright (St. Francis Xavier University)

Isabelle, a woman from the Blood Indian Reserve in Alberta, stands with arms “gently outstretched . . . her unused breast milk seeping through the bright white hospital gown. She is the vision of a ruined woman child in a Virgin Mary blue overdress, her own humanity betraying her, celebrating her.” This tragic, defiant tableau vivant ends Dreary and Izzy (2006) by Nlaka’pamux and Irish playwright Tara Beagan. Set during the Sixties Scoop when Indigenous children weretaken by child welfare services and adopted by white middle-class families, the play dramatizes the loss of an Indigenous past and future through the separation of Isabelle from her mother and child. This paper examines Dreary and Izzy as a play about thecrisis of the mother-child relationship and the emergence of a reimagined Indigenous mother figure. Dreary and Izzy makes a vital argument for the urgency of rematriation—a return to the mother and alternative to repatriation—that resituates women (and children) at the centre of Indigenous stories while acknowledging the historical, religious, social, and healthcare obstacles to this act (Horn-Miller). Using Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) scholar Kahente Horn-Miller’s concept of rematriation, this paper argues that the powerful, frustrating ending of Dreary and Izzy, which repeats the cycle of separating mother and child, calls out to the audience for a new symbol of the mother—one that includes Indigenous maternity and thereby protects Indigenous futurity. By leaving the audience with “a ruined woman child in a Virgin Mary blue overdress,” the play pleads for the recollection of the Sixties Scoop in relation to the present-day “millennium scoop” and ultimately calls for the emergence of a radical mother figure

“The Ocean’s Dreams: Hannah Moscovitch’s Maternal Histories.” Roberta Barker (Dalhousie University)

Hannah Moscovitch’s recent Canadian history plays, What a Young Wife Ought to Know (premiered Halifax, 2015) and Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story (premiered Halifax, 2017), are both shaped by white working-class immigrant women’s lived experiences of maternity as it intersects with poverty, disease, violence, and social inequality. In What a Young Wife Ought to Know, the Irish immigrant sisters Sophie and Alma are traumatized and destroyed by a society that disdains their sexuality and denies them the right to refuse pregnancy. In Old Stock, the traumatized Romanian-Jewish immigrant Chaya is given a stake in the future and brought back to active engagement with the world by the birth, illness, and survival of her son. Placing these characters’ contrasting experiences in dialogue with one another, my paper will suggest that Moscovitch constructs post-confederation Canadian history as fundamentally a history of working-class mothers: women without whom the settler-colonial “nation of immigrants” could never have emerged, but who are often marginalized, erased, or actively oppressed by that nation’s dominant power structures. Like her collaborators, the actors whocreated the roles of Sophie, Alma, and Chaya, Moscovitch steadfastly refuses to idealize motherhood as the foundation of the nation. Instead, her dramas hinge upon the (re)-emergence of the diverse voices and dreams of Canada’s settler mothers. In the process, they embody the ways in which white feminine desire has both furthered and been frustrated by the settler-colonial state.

“Wilberforce at Blyth.” Taylor Marie Graham (University of Guelph)

My dissertation-in-process is a rural feminist and decolonial historical analysis of the Blyth Festival Theatre. Since 1975, Blyth has produced a full summer season of Canadian plays (except in 2020), with an emphasis on new work. Throughout this history, important productions challenged past representations of the “imagined community” of Canada found on Blyth’s stage (Anderson 8). At CATR’s 2022 conference, I propose to discuss Sean Dixon’s play The Wilberforce Hotel, which premiered in 2015 and is inspired by the true events of the Wilberforce settlement (Ontario Heritage Trust). The 800-acre site now known as Lucan, Ontario, was purchased in 1830 by a group of former American slaves including Austin Steward, the owner of the Wilberforce Hotel (Ontario Heritage Trust). Dixon’s play adapts portions of Steward’s autobiography, breathing life into his complex story. The play also opens with a controversial blackface scene. Two white actors blacken their faces and recreate a minstrel performance at the top of the play (Dixon 12). The building which now houses the Blyth Theatre Festival, was erected in 1920 as a memorial to fallen soldiers and was used as a performance venue for traveling minstrel productions as well as minstrel performances created by a local undertaker (North Huron Publishing). While The Wilberforce Hotel reanimates Steward’s life, it also reanimates this racist performance practice on Blyth’s stage. Dixon’s play paradoxically brings to life and confronts histories of Black oppression and acts as a case study demonstrating the difficult negotiations theatres like Blyth make when performing work which responds to historical erasures and/or racist portrayals on their stages.

Leading in the Crucible: Theatre Leadership, Mentorship, and Emergence in a World in Crisis (Part I) (Roundtable)

Led by Scott Mealey. Participants: Susan Bennett, Ric Knowles, Yvette Nolan and Kelly Thornton.

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Roundtable Organizer Scott Mealey (University of Toronto)

The accelerating withdrawal of “Baby Boomers” from the theatre industry and academy has led to an emerging leadership crisis, made even more pressing by increasing social, environmental, and political instability. There are nevertheless signs of hope. New, increasingly diverse, industry leaders demonstrate the ability to read the times and to develop bold yet practical visions for their theatres. Simultaneously, forward-thinking senior scholars are building an expanding infrastructure of equitable mentorship. Anchored by proven leaders from the artistic and academic worlds, this roundtable, moderated by Dr. Scott Mealey (U. of T.’s Centre for Spectatorship and Audience Research), will feature a lively discussion about ethical, effective, and sustainable leadership and how we might cultivate a stronger mentoring ethos within the shifting Canadian theatre landscape.

12:30-12:45 AST

Break / Pause

12:45-14:15 AST

Emergences from and Reexamination in Archives (Curated Panel)

Moderator Justin Blum. Papers by Kathryn Harvey, Jessica Riley, and Amanda Attrell

Live captioning provided.

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Curated Panel Moderator Justin Blum

This panel argues for and reevaluates the impact of archival research on scholarly considerations of theatre in Canada. Elin Diamond in “Performance in the Archives” tells us: “The archive sits in its silent vault, but when you and I take hold of it, it becomes a performance site, a materialization of an implied narrative already spatialized and arranged” (21). Just so, this panel presents a cross-career-stage dialogue about the panelists’ current work in performing arts archives

The discussion intersects theatre and performance studies with archival studies which Michelle Caswell in Urgent (2021) calls “a field . . . on fire” (12). First, Kathryn Harvey’s paper discusses the impossibility of performing arts research without the availability of archived materials, considers the lack of neutrality in the acquisition and arrangement of these materials, and posits “what about what is not in the archives?”. Jessica Riley’s paper then uses archived records to reexamine dramaturgy across difference by studying the relationship between Urjo Kareda and Guillermo Verdecchia through the latter’s creation of Fronteras Americanas (1993). This insight from archival data interrogates power dynamics and biases which have shaped the dramatic canon. Finally, Amanda Attrell’s paper considers archival traces of the process that creates oscillating self-performance in Alien Creature (1999)and Secret Life of a Mother (2018). It explores the empowering effect of these auto/biographical performances by examining their archival remains. Together, these three papers discuss issues arising from archival research and reconsider the possibilities available in archives to researchers of performance and theatre.

“Traces of Existence: Performing Arts Archives.” Kathryn Harvey (University of Guelph)

Archives exist in many forms and for many purposes. The University of Guelph’s Archival and Special Collections, where I work, houses one of the largest theatre archives in Canada. Although its focus is primarily on Ontario theatre, it is no secret that those who work in theatre tend to move around, so in addition to our holdings of theatre companies, we also hold the papers of theatre professionals who have worked across the globe. But what is the point of all this collecting?

Without documentation (set and costume designs, stage manager’s prompt books, wardrobe bibles, maquettes, photographs, videos, show reports, playbills, reviews, and more), it would be impossible to: RePlay, to perform an historical re-enactment; ReCollect, to study the reception of a production or understand various directors’ visions of the same play; ReExist, to invite new creations inspired by “old” works or take action in response to a compelling performance. None of these things could happen without archives. But here’s the catch. Archives are not neutral spaces. The collections they house all have their own histories about how they got there. The finding aids researchers use are created by people, and each person has their own perspective, biases, and politics, so assuming complete objectivity of the finding aids should be questioned. And what about what is not in the Commented [RW1]: Baz will confirm a moderator archives? Why did some materials make it in and some did not? My paper will delve into these issues to explore the traces of existence in performing arts archives

“Reconstructing and Reexamining Dramaturgy Across Difference: What Archives Reveal about the Development of Fronteras Americanas." Jessica Riley (University of Winnipeg)

This paper draws on archived records to reconstruct and analyze a complex instance of new-play development dramaturgy across difference. Through an examination of extant script drafts and surviving correspondence tied to the development of Guillermo Verdecchia’s Governor General’s award-winning and widely studied autobiographical, tri-lingual solo play Fronteras Americanas (1993), this paper exposes the ways in which Verdecchia, a Latinx playwright and performer, negotiated the dramaturgical input of Urjo Kareda, then-artistic director of Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre—a theatre that has been described, under Kareda’s artistic directorship, as “a white fortress onstage and in the demographics of its audience” (Kamal Al-Solaylee Tonight at the Tarragon x). Given that the values embedded in dramaturgical processes can often be invisible to participants, archival records offer a valuable point of entry for exposing the ways in which dramaturgs shape the aesthetic and ideological outcomes of theatre creation. This paper makes visible how negotiations across difference—including aesthetic, cultural, and racial difference—played out between Kareda and Verdecchia, exposing the power dynamics of playwright-dramaturg negotiations and the impacts of this process on the formand content of the play that emerged. At a time when we are seeking to better understand and unlearn implicit biases that have historically shaped the dramatic canon, archival data can be instrumentalized not only to examine the creative input of the dramaturg but also to interrogate how that input manifests, what kind of creativity it supports, and the power dynamics that underlie the process

“Perceiving Process in and Beyond Alien Creature and Secret Life of a Mother.” Amanda Attrell

At the end of Alien Creature (1999), actor-playwright Linda Griffiths hypothesizes the lasting effects of her auto/biographical representation of Canadian poet Gwendolyn MacEwen: “an after-image of GWENDOLYN’S face hovers in the air” (50). In each performance of Secret Life of a Mother (2018), playwright and auto/biographical subject of the performance Hannah Moscovitch arises from her seat in the audience to walk onto the stage and announce, “I’m Hannah. They told me I had to do the rest of the text myself,” replacing hitherto solo performer Maev Beaty (23). Each of these powerful plays enact auto/biographical creation by intertwining the selves of women artists in solo performance. As ever, performance remains illusory. And yet, these women enmesh their selves and reveal their collaborative creative process in each performance to speak to the circumstances of women artists in Canada.

This paper analyzes the representational strategies employed in these plays which each enacts empowerment in oscillating self-performance. In it I consider archival traces of the creative process that led to the rupture and revision of existing dramatic form in each play. Archival traces housed in public institutions and those shared with me by Moscovitch enable an understanding of how an actof creating relationship in performance, amongst artists and with the audience, begins in process and may extend beyond the live moment. I argue that archival tracing of process to build a deeper understanding of these representational strategies illuminates the impacts of the empowered auto/biographical self-representation created by these intangible yet galvanizing performances.

Leading in the Crucible: Theatre Leadership, Mentorship, and Emergence in a World in Crisis (Part II) (Roundtable)

Led by Scott Mealey. Participants: Nina Lee Aquino, Sue Balint, Stephen Johnson, and Marlis Schweitzer

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Roundtable Organizer Scott Mealey (University of Toronto)

The accelerating withdrawal of senior leaders from the theatre industry and the increasingly adjunctified academy has led to an emerging leadership crisis, made even more pressing by increasing social, environmental, and political instability (ATHE; CITT; PACT). There are nevertheless signs of hope. New, increasingly diverse industry leaders are demonstrating the ability to read the times and developing bold but still practical visions for their theatres (Mass Culture Council; Victor and Ahmed). Established theatres across Canada are transforming where theatre can be staged and who gets to tell those stories. Simultaneously, forward-thinking senior scholars are building an expanding infrastructure of equitable mentorship. Lifetime achievement winners in the North American academy are lauded not only for what they have individually achieved, but also for the tables they have built and shared with emerging scholars.

Leading in the Crucible Part II revisits two critical leadership questions: What are the best practices for guiding a theatre organization through change? How can a theatre department orcompany create an ongoing mentoring ecosystem that crosses generations and cultures? Anchored by proven leaders from the artistic and academic worlds, these sessions, moderated by Scott Mealey (Centre for Spectatorship and Audience Research), will feature a lively discussion (including a time for Q&A with audience members) about ethical, effective, and sustainable leadership and how we might cultivate a stronger mentoring ethos within the shifting Canadian theatre landscape.

14:15-14:30 AST

Break / Pause

14:30-16:00 AST

Impossible Archives, Emergent Archives (Curated Panel)

Moderator Marlis Schweitzer. Papers by Olivia Michiko Gagnon, Colleen Kim Daniher, and Kristin Moriah

Live captioning provided.

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Curated Panel Moderator Marlis Schweitzer (York University)

This panel brings together papers that investigate archives (repositories of knowledge/history/information) as a matter of both impossibility and emergence. Archives are impossible because they draw finite limits where there are none. Collections order, sort, differentiate, authorize, enclose. At the same time, archives are emergent because they are themselves documents of social order, replete with human errors, miscalculations, silences, and surprises. In other words, archives become emergent when they are treated not as a limit-point, but as a point of departure

In keeping with the conference theme of “Performing Emergence,” our grouping of papers collectively inquire into the potentiality of theatre and performance archives and archival methods to glimpse alternative life-worlds. Particularly interested in the vulnerabilities of dominant archives (or, archives of domination), we pursue impurity, errantry, and incommensurability as themes and methods for meaning-making with and in official narratives ofthe local, national, and global past. Tracking figures who show up in the wrong place or at the wrong time, the wayward document or rumor that threatens to undo the whole, or tandem temporalities that refuse to stay in one place/time, we consider instances of archival disorder and disruption (e.g. impossibility) to be a matter of emergent social re-ordering. Together, our papers span 19th –21st century performance practices in Europe, the U.S., and Western Canada, from concert hall performance to contemporary installation art to reflect on archival practice (our own and others’) in performance historiography as an occasion for grappling with emergent pasts and futures.

“Entanglements of Race and Land, Kinship and Archive: Elizabeth M. Webb’s For the Mud Holds What History Refuses (Providence in Four Parts).” Olivia Michiko Gagnon (University of British Columbia)

In this paper, I spend time with Elizabeth M. Webb’s multimedia installation For the Mud Holds What History Refuses (Providence in Four Parts). Incorporating a variety of archival and original materials, this work comprises a 16mm film, a sound work, porcelain sculptures, and printmaking “pigmented by red clay soil she harvested from her family’s former plantation land in Eastern Alabama.”(https://www.elizabethmwebb.com/portfolio/providence-in-four-parts). Across these sites, she unfolds the dense intersections of and interactions between her own (mixed-race) family history, histories of slavery in the southern United States, and histories of environmental degradation in Providence Canyon, Georgia—a site “considered to be one of ‘Seven Natural Wonders of George,’ formed in under 100 years as a result of soil erosion” directly related to cotton plantation practices (Ibid). Taken as a whole,For the Mud What History Refuses (Providence in Four Parts) performs a complex (and hyperlocal) history of place premised on the entangled inseparability of social, natural, intimate, embodied, and racial histories, even as it asks us to consider the politics of aesthetic and performatic historiographies that place such histories––so often held apart––into close proximity

“Archives of Impurity: Winnifred Eaton and Calgary’s Little Theatre Movement.” Colleen Kim Daniher (Wilfrid Laurier University)

In January 1924, Winnifred Eaton Reeve stood before an elite crowd of Calgary society members at Gladys Attrees’ dance studio, urging them to consider founding a Little Theatre movement in the city: “The Little Theatre is drama of the people, for the people, and by the people,” she is reported to have said, in a rousing speech (Calgary Herald “Drama of the People”). Largely credited as “the founder” of the Little Theatre movement in Calgary, Eaton Reeve would go on to serve as the group’s honorary president, president of the programme committee, and in-house playwright.

Today, Eaton Reeve’s name appears on the University of Calgary’s “Reeve Theatre.” But what does Canadian theatre history really know of Winnifred Eaton Reeve—a Broadway-produced novelist, essayist, and Hollywood screenwriter, most famously known for her Japoniste writings under the pen-name of Onoto Watanna? What would it mean to take Eaton seriously within the canons of Canadian theatre history?

This paper considers the historical memory of Winnifred Eaton Reeve within Canadian theatre historiography as both archival problem and potential emergence. In so doing, it investigates how notions of purity—racial, national, medial, and generic—both structure and contain dominant practices of “doing” theatre historiography. Weaving together scraps of seemingly incommensurable archival data that surround Eaton Reeve’s marginal appearance in the archives of Canada’s Little Theatre Movement, I argue that impurity itself becomes a heuristic for documenting the emergent archives of empire, colonialism, and racial capitalism of which Canadian theatre history has always been a part.

“Berlin and Beyond: What Happened When Will Marion Cook Studied Abroad?” Kristin Moriah (Queen’s University)

TEXT OF ABSTRACT In this paper I turn towards accounts of international travel in African American newspapers like the Washington Bee and consider their role shaping a sense of national citizenship and belonging within the Black community. I am particularly interested in their coverage of Will Marion Cook’s time at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik. Cook’s journey was entangled with a series of similar trips by prominent Black cultural figures at the time. Born in 1869, Will Marion Cook was one of the most influential and innovative composers of his day. His work with famed African American minstrel duo Bert Williams and George Walker includes the sketch Clorindy, the Origin of the Cakewalk (1898), and In Dahomey (1902), the earliest full-length black Broadway musical. Cook also studied with Antonín Dvořák and was famed for merging European and African American musical styles in his compositions. For African American performers and intellectuals like Will Marion Cook, Mary Church Terrell and W.E.B. DuBois, travelling abroad and performing in Europe was complicated and provided little guarantee of escaping anti-Blackness on a quotidian basis. But within the pages of Black newspapers, we find that their experiences inEurope formed a curious repudiation of American racism.

Performance Training as Research (Curated Panel)

Moderator Christine (cricri) Bellerose. Papers by Christine (cricri) Bellerose, Virginie Magnat, and P Megan Andrews

Live captioning provided.

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Curated Panel Moderator Christine (cricri) Bellerose (Unaffiliated Dance Artist/Scholar)

Performance training as research is an emerging academic research approach in the lineage of Theatre and Performance Studies, Education, and Somatics –PAR (performance / practice as training) (Piccini), ABP (arts-based practice) (Eisner), SPR (Somatic-Performative Research) (Fernandes). In our panel, the techniques and methods presented are anchored in a performance tradition –multi-modal performance / installation / event and research focused on work-in-progress (P Andrews), Somatics, EcoSomatics and durational movement performance art (Bellerose), Grotowski-based physical and vocal training (Magnat). Inquiring through performance training as research is a slowing down of the process and outcome of inquiry. Performance training itself becomes research modality, whereby methods and techniques remain, but are enriched by revelations, new bits of making-sense emerging that in turn require that methods and techniques be modulated. These adjustments benefit the methods and techniques, are transferable and teachable to others. These adjustments are, furthermore, ripe with materials to enrich research questions and outcome. We crack open methods and techniques –not to break them, no! –but to plow and harvest those fissures. Emphasizing slowness and process over product and efficacy can be a way of using holistic performance training modalities to question, challenge and resist the neoliberal academy's definition of what constitute research excellence

“Performance Training as Research: An Ecosomatics of Apprenticing with the Land.” Christine (cricri) Bellerose (Unaffiliated Dance Artist/Scholar)

How do I make use of performance training as research in EcoSomatics and apprenticing with land? By attuning to depatterning and repatterning habits of the body during training sessions and making use of these transformations as material for inquiring colonialcultural history in its body-sense-land-knowledge relationship. This mode of moving-thinking allies with the movement for slow scholarship, considering the movement artists' training as an accumulation of knowledge. Furthermore, apprenticing with land integrates the political to the ecological, how ecosomatic Dance scholar Isabelle Ginot speaks of the field, adding that the project itself is a site of responsibility for humans and nonhumans moving-thinking together toward emancipation (Écosomatiques). Furthermore, trained movement artists have accumulated a fond of 'trusting in the unknown', which allows making sense of: knowing that something is happening to me and I know that I do not know what that is, but I do know that I can dance it. This multi-layered approach harmonizes with research methodology, performance performer training, land-based and/or embodied inquiry, decolonial studies, and nonhuman ethnography, and is ripe with new knowledge for everything is put to the test: taught immutable technique to a technique which moves with the body of the mover, trusting a sense of wonder and accessing enchanted learning, unsettling a cultural legacy of distrusting the knowledge from sensing, apprenticing with land. I experience this type of research as liberating. It frees my mind to think new and unexpected questions because I am supported by grounding through the body that knowns how, when, where to move through the unknown.

“Exploring (K)new Paradigms for Performance Training.” Virginie Magnat (University of British Columbia)

Central to my Grotowski-based performance training is an ecosystemic conception of organicity that I have come to associate what Oglala Lakota scholar Vine Deloria Jr. describes as our intuitive experience of the energy and power of the natural world linked to our personal involvement in the processes of nature through the great bond bringing together all forms of life within the complex whole of the cosmos. Indigenous epistemologies mandate establishing relations of ethical reciprocity with non-human agents, and Opaskwayak Cree scholar Shawn Wilson points to the sacred nature of these relationships and the ethics of relational accountability because "everything that we do shares in the ongoing creation of our universe" (Research Is Ceremony 138). What distinguishes this non-anthropocentric conception of agency from the quantum-based theory of agential realism advocated by new materialist scholar Karen Barad, is its spiritual dimension, foregrounded by Deloria, Wilson, and others. Moreover, Education scholar Gregory Cajete, a Tewa citizen of the Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico, contends that Indigenous cosmologies offer "profound insights for cultivating a sustainable relationship to place and a spiritually integrated perception of Nature," insights that are particularly valuable "in the face of the rapid transformation of the Earth by Western science and technology and the ecological crisis that is unfolding at the same time" (Critical Neurophilosophy and Indigenous Wisdom 102). Within this context, how can performance training engage practitioners in research and ceremony?

“Research Happens: ‘In the Repetition of Gestures.’” P Megan Andrews (Simon Fraser University)

If indeed “history happens, in the repetition of gestures”(56), as Sara Ahmed writes, then how do we shift? How do we invite new gestures, new frames, new structures, new relations? In this paper, I discuss my approach to performance training as research through the lens of the disorientation project, a multi-year movement research practice and multi-modal performance / installation / event. I share various structuring values, principles and practices anchoring the work; articulate the constructed situation of its recent public engagement; and reveal some of the developing insights as they illuminate the performance training as research frame. I propose that the disorientation project enacts methodological responses to my opening questions. The disorientation project is not so much "a work" as it is an ongoing, iterative andmulti-medial research process through which I seek to unfold experiences of ethical relationality –with self, object, other, land, environment. The project develops in relation with the question posed by artist/scholar Walead Besthy, who considers ethicswith respect to social or relational art, asking: "how do ethical relations create aesthetic form?" (19).

In the project, I engage movement, sounding, spoken word, video, recorded audio, objects, text animations, dramaturgical dialogue and writing and/as performance. My research questions then invite consideration of these processes and practices as they manifest relationalities, reveal aesthetic dimensions and function as reflective techniques. The process can be understood as a kind of "repetition of gestures" toward the emergence of the new, through which I enact an ongoing practicing-performing | performing-practice focussed on inquiry and committed to knowledge generation.e a stronger mentoring ethos within the shifting Canadian theatre landscape.

16:00-16:15 AST

Break / Pause

16:15-17:45 AST

Rückenfigur: 365 Days; or, a durational meditation of the solitary in a pandemic (Performance)

Filmed Performance Art by Sorouja Moll

Screening and Q&A.

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Artist and Q&A Host Dr. Sorouja Moll (University of Waterloo)</h3?

Rückenfigur: 365 days is a durational meditation and documentation of the solitary who stood at the shoreline of Lake Ontario each morning during the first year of the pandemic. When I (like all of us in different ways) was sequestered because of the COVID lockdown, I became curious about how being solitary performed and created meaning. My interest turned to Caspar David Friedrich’s 1818 Wanderer above the Sea of Fog and his compositional placing of his subject’s back towards the observer known as Rückenfigur. The artistic device or pictorial characteristic is borrowed from the German term for “a turned figure.” The figurative play creates an illusion of space, an imagined yet unseen and undisclosed perspective, and a performance of witnessing the other while witnessing self—watching like an elusive shadow—on the perilous edge at a moment of transition, profound social change, and individual estrangement. The fascination of the solitary figure has a long philosophical and literary history with such figures as Lao Tzu, Nietzsche, Emerson, Woolf, Thoreau, Whitman, et al. Aristotle likened “the solitary” to a god. Public sculptures mark spaces where water meets land with monuments. Les Voyageurs, in Marseilles, by French artist Bruno Catalano for instance evokes memories of travellers and the parts of themselves they leave behind; Waiting for the Floor near the city of Dordrecht is a large-scale sculpture of a little boy holding a boat waiting for the water to arrive; The Little Mermaid on a Denmark shore in Copenhagen by Edvard Eriksen depicts a mermaid’s wait to be human. What does it mean to be “solitary”? Or, how is meaning made when being solitary or observing the solitary? The word’s lexical configuration finds itself bound within the etymology of “widow”: There is always the grief.

As I emerge from this period, I recollected the 365 images and replay the series as a one-hour projection in various locations. With this work, my queries explore how recollected images of the solitary reexist as a counter memorial, how the work performs to rewitness and remember individual experience of ever-changing horizons and shorelines; and how the meaning of the solitary reemerges in ourselves and others uniquely and powerfully

Refusing Climate Fatalism through Site-Specific Theatre (Curated Panel)

Moderator Kathleen Gallagher. Papers by Kathleen Gallagher, Christine Balt & Nancy Cardwell, and Lindsay Valve & Munia Debleena Tripathi

Live captioning provided.

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Curated Panel Moderator Kathleen Gallagher (University of Toronto)

Our panel consists of three papers emerging from the research study (2019-2024). This multi-sited, drama-based ethnographic project, unfolding in Toronto Canada, Lucknow India, Kaohsiung Taiwan, Thessaloniki Greece, Coventry England and Bogotá Colombia, harnesses theatre as a methodology for understanding and enacting climate justice across the globe. The panel will focus specifically on the genre of site-specific theatre, and in particular, how ‘site’ can be put to work as an aesthetic and pedagogical tool to meet the demands of this critical juncture in the climate emergency. These papers position site-specific theatre as an entry-point into refusing the denial, despair and fatalism that has come to characterize representations of the climate crisis in the theatre and elsewhere (see Heddon and Mackey, 2012; Balt, 2021). Rather, it engages with the sensory, affective and embodied capacities of ‘site’ to address our inheritances and what has brought us to this moment, and, at the same time, to imagine alternative and more life-sustaining futures. In the first paper, Dr. Kathleen Gallagherexamines ‘site’ at the global scale, providing an overview of the project and how it engages theatre for climate justice across the global North and South. In the second paper, Christine Balt and Nancy Cardwell confront local histories of climate injustice at a site near a Toronto high school. Munia Debleena Tripathi and Linsday Valve consider ‘site’ according to the virtual sphere in the third paper, where the affordances of online, cross-site creative collaborations are explored as solidarity-building endeavours in these times

“Performance, Global Ethnographic Research, and Climate Justice: Imagination and Collective Avowal.” Kathleen Gallagher (University of Toronto)

What might it mean for researchers, young people, and a research project to co-emerge in the mutable times of a global health pandemic? This first paper will set the framework of place, scope, methodology and creative practices of our global, collaborative ethnographic study. How might creative digital and live theatrical storytelling resonate in interdisciplinary and intergenerational ways to build knowledge and spur action in advancing socioecological justice? The primary ambition of our project, (2019-2024), is to respond to the need for new ways of learning about, thinking about, and responding to, pressing environmental and social crises by asking if theatre can lead to alternative ways of seeing the world that can account for the ‘inextricable entanglements’ of the environment, society, subjectivity and our own actions (Neimanis, Åsberg and Hedrén 2015, 68). Working with researchers, youth artists, theatre-makers, and drama teachers across our sites (Toronto Canada, Lucknow India, Kaohsiung Taiwan, Thessaloniki Greece, Coventry England and Bogotá Colombia), our global North-South, arts-led and youth-driven research ecology is not about prescribing particular containers within which creative work must be undertaken, but reintroducing embodied and sensory knowing and imagining back into creative and research processes. Though we work with specific theatre genres in our project (Verbatim, Devised, and Site-Specific theatre), these become important enabling constraints for young theatre-makers to assemble their thoughts and “affective inventories” (McDuie-Ra et al 2020) and to activate their performative impulses to reach (local and global) listening publics.

“Looking Locally: Site-Specific Theatre for (Re)-emerging Ecologically-Just Pasts and Futures.” Christine Balt(University of Toronto OISE) and Nancy Cardwell (University of Toronto OISE)

In this paper, the authors consider pedagogies of site-specific theatre at the local Tkoronto research site of this study. Cityscape High School is located near the lost river of Garrison Creek. The stream, which once nourished surrounding forests and was a significant Indigenous transport route, declined in the wake of settler activity and, in the 1920s, was buried to make way for the expansion of the city. With the guidance of our teacher-collaborator, Mr. B, our participants engage in a walking site-specific performance in order to trace the reach of the buried creek. This project, unfolding at a time of climate emergency and an ongoing pandemic, both of which have disproportionately impacted the lives of youth, Indigenous communities and people ofcolour around the world, takes its cue from Sally Mackey’s (2016) suggestion, drawing from Maurya Wickstrom, that site-specific performance can “‘evoke dreams of habitable environments and affirm life as possible’ in a time of uncertainty, crisis, terror and transience” (p. 113). It draws from an Indigenous land-based pedagogical approach to promote intimate, anti-colonial, non-extractive relationships to place. It critically considers settler responsibility in these times, confronting the now ubiquitous land acknowledgement as a hollow performance. We consider: what do site-specific theatre pedagogies offer for realizing a different kind of land acknowledgement, and how can this be a ‘doing:’ a method for imagining and performing life-sustaining futures in addition to recognizing what has come before? We agree with Cree scholar Karen Recollet’s (2016) argument that “gestures of futurity are choreographies of possibilities and hope” and site-specific theatre offers possibilities for enlivening such gestures.

“Looking Internationally: Virtual Spaces as Sites for Climate Justice in the Global Drama Club.” Lindsay Valve (University of Toronto OISE) and Munia Debleena Tripathi (University of Toronto)

When a global pandemic forced the Audacious Citizenship project online, we were initially gripped by feelings of loss as we reckoned with the essential relationships, felt spaces, and shared contexts that seemed impossible in the absence of global travel. A year spent online with Toronto youth, however, transformed our grief into curiosity and hope as we came to understand our online space as a site of continuous emergence; one that could be created and recreated each time we came together. These lessons seeded a question that would inspire a reimagined methodology for the third year of our project: What co-creative possibilities might the virtual space present when we surrender the impulse to transfer our in-person interactions online and, instead, meet the virtual space in its full potentiality?. In this paper, we explore the reinvention of the virtual space as a site of its own. Liberated from physical notions of ‘place’ and ‘presence’, we have re-imagined that space as the site of a Global Drama club, hosted by the Toronto team and unfolding alongside the site-specific theatre activities led by our international collaborators. Bringing together small groups of young people from each research site, the Global Drama Club creates a bridge between the site-specific lives, stories, and experiences of youth and researchers alike, and in the process, introduces new possibilities for extended forms of relationship, reciprocity, and liveness that compels us to reconsider the role of digital co-presence in our research, and indeed, what it means to be and work ‘together’.

17:45-18:00 AST

Break / Pause

18:00-19:30 AST

RePlaying Institutional Challenges, Emerging with Solutions (Paper Panel)

Moderator Kimberley McLeod. Papers by Jessica Watkin and Cyrus Lane

Live captioning provided.

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Paper Panel Moderator Kimberly McLeod (University of Guelph)

“Disability Dramaturgy: History, Perspective, and Practice.” Jessica Watkin (University of Toronto)

The first time I experienced John Cage’s 4”33 was during my Masters, but as a Blind person I have always been intrigued by sound and silence during performance. I would rather listen to a performer’s breathing or the scrape of their feet on the stage than an audio description telling me what’s happening visually. Dramaturgically, the sounds and the silences of a performance intrigue me deeply as someone who cannot always interpret visuals: was that silence intentional? What could that mean? In December of 2020 I received an invitation to create live captions to interpret the silence during 4”33 that was happening in the middle of Leslie Ting’s zoom performance of her show Speculation. The Cage piece was to be experienced through a conference call, and I was invited to poetically interpret the “found” sounds of silence for a Deaf and non-hearing audience members, the captions were to be streamed on screen for the digital performance. This small moment of access, Disability aesthetics, and artistry animates Disability Dramaturgy, and how I as a Disability Dramaturg practice these concepts.

Disability Dramaturgy is the ongoing practice of prioritizing informed, contextual, and thoughtful care in performing spaces not just for the sake of access, but also to contribute to a wider collections of Disability methods and aesthetics. At the end of my dissertation project where I engaged with Disabled artists in Canada and their performance creation processes, I find myself coming in to understanding with a new emerging two-pronged definition of Disability Dramaturgy that prioritizes care and activism. In this presentation, I define the iterations of Disability Dramaturgy (Victoria Ann Lewis, Kate O’Reilly, TR Chrystian, Sins Invalid), and then describe my new configurations of DD that highlight access intimacy, interdependence, and intersectionality. Finally, I’d like to end this presentation by offering some examples of performances and practices that animate the ways that Disabled artists can and are moving towards methods of practicing their desired artforms in ways that respond to their needs, and not in ways that compromise their bodyminds

“Mitigating Precarity: Talk is Free Theatre’s Artist BIG program.” Cyrus Lane (University of Ottawa)

In this presentation, I would like to introduce, examine, and critique a new model for post-pandemic theatre governance developed by Talk Is Free Theatre and its CEO Arkady Spivak. Artist BIG is a pilot program providing an affiliated group of artists a guarantee of employment amounting to an agreed upon sum of money every year for three years. This model offers an alternative to the accepted contract-by-contract approach that exacerbates precarity and fear of unemployment and leads artists to take work out of pure necessity. Artist BIG also offers artists a degree of creative autonomy, with current seasons being curated and built around projects developed by participating artists during the pandemic. Based on interviews with Spivak, Artist BIG participants, and in-demand arts consultant Jane Marsland, my presentation uses a critical ethnography framework to discuss and examine these practices.

Artist BIG asks some compelling questions of Canadian theatre as it emerges from the pandemic and seeks equitable and just ways to ReExist. If performing arts organizations continue to treat artists as disposable, what position is theatre in to address wider societal injustice? What power do artists have to affect change if precarity is, as Judith Butler says, “the galvanizing position” of their lives? (Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly 2012). And is a Basic Income model of theatre governance an effective model to redress these issues? I put forward that while it has yet to be seen if Artist BIG is feasible in the long run, its greatest value is that it presents a model for governance in which artists are only asked to prove their point of view, not their worth.

Performing as/in Response to the Nonhuman (Roundtable)

Led by Conrad Alexandrowicz. Participants: David Fancy, Gwen Dobie, Christine Bellerose, Katrina Dunn, and Lin Snelling

Roundtable Organizer: Conrad Alexandrowicz (University of Victoria)

Roundtable Participants: Dr. Christine Bellerose (Unaffiliated Dance Artist/Scholar), Dr. David Fancy (Brock University), Gwenyth Dobie (York University), Katrina Dunn (University of Manitoba), Lin Snelling (Universityof Alberta)

One might think that the term ‘ecohubris’ would have been in common parlance for years, given that it captures logically and usefully the radical nature of the human/nonhuman problem, one within which the climate crisis is subsumed. However, it seems to have been coined quite recently by Downing Cless: “An extension of the ancient Greek term for an overabundance of pride or arrogance, ecohubris is an excessive zeal to control or dominate nature, acting without limits and with a sense of being above nature, as though one were a god.”

Ecofeminist philosopher Val Plumwood argues that foundational elements of Western philosophy have enabled and justified the exploitation and pollution of the earth’s resources, the oppression of women, the exploitation of labour by capital, and of racialized populations. Thus, disastrous effects in both the biosphere and the “sociosphere” have a common cause. She argues for nothing less than a radical remaking of our relationship with the nonhuman, dismantling the harmful dualisms by means of which it is constituted

In the realm of performance, I propose, this means exploring the possibilities of performing as and/or in response to the nonhuman, a problematic proposition indeed, given that most theatre has been and continues to be all about the human. As pioneering scholar Una Chaudhuri has written, the theatre is “the least environmentally aware, mosteco-alienated, and nature-aversive of all the arts of the Western world.”

I propose that artist-scholars who are committed to developing new approaches to teaching students in the teeth of the climate crisis need to learn new skills, or refresh existing ones. Many of us as faculty members forget about the possibility of becoming students again ourselves, but if there were ever a need for such renewal of our capacities as teachers and researchers, it is now: As Greta Thunberg has said, “We now need a whole new way of thinking.”

Some or all of following topic areas will be explored by participants. The moderator will provide a brief introduction, after which each participant will speak on their own engagement with the topic. Conversation will then take place between participants; finally, the conversation will be turned over to observers/audience: • The pedagogy of Jacques Lecoq, which is full of the impersonation of nonhuman sources;
• Deleuze and Guattari’s “becoming-animal,” from A Thousand Plateaus...; 
• The uses of Viewpoints improvisation;
• The uses of dance improvisation in playing of/with objects, vegetative life, nonhuman  animals;
• Tadeusz Kantor’s object-relation improvisations;
• Inspiration from Indigenous epistemologies;
• Inspiration from pre-Christian European shamanism, as may be found in the work of Grotowski.

19:30-19:45 AST

Break / Pause

19:45 AST

Ice Age Coming (Performance)

By Corenski Nowlan

Note: There are separate Zoom links for the performance and the Q & A; Live captioning provided.

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An online play by Corenski Nowlan

University of Toronto, Scarborough

Online June 6-7

For thousands of years, the land on which the University of Toronto operates has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land.

Monday, June 6th

10:30-12:30 ET

09:30-11:30 CT

Welcoming Remarks and Keynote - Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu

Keynote - Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu

What is the Future of Blackness in Canadian Theatre?

Reflections on the creation of culturally specific work in a pandemic and the shifting cultural landscape in theatre.

Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu is an acclaimed theatre creator and director raised in Kenya and Victoria, BC and based in Toronto. She recently won a Dora Award for her Outstanding Direction of The Brothers Size, which also won for Outstanding Production. She is the Founder/Artistic Director of the experimental theatre company IFT (It’s A Freedom Thing) Theatre and also recently directed the critically acclaimed plays: Trout Stanley(Factory Theatre), Here are the Fragments (The Theatre Centre/The ECT Collective), Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Soulpepper) and Oraltorio: A Theatrical Mixtape(Obsidian/Soulpepper). Mumbi is also the recipient of a Toronto Theatre Critics Award, an Artistic Director's Award (Soulpepper), a Pauline McGibbon Award, a Mallory Gilbert ProtegeAward, a Harold Award, and has been twice nominated for the John Hirsch Directing Award. She is a graduate of Soulpepper Academy, York University and University of Toronto as well as Obsidian Theatre's Mentor/Apprenticeship Program.
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Quel est l’avenir de la négritude dans le théâtre canadien ?

Réflexions sur la création d’œuvres culturellement spécifiques en temps de la pandémie et sur l’évolution du paysage culturel du théâtre.

Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu est une créatrice et metteure en scène de théâtre saluée par la critique. Elle a grandi au Kenya et à Victoria, en Colombie-Britannique, et vit maintenant à Toronto. Elle a récemment remporté un prix Dora pour sa mise en scène exceptionnelle de The Brothers Size, qui a également remporté le prix de la meilleure production. Elle est la fondatrice et la directrice artistique de la compagnie de théâtre expérimental IFT (It's A Freedom Thing) Theatre et a récemment mis en scène des pièces acclamées par la critique : Trout Stanley (Factory Theatre), Here are the Fragments (The Theatre Centre/The ECT Collective), Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (Soulpepper) et Oraltorio : A Theatrical Mixtape (Obsidian/Soulpepper). Mumbi est également lauréate des prix Toronto Theatre Critics, Artistic Director’s (pour la compagnie Soulpepper), Pauline McGibbon, Mallory Gilbert Protege, et enfin du prix Harold. Elle a également a été nominée deux fois pour le prix John Hirsch. Elle est diplômée de la Soulpepper Academy, de l’Université York et de l’Université de Toronto, ainsi que du programme de mentorat et de formation de l’Obsidian Theatre.

12:30-12:45 ET

Break / Pause

12:45-14:15 ET

11:45-13:15 CT

Performing ReExistence in the 21st Century (Paper Panel)

Moderator Kailin Wright. Papers by Naila Keleta-Mae, Christine Balt, and Sheetala Bhat

Live captioning provided.

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Paper Panel Moderator Kailin Wright (St. Francis Xavier University)

“Black and Free in the 21st Century.” Naila Keleta-Mae (University of Waterloo)

The pursuit of freedom has been a central preoccupation of Black people ever since the advent of the Transatlantic slave trade in the 16th century when Europeans led the taking of Africans from their lands to build European settlements in North America andthe Caribbean (Bakare-Yusuf; Cooper; Fanon; McKittrick; Williams). For the past five centuries Black people in these geographical regions have used performance, theatre, visual art, music and other means of expression to imagine and advocate for freedom in the public and private spheres that influence everyday life (Brand; Collins; Crenshaw; Gale; hooks; Hope; Thomas)

This paper will present findings from my research project “Black and Free in the 21st Century” that I began in 2018 with funding from an Insight Development Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. The research question was: What do Black expressive cultures in North America reveal about what it means to be Black and free in the 21st century? This paper will present findings from three sites visits in North America that I made in 2019 (as part of research project) and where I conducted interviews, collected ephemera, took pictures and/or recorded audio and audio-visuals. The site visits were to Freedom School in Canada, and Afropunk and Miami Art Week in the United States. The theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the paper’s site analyses will be performance studies, feminist theory, critical race theory and autoethnography

“Locked Down in Toronto: How Youth Claim a Right to the City through Autobiographical Performance.” Christine Balt (University of Toronto OISE)

How do Toronto youth negotiate ‘a right to the city’ at a time of pandemic and housing crisis? This paper engages with the data from a drama-based, ethnographic doctoral research study examining how drama students seek, claim and make space in a city that has become increasingly hostile for young people: a lack of affordability, gentrification, development, and an ongoing pandemic resulting in lockdowns and school closures, have all eroded the right to the city for youth (see Gallagher-Mackay et al., 2020). Henri Lefebvre’s (1991) formulation of ‘the right to the city’ argues that city-dwellers must re-claim and re-inhabit the spaces from which they are excluded. This occurs by reviving the city as the site of “encounter, connection, play, learning, difference, surprise, and novelty” (Purcell, 2014, p, 149). This study, situated in the virtual Grade 12 drama class in a rapidly-gentrifying downtown Toronto neighbourhood, home to a diverse body of low-income and immigrant families and youth, mobilizes autobiographical performance as a pedagogical strategy for claiming space in the city. In particular, I turn to Deirdre Heddon’s (2007) concept of ‘autotopography’ as a methodology for ‘bringing the city in’ at a time of quarantine. These performances engaged with Toronto via “a confederacy of imaginations... to discover not only an alternative city, but...to bring one into existence” (Bradby and Lavery, 2007, p. 50). Such work offers new insights into the hopes and desires of youth for a city that is more responsive to their rights as members of an urban citizenry.

“‘Restart the play’: On Cyclicality and the ‘Indian Woman’in the Theatrical Future of C Sharp, C Blunt.” Sheetala Bhat (Western University)

How do futuristic theatrical performances in India work within and against the notion of cyclical time to reimagine the figure of the "Indian woman"? In C Sharp, C Blunt (2013), Pallavi Arun’s one-woman play set in a near future in India, a singing app called Shilpa interacts with the audience to confront them about the normalization of sexual assaults against women in India. Shilpa has inherited the trauma of the actor/singer who provided voice for the app. The play moves in loops, as Shilpa often malfunctions due to uncontainable rage associated with the traumatic memories of her human voice. At this time when Hindu nationalism is ruling India with the ahistorical ideology of a pure Hindu past while employing modern technology for intense surveillance of dissent, revisiting C Sharp, C Blunt enables a rethinking of cyclicality, re-emergence, historicity, and futuristic technology through the lens of gender politics. How can the cyborg in India, whose beginning and updates are in this instance marked by utterance of lines from Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto,” re-envision Donna Haraway’s idea of the cyborg specifically for the cultural and political milieu of contemporary India? I propose a conceptcalled interruptional relations to describe futuristic decolonial politics in postcolonial India through a reading of C Sharp C Blunt. I argue that the play envisions the future in which multiple resistances and relations that interrupt each other are not contradictions but nature of the relations itself.

Real Participatory Bodies ... and Killjoys (Paper Panel)

Moderator Peter Kuling. Papers by Naomi Bennett, Caitlin Gowans, and Mary Tooley.

Live captioning provided.

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Paper Panel Moderator Peter Kuling (University of Guelph)

“Redefining ‘Realness’in the Age of Zoom.” Naomi P. Bennett (Louisiana State University)

Over the past two years the COVID-19 pandemic has introduced a wide array of new words and phrases into everyday language. Some, such as social distancing or Zooming, describe new means of interaction and the adoption of new tools for connecting through computer mediated technology. Others, such as face-to-face, virtual, or concepts of what is considered real, have taken on new meanings. Specifically, the concept of real has been differentiated from “real.” “Real” is ironic, not real, and therefore not valued on the same level as a real, in-person, or face-to-face encounter; a real interaction; really seeing or meeting someone. Mimed quotation marks bracket our online interactions and question whether the experience was a quote-unquote “real” one.

This paper investigates what it means to be Real in the Age of Zoom. By applying theater scholar Peter Brook’s concepts of Deadly and Immediate Theatre, and Edward Soja’s theory of Thirdspace, I will look at two examples of video-based online interaction: dist[Sense], a Zoom-based performance experience that I developed in October 2020 (presented by the HopKins Black Box) in which one audience-participant and one performer-participant to physically connect in a single Zoom box; and Human Online, a virtual space for self and mutual awareness in which two individuals in different parts of the world are connected via a silent video connection for one minute. Both pieces focus on the mutual shared space, attention, and presence. Elements that I argue are essential to the perception of Realness in both in-person and online interactions

“Where Has Your Body Been? Liveness and Embodiment in Jennifer Haley’s The Nether.” Caitlin Gowans (University of Toronto)

“We can’t control a person’s body” says an agent investigating the eponymous Nether of Jennifer Haley’s 2013 play. She continues: “Yours is free to walk out the door [...] But if it does, we’ll rescind your login” (6-7). The threat is clear in the world of Haley’s play about a world in which an immersive version of the internet increasingly supplants users’ daily lives “in world”. Since March 2020, many human activities have gone “online”. This phenomena has raised important questions in the field of Theatre studies about what liveness means now in the theatre given the proliferation of online performances. The question of liveness in the digital realm echoes the question, presented as a “nightmare” by N. Katherine Hayles, of whether or not we could one day upload our consciousness to the internet

For Hayles, information is necessarily bodied. So too, are the representations of the disembodied avatars on stage in Haley’s play. Here, I make a posthumanist case, along with Hayles, for the necessity of the body. In the play, users of the Nether leave their physical bodyand exist as, what is advertised as, “untethered consciousness”(23). However, consciousness must be represented by bodies both in the fictional world and on stage. This paper offers an intervention to the question of liveness when it is only possible through the digital. By turning to the way that playwrights thought about this question before Covid, I will propose The Nether as evidence of a performance history that questions the body’s essentialness to identity while insisting upon its necessity.

“Righting a Wrong: The Experience of a Killjoy in Participatory Theatre.” Mary Tooley (Queen’s University)

To join in a participatory theatre experience, the audience needs to accept the invitation tocross the fourth-wall and become a player (White). But what happens when aspects of ourparticipation are unethical, or add odds with our political or social values? Drawing on thework of Sara Ahmed, this essay will explore the characteristics, function, and impact of herconcept of the killjoy on participatory theatre. Accustomed to decades of proscenium theatreexperiences, being a good audience has become synonymous with receiving performances insilence, at a static distance, and with applause (Heddon, Iball, and Zerihan). We are trained tosuppress our questions and concerns to refrain from challenging the methods or intentions ofthe artists in front of us. The killjoy, a refuser of the invitation in participatory theatre, who isfrequently viewed as merely a buzz kill, combats an audience’s tendency to becomecomplacent in unethical moments. A killjoy says the unsayable, brings politics into anapolitical space, and places us in positions of discomfort that necessitate action. It takescourage to become a killjoy, for they risk disrupting the play’s momentum, humiliatingartists, and ruining an often expensive theatrical experience for others. This presentation will unpack instances in participatory theatre where the content, structuring, performance style, or behaviour of other participants has inspired the manifestation of a killjoy. Specifically this paper will consider the example of New Societies (re:current theatre), which invites participants to imagine a utopia in a colonial game-play context. I will connect the killjoy to writing by Indigenous scholars on decolonizing acts of refusal and resistance (Simpson, Robinson, and Garneau).

14:15-14:30 ET

Break / Pause

14:30-16:00 ET

13:30-15:00 CT

Relational Acts of Research and Theatre Practice (Praxis Workshop)

Led by Kathleen Gallagher and Andrew Kushnir

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Praxis Workshop Leaders Kathleen Gallagher (University of Toronto) and Andrew Kushnir (Project: Humanity)

“Art making takes place in a series of relational acts, some more explicit and intentional than others.” (James Thompson, 2015, p. 436). In this praxis workshop, participants will explore the pedagogical possibility of a new publication that is the result of a researcher-artist and artist-researcher collaboration. Hope in a Collapsing World: Youth, Theatre, and Listening as a Political Instrument (UofT Press 2022) is the hybrid output of a long-standing research and theatre collaboration between scholar Kathleen Gallagher and playwright Andrew Kushnir. Our impulse to publish an ethnographic research text alongside its theatrical rendition, the script of Towards Youth: a play on radical hope, was to deepen with context and subtext the relations of the ethnographic research and theatre practices. In our workshop, participants will move between the two parts of the book –first by exploring a scene from one of the five international research sites featured in the play, exploring the borders of difference from where we sit. Having taken “a walk in another’s words” (Deavere Smith, 2003, p. 7), participants will then engage with Dr. Gallagher’s analysis of this site followed by a sociometric exercise that surfaces their own impressions, questions and insights. A subsequent move back into the world of the play will carry forward new perspectives and frameworks through which to understand the intricate relationships, tensions and revelations that undergird the Radical Hope project: that young people have so much to teach us about the world they want, if only we listen more careful.

Canadian Soundings (Working Group)

Led by Sasha Kovacs and Michael Elliott. Participants: Virginie Magnat, Moira Day, Katrina Dunn, Meredith Scott, Shannon Holmes, and Shannon Vickers

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Working Group Co-Leaders: Michael Elliott (University of Victoria) andSasha Kovacs (University of Victoria)

Working Group Participants: Virginie Magnat(University of British Columbia), Moira Day (University of Saskatchewan), Katrina Dunn (University of Manitoba), Meredith Scott (Sheridan College), Shannon Holmes (University of Regina), Shannon Vickers (University of Winnipeg)

In nautical terms, a sounding is used to determine the depth of water under a ship. This Working Group takes inspiration from this marine procedure to locate the deep histories of the voice in Canadian performance, and to explore how vocal practices and innovations impact and intersect with the buoyancy of certain habits, historiographies, and traditions in the Canadian theatre. Building on the success of the curated panel discussion at the CATR conference in 2019 and responding to the current research that situates the voice as a subject of critical inquiry in theatre studies (Magnat, 2019; Thomaidis, 2017; Smith 2017; Pascoe 2011), the Working Groupexamines the history of voice and voice training in the Canadian theatre, with a view to chart the course that brought us to our current position and propose possible streams forward. Current Working Group members includescholars, artists, and educators that are exploringvoice as a central conduit for the charting of Canadian theatre’s past, present, and future.

First Story Walk (Praxis Workshop)

Led by SLed by Jill Carter and Jon Johnson

Praxis Workshop Leaders: Jill Carter (University of Toronto) and Jon Johnson (University of Toronto)

Jill Carter and Jon Johnson lead a 360-degree virtual tour exploring the Highland Creek Valley at the University of Toronto Scarborough campus. The narrators will guide participants and reflect on our campus connections to its original caretakers throughout the tour.

16:00-16:15 ET

Break / Pause

16:15-17:45 ET

15:15-16:45 CT

Ethnographies: Cosplay & Striptease. (Paper Panel)

Moderator Michelle MacArthur. Papers by Xavia Publius, and Jessica Thorp & Julia Matias

Paper Panel Moderator Michelle MacArthur (University of Windsor)

“'The Role You Were Born to Play': Fannish Poetics of Acting and Casting in Cosplay." Xavia Publius (University of Alberta)

The perennial impulse to adapt previous work to new media and new sociohistorical contexts is robustly theorized in both performance studies and fan studies. Research on cosplay and character blogs has examined notions of identity, appropriation, and performance in regards to why we dress up or roleplay as characters, while scholarship and activism around casting has tackled issues of appropriation and harmful historical practices such as blackface and ciswashing. Bringing all of these discourses into conversation with each other, I argue that because film and television aren’t easily restaged in the same way as theatre or performance art, cosplay becomes one culturally accepted yet contested avenue for recorporating these characters. Extending the notion ofthe ‘dream role’ in acting, I autoethnographically enact various cosplay scenarios to uncover a praxis of navigating the ethical difficulties of fan-character interactions. How do we balance personal affective resonances with a character and the sociopolitical ramifications of performing that character both privately and publicly? What similarities and differences must be negotiated and what opportunities for subversion and critique might emerge in the embodied interface of character and fan? Does cosplay require verisimilitude in its poetics of acting and casting, or are there other approaches to embodying characters as fans

“Re-Evaluating Striptease Scholarship: Ethnography and Ethics of Dual Positionality as Practitioner/Researchers of Neo-Burlesque Performance.” Jessica Thorp (University of Toronto) and Julia Matias (University of Toronto)

This paper aims to discuss some of the challenges of conducting ethnographic research on neo-burlesque striptease for artist-academics. As a “low-brow” popular form which is practiced predominantly by women and queer folks, neo-burlesque has received little institutional support and respect. As practitioner/researchers, we understand that part of our duty and the value of our work is to meaningfully share the cultural contributions of our form in ways that benefit and serve its community members. This paper is a reflection on the challenges of doing that work: How can we ensure that we are leveraging our institutional access to the best of our ability in order to support and amplify our the intellectual and creative work of burlesque artists --without being exploitative of the trust we have earned as their peers? How can we meaningfully recognize the communal knowledge fostered internally for those who participate inneo-burlesque as a community or scene meaningfully without co-opting this data as our own “original research”--or as T.L. Cowan and Jasmine Rault write: “How do the industrial technologies of academic scholarship synthesize relational knowledges into individualized genius?’ (3) How can the performances and productions we create as artists reflect a meaningful engagement with the ethics that our research has helped develop? What can we hope to generate through occupying these two identities at once?

CONTINUED: Canadian Soundings (Working Group)

Led by Sasha Kovacs and Michael Elliott. Participants: Virginie Magnat, Moira Day, Katrina Dunn, Meredith Scott, Shannon Holmes, and Shannon Vickers.

CONTINUED: First Story Walk (Praxis Workshop)

Led by Jill Carter, Jon Johnson, Charlotte Big Canoe

17:45-18:00 ET

Break / Pause

18:00-19:30 ET

17:00-18:30 CT

CATR Anti-Racism and Anti-Oppression Report Session (Praxis Workshop)

Avec traduction anglais > français | With French to English translation

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Session Leader Deneh’Cho Thompson (University of Saskachewan)

Please join members of CATR’s Board of Directors for an Association-wide discussion of our Anti-Oppression and Anti-Racism Ad Hoc Committee Final Report. The culmination of a year-long process begun in the fall of 2020, the report grew out of committee research anddiscussions andwas completed with the input of Bakau Consulting. The report offers 25 recommendations for new initiatives and changes to CATR’s existing processes. As we move towards ratification and implementation, CATR’s Board is looking for input from the membership to guide the next stages of the work. The full report will be circulated to the membership in advance of this event. The session itself will feature an overview of the report’s contents, as well as opportunities for members to helpcraft the way forward for this important initiative.

Read the report here

Responsable de session : Deneh’Cho Thompson (Université de Saskatchewan)

Veuillez vous joindre aux membres du conseil d’administration de L’ACRT pour une discussion à l’échelle de l’association sur le rapport final de notre comité spécial sur la lutte contre l’oppression et le racisme. Point culminant d’un processus d’un an entamé à l’automne 2020, le rapport est né de recherches et de discussions en comité et a été complété avec la contribution de Bakau Consulting. Le rapport propose 25 recommandations pour de nouvelles initiatives et des changements aux processus existants de l’ACRT. Alors que nous nous dirigeons vers la ratification et la mise en œuvre, le conseil d’administration de l’ACRT sollicite les commentaires des membres pour guider les prochaines étapes des travaux. Le rapport complet sera distribué aux membres avant cet événement. La séance comprendra un aperçu du contenu du rapport, ainsi que des occasions pour que les membres aident à tracer la voie à suivre pour cette initiative importante.

Lisez le rapport ici

19:30-19:45

Break / Pause

19:45 ET

18:45 CT

University of Toronto Press Launch (TRIC, CTR)

Tuesday, June 7th

10:30-11:00 AST

09:30-10:00 CT

Get together in Kumospace

19:45 ET

18:45 CT

Re-Collecting Roundtable: Audiences, Spectatorship, and Participation After the Pandemic (Roundtable)

Led by Kelsey Blair.;Participants: Kelsey Blair, Kelsey Jacobson, Signy Lynch

Roundtable Co-Organizers: Kelsey Blair (Concordia University), Kelsey Jacobson (Queen’s University), and Scott Mealey (University of Toronto)

The past two years have necessitated a re-negotiation of what it means “attend” the theatre and meant navigating new ways of being together, new means of engaging and interacting with artists and companies, and new challenges and opportunities when it comes to accessibility, equity, and diversity. Audiences might have spectated in a crowd of thousands (as in Choir! Choir! Choir!’s participatory choirs on Facebook) or had an intimate one-to-one (as in Outside the March’s Ministry of Mundane Mysteries phone-based drama); they might have enthusiastically engaged in a lively comment section (as in Rebecca Northan’s Blind Date series on YouTube), or quietly pondered the contributions of others (as in Rumble Productions’ meditative Good Things To Do). The conditions of audience spectatorship since 2020 have challenged ideas that physical proximity and temporal simultaneity are necessary parts of the theatrical experience. And yet, a desire to be ‘in-person’ and celebration of return to physical theatres has also persisted

What long-held ideas about audiences are most relevant to this contemporary moment? What new ideas have emerged? This roundtable invites scholars whose work considers audiences to reflect on what has changed and what has stayed the same in relation to theatre spectatorship as well as the contingent ideas of presence, liveness, participation, and responsibility.

RePlaying the More-Than-Human and the Environment (Paper Panel)

Moderator Kimberley Richards. Papers by Natalie Doonan and Emma Morgan-Thorp.

Live captioning provided

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Paper Panel Moderator Kimberly Richards

“What is Environmental Re-mediation? Developing sensory attunement through Virtual Reality.” Natalie Doonan (Université de Montréal)

Coney Island MTL is a journey along the St. Lawrence waterfront in Montreal that takes the forms of both an immersive online tour and a series of live, participatory events. It promotes public awareness of biodiversity through a combination of embodied activities and immersive digital technologies. The online component is a website featuring a series of 360-degree videos. The videos depict the present-day waterfront landscape, populated by the insects, plants, fish and birds that live there. Each video is geo-tagged and accessible from an interactive map. The bilingual (French and English) narration in the videos brings together the voices of citizen-activists, foragers, fish and plant biologists, fishers, hunters, architects and historians. The project also includes a series ofparticipatory events along the waterfront, during which these immersive videos are screened on Virtual Reality (VR) headsets. This site-specific and web-based project asks: (How) can immersive and interactive art forms produce sensory, embodied knowledgeand increase imaginative capacities?

In this paper presentation, I will discuss work that I have been doing with a fifth-grade class to develop environmental attunement through screenings of Coney Island MTL on VR headsets in situ. Through intermedial experiences in the headsets and in the waterfront park, I will show how these hybrid physical-virtual techniques can be used to train attention to the environment

“Focal Shift: Foregrounding More-Than-Human Actors in Ecologically-Driven Performance.” Emma Morgan-Thorp (York University)

This presentation considers some ways in which more-than-human actors can be meaningfullyunderstood as creators of ecologically-driven performance. With particular attention to AugustoCorrieri’s discussion of major dramaturgy in the sense of ecological performance inSection twoconsiders instances in which minerals like stone and uranium can be understood as actors. Here Iturn to Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s work on lithic agency along with Marie Clements’ play Burning Vision, which traces the trail of uranium from mines to dropped bombs, noting its effects uponfour different communities across the world. Finally, I consider the tick as an actor.“The Rock, the Butterfly, the Moon, and the Cloud,” I explore three modes of performance oriented around the more-than-human. In the first section, I consider the land as actor and posit that site-specific performance, in which site and performance are mutually affecting elements, can centre particular places as agents. In their respective writings on site-specific theatre, performance theorists Joanne Tompkins, Keren Zaiontz, and Sophie Nieldelucidate many ways in which site and performance co-constitute and alter one another.In a recent plenary, innovative auditory landscape artist Rob St. John shared an anecdote aboutbeing bitten by a tick and contracting Lyme Disease while making field recordings. BringingJakob von Uexküll’s theory of umwelt into conversation with St. John’s ecologically-drivenperformance practice permits me to demonstrate how anti-anthropocentric innovations both inperformance theory and practice and in environmental studies have brought us to this more-than-human dramaturgical turn. The emergence into more ecologically-driven performance and awayfrom the anthropocentrism marks this historical moment as one in which we humans arecollectively seeking narratives and worldviews to help us save ourselves from the ecological crisis we have created.

12:30-12:45 ET

Break / Pause

12:45-14:15 ET

11:45-13:15 CT

Welcome to Grounds for Goodness! A Participatory Glimpse of a Multi-Year Community Arts Project Navigating COVID Times (Praxis Workshop)

Led by Ruth Howard (Jumblies Theatre)

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Praxis Workshop Leader Ruth Howard (Jumblies Theatre)

This interactive workshop, led by Ruth Howard, Artistic Director of Jumblies, with other Jumblies associate artists, will share a multi-faceted community-engaged project. Grounds for Goodness, exploring and expressing the notion of ‘social goodness’ (how and why people or groups of people act in good ways towards other through times of crisis large or small), spans 4 years, many places and people, varied and combined art forms, live, online and hybrid formats, and hundreds of stories. Following a short presentation, all workshop participants will take part in a rapid creation process sharing some of our approaches to online facilitation and collaborative creation, allowing time for questions and response.

Academic Jobs Workshop (Praxis Workshop)

Led by Laura Levin, Signy Lynch, and Sarah Robbins

Praxis Workshop Leaders Laura Levin (York University), Sarah Robbins (University of Toronto), Signy Lynch (University of Toronto Mississauga)

This event is designed for graduate student members of the association and involves practical advice for applying for tenure-track positions at post-secondary institutions. The workshop will be facilitated by Laura Levin (Associate Dean, Research, York University), followed by a Q&A led by Sarah Robbins (PhD Candidate ABD, University of Toronto) and Signy Lynch (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Toronto Mississauga). It will focus on preparing materials for academic applications, including curating your dossier, writing effective teaching/research statements, and what to expect in the application and interview process.

14:15-14:30 ET

Break / Pause

14:30-16:00 ET

13:30-15:00 CT

Parallel Paths (Praxis Workshop)

Led by Alana Gerecke and Justine A Chambers

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Praxis Workshop Organizer Alana Gerecke (Simon Fraser University) with Justine A. Chambers (Simon Fraser University)

In a collaborative exploration of what it is to “ReCollect” in this end-pandemic moment, AlanaGereckeand Justine A. Chambers combine academic and artistic research with social practice todevelop a participatory movement score that explores the possibility of moving together—at adistance. This score draws on our independent and joint investigations of everyday urbanchoreographies. Together we develop one of the twenty-two choreographic propositions from ourcoauthored score “Moving Together, 22 Ways” (CTR 176) to offer a simple invitation, one thatimagines how bodies located in different cities might navigate going on a walk together. Thisworkshop is open to anyone who is able to mobilize through a city space; no particular training isnecessary, though a cell phone will be a key tool. Beyond exploring the possibilities of a sharedphysicality at a distance, this workshop is designed to deepen a kinesthetic sense of familiar cityspaces while “engag[ing] with the unspoken movement expectations that structure these placesby offering subtle shifts to the formal arrangements of assembly each site invites”(Chambersand Gerecke 37).

Workshop Structure: The first twenty minutes of the worshop will be dedicated to logistics. When participants “arrive” to the workshop, they will receive a digital package. In the package they will find a route map (a pre-determined route developed to trace pedestrian density zones in Vancouver), which they will then overlay upon a map of their own neighbourhood or city. Participants will also find a series of instructions for negotiating the route and a set of prompts to guide interaction. Participants will exchange phone numbers, and then log off Zoom and head outside. While having a phone conversation with a designated partner, pairs of participants will go on a simultaneous "walk of Vancouver” that is overlayed on their respective location. As they walk they will talk about where they are, what they see, hear and smell, and they will be asked to navigate the obstacles presented by their local surroundings by collectively re-routing the imposed route as a shared task. After taking a walk (~30 min), participants will return to the Zoom room for a final 30-minutes to discuss their experiences as a group.

Chambers, Justine,and Alana Gerecke. “Moving Together, 22 Ways.” Canadian Theatre Review 176 (Fall 2018): 37-4.

ReCollecting Practices, ReAligning Industries (Paper Panel)

Moderator Shana MacDonald. Papers by Ilana Khanin, Neil Silcox, and Gordon Portman

Live captioning provided.

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Paper Panel Moderator Shana MacDonald

“Branding the Brand-New: Art and Commerce in the CryptoSpace.” Ilana Khanin (University of Toronto)

Blockchain technology, cryptocurrency platforms and nonfungible tokens (NFTs) are steadily reshaping the landscape of financial transactions. Cryptoart, a subset of the NFT market, has transformed how artworks travel from creator to buyer to re-seller. digital art, historically relegated to the sidelines as a lesser form, has taken up a central position in the cryptoart sphere. When Beeple’s “Everydays: The First 5000 Days”—a JPG file—went for $69 million at a Christie’s auction in March 2021, it marked a new era in public perception and private ownership of online-only art

Corporations jumped on the bandwagon too: Nike, Visa, McDonalds, and Taco Bell have all produced NFT offerings in the past year. While it is by no means surprising that the corporate world would want to cash-in on the hype, these brand-based tokens circulating alongside work by digital (visual and performance) artists is compelling and complicated. As centralized organizations with physical presences, they throw into question the decentralized vision for cryptoart as a medium that has easy entry and high earning potential.

Cryptoart could transform the economic systems that underpin art and performance work, or it could become another financial experiment that leaves artists behind. At this precipice, understanding and harnessing the potential of this alternative economic model for artistic production and distribution becomes urgent. My paper takes cryptoart seriously as an artistic practice and investigates how aesthetic and commercial interests are entangled in the crypto-digital space

“Sh!t-Disturbers: Contract Instructors as Disruptors & Change-makers.” Neil Silcox (Contract Instructor, Artist)

Canadian theatre training continues to reckon with its history of racism, colonialism, and misogyny (among several other problems). While tenured faculty and program staff work to change the structures and cultures of theatre departments and programs, the fact remains that much –if not most –teaching is done by teachers working as sessional, guest artists, short-term fellowships, and TAs. While these instructors lack institutional power and protections, they are nonetheless drivers of the move toward more socially just theatre education. My work here aims to bring together these untenured, precarious instructors to share actionable, concrete strategies for improving social justice in the theatre classroom. Not structural changes we hope the people in power will make, but real changes we can bring to a classroom if we’re only there for a year, a term, or even a single day.

Drawing from notes gleaned from the “Sh!t-Disturbers” Seminar (Phase 1) in Act I of the Conference,including exit surveys of the participants, and scholarship around socially-just teaching (in theatre and beyond), this paper will share the strategies that were gathered, point to questions the seminar group was unable to answer, and identify gaps where new strategies will need to be found or created. Thus, the paper will endeavour to answer two questions: 1. How can precarious faculty ensure that they are agents of social justice in the classrooms and programs they teach in? 2. What can programs and institutions do to empower their precarious teachers to teach in more socially just ways?

“Unmasking Unmasked: A Case Study of How the Principles and Procedures of Action Research Can Be Applied to the Process of Decolonizing Theatre Practice.” Gordon Portman (University of Ottawa)

This presentation is the documentation of a practical investigation into ways in which carefully defined and chosen decolonizing practices applied to the process of new-work creation in theatre might be ex-tended and/or adapted to a range of developmental / rehearsal / performance processes. I draw upon my recent practical experience as developmental dramaturge / director of a devised new work –Unmasked, by emerging Saskatoon playwright Megan Zong –to show how the application of theories around discursive leadership, stratigraphic dramaturgy, and inter-disciplinary collaboration can create a functional, productive experience of EDI-defined principles in a theatre workspace. The project –which included active engagement of the performers with text, movement, live music, and design –required the adaptation of decolonization theories, methods, and potential outcomes from other media/ art forms, a process I document in this presentation alongside a contemplation of how these experiments with adaptation might be further reshaped into to ways of working in other theatre spaces and/or genres. Unmasked was a relatively small piece created and presented as an independent collective; in this presentation, I offer consideration of the ways in which what we discovered about enacting practices like checking in/out, consultation, and prioritizing inclusivity over hierarchy might be expanded into, and/or applied to, other sorts of theatre work in other sorts of contexts. The key takeaway: that informed consent is an essential, and readily adaptable, component of EDI-defined work that can arguably applied to,or within, any theatre creation environment.

16:00-16:15 ET

Break / Pause

16:15-17:45 ET

15:15-16:45 CT

Performing Health and Care (Paper Panel)

Moderator Kelsey Jacobson. Papers by Maria Meindl, Julia Gray, and Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston

Paper Panel Moderator Kelsey Jacobson

“‘Die Gymnastik des Berufsmenschen,’ a Recollection.” Maria Meindl (University of Toronto)

Berlin-based movement teacher Elsa Gindler (1885-1961) has been recognized for her influence on psychology (Geuter et al.) the performing arts (Loukes) and many disciplines which seek tounite body and mind (Johnson). Her only published article, “Die Gymnastik des Berufsmenschen,” appeared for thefirst time in 1926. Later, it was translated into English, and reprinted in Don Hanlon Johnson’s 1995 Bone, Breath, and Gesture, a staple text of dance programs and trainings for practitioners who seek tounite body and mind.

A present-day reader might be tempted to take an ahistorical view of the article, which speaks in uncanny fashion to today’s concerns. Gindler observes that “we do not quite keep up with our lives” (5), that “we gladly give ourselves a work-out, but we do not wish to wear ourselves out” (14). She discusses her interest in inner experience rather than outer form (6-7). With a focus on contextualizing Gindler, my research shows that she was very much a product of her time. This article was part of a lecture demonstration at GeSoLei, a health fair in Dusseldorf, which hosted some eight million visitors

My presentation will draw on German-language sources, film clips and contemporary accounts of the fair. Not only does the article provide a window into the heart of what Paul Weindling dubbed the “golden age of health propaganda” in Germany” (409); it demonstrates the importance of context on understanding historical documents, and the narratives that may come to fill the gaps when context is absent.

“Performance, health and health care: aesthetic and relational re-existing.” Julia Gray(University of Toronto Scarborough)

This proposed paper will explore onto-epistemological challenges and possibilities associated with engaging performance practices in the field of health. In an attemptto move beyond binaries often associated with the intersections of these fields, such as the ways embodied, gestural, spatial and imaginative performance practices push against traditions of the scientific research apparatus including positivist framings of health and health care, I will consider the ways performance practices might contribute to a re-existence of health care towards the relational and aesthetic through the exploration of two examples. Specifically, through this paper I will explore 1) ethical tensions through my role as playwright of a devised play called Cracked, which aims to disrupt dominant, tragic cultural discourses that stigmatize people living with dementia, and 2) teaching performance theory and practice to health studies studentson-line. The urgency of these examples will be considered in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, where the need for cultural thriving and belonging has been exposed and emerges as central to addressing systemic barriers to health, and the wellbeing of individuals.

“The Care of Quiet Things: Performing Fourth-floor Ethnography in Contemporary Poland.” Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston (York University)

This paper discusses my forthcoming book manuscript, quiet theatre, based on fieldwork conducted with Randia,an elderly, disabled, shut-in Romani woman in Poland living on the fourth floor of a walk-up. Focusing on the performance ethnography project on which she collaborated with me over a period of ten years, the paper inquiries into the effects of the absenting of care in contemporary Poland. It explores the ways that such effects are intertwined with global neoliberal regimes of care, post-EU accession migrations, local politics and economy, and state-sanctioned racism. Specifically, I focus on the absenting of the care of quiet things: the care of passing a glass of milk, moistening lips with a tissue, pulling up socks just right, and banishing an intrusive fly. This is the care of simply being present, listening and witnessing. This care can be most challenging to perform because it requires high levels of emotional engagement and vulnerability. How is such care moralized and embodied, and what happens when it disappears from everyday life? Quiet forms of care can nurture a person’s dignity, so what are the consequences when such care is lacking? This paper asks how performance ethnography might give expression to such absences of care? What can we learn from these ephemeral absent spaces? Can performance ethnography mobilize absence as an important future-focused practice through which care might be performed and reimagined in the post-pandemic world?

Réexister: Narrative et Territoire. (Paper Panel)

Moderator Sebastian Samur. Papers by Patricia Blanchet and Marie-Hélène Massy Emond

With French to English translation | Live captioning provided.

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Modérateur de séance / Paper Panel Moderator: Sebastian Samur (University of Toronto)

«Prise de parole théâtrale pour la souveraineté narrative d’étudiantes autochtones du collegial » /“Theatrical speech for the narrative sovereignty of Indigenous college students.”Patricia-Anne Blanchet (Université de Sherbrooke)

De plus en plus d’initiatives convergent vers une volonté de reconnaitre les réalités et de valoriser l’apport culturel des peuples autochtones, « notamment dans les domaines artistiques et de plus en plus dans celui de l’éducation » (Maheux et al., 2020, p. 6). Cette renaissance culturelle autochtone s’inscrit dans un processus de décolonisation qui s’actualise dans tous les domaines de la création, dont le théâtre (Côté, 2017). Les femmes autochtones sont particulièrement présentes dans l’espace public à travers l’art. Voie de résistance et de résilience, la création autochtone au féminin propulse l’expression de leur identité culturelle (Léger et Morales Hudon, 2017). Cette communication présente la mise en œuvre d’une démarche de création collective basée sur la théâtralisation de récits de vie d’étudiantes autochtones de l’ordre collégial. Par lerecours à une méthodologie de la relation (Smith 2012; Wilson, 2008), cette recherche-action-création rencontre les lignes directrices de la recherche par, pour et avec les femmes autochtones (Femmes Autochtones du Québec 2012). Alors que peu d’études convoquent l’éducation artistique, en particulier les arts vivants en contexte autochtone, le théâtre social, en tant qu’outil éducatif artistique, vient offrir un espace pour créer et transformer la réalité en partant d’expériences personnelles et de réflexions collectives, dans une visée mieux-être et de souveraineté narrative (Wright, 2017)
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More and more initiatives are converging towards a desire to recognize the realities and value the cultural contribution of indigenous peoples, "particularly in the artistic fields and increasingly in that of education" (Maheux et al., 2020, p. 6). This indigenous cultural renaissance is part of a process of decolonization that is happening in all areas of creation, including the theater (Côté, 2017). Indigenous women are particularly present in public space through art. A way of resistance and resilience, Aboriginal women’s creation propels the expression of their cultural identity (Léger and Morales Hudon, 2017). This communication presents the implementation of a collective creation process based on the dramatization of the life stories of Indigenous college students. Through the use of a relationship methodology (Smith 2012; Wilson, 2008), this research-action-creation meets the guidelines of research by, for and with Indigenous women (Native Women of Quebec 2012). While few studies call for arts education, in particular the performing arts in an indigenous context, social theater, as an artistic educational tool, offers a space to create and transform reality starting from personal experiences and collective reflections, with a view to well-being and narrative sovereignty (Wright, 2017)

« «Vivre en dessous » récit de rencontres entre un territoire, deux femmes et leurs mondes. » ““Living below”: A Story of Encounters Between a Territory, Two Women and their Worlds.” Marie-Hélène Massy Emond (Université du Québec)

Compte-rendu sur une recherche en écriture théâtrale portant sur récit biographique et le dialogue de deux femmes, une Anicinapek8e et une Abitibienne,réalisé au printemps 2021.À plusieurs mains, avec images vidéos, verbatims et traces audios, le collectif de « Vivre endessous » a nourri le récit d’une rencontre entre deux femmes et leurs mondes. Valérie Côté etTina Mapachee ont fait l’acte de se raconter. Se raconter à partir de lieux : le corps, la maison, laforêt, la voiture, la rue. Se raconter à partir d’elle-même : leur parcours, leurs histoirespersonnelles, leur regard sur l’Histoire tel qu’elle les a façonnées et le monde tel qu’ellesl’éprouvent. De cette rencontre à deux est née une installation qui contient une forme théâtraleparticipative où les spectateurs sont invités à prendre parole dans un demi-cercle de partage.Faut-il aller au-delà de ces considérations historiques lorsqu’on se raconte par la rencontre ?Faut-il au contraire, entrée par cette porte, celle de l’Histoire pour sentir une prise au sol et àl’air? À partir d’où parlons-nous

JCe corps, à partir d’où parle-t-il ? De ses maux, de ses mots, de ses accouchements, de ses traitements, de ses deuils, de son âge, de sa mémoire, de sa honte, de sa culpabilité, de ses sens, de ses rêves, de ses marques, de ses points de repères ? Ce corps et ce lieu, quelles langues parlent-t-ils ? La langue de l’enfance, la langue de la mère, la langue du père, de la forêt, des ancêtres, la langue des fonctions, la langue judiciaire, la langue de la rue, la langue de l’amour, l’anglais, le français, le joual, l’Anicinpemo8in ? Sur un territoire au présent extractiviste, commentse nouer aux lieux et aux autres à partir de ses expériences, de sa culture, de sa visibilité et de son invisibilité ?
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A research report on theatrical writing about biographical stories and a dialogue between two women, an Anicinapek8e and an Abitibienne, produced in the spring of 2021.With several hands, with video images, verbatim dialogueand audio traces, the collective "Vivre en Dessous" has nourished the story of an encounter between two women and their worlds. Valérie Côté and Tina Mapachee performthe act of telling their stories. They tell their stories from places: the body, the home, the forest, the car, the street. They tell stories from their lives: their journeys, their personal histories, their view of History as it has shaped them and the world as they experience it. From this meeting oftwo was born an installation that usesa participatory theatrical formatwhere spectators are invited to speak in a sharing semi-circle.Should we go beyond these historical considerations when we tell our story through encounter? Should we, on the contrary, enter through this door, that of History, to feel groundedin the earth and caught in the air? Where do we speakfrom?

This body, from where does it speak? Of itsailments, of itswords, of itsbirths, of its treatments, of itsmourning, of itsage, of itsmemory, of itsshame, of itsguilt, of itssenses, of itsdreams, of itsmarks, of itslandmarks?This body and this place, what languages do they speak? The language of childhood, the language of the mother, the language of the father, of the forest, of the ancestors, the language of functions, the language of justice, the language of the street, the language of love, English, French, Joual, Anicinpemo8in? On an extractivistterritory, how do you connect with places and others based on your experiences, your culture, your visibility and your invisibility?

17:45-18:00 ET

Break / Pause

18:00-19:30 ET

17:00-18:30 CT

Performing Complaint: Working on theatre and performance institutions (Seminar)

Led by Signy Lynch, Sarah Robbins, and Jenn Boulay. Participants: Rebecca Comer, Shannon Hughes, Julia Matias, Alejandra Nunez, Gabriela Petrov, Angela Sun, Jessica Thorpe, and Jessica Watkin

Note: this session is open to pre-accepted participants only / Remarque: cette session est ouverte aux participants préacceptés seulement.

More info

Seminar Organizers: Signy Lynch ( University of Toronto Mississauga), Jenn Boulay (University of Toronto), Sarah Robbins (University of Toronto)

Drawing inspiration from Sara Ahmed’s latest book Complaint!, this seminar invites participants from a wide range of backgrounds to share responses—including papers in progress, artistic works, and personal narratives—that engage with the theme of complaint as it relates to effecting change in Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies (DTPS) departments and institutions. We invite respondents to lend Ahmed’s “feminist ear” to reflect on processes of complaint and the institutional mechanics that they illuminate, and to consider how we might learn from them to work towards more just and equitable spaces for theatremakers, arts workers, students, and faculty. The session has multiple goals. Firstly, we aim to build solidarity among and provide support to individuals working to effect change in institutions (including through decolonial, anti-racist, and equity-based practices). Secondly, we aim to use the language and framing of Ahmed’s book to cultivate a forum for critical reflection and knowledge-sharing towards both scholarly and practical ends. We intend for this seminar to join Ahmed’s project of working on the university (and other theatrical institutions).

Digital Performance (Working Group)

Led by Kimberley McLeod and Shana MacDonald. Participants: Peter Kuling, Sebastian Samur, Catherine Quirk, Taylor Graham, David Bobier, Michelle MacArthur, Naomi Bennett, Tara Harris, Michael Wheeler, and Laura Levin

More info

Working Group Co-Leaders Kim McLeod (University of Guelph) and Shana MacDonald (University ofWaterloo)

Working Group Participants: Peter Kuling (University of Guelph), Sebastian Samur(University of Toronto), Catherine Quirk(Edge Hill University),Taylor Graham (University of Guelph), David Bobier(VibraFusionLab), Michelle MacArthur (University of Windsor), Naomi Bennett(Louisiana State University),Tara Harris (York University), Michael Wheeler (Queen's University), Laura Levin (York University)

This working group aims to consider, within the current moment, the relationship between theatre, performance and the digital. We look at the possibilities that emerge when performance engages with digital tools and spaces, but also thechallenges and limitations that occur, particularly in light of biases built into programming, increases in dataveillance, the corporate platformatization of digital public spaces, and the abundance of misinformation that spreads through digital means. The work of the group includes outlining a network of artists and researchers with a shared vocabulary, map out issues related to the digital tools and spaces artists and activists are engaging with, and in later stages focus on the relationship between digital performance and collective assembly, particularly as a mode of activism and resistance.

Moving Together to Reclaim and Resist (Working Group)

Led by Jenn Cole and Melissa Poll. Participants: Julie Burelle, Jill Carter, Selena Couture, Adron Farris, Kelsey Blair, Leah Decter, Virginie Magnat, Kimberly Richards, Ken Wilson, Alana Gerecke, Elan Marchinko, Jimena Ortuzar, Nazli Akhtar, Emma Morgan-Thorp, and Cara Mumford

Note: Only the first half of the session will be open to non-participants.

More info

Working Group Co-Leaders Melissa Poll (Simon Fraser University), Jenn Cole (Trent University)

This session is supported by The Gatherings Project

Working Group Participants: Julie Burelle (UC San Diego), Jill Carter (University of Toronto), Selena Couture (University of Alberta), Adron Farris (Ball State), Kelsey Blair (Concordia University), Leah Decter (Nova Scotia College of Art and Design), Virginie Magnat (University of British Columbia), Kimberly Richards (University of British Columbia), Ken Wilson (University of Regina), Alana Gerecke (Simon Fraser University), Elan Marchinko (York University), Jimena Ortuzar (Toronto Metropolitan University), Nazli Akhtar (University of Toronto), Emma Morgan-Thorp (York University), Cara Mumford (Filmmaker)

Moving Together to Reclaim and Resist marries the vital need for a CATR working group dedicated to Indigenous performance on Turtle Island with the conference’s recent tradition of offering a “walking” (or moving) group that enables participants to physically acknowledge the unceded and ancestral lands occupied by the conference proceedings. This year’s Zoom gathering will feature a talk from Sandra Lamouche, a Nehiyaw Iskwew artist from the Bigstone Cree Nation in Northern Alberta. Sandra is a multidisciplinary creator and storyteller, a champion hoop dancer, and an award-winning Indigenous educational leader. For her M.A. thesis, “Nitona Miyo Pimadisiwin (Seeking a Good Life) Through Indigenous Dance,” she examined Indigenous dance as a social determinant of health and well-being. Sandra’s contribution is graciously supported by The Gatherings Project.

Beyond Sandra’s talk and a responsive Q&A, the first half of our session will include individual land acknowledgments, some brief words from the convenors, and a gentle movement practice. This portion of the gathering will be open to all conference-goers as participants or observers. We will break for fifteen minutes near the ninety-minute mark and then reconvene for a members-only discussion.

In advance of our gathering, participants and observers are encouraged to acquaint themselves with the group’s issue of SFU’s Performance Matters, Moving on/with the Land, and/or listen/read about Papaschase Cree scholar’s Dwayne Donald’s relational walking practice.

19:30-19:45 ET

Break / Pause

19:45 ET

18:45 CT

CONTINUED: Performing Complaint: Working on theatre and performance institutions (Seminar)

Led by Signy Lynch, Sarah Robbins, and Jenn Boulay. Participants: Rebecca Comer, Shannon Hughes, Julia Matias, Alejandra Nunez, Gabriela Petrov, Angela Sun, Jessica Thorp, and Jessica Watkin

Note: this session is open to pre-accepted participants only / Remarque: cette session est ouverte aux participants préacceptés seulement.

CONTINUED: Digital Performance (Working Group)

Led by Kimberley McLeod and Shana MacDonald. Participants: Peter Kuling, Sebastian Samur, Catherine Quirk, Taylor Graham, David Bobier, Michelle MacArthur, Naomi Bennett, Tara Harris, Michael Wheeler, and Laura Levin

CONTINUED: Moving Together to Reclaim and Resist (Working Group)

Led by Jenn Cole and Melissa Poll. Julie Burelle, Jill Carter, Selena Couture, Adron Farris, Kelsey Blair, Leah Decter, Virginie Magnat, Kimberly Richards, Ken Wilson, Alana Gerecke, Elan Marchinko, Jimena Ortuzar, Nazli Akhtar, Emma Morgan-Thorp, and Cara Mumford

University of Lethbridge

In-Person/Online June 12-14

Oki. The University of Lethbridge's Blackfoot name is Iniskim, meaning Sacred Buffalo Stone. The University of Lethbridge acknowledges and deeply appreciates the Siksikaitsitapii peoples’ connection to their traditional territory. We, as people living and benefiting from Blackfoot Confederacy traditional territory, honour the traditions of people who have cared for this land since time immemorial. We recognize the diverse population of Indigenous Peoples who attend the University of Lethbridge and the contributions these Indigenous Peoples have made in shaping and strengthening the University community in the past, present, and in the future.

Sunday, June 12th

8:45-10:45 MT

09:45-11:45 CT

Welcoming Remarks and Keynote - Tara Beagan

Keynote - Tara Beagan

Tara Beagan is proud to be Ntlaka’pamux and, through her late father’s side, of Irish ancestry. She is cofounder/director of ARTICLE 11 with Andy Moro, based in Mohkinstsis. Beagan served as Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts from February 2011 to December 2013. During her time, NEPA continued with traditional values for guidance, had an Elder in Residence, and named and moved into the Aki Studio. Beagan has been in residence at Cahoots Theatre (Toronto), NEPA (Toronto), the National Arts Centre (Ottawa) and Berton House (Dawson City, Yukon). During the pandemic she was Playwright "In Residence" at Prairie Theatre Exchange (Winnipeg). Seven of her 32 plays are published. Two plays have received Dora Award nominations (one win). In 2018, Beagan was a finalist in the Alberta Playwrights’ Network competition. In 2020, Honour Beat won the Gwen Pharis Ringwood Award for Drama. Recent premieres include Deer Woman in Aotearoa (New Zealand), Honour Beat opening the 2018/19 season at Theatre Calgary, The Ministry of Grace at Belfry Theatre in Victoria, and Super in Plays2Perform@Home with Boca Del Lupo (Vancouver). Beagan was the 2020 laureate of the Siminovitch Prize for theatre, playwriting.
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Tara Beagan est fière d’être Ntlaka'pamux, ainsi que d’origine irlandaise du côté de son père, aujourd’hui décédé. Elle est cofondatrice et directrice d’ARTICLE 11 avec Andy Moro, qui est basé à Mohkinstsis. Beagan a été directrice artistique de la compagnie Native Earth Performing Arts de février 2011 à décembre 2013. Pendant son mandat, NEPA a continué à s’inspirer des valeurs traditionnelles autochtones, a accueilli un aîné en résidence et s’est installé dans le studio Aki. Beagan a été en résidence au Cahoots Theatre (Toronto), à NEPA (Toronto), au Centre national des Arts (Ottawa) et à la Berton House (Dawson City, Yukon). Pendant la pandémie, elle était dramaturge « en résidence » au Prairie Theatre Exchange (Winnipeg). Sept de ses 32 pièces ont été publiées. Deux pièces ont reçu des nominations aux prix Dora (et a remporté le prix une fois). En 2018, Beagan a été finaliste du concours de l’Alberta Playwrights' Network. En 2020, Honour Beat a remporté le prix Gwen Pharis Ringwood, dans la catégorie théâtre. Parmi les premières récentes, on peut citer Deer Woman à Aotearoa (Nouvelle- Zélande), Honour Beat qui a inauguré la saison 2018/19 au Theatre Calgary, The Ministry of Grace au Belfry Theatre de Victoria, et Super dans Plays2Perform@Home avec Boca Del Lupo à Vancouver. Beagan a été la lauréate 2020 du prix Siminovitch pour l’écriture de pièces de théâtre.

10:45-11:00 MT

Break / Pause

11:00-12:30 MT

12:00-13:30 CT

(Plenary) Istotsi: The Land We Live On

By Making Treaty Seven (MT7): Film Screening with Q&A

A plenary film screening with Q&A from Making Treaty 7 (MT7)

Under the direction of celebrated artists Michelle Thrush and Sandi Somers, Making Treaty 7 Cultural Society brings together eight artists to immerse themselves in theatre creation techniques inspired by the land we call Calgary. Together, they wrote, listened, danced and created under the guidance of a cadre of veteran artists and Treaty 7 Knowledge Keepers to create this collage of short films.These artists speak from the heart to the land we live on.

12:30-12:45 MT

Break / Pause

12:45-14:15 MT

13:45-15:15 CT

LUNCH/LAUNCH Playwrights Canada Press

Host: Annie Gibson

Host: Annie Gibson (Publisher)

Lunch courtesy of Playwrights Canada Press featuring selected readings from PCP’s latest theatre publications,including Interdependent Magic: Disability Performance in Canada,and Voices of a Generation: Three Millennial Plays.

14:15-14:30 MT

Break / Pause

14:30-16:00 MT

15:30-17:00 CT

Youth, Activism & Performance: Issues That Matter (Seminar)

Led by Nicola Elson. Participants: Heather Fitzsimmons Frey, Caroline Howarth, Belarie Hyman Zatsman, and Abigail Shabtay

In-Person Location: W565

More info

Seminar Organizer Nicola Elson(University of Lethbridge)

Seminar Participants: Heather Fitzsimmons Frey (MacEwan University), Caroline Howarth (Concordia University of Edmonton), Belarie Hyman Zatsman (York University), Abigail Shabtay (York University)

In this seminar, five specialists in Theatre for Young Audiences gather from universities across the country to discuss methodologies in incorporating meaningful and sensitive subjects into live performance for children and youth. How do we address difficult topics from a child's point of view with the goal of using theatre to give children the courage to know that the world around them is changeable? When theatre artists view children as competent citizens with valid demands from the world of adults, what kind of theatre do we make in their honour and why? These conversations are reminiscent of young activists such as Greta Thunberg demanding action on climate change. ‘I don't want your hope. I don't want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic.’ It is a powerful image of youth demanding more of adults.

Subjects in our discussion will include narratives on children’s rights, the importance of consent, the urgency of climate change action, lgbtq2s+ rights, and social justice. As we embrace these issues that matter to young people, how do we also enhance equity, diversity, decolonization, and inclusion in these plays, in our creative teams, in our audiences and in our future artists? Finally, speakers will discuss aesthetic and creation processes used when creating this type of meaningful work for young people and audience reactions to produced work.

Compass (Praxis Workshop)

Led by lo bil

In-Person Location: W425-Spinks Theatre

More info

Praxis Workshop Leader lo bil(Interdisciplinary Artist)

NOTE: Training is not required for attendee involvement. This score emphasizes the ethos of “Work with the body that I have within whatever physical limitations are present.”

I derive visual forms from actions that emerge from an interoceptive process in response to the immediate environment. In my heightened state of awareness in performance, my actions are porous to perceptions of and responses to being with witnesses. I believe performance can potentially reframe our visceral sense of collectivity when we witness a live decision-making process in performance. Being open to responses in each other creates an intimacy in the room but also allows for a greater potential for audience to witness their own agenc

This workshop offers a speculative research score toward recognizing an inner guidance system and locating images through creative self sourcing and collective witness technique. We willplay with the themes of emergence, fracture, mirror of parts, urgency, re-existence, bio-politic.

Presence, Absence, Divergence (Paper Panel)

Moderator Andy Houston. Papers by Kelsey Jacobson & Jacob Pittini, Claire Borody, and Nancy Curry

Live captioning provided.

In-Person Location: W514

More info

Paper Panel Moderator Andy Houston (University of Waterloo)

“Recollections on Re-Collecting: Inviting Self-Theorizing in Audience Interviews about Theatrical Co-Presence.” Kelsey Jacobson (Queen’s University) and Jacob Pittini (Queen’s University)

How do audiences perceive, understand, and produce co-presence, a concept that is considered fundamental to theatre and live performance? In light of the Covid-19 pandemic’s disruption to live, ‘in-person’ theatre, what it means to gather and be an audience must berevisited. By inviting audience members to recollect their experiences amidst a return to in-person theatre at the Kick and Push Festival in Kingston, ON we explore how the pandemic has offered a re-evaluation of spectatorship. Using data collected through a tiered audience research method in which spectators were asked to themselves analyse the function of the audience, this paper evaluates the ways in which audience members communicate and understand their role in the theatrical event. Our research method invites audiences to revaluate and re-collect at this vital moment of heightened consciousness about what it means to be together.

To what extent, we ask, are audiences conscious of the affective, subjective, perceptualphenomenon that constitute their participation within the bounds of spatio-temporal conditionsand theatrical ontology? (Zhao 2003, Féral 2012, Unterman 2017). Using a method wherein audiences are empowered to self-theorize their own experiences, weunderstand the audience experience to be a personal sense-making process (Sedgman 2017). We explore how the self-perception of audiences impacts understanding of theatrical experiences and argue that audiences are driven by a desire to contribute communally, share experiences collectively, and derive enjoyment from conceptualizing a perceived audience role and then fulfilling it. By establishing expectations about their own participation as audience members, individuals are able to engage with theatre in transformative—and renewed—ways

“RE-Vision: Evolution of Performance Possibility.” Claire Borody (University of Winnipeg)

As a theatre scholar and director focused on the creation of original theatre, and often working with specific communities to buildthis work, the pandemic caused, not a slow down of research activity, but a deep freeze. As of March 2020, the culture of live theatre was put on hold indefinitely and only now is showing signs of rebirth and emergence. At the point that the provinces were issuing the first, of what would become a series of emergency health orders, no one had any idea how of drastic and far reaching the pandemic would be. There was no way of knowing how damaging it would be to the art of theatre

There is no way to substitute the tenuous live bonding that occurs between the performer and the spectator. Theatre is a live art. The dynamics of the actor/spectator relationship are created in a shared space. That dynamic is not possible in recorded or even live-streamed contexts. However, as the pandemic roared on, it became increasingly clear that it would be necessary to create bridging activity in the gap left by the absence of live theatre. A multitude of online seminars, symposiums and workshops that appeared in the spring and summer of 2020, attempted to address the issue without adequately acknowledging the fact that “the moment that you take theatre out of a live context, it is not theatre”. Starting from that foundation, I set out to explore the possibilities for creating a hybrid performance forms –neither theatre nor film –that would develop a sustainable creative process and that would utilize the properties of available technology. This paper presents the outcomes of that exploration

“RE-EXIST Proposal: Drama for Autism: Re-thinking the pedagogy.” Nancy Curry (University of Victoria)

Recent research into autistic communication and cognition (Crompton, 2020; Frith, 2012; Heasman & Gillespie, 2018; Vermeulen, 2012) can inform the practice of theatre facilitatorsand teachers working with autistic actors and students. While a variety of drama-for-autism programs and curricula exist in the marketplace and have been embraced by theatre schools as a move toward inclusion and providing strategies for teaching social skills, the pedagogy is often based on outdated research. A current trend in autism research supports the idea of a “double empathy problem” (Milton, 2012), or the need for practitioners to be empathetic towards the autistic people they work with as well asencouraging empathetic thinking in their students/actors.

The Story Wheel curriculum, Ms. Curry’s doctoral research project, offers a structure for examining a variety of social interactions, but more importantly, the research data pointed up the importance of recognizing the traits of autistic cognition and communication and the need for designing the pedagogical approach accordingly. By leading a class of autistic adults through a series of twelve story-drama workshops, using archetypal literary theory (Frye, 1957) as a framework, the project gave Ms. Curry the opportunity to observe autistic interactions and discover the capacity for character analysis, improvisation,physical characterization, and humour in each participant. This presentation will look at the Story Wheel curriculum in depth, and the participants’ response to the curricular structure, along with recommendations for practice for creating a successful working/learning experience for autistic drama participants.

16:00-16:15 MT

Break / Pause

16:15-17:45 MT

17:15-18:45 CT

Gallery Tour

Led by Josie Mills

Note: This event is in-person only.

In-Person Location: Art Gallery

More info

Tour of current exhibitions at the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery with Director/Curator, Josephine Mills. In the Hess gallery, Fragile & Familiar, featuring figurative artworks from the UofL’s extensive art collection, curated by graduating Museum Studies student Kelsey Black. In the Christou Gallery, A Glimpse into Chinatown, a commission from emerging artist Angeline Simon in which she addresses anti-Asian racism in Lethbridge through her haunting images of the architecture of the former Chinatown along with archival texts and objects.

VibraFusionLab: Reimagining theatre through vibration and visual sound (Praxis Workshop)

Led by David Bobier

In-Person Location: W480

More info

Praxis Workshop Leader David Bobier (VibraFusionLab Collective)

NOTE:No training is required for participation. Observers/audiences are most welcome and encouraged

VibraFusionLab is an internationally renowned disabled artists led lab and creative research and performance project that supports accessibility in art practices and art experiences and facilitates the multi-sensory and tactile arts for greater access for a broader more diverse audience. Through VibraFusionLab Collective (VFLC) we promote and support the creation of new accessible art forms, focus on inclusive technologies that have the potential of expanding art-making practices and investigate new experiences of sensory accessibility for artists and audiences of all abilities. By engaging with broader and more diverse communities VFL has maintained a path of exploration in challenging social perceptions of body abilities and limitations, deconstructing barriers associated with deafness and disability and of providing vital opportunities for artists of all abilities to work and share the creative process on an equal basis

The workshop/presentation will consist of a PowerPoint introducing aspects of the technology and an overview of VibraFusionLab projects over the recent past with a particular focus on theatre and performance. This will provide participants with a concept of the vibrotactile as both a creative medium and as a medium of accessibility to experiencing and enjoying the arts. Participants will be introduced to various vibrotactile systems including wearable devices, hand-held devices, vibrotactile floors and walls, retrofitted chairs and benches, etc. A discussion will follow around new approaches to art making that champion the senses beyond vision andhearing and how these approaches can be used to build new methods of communication and language through the arts. This will be followed by a hands-on, ‘bodies-on’,interactive workshop where participants can experience sound/music as vibration through various vibrotactile systems provided. They will also have the opportunity to create their own sound and vibrotactile elements through voice and movement. There will also be instructions on how to make a simple vibrotactile device.

Storied Pasts and ReCollected Stages (Paper Panel)

Moderator Sasha Kovacs. Papers by Heather Davis-Fisch, Heather Fitzsimmons Frey, and Grahame Renyk

Live captioning provided.

In-Person Location: W401

More info

Paper Panel Moderator: Sasha Kovacs (University of Victoria)

“What Happens Next: Nootka Sound; Or, Britain Prepar’d as Colonial Prequel." Heather Davis-Fisch (University of the Fraser Valley)

The surviving script of Nootka Sound: Or, Britain Prepar’d (1790) presents several interesting performance historiography problems. First, its status, as suggested by James Hoffman, as British Columbia’s first play, based on its participation in the “hegemonic operations of Empire-building on Canada’s west coast.” Second, as a pantomime, the performance text that is archived at the Huntington Library and the associated remains of the performance, such as periodical reviews, is fragmentary, leaving significant gaps when one tries to reconstruct what might have happened on stage, particularly around the play’s representation of Nootka Sound itself and of Indigenous peoples living there. Third, the play fits into a longer genealogy of British performances staging the Pacific Northwest, prompted by mass interest in Captain James Cook’s voyages and death and in the visual representations of the region that accompanied coverage. Finally, adding a consideration of remounts of the play—it was revived in fall 1790 with the title of The Provocation! and then remounted again in 1793 as The Shipwreck; Or, French Ingratitude—allows for questions of spectatorship and changing meaning of the pantomime in relation to colonization and imperialism to emerge: The Provocation! was staged for a visiting delegation of Cherokee Chiefs, and The Shipwreck was performed for the Turkish Ambassador. In other words, the play is a baggy mess for a performance historian

In this paper, I will consider these questions, but will begin with the contention that Nootka Sound indeed plays an important role in the performance history of the territories now known as British Columbia, but that this role is linked to how the play participated in the transformation of land into commodity. Through the 1770s and 80s, Britain and Spain were in conflict over which nation would claim sovereignty over the Pacific Northwest, and Nootka Sound emerged as a key site in that conflict, which became known as the Nootka Sound controversy. Nootka Sound, both historically in the contest of imperial desires and in the play’s representational world, is transformed from a complex place and space in and of itself into territory that is commodified in order to be taken, traded for, or exchanged. This transformation of land into commodity is, arguably, central to settler colonialism’s work. Framing historiographical questions within the context of settler colonial studies, this paper will consider the role Nootka Sound: Or, Britain Prepar’d played in preparing British subjects for later settlement of the Pacific Northwest

“Re-enacting for the Future: Living History Museum Interpreters and Educational Programming." Heather Fitzsimmons Frey (MacEwan University)

At the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village an historically dressed interpreter teaches children to bake festive bread, gently rolling and braiding dough, and forming into a circle that represents eternity. During this pandemic she shows and speaks, but in the past, her own hands guided the hands of children. Just as generations of elders haveshared embodied knowledge, this interpreter shares what she knows and how she knows it in practical ways that evoke centuries of intergenerational exchange. The interpreter tells us that once, a young women came to the Village and told the interpreter that she remembered her from a visit when she was seven years old: she remembered the woman’s hands on hers, rolling out the dough.

Times collide when children (who so often represent the future) enter a living history museum, animated by historically dressed interpreters. Based on interviews conducted at Calgary Heritage Park, Fort Edmonton Park, and the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village (2017-2022), this presentation explores what it means to create and perform meaningful interactive interpretive experiences for children that are about the past, that help them to reflect on their own relationship to the present, and that propel them into the future. In particular, we consider tensions between cultural and historical interpretation, first person and third person interpretation, youth influences on programming, different ways of creating spaces of engagement, and the impact of curriculum. As re-enactors perform the past for Alberta’s future adults, we are inspired by thinkers who connect histories, futures, and childhood together, such as Betasamasoke Simpson (2017), Ishiguro (2016), and Lesko (2012).

“Jokers in the Deck: insights gleaned from pondering Canadian Musicals as they appear in 1970’s Canadian theatre studies.” Grahame Renyk (Queen’s University)

In the 1970s, Canadian theatre studies was carving out its place as a discipline while, at the same time, robust government funding fostered a growing cohort of professional theatre artists and organizations. A small, but mighty cohort of scholars worked tirelessly to document the fast expanding archive, chronicling the rapidly unfolding history of the form while also writing the story of the discipline. Preliminary narratives emerged positioning plays, playwrights, and the so-called alternative theatre movement as the primary signifiers of a distinctly Canadian theatrical tradition. Yet, even though several Canadian Musicals were written and produced during this era (including nearly two dozen at the Charlottetown Festival), they feature minimally, if at all, in this emerging scholarship

“Canadian Musicals” is a term referring to music theatre works that occupy a liminal space betweenthe “unmistakably US-American aura” of what David Savran calls the Broadway-style musical as global brand (Savran 26) and whatever it is we might call Canadian theatre. They are ‘Canadian’ in the various messy, uncomfortable, and contestable ways one may attempt to define that endlessly slippery term, and ‘Musicals’ insofar as they adopt or respond to the vernacular of Broadway-style musicals. The slippery liminality of Canadian Musicals positions them as historiographic wild cards, jokers in the deck that awkwardly defied the preliminary historical narratives established in the early days of Canadian theatre studies, but that also continue to reveal the perils of using a knotty national qualifier like ‘Canadian’ to articulate what, if anything, defines theatre created in these lands as somehow distinct in form, content, and execution.

17:45 MT

BREAK / PAUSE - End of Day / Fin Du Jour

8:45-9:15 MT

Coffee / Café

9:15-10:45 MT

10:15-11:45 CT

Monday, June 13th

Reading the TRC: Forging Right Relations between Indigenous People of Turtle Island and Ireland (Roundtable)

Led by Paul Halferty. Participants: Joseph Naytowhow, Cheryl L'Hirondelle, James Kelley, and Paul Halferty

In-Person Location: W561

More info

Roundtable Organizer J. Paul Halferty (University College Dublin)

Roundtable Participants: Joseph Naytowhow (Woodland Cree/Halfbreed, Artist), Cheryl L’Hirondelle (Cree/Halfbreed, Artist), James Kelly (Irish, Ireland Canada University Foundation)

This roundtable has two goals: First, to elaborate and share the work undertaken thus far by Landspeak, especially in its community-engaged online reading of the TRC Executive Summary. And second, to make further connections and relationships with Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in the land now known as Canada and Ireland

On 30 September 2021, in solidarity with Indigenous peoples and responding to the call made by CATR, the organizers of Landspeak began hosting weekly, online meetings to read aloud the TRC. Originally the organizers had planned to read the text in a kind of durational performance, enlisting readers from Canada, Ireland, and further afield. This plan was changed to weekly, online meetings, which fostered a variety of connections and friendships among its participants. We will finish the document with a final online ceremony to mark our friendships and collective and dedicated emotional and intellectual work undertaken on 20 December –our reading and connection having taken shape between the time of the autumn equinox and the winter solstice

The first meeting on September 30 was inaugurated with the participation of the Canadian Ambassador to Ireland, Nancy Smith, and the Irish Ambassador to Canada, Eamonn McKee, making it an official nation-to-nation acknowledgement of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. The event was opened with prayer offerings from Cheryl L’Hirondelle (Cree/Halfbreed) on behalf of the Landspeak team, to Knowledge Keeper Joseph Naytowhow (Woodland Cree/Halfbreed). The initial readers were from Dr. Paul Halferty (Director, Centre for Canadian Studies, University College Dublin), Dr. Niall Majury (President, Association for Canadian Studies in Ireland and Senior Lecturer, Queens University, Belfast), and Professor Renee Hulan (Saint Mary’s University, Halifax; UCD Craig Dobbin visiting Professor). Cree poet and Poet Laureate of Parliament, Louise Halfe closed the event with comments and a prayer.

Central to our weekly actions are efforts to acknowledge and understand how the history of Indigenous dispossession and the Irish diaspora are entangled, while also witnessing and learning from the experiences of colonization and decolonization both on the island of Ireland and across North America. For white/non-Indigenous/settler Canadians, we have been reading the TRC as a responsibility as we endeavour to move forward in a process of truth and reconciliation. For Irish people, reading the report is an act of solidarity and support –for the Indigenous peoples of Canada, and also for the aspirations of this document produced on the behalf of all the people of Canada. While the weight or responsibility is on others to read this document, the Indigenous participants have in many ways lead readers as we have made our way through this difficult document.

The roundtable speakers will make short presentations and discuss what this work organizing and participating in the reading has meant to them, and (through a survey conducted) what it has meant to the participants. And although the roundtable speakers have been working together for more than two years on a variety of projects linking Ireland and Canada, the meeting in Lethbridge will be the first time we will all meet in person. Through an open discussion with the audience members gathered, we will also invite the involvement of a respresentative of the Blackfoot Confederacy, on whose territory the conference will take place.

Demystifying Performance: Studies on Screen Acting and Embodied Cognition (Curated Panel)

Douglas MacArthur, Javid Sadr, and Aaron Taylor

In-Person Location: B716

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Co-Authors/Co-presenters: Douglas MacArthur (University of Lethbridge), Javid Sadr (University of Lethbridge), Aaron Taylor (University of Lethbridge)

Screen acting––a technologically enabled form of dramatic performance––is an activity with a considerable degree of uncertainty surrounding both its execution and reception. This mystique is often articulated via a number of questions that recur throughout academic, popular and professional discussions about screen acting. Do screen actors simply exist “as themselves” for the camera, or is the illusion of a plausible character largely a product of the technology on which the performance depends? If actors do produce the impression of behavioural and emotional verisimilitude through carefully conceived performance choices, how exactly is this effect accomplished, and why are certain individuals more adept at its execution? How does the camera enable their achievement of this effect? Our purpose in this presentation is to argue that these questions can be interestingly addressed via the employment of an interdisciplinary research program that adopts embodied cognition as its operative lens. Embodied cognition is the notion that mental activity “is grounded in the physical characteristics, inherited abilities, practical activity, and environment of thinking agents” (Anderson 126)

Our proposed curated panel will present the current findings of the Universityof Lethbridge’s Screen Acting and Embodied Cognition research project. This research team is interested in understanding how actors mobilize their learned abilities to negotiate complex social relationships and affective contexts interactively to craft plausible human behaviour. Rather than take the typical form of a pre-constituted panel comprised of individual research presentations grouped around a central topic or theme, our proposed curated panel will take on a somewhat different approach. Our research team––comprised of the three panelists––will speak to three distinct facets of our research initiative, describing our studies currently in progress, and will solicit feedback from the audience throughout the proceedings. These three studies consider screen acting within an embodied cognition framework formulated via an interdisciplinary partnership between a performance practitioner, psychologist and neuroscientist, and media studies theorist. Collectively, our three interrelated empirical studies provide new means of apprehending the expressive coordination of screen actors’ minds and bodies, and they also seek to identify how viewers apprehend, acknowledge, and assess actors’ performative achievements.

The Places We've Scene (Paper Panel)

Moderator Ric Knowles. Papers by Andy Houston, Robert Motum, and Kelly Richmond

Live captioning provided.

In-Person Location: W401

More info

Paper Panel Moderator Ric Knowles (University of Guelph)

“Re-Existing in our Home: Finding and Feeling Common Ground in Welcome to the Tree Museum.” Andy Houston (University of Waterloo)

To have common ground means this: that roots which have ground elsewhere can reach into me and actually become me. —Eugenio Barb

Geneticist and environmentalist, David Suzuki reminds us that economics and ecology are both based on the Greek word oikos, meaning household or domain. Ecology isthe study of home, while economics is its management. Ecologists try to determine the conditions, laws, and principals that enable life to survive and flourish. Yet Suzuki is regularly reminded by business people and politicians that he has to be “realistic” in his advocacy because “the economy is the bottom line.” By elevating the economy above ecological principals, we assume that we are immune to the laws of nature; that we are somehow above our place within the ecosystem, and the relationships we sharewith the natural world. Suzuki points out that this tendency is suicidal. Instead, he says we need to recognize our embeddedness within the biosphere and how our agency affects the many relationships that make up the world’s ecology

In 2018, I taught adevising theatre class with a focus on the dichotomy between economy and ecology; the class research brought us back to the place of home in ecology. Agreeing that the comfort and security we value in a home should extend to the whole planet, the class asked: Why does humanity do so much that destroys our home? Eventually the students’ research from the class was shared with playwright Robert Plowman. He wrote a text entitled Welcome to the Tree Museum wherein the central question, ‘what are we doing to our home?’ was embodied in family relationship. I think the play’s focus on human relationships offers a compelling and unique perspective on our ecological crisis; indeed, it is a perspective that has grown more resonant during the pandemic, and with the recent catastrophic fires and floods in western Canada. Welcome to the Tree Museum illuminates human agency in relation to our natural world and our capacity to desire –a dichotomy that makes us a peculiar, unbalanced part of the ecosystem. In this paper I will examine the dramaturgical development of this project, from the exploration of human relationships with other living beings in the ecosystem to how the relationships we share with other humans, in particular with those closest to us, are crucial to understanding how we address the current eco-crisis, and find ways to re-exist within our home

“Performing (on) Twitter: Documents from the Site-Specific Theatre Bot.” Robert Motum (University of Toronto)

‘An audio performance of a poem performed in the backseat of your car.’ ‘A new devised production by Judith Thompson staged in that place you got lost.’ ‘A story your grandmother told you performed at your elementary school for an audience of one.’ ‘A rendition of your favourite aria staged as a game of telephone with 1000 strangers.’ These are recent tweets from my latest digital-theatre project, the Site-Specific Theatre Bot (@TheatreSite). Like many other Twitterbots, my project relies on a simple algorithm to string sentence fragments togetherto create short narratives –in this case, imagined site-specific or immersive performances. After arranging these sentences, my bot automatically tweets one of these brand-new ‘performances’ every four hours

Darius Kazemi, a prolific programmer of Twitterbots, identifies ‘such bots as subversions, simple creations that amuse and provoke, and whose very artificiality prompts us to think a little more about the nature of human creativity’ (Twitterbots, Veale, 6). With over 1000 tweets, my bot has produced lyrical poetry, timely political musings, and a lot of utter nonsense. However, each tweet invites its reader to take a moment to imagine how these performances might unfold –and invites them to enact the performance inside their mind. Twitter users from around the world have connected with specific tweets, and one individual from Argentina even created a series of Playbill covers for their favourite @TheatreSite performances.

While the project is certainly silly and playful, I believe that it invites interesting and profound questions during the COVID-19 pandemic. While theatres remained closed, and many artists out of work, my bot continued to tweet ‘four performances a day’. As we were confronted with rising case counts, deaths, and our own mortality, the automated nature of my bot meant that new tweets would be sent (theoretically) ‘forever’ –with or without my presence. And finally, in the last couple of years, Twitterbots have become a propaganda tool to ‘spam’ Twitter feeds with COVID misinformation. I intend for my paper to unpack the areas in which my small art project interacts with these larger questions of labour, mortality, and ethics.

“Uncanny Emergence: Research-Creation in Haunted Natures, Hidden Environments.” Kelly Richmond (Cornell University)

It seems obvious and intuitive that scholarly research and creative production are emergent processes requiring risk, repetition, experimentation, transformation, collectivity, collaboration and play, and yet within a neoliberal and anthropocentric academy the spacetime for such interactions are ever shrinking. This is especially true of research-creation, the unwieldly place where institutional affirmation and exploratory forms must mix. In Spring 2022, I am leading the research-creation project Haunted Natures, Hidden Environments at Cornell University, an immersive environmental performance (read: haunted house) that investigates how haunting functions as a performancepractice, and how performing the uncanny serves to defamiliarize presumed anthropocentric relations between the theatrical and the (un)natural. Informed by Natalie Loveless’ declaration that research-creation is “a decidedly uncanny practice” and that “The uncanny is an emergent phenomenon... It is never certain; it is always propositional and responsively in the encounter” (How to Make Art at the End of the World 47, 51) this work does not preemptively presume its findings; my collaborators and I can design the circumstances, but the spectres will emerge as they see fit. In my panel paper, I will describe how “uncanny emergence” served as a guiding methodology for the design, dramaturgy, rehearsal, and production of Haunted Natures, Hidden Environments, and impart how the project informed both my theoretical questions (how do haunting and the uncanny transform what we understand as the ecological theatre?) and institutional ones (how does research-creation challenge what counts as knowledge-creation and circulation within the academy?)

10:45-11:00 MT

Break / Pause

11:00-12:30 MT

12:00-13:30 CT

Partnering Live Foley with Physical Theatre (Praxis Workshop)

Led by Nicola Elson

In-Person Location: W425-Spinks Theatre

More info

Praxis Workshop Leader Nicola Elson (University of Lethbridge)

A 90-minute session consisting of approximately 45 minutes of presentation and discussion and 45 minutes of active participation.

The presentation will discuss the history of foley and various styles of physical theatre that are complimented by the addition of live foley. Discussion of Dracula; A Comedy of Terrors and The Sissy Duckling (two productions directed by Nicola Elson in this style) will showcase examples of this marriage of physical theatre and foley

The active participation portion of this workshop will have some participants on their feet creating physically dynamic characters, puppets or masked characters that are immersed in a physical activity. The remaining participants will be given various foley instruments and objects to create soundscapes for these characters. All participants will be asked to explore where the initiation of ideas comesfrom and alternate whether their creations are led by the visual offerings in movement or the sound offerings in foley.

The Role of Performing Objects in Teaching, Learning, and Creating Theatre (Curated Panel)

Moderator Shelley Scott. Papers by Gabrielle Houle, Gabriel Levine, and Mia van Leeuwen & Stefano Muneroni

Curated Panel Moderator Grahame Renyk

This curated panel proposes to bring together four artists, scholars, and artists-scholars to discuss the role of performing objects in learning, teaching, and creating theatre. All participants have a strong creative practice and research program involving performing objects, and all of them teach theatre in university. They will discuss how objects are used in their own creative and teaching practice, or in the practice of others. Levine’s work focuses on puppetry and ecological learning; van Leeuwen and Muneroni’s focuses on object theatre, storytelling, and ritual; and Houle’s focuses on masks and actor training. Presenters will approach their topic in the first person, drawing from documentary research, interviews, and practice-based research. They hopethat this panel will foster conversations on the place of objects in our creative and pedagogical work

“Masks and Masking at the National Theatre School of Canada.” Gabrielle Houle (University of Lethbridge)

In 2009, theatre-maker Dean Gilmour casually told me that a collection of masks that had belonged to Michel Saint-Denis was being kept at the National Theatre School of Canada (NTS). While intrigued, I did not investigate this further. Years later, I met with sculptor of masks Etienne Champion in southeastern France to learn about his practice. At the end of our conversation, Champion unexpectedly asked if I knew where Saint-Denis’ masks were. I immediately responded that they were in Montreal. In 2019, I finally went to NTS and, with the help of its Head Librarian, saw the masks for the first time, interviewed artists who trained and taught with them, and examined Saint-Denis’ correspondence with the founders of the school (he was a key consultant on the creation of NTS). I soon realized that while the masks were connected to Saint-Denis’ theatre pedagogy, they had been used at the school by one of his close colleagues: master-teacher Pierre Lefèvre. Lefèvre successfully trained generations of actors with them. These masks, however, were duplicates. Anglo-Algerian designer Abdel Kader Farrah, with whom Saint-Denis collaborated, likely created the originals. Other copies can be found in theatre schools across North America (Julliard, where Lefèvre also taught, has a collection). This presentation will introduce the audience to an important collection of masks inCanadian theatre history, to the ways in which they have been used at NTS, and to their influence on generations of performers.

“Object-Theatre and Ecological Pedagogy." Gabriel Levine(York University)

In industrialized countries in the 1970s, as the post-war wave of disposable consumer products increasingly found their way into landfill, artists began to experiment with making theatre out of discarded objects. From the “trash puppetry” of Paul Zaloom to the “théâtre d’objets” of Théâtre de la cuisine (among many other artists and companies), performance-makers used the old arts of puppetry to reveal the latent animacy in the cast-off detritus of modernity. In the intervening years, object-theatre has become a generative mode of teaching as well as performance, offering an accessible pathway into puppetry training. The simple puppetry exercise of finding the life in everyday objects, as this presentation explores, is also a training in ecological praxis: it proposes relationships of non-mastery and reclaims the waste generated by industrial consumer production. In so doing, it resonates with the work of Indigenous and decolonial thinkers who prioritize relationships beyond the human, as well as recent scholarship that reclaims the agency of objects and materials beyond the colonial subject-object split. In this speculative inquiry, I draw on interviews with artists and archival sources as well as my own teaching to examine object-theatre as a training in ecological praxis. In an economic system where waste is treated as an externality—whether carbon dumped into the atmosphere or plastic dumped into the oceans—can ecological learning emerge from playing with trash

“The Life & Death of Objects.” Miavan Leeuwen (University of Lethbridge) and Stefano Muneroni (University of Alberta)

And the crack in the tea-cup opens a lane to the land of the dead- W. H. Auden. This co-presentation by Mia van Leeuwen (director, devisor) and Stefano Muneroni (dramaturge) discusses their relationship with performing objects through their collaboration on two projects—Sapientia (2014-15) and giving up the ghost (2021-22)

In Sapientia, object theatre is used to re-frame a medieval religious play by Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim, history’s first (known) female playwright. Sapientia tells the story about a Christian noblewoman who, when faced with religious persecution from the Roman emperor, allows her three children to be martyred. Protected by their faith, the children instead become immune to physical pain and undergo miraculous bodily transformations. In van Leeuwen’s object theatre adaptation, a mirror, a flashlight, an espresso maker, and three teacups, re-tell this ecstatic tale. The smashing of a milk-filled teacup as a stand-in for the execution of a virgin martyr, created a surprising visceral reaction from audiences across Canada, revealing objects as potent tools for storytelling

Giving up the ghost presents another way to work with and relate to objects. Moving away from the anthropomorphizing of objects into characters, this performance project reflects on heterogeneous ritualization practices to create a series of object-altar installations.Inspired by wunderkammers, the rites of Ukrainian Catholic mass, and of the ofrendas made as part of the annual tradition of Mexico’s Día de Muertos celebration, van Leeuwen’s performance composites bring together a collage of objects from her long history of performance works, now re-assembled as a part of a memorial service for her theatre. What is the life of objects when faced with the absence/death of human form and manipulation?

Balik-bayan/(Re)turning to Home: (Re)curing, (Re)inscription, and (Re)configuration of Philippine-Canadian Theatre (Curated Panel)

Moderator Dennis D. Gupa. Discussant Marc Perez. Papers by Alecks Ambayec, Allen Baylosis, and Karla Comanda

Curated Panel Moderator Dennis D. Gupa (University of Winnipeg); Discussant Marc Perez (Writer)

This panel attempts to reflect, complicate, and define the aesthetical, ethical, and political tendencies and imaginaries of Philippine Theatre as conceived, created, and curated in Turtle Island by commemorating recent performance creations of Filipino theatre artists born and raised inthe Philippines. The papers in this panel primarily ask how other aesthetics and ethics should be (re)inscribed in the current discourse on Asian -Canadian Theatre with regards to theatrical projects that deal, tackle, and problematize the narratives of home, vicissitudes of migration, and politics of identity and ethnicity by Filipino theatre artists in Canada. Charting an explorative inquiry on three Philippine theatrical projects in Canada and the philosophical architectures of "homing", the papers locate a stubborn (re)production of plural subjectivities of Philippine diasporic dramaturgy. The panelists wish to specifically ask: How do we speak about the dramaturgy of Filipino migration? To what extent artists born and raised in the Philippines can claim Philippine-Canadian Theatre? What ethical and collaborative gestures can be forged between entities with Philippine heritage that can eventually foreground a transhistorical and intracultural criticality among Filipino communities in Canada about theatre and migration? We hope to broaden a narrative (re)configuration of a dramaturgy that emerges from within the imaginaries of the artists who have the solid and direct historical embodiment of transnational displacement by citing three theatrical projects.By consolidating the experiences, criticality, and subjectivities of theatre artists involved in these projects, a fluid logic of Philippine-Canadian theatre is defined through the theatricalization of immigrants' sufferance, reconstruction of early Filipino settlement history through place-based-inquiry, and parodying the "Pinay" through burlesque

“Empathy Towards the Stranger: The Cosmopolitan Stage in DennisGupa’s I am Not a Laughing Man.” Alecks Ambayec (University of the Philippines Diliman)

This study is a reading of how a local student play staged in Canada about the life and selected works of a Filipino migrant in the United States named Carlos Bulosan, provides a venue for cosmopolitanism. I Am Not A Laughing Man is investigated through its multicultural setting, its invitation to mutual respect and openness, and its power to elicit empathy among strangers through the experience of the familiar and the unfamiliar, relocation and dislocation, entanglement and displacement. This essay emphasizes,through Dennis Gupa’s I Am Not A Laughing Man, how cosmopolitan theatre can form a global community grounded in care for each other despite differences.

“Na(i)tawid: Dramaturgical Notes on Pinoys, Pan[dem]ic, and Place-based Inquiry in Victoria.” Allen Baylosis (University of British Columbia)

“Correspondence”is a devised theatre project by Filipinx and other queer Southeast Asian artists. The project's goal is to stage interweaving Filipino migration stories as a form of community building. It is partof Filipino Canadians' intercultural theatre community-based project devoted to collecting migration stories in Turtle Island. Existing literature shows a written record of Filipino seafarers arriving in Nootka Island, British Columbia, who interacted with members of the First Nations. The research team planned to go to Nootka Island but relocated to Victoria because of the challenges brought by the pandemic. The team attempted to conduct a place-based inquiry given the limitations of resources in Victoriato recoup for the opportunity supposed to be held in Nootka Island. As the assistant dramaturg, I ask how this place-based inquiry becomes a critical-empathic commemoration method. To do this, I cor[respond] with our inquiries about the story of the firstgroup of Filipinos in Nootka Island with the considerations of the pandemic. This paper describes the performative process of crossing from Vancouver to Victoria through dramaturgical note-taking. New historicism was used as the critical approach to process the data gathered about Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka) as discussed by indigenous scholar Karla Point. We listened to aural narratives from Beacon Hill Park, the Goldstream Provincial Park, and the Esquimalt Lagoon. Hence, this paper offers dramaturgical notes, consisting of different (en)counterings: redirection, displacement, and precarity—crucial identifiers of representations for the then and now Filipinos in the diaspora

“The Byuti and Drama of Viktoria Court: Parodying the “Pinay” through Burlesque.” Karla Comanda (University of Alberta)

With a name taken from the Queen of MTV and a famous chain of love hotels, Viktoria Court made her solo debut in 2019 with a number that combined her guilty pleasures of Tito music and beauty pageants. In this presentation, I will discuss how the "Pinay" identity is [dis]oriented through Viktoria Court's persona and performances by drawing on the bakya, baduy, and jologs aspects of Philippine culture, as well as the Philippines' socio-political issues. I will also elaborate on my personal burlesque journey and artistic process in creating new performances.

12:30-12:45 MT

Break / Pause

12:45-14:15 MT

13:45-15:15 CT

LUNCH/LAUNCH Talonbooks. Host: Kevin Williams

Host Kevin Williams (Publisher)

Lunch courtesy of Talonbooks featuring selected readings from Talon’s latest theatre publications.

14:30-16:00 MT

15:30-17:00 CT

Emerge into the Land: A Listening Walk on the Coulee Edge (Praxis Workshop)

Led by Annie Martin and Sandra Cowan

In-Person Location: W401

Note: This event is in-person only and will involve approximately 45 minutes of walking / Remarque : Cet événement est en personne seulement et comprendra environ 45 minutes de marche.

More info

Led by Annie Martin (University of Lethbridge) and Sandra Cowan (University of Lethbridge)

NOTE: Participants meet in W 401. This Sound Walk is in-person only (no online participation). We will be walking for about 45 minutes. Participants should be prepared with good walking shoes and appropriate clothing for outdoors.

In this listening walk we invite participants to explore emergence from architectural spaces into the land through alltheir senses. Walkers will experience the footpaths along the edge of the coulees overlooking the Oldman River, and the acoustics of the iconic concrete University Hall building designed by Canadian architect Arthur Ericson. Our approach to this listening walk is an adaptation of a practice developed by the Canadian composer Hildegard Westerkamp. In this practice, we walk in silence and tune our senses vividly to the world around us. Walking with sensory awareness is a practice of opening the senses and welcoming all the perceptions that arise, equally and simultaneously -sounds, sights, sensations of heat and cold, bodily sensations, scents -everything. What are the sounds in silence? What does the walk as an interaction between our body, mind, and the terrain offer to our sense perceptions? What emerges from this practice? After walking, there will be an opportunity to draw or write some lines reflecting on the experience, and some time for discussion.

Somatic Engagement (Working Group)

Led by Christine (cricri) Bellerose and Ursula Neuerburg. Participants: Camille (Renarhd) Burger, Virginie Magnat, Eury Chang, Gabriela Petrov, Maria Meindl, Naomi P Bennett, Majero Bouman, Conrad Alexandrowicz, P Megan Andrews,  Lisa Ndejuru, Sanja J Dejanovic, Kelly Mullan, Christine Brault, Ramona Benveniste, Ray Louter, Daniella Vinitski, and Jenn Boulay

Note: Only the first 40 minutes of this session are open to participants outside the working group.

In-Person Location: Recital Hall

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Working Group Co-Leaders: Christine (cricri) Bellerose (Independent/Unaffiliated), Ursula (Ulla) Neuerburg-Denzer, (Concordia U), Twyla Kowalenko (Independent/Unaffiliated)

Working Group Participants: Camille (Renarhd) Burger (Independent/Unaffiliated), Virginie Magnat (University of British Columbia), Eury Chang (University of British Columbia Okanagan), Gabriela Petrov (Concordia University), Maria Meindl (University of Toronto), Naomi P Bennett (Louisiana State University), Majero Bouman(Independent/Unaffiliated), Conrad Alexandrowicz (University of Victoria), P Megan Andrews (Simon Fraser University), Lisa Ndejuru(University of Toronto), Sanja J Dejanovic (York University), Kelly Mullan (York University), Christine Brault (Université de Québec à Montrèal), Ramona Benveniste (Independent), Ray Louter (Independent), Daniella Vinitski (York University), Jenn Boulay (University of Toronto)

The Somatic Engagement Working Group is investigating the overarching role of Somatics within the fields of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies. Our primary aim is to develop a shared vocabulary among the working group participants, while recognizing the particularities which make each practice and research distinct. During our mandate, we aim toidentify somatic values and processes (year 1), apply its vocabulary to the world outside the self (year 2), situate the somatic relationship between the researcher and her/his/their community(ies) (year 3), and thus arrive at a more clearly defined map of the existing and potential roles of Somatics within and outside of academia. We understand Somatics to go beyond the study of human embodiment and extend our investigation in and out of academia, and into areas of studies attending to Pedagogies and Research Methodologies, diverse Cultures and Histories, Health and Well-Being, Land-Based, Decolonial, Ecological, Spirituality, and Feminist Studies as well as in their applied practices in the performing arts, performance arts, and folk arts. Our member-base is diverse. We are artist-researchers, academics, independent researchers, teachers, and therapists working across the lineage of one or more of the many philosophies and practices regrouped under the Somatics umbrella. Our group is active year-long through slow scholarship sharing modality and via monthly informal gatherings

Groupe de travail sur l'engagement somatique

Co-modératrices : Dr. Christine (cricri) Bellerose (indépendante/hors institution), Ursula (Ulla) Neuerburg-Denzer, (Université Concordia), Twyla Kowalenko (indépendante/hors institution)

Le groupe de travail sur l'engagement somatique se penche sur le rôle de la somatique dans les domaines du théâtre, de la danse et des études du performatif. Nous projetons développer un vocabulaire commun qui lie nos praxis tout en reconnaissant les particularités qui les distinguent. Au cours de notre mandat, nous visons à identifier valeurs et processus somatiques qui définissent notre relation à la somatique (année 1), à appliquer ce vocabulaire au monde hors de soi (année 2), et à situer la relation somatique entre chercheur.e et sa/ses communauté(s) (année 3), pour ainsi arriver à une carte plus clairement définie des rôles existants et des potentiels activés lors de l'emploi de la praxis somatique, et ce, à l'intérieur comme à l'extérieur du milieu universitaire. Nous préconisons que la somatique va bien au-delà de l'étude de l'incarnation du bien-être au sens humain et enrichie autant la recherche savante que l'engagement hors-mur universitaire, et ce, dans des domaines d'études variés comme la pédagogie de l'éducation, les méthodologies de recherche, en lien avec l'étude des cultures et de(s) l'histoire(s), la santé et le bien-être, l'écologie et le savoir issue de la terre, l'élan décoloniale, la spiritualité, et le mouvement féministes, ainsi que dans leurs pratiques appliquées aux arts de la scènes et arts populaires. Les membres du groupe de travail sur l'engagement somatique sont issues de divers milieu : nous sommes artistes-chercheurs, universitaires, chercheurs.es indépendants.es, enseignants.es, thérapeutes issues de lignée(s) de la philosophie, de l'éducation, et de la pratique Somatique. Notre groupe est actif à l'année longue par sa structure de slow scholarship (mode qui préconise le ralentissement et la lenteur) et par le biais de rendez-vous informel mensuel.

Environmental Stewardship in Theatre and Performance Education (Working Group)

Led by Hope McIntyre and Kimberly Richards. Participants: Anna Griffith, Justine Conte, Selena Couture, Dennis Gupa, and Taylor Graham

Note: Only the first 40 minutes of this session are open to participants outside the working group.

In-Person Location: W565

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Working Group Co-Leaders: Hope McIntyre (University ofWinnipeg), Kimberly Richards (University of British Columbia)

Working Group Participants: Anna Griffith(University of the Fraser Valley), Justine Conte (York University), Selena Couture (University of Alberta), Dennis Gupa(University of Winnipeg), Taylor Graham(University of Guelph)

The primary goal of this group is to discuss how we teach, document andprepare students for sustainable practices in theatre and performance. The urgency of the climate crisis requires theatre and performance practitioners, researchers and educators to develop and refine practices of environmental stewardship in all aspects of their work. The theatre industry is increasingly using metrics of sustainability to measure the potential social value of an event against its environmental impact. Students need to be prepared to enter a field that is shifting to a model of environmental stewardship and that responds to the unfolding climate crisis. This shift is linked inextricably to a movement towards decolonial approaches to theatre and performance-making. Developing good and sustainable relationships to land is vital work for artists and cultural producers, as we move to a holistic view of the role of the arts in community. Our first year will focus on gathering information, resources, and research to answer the question -How are sustainable practices being implemented and how do we need to adjust curriculum to match? In year two, we will map a way forward. By the final year our goal is to create and disseminate an action plan.

Course Correction: Reorienting Approaches to Space in Theatre and Performance (Working Group)

Led by Katrina Dunn. Participants: Alessandro Simari, Danielle Howard, Shauna Janssen, Laura Levin, Alana Gerecke, Keren Zaiontz, Sandra Chamberlain-Snider, Cordula Quint, and Jayna Mees

Note: this Working Group Session will be open to non-Working Group participants from 3pm to 4pm MT, both on Zoom and in-person.

In-Person Location: W561

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Working Group Leader: Katrina Dunn (University of Manitoba)

Working Group Participants: Alessandro Simari University of Ottawa, York University), Danielle Howard (York University), Shauna Janssen (Concordia University), Laura Levin (York University), Alana Gerecke (Simon Fraser University), Keren Zaiontz (Queens University), Sandra Chamberlain-Snider (University of Victoria), Cordula Quint (Mount Allison University), Jayna Mees(York University)

The Course Correction: Reorienting Approaches to Space in Theatre and Performance Working Group is a collection of scholars working in a range of scholarly environments that is looking to build on the twenty-year legacy of thespatial turn by defining and exploring new directions for spatial perspectives on theatre and performance. Group members contribute research that heeds Kim Solga’s call, in Theory for Theatre Studies: Space (2019), for the decolonization, not only of the stage, but also of spatial theory and its methodologies. They look for deeper incorporation of feminist and queer spatial theory into the field and encourage the uptake of urgent ecological issues and environmental ethics into spatial theory and practice. They are also looking to assess the consequences of the pandemic’s interruption of spatial co-presence, often seen as fundamental to theatre and performance.

16:00-16:15 MT

Break / Pause

16:15-17:45 MT

17:15-18:45 CT

Beyond Trigger Warnings: Shaping Content Conversations Between Productions and Audiences (Praxis Workshop)

Led by Charlie Peters

In-Person Location: B716

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Praxis Workshop Leader: Charlie Peters (University of Alberta)

Content warnings (or calls for them) are becoming more and more common in the theatre and the academy. At the same time, criticism of such warnings for a variety of (legitimate and less legitimate) reasons is increasing in step. In this praxis workshop, I reframe the discussion from “warnings” to “conversations” by arguing that discussions of theatrical content forms part of a larger dramaturgical exchange between production and audience.

The workshop begins with a discussion of the scholarly literature on content warnings which take place primarily in the context of the scholarship of teaching and learning or (to a lesser extent) psychology. Bringing in theatre-specific discussions, I propose a series of considerations to help theatre artists shape meaningful content conversations for their productions. These considerations take into account research that identifies potential risks of content warnings as well as their benefits—especially through a Disability lens of accessibility, in the context of informed consent, and in light of a changing cultural zeitgeist. I illustrate these principals with examples from my own recent work.

n small groups, participants areguided in the writing and workshopping of content conversations for upcoming or hypothetical productions. No preparationis required but folks are welcome to reference projects on which they are currently working.

CONTINUED: Somatic Engagement (Working Group)

Led by Christine (cricri) Bellerose and Ursula Neuerburg. Participants: Camille (Renarhd) Burger, Virginie Magnat, Eury Chang, Gabriela Petrov, Maria Meindl, Naomi P Bennett, Majero Bouman, Conrad Alexandrowicz, P Megan Andrews,  Lisa Ndejuru, Sanja J Dejanovic, Kelly Mullan, Christine Brault, Ramona Benveniste, Ray Louter, Daniella Vinitski, and Jenn Boulay

CONTINUED: Environmental Stewardship in Theatre and Performance Education (Working Group)

Led by Hope McIntyre and Kimberly Richards. Anna Griffith, Justine Conte, Selena Couture, Dennis Gupa, and Taylor Graham

CONTINUED: Course Correction: Reorienting Approaches to Space in Theatre and Performance (Working Group)

Led by Katrina Dunn. Participants: Alessandro Simari, Danielle Howard, Shauna Janssen, Laura Levin, Alana Gerecke, Keren Zaiontz, Sandra Chamberlain-Snider, Cordula Quint, and Jayna Mees

17:45-18:30 MT

BREAK - Dinner on Your Own / PAUSE - Dîner seul

18:30 MT

Mondays are a Drag

(18:30) - Dinner Reservation

(19:30) - Show

At The Owl Acoustic Lounge (606 3 Ave South)
Presented by Theatre Outre
*Note: This event will be in-person only*

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Presented by Theatre Outre

Lethbridge's Theatre Outré presents: Monday is a Drag at the Owl Acoustic Lounge! Join our matron saint Didi d'Edada and her Southern Alberta drag family as they perform the house down on this manic Monday! Tired of citations? Leave 'em behind and join the EXCITATIONS!

In-person only at The Owl Acoustic Lounge (606 3 Ave South)

Tuesday, June 14th

8:45-9:15 MT

Coffee

9:15-10:15 MT

CATR Scholarly Awards Ceremony: Saddlemeyer, O'Neill, Plant, and Godin Awards

Hosted by Kimberly Richards

"President's Award" Presentation - Presented by Yana Meerzon

Avec traduction anglais > français | With French to English translation | Live captioning provided.

In-Person Location: Recital Hall

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Hosted by Kimberly Richards (University of British Columbia)

The Association recognizes this year’s recipients of CATR’s Scholarly Awards, honouring scholarly work of significant merit in any area of Canadian theatre or performance research.

Richard Plant Award, presented by Kimberly Richards (University of British Columbia): Named in honour of one of the Association’s co-founders, this award is given annually to the best English-language article on a Canadian theatre or performance topic. The award is given in alternate years to a long form article/article/book chapter and a short form article, blog post or substantial piece of written criticism. The 2022 award will be given to a long form article and/or a book chapter in a scholarly collection, published in 2020 and/or 2021

Prix Jean-Cléo Godin, presented by Michelle MacArthur (University of Windsor): Nommé en l’honneur d’un des cofondateurs de l’ACRT et de la SQET, le prix récompense chaque année le meilleur article (recherche ourecherche-création) de langue française. Il honore le mérite d’un·e chercheur·se ainsi que ses travaux dans le domaine du théâtre ou de la performance au Canada.

Ann Saddlemyer Award, presented by Ric Knowles (University of Guelph):Named in honour of the association’s co-founder, the Ann Saddlemyer Award goes to the best book published in English or French in a given year. The winning book should normally be broadly on a Canadian topic, and should constitute a substantial contribution to Canadian Theatre and Performance Studies.

Patrick O’Neill Award, presented by Michelle MacArthur (University of Windsor): Honouring a respected editor and champion of the Association, thePatrick O’Neill Award is given each year to the best edited collection published in either English or French on a Canadian theatre and performance topic. The award is given in alternate years to a play anthology and an essay collection. For the 2022 award, collections of articles published in 2020 or 2021 will be considered.

CATR President’s Award Presentation Presented by Yana Meerzon

The President’s Award is given out, when warranted, by nomination of the President and vote by the Board, in recognition of distinguished service to the Canadian Association for Theatre Research. It was established in 2016.

10:15-12:30 MT

CATR Annual General Meeting

Avec traduction anglais > français | With French to English translation | Live captioning provided.

In-Person Location: Recital Hall

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Annual General Meeting (AGM)

Keep up to date with the business of your Association, meet your Board of Directors, and learn how to get involved!

12:30-12:45 MT

Break

12:45-14:15 MT

Lunch

Celebrating CATR's Lifetime Achievement and Honorary Associateship Recipients for 2022

Presented by the Board of Directors

In-Person Location: Atrium

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Join us in celebrating therecipients of CATR’s Lifetime Achievement Associateship and Honorary Associateship for 2022!

The Lifetime Achievement Associateshipis conferred by the Board on any Member or former Member who has made a significant and sustained contribution to the field of theatre research in Canada.

The Honorary Associateship is conferred by the Board on any individual who has made a significant and sustained contribution to Canadian theatre.

14:15-14:30 MT

Break

14:30-16:00 MT

Performing New Emergence: What Future Exists for the Prairie Theatre Sector? (Roundtable)

Led by Taiwo Afolabi. Participants: Christine Brubaker, Yvette Nolan, Ibukun Fasunhan, and Cali Sproule

In-Person Location: W561

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Roundtable Organizer: Taiwo Afolabi (University of Regina)

Roundtable Participants: Christine Brubaker (University of Calgary), Yvette Nolan (University of Saskatchewan), Ibukun Fasunhan (University of Regina), Cali Sproule (University of Calgary)

The global pandemic, the murder of US citizen George Floyd and the MMIP on the prairies have catalyzed one of the most significant, immense, drastic, and unprecedented turns in human history. Many disciplines across different regions are asking critical and ethical questions about race, identity, representation, and systemic change. The same is true for Canadian theatre. In the Canadian prairies, the theatre sector has been severely impacted. Apart from the uniqueness of the locations in this region (Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan), there is a need to create space for collective deliberation, partnership and collaborations with other theatres and artists in their region. Many racially diverse artists and theatre companies who are not affiliated with the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres (PACT) find it challenging to identify and collaborate with mainstream theatre companies. Regardless of where the companies find themselves, they are faced with many challenges from funding shortages to outdated governance models, racism, sexism, ageism, and many other forms of bias, either conscious or unconscious. This research is guided by the following research questions: In what ways can different parts within the ecosystem of the theatre sector come together to address these issues? What tools can be developed to solve the puzzle the global pandemic and social movements such as Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, and Anti-Asian Hate have exposed us to? What is the future of the prairie theatre sector, and how can we envision a future together? “Re-imagining and Rebuilding the Prairie Theatre Sector through Critical Dialogue”, a web series of 10 episodes focuses on critical issues pertinent to advancing the ecology of theatre on the Prairies. The curated dialogue engages independent professional artists and sector leaders in identifying thematic directions and questions that the sector would like to focus on. This work will become the foundation for a next stage “Critical Uncertainties and Future Scenarios” where the research team with the community partners will engage in a year-long strategic foresight process to identify shared pathways for achieving sustainable and meaningful change. This roundtablewill create a space to share some findings of the research.

Rhetoric and Reckonings: An empirical reading of the siloes and shifts in post-secondary Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies programs in Canada (Curated Panel)

Moderator Barry Freeman. Papers by Barry Freeman, Malika Daya, Keira Mayo, and Scott Mealey

Curated Panel Moderator: Barry Freeman (University of Toronto Scarborough)

Long-standing concern about the neoliberalization of post-secondary “Liberal Arts'' education (Giroux) has increasingly collided with emerging anger about the persistent whiteness and colonialism of the academy. Writers such as Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang encourage institutions to use these prompts to move beyond a rhetoric of crisis and toward an educational system that sees justice and decolonization as its mandate. These are shifts that require “bone-deep changes”and not mere “alterations to terminology” (Carter 8)

This curated panel will present findings from the first two years of research from Belongings: Reimagining a Liberal Arts Theatre Education in Canada, an empirical study of post-secondary Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies in Canada. In this first phase of this project, the research team gathered and analyzed public information from 67 Canadian DTPS programs, which includes program and course descriptions, academic handbooks, website materials, anti-racism statements and social media streams. In this presentation, the team will present about 1) curricular focus and evolution, 2) reforms in pursuit of anti-racism, equity, diversity and inclusion, 3) how our curricula are staffed with academic labour and how this is publicly represented, and 4) how we are representing our programs visually on websites and social media. A discussion following the presentation will focus on what has been revealed in this work to this point, and solicit input from attendees about the research design of the next, more immersive phase of this project. Our panel will feature 4 short presentations from the research team, followed by time for open discussion.

What does this research tell us so far about the present structure and state of post-secondary DTPS programs in Canada> Barry Freeman (University of Toronto Scarborough)

In this first presentation from the research team, Barry will set the stage with a brief overview of our database of 67 programs, zeroing in on the recent gathering of all program descriptions as well as course descriptionsfor every course on offer currently across these programs. After differentiating between disciplinary orientations, liberal arts vs. professional programs, urban or rural contexts, for example, Barry will offer a brief analysis of these programs, including but not limited to: common curricular designs; the relative weight of areas of study such as acting, voice and movement, theatre history; the balance of Western canonical work in relation to other global traditions and Indigenous performance practices; the relationship programs have to their institutional context, professional partners, the community, or the land they operate on.

How are DTPS programs perpetuating, or challenging, racist and colonial ways of knowing? What changes can we yet observe in evolutions of curricula, changes to best practices, shifts in institutional culture or ethic, or commitments to change? Malika Daya (University of Toronto)

Malika will present on our ongoing assessment of public manifestations of EDI-related (Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) change across DTPS programs. In Year 2 of the project, we’ve analyzed a representative sample of EDI related social media related posts, EDI related programming (residencies, artist talks, workshops, etc) and program websites. Malika will be offering an analysis of emergent trends of publicly shared efforts DTPS programs have made towards decolonizing historically colonial spaces of learning and play, marking out visible waves of EDI activity that are publicly expressed on their websitesand social media outlets. Furthermore, there will be a discussion around the types of potential reform present, such as the establishment of antiracism committees, the hiring of IBPOC faculty, EDI-focusedprogramming and productions, and a visible presence of evolving curricula designs

What can we continue to learn about the implicit values and outcomes of DTPS programs in Canada by way of a visual analysis of the public information available on websites and social media? Keira Mayo (University of Toronto)

Keira will round out our presentations by (1) briefly revisiting our analysis of website photos and their “lexicon” of power dynamics, then (2) introduce social media visual materials with attention to the doubled rhetoric created through captions, and (3) present some suggestions about what and how ideals and values are implied through these materials, to whom, and to what potential ends. Maintaining that “the act of looking at and interpreting photographs is profoundly impure” (Langmann and Pick 103), this work follows Philp Bell’s theory of analysing visual material where the individuality of an image is understood within a larger field or a “gallery” images. Holding the individual photo and “gallery” together, Keira compares website photos and social media visuals to raise questions about imagined audiences: the imagined prospective student and current student, the imagined community within the program, and even the imagined parent (or more specifically, the imagined parent’s imagined student).

What does the distribution of different forms of academic labour reveal about the state of DTPS education in Canada? What might be revealed about categories of value, status and hierarchy, and how does this relate the ostensible values and intended outcomes of our programs? Scott Mealey (University of Toronto)

While most post-secondary theatre websites introduce their educators in some fashion, the nature of that presentation can vary widely. Faculty links might be prominently featured on a program’s frontpage or buried in a byzantine series of subfolders. Positions alternate between traditional academic titles (professors and adjuncts), industry designations (artistic directors and production managers), and prep school nomenclature (tutors and mentors). The permanence or status ascribed to each of these terms, and how they might effect a particular curriculum, is often left opaque. The mode of assembling departmental labourers—including by simple alphabetization, professional advancement, or departmental service—imply value-based taxonomies that may indicate how departments promote longevity and acclaim, celebrate collegiality and diversity, and guide learners toward particular brands of “professionalism.” Scott documents these trends in the advertised compositions of faculty and staff and explores the likely outputs these patterns might suggest. He also considers whose ends these listings of labour are intended to serve, how theatre work is seen to be accomplished, and what agents may be offering competing agendas.

Training as Research, Apprenticing with Land (Praxis Workshop)

Led by Christine (cricri) Bellerose

In-Person Location: W425-Spinks Theatre

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Praxis Workshop Leader: Christine (cricri) Bellerose (Independent Artist-Researcher/Unaffiliated)

NOTE: English delivery, with French and English workshop instruction. PDF provided during the event. Q&A in français et English. This is a hybrid in-person / synchronous online session: instructions come in three options and are available as PDF (français / English): 1. in-person, as a group; 2. online, with floor space; 3. online, with reduced mobility. Participants are asked to bring “ice” (i.e.: ice cube, ice pack, frozen peas) and leafy texture (i.e.: blades of grass, a plant, a bunch of carrots with leaves). Observers-only are welcome. Participants are instructed to bring their own research question (current or past research) for a RePlay by way of moving-thinking with land.

This praxis workshop takes participants into their own research inquiry by offering a 90-minute coaching session layering apprenticing with the land to their own research approach. During the workshop, I will also share my ten years of praxis experience developing somadance eco-performance as research, a training as research approach that involves improvisation and durational somatic-based movement performance art with the cold water and wind. In the approach of apprenticing with land, movement emerging are stories, are theories. Furthermore, this approach enriches traditional scholarship especially when overlapping with land-based epistemologies. Thinking-moving emerges at the encounter of body-sense-land—and yes, land-based thinking can be brought inside because the imprint of memories of these encounters live in our body.

Training as research, apprenticing with land inquiry reactivates a relationship between dancer and land, effectively repatterning a land-based meaning-making approach. In a typical session, I move meticulously through a set of pre-established sequence: walking aimlessly until I arrive at the place of calling; settle (choose between “in,” “down,” or “float”); manifest the performance milieu. These are three steps of many more –further complicated by layers of micro-steps –which propel me into the training as research and framed by way of multiple ecosomatic encounters. Me-and-the-land, or land-me-land. All is perspective, in training as research. All is attentiveness to perspectives in apprenticing with land –attentiveness to gravitation, attentiveness to orientation, attentiveness to cold as texture, etc. Moreover, depatterning somatic amnesia and repatterning ecosomatic senses can be taught to dancers and non-dancers alike, for them to access their own sense of enchanted kinship, their own fundamental relationship to the land. The physicality and the sensory awareness required of movement performance artists is important for all researchers, not only those who have stage goals. A follow-up session, off-conference, will be gifted to those wishing to share their out-of-studio training as research, apprenticing with land experience.

16:00-16:15 MT

Break

16:15-17:45 MT

Challenging the Taboo of Emotion in Theatre Practice (Praxis Workshop)

Led by Tom Stroud, Ines Buchli, and Gayle Murphy

In-Person Location: W425-Spinks Theatre

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Praxis Workshop Leaders: Tom Stroud (University of Winnipeg), Ines Buchli (York University), Gayle Murphy (University of British Columbia)

NOTE: Six to twelve would be a good number of active participants, and any number of non-participating audience members would be welcome. There is no preparation or training required for attendee involvement.

The presentation will explore and discuss the results of a two-year SSHRC funded research project in which investigators worked with eight professional actors in a rehearsal and performance setting to examine the use of the BOS Emotional Effector Patterns (EEP) in the stimulation and regulation of emotion in the acting process. The research was motivated by the mounting evidence suggesting that the use of personal history when accessing emotion can result in undue stress on the actors’ emotional well-being. Alternatively, as a purely physical approach, the EEP use precise breathing patterns, facial expressions, and muscle activation defined in specific postures, to allow the actor to stimulate and regulate emotion without the use of past personal experience.

The session will consist of approximately 60 minutes of presentation and 30 minutes of active participation. The presentation will draw from current research in emotion science, actor interviews, and video footage demonstrating the use of the EEP. Topics will include training methods, rehearsal process, application to style, repeatability, and emotional challenges.

Performing Retro: (re)Visiting, (re)Activating, and (re)Playing the Past through Resistant Forms of Nostalgia (Roundtable)

Moderator Susan Bennett. Papers by Benjamin Gillespie, Michelle MacArthur, and Julia Henderson

Curated Panel Moderator Susan Bennett (University of Calgary)

This panel explores how performance fuses the past with present as a resistance to sentimental forms of nostalgia by directing its impact toward the present and future, thereby demonstrating how seemingly outmoded forms, styles, and personas can retro-activate the past to critique the present. No longer just a yearning for a specific place or the mourning of bygone days, nostalgia is a yearning for another time. It is also a coping mechanism, a way to relieve, as Sprengler writes, “the anxieties generated by progress, the swift loss of a way of life and traditional ways of interacting with the world” (15). Relatedly, in The Future of Nostalgia, Boym argues that nostalgia “is not always about the past; it can be retrospective but also prospective. Fantasies of the past determined by needs of the present have a direct impact on realities of the future. Consideration of the future makes us take responsibility for our nostalgic tales” (xvi).

Drawing inspiration from the conference theme, we examine different iterations of the “retro” across retrospectives, musicals, and plays which draw upon nostalgia, or the pervasive desire to “go back” in time. We explore these trends as perhaps suggestive of a larger “retro” turn as artists continue to replay, revisit, and recycle materials while pleasing audiences seeking comfort in artifacts from the past. The emergence of the “retro” turn in theatre and performance might offer ways to cope with destabilizing the negative forces of the present. But beyond the political ambivalence and sentimentality embedded in nostalgia, what else does the retro turn in performance reflect and achieve? How might it connect the past, present, and future for artists and audiences? How can we imagine the retro to (re)activate the past in order to critique the present? Does the retro enable new modes of re-emergence? How does anachronism and retrospection (re)play in/as performance?

“Slippery When Wet: Queering the Retro/Future in Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective, or the Vanishing Archive of Performance.” Benjamin Gillespie (The City University of New York)

In April 2020, Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective was set to open at the AGYU gallery in Toronto, but due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the exhibition was postponed indefinitely, remaining unseen for more than a year. The exhibition was meant to coincide with Dobkin’s 50th birthday and imagines a “slippery” approach to the re/presentation of Dobkin’s performance history by containing both the material and immaterial archival remains of her queer body (of work) over the past 25 years. It also emphasizes the fluid nature of how her performance and its documentation exists over time. The title playfully recalls Dobkin’s pleasurably perverse queer performances over the past three decades, which haveoften been staged in the unconventional “wet” spaces of the public restroom, on/in her own body, or in relation to the bodies of other women. Just as her past performances were commemorated by the exhibit have all but disappeared (apart from documentation), for a period of time, the retrospective itself remained elusive as well—an unplanned vanishing act that, until its eventual opening in September 2021, had left only traces of an archive of an archive. For Dobkin, the exhibition explores how time, like her own queerly ageing self (now experiencing menopause), remains ever-shifting in embodied memory. Ironically, while the exhibition’s documentation served to retro-actively reimagine and embolden the past with new meaning, the future of the exhibit itself was in question for an extended period of time.

Drawing upon extensive interviews, exhibition ephemera, and Dobkin’s performance archive itself, this paper maps the slippery nature of time for the ageing queer artist by offering a comparative analysis ofthe delayed Wetrospective exhibition alongside her decade-earlier interrogation of the archive (marking her 40th birthday), Everything I've Got (2010). In doing so, I draw together both age and queer studies through the notion of the retro, demonstrating how queer performance is always a slippery medium that becomes increasingly complex as the artist’s body of work expands and ages

“Comfort and Critique: Ambivalent Nostalgia in Three Millennial Plays.” Michelle MacArthur (University of Windsor)

A recent BBC Ideas piece asks, “Are millennials the most nostalgic generation?” and points to evidence such as the popularity of Disney remakes of their 1990 blockbusters, “throwback” club nights, and Instagram filters that make digital photos look like Polaroids. Millennial nostalgia is facilitated by unprecedented access to the artefacts of the past through digital tools such as Netflix, iTunes, and other streaming services that enable Generation Y to view movies from their childhood or listen to their favourite1990s music. But millennial nostalgia is also a reaction to the instability of our times. As one BBC interviewee remarks, noting the rising costs of living and education as compared to her parents’ generation, “Hopefully when we can eventually afford to buy a house, we’ll all stop being so nostalgic.”

While millennial nostalgia has received limited scholarly attention, it is an emergent theme in cultural representations of this generation, where the retro is invoked as a source of both comfort and critique. This paper traces this theme through three plays: Erin Shields’ The Millennial Malcontent (2017), which updates John Vanbrugh’s Restoration Comedy The Provoked Wife (1697) to present-day Toronto; Halley Feiffer’s Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow (2017), which renders Chekhov’s three sisters as self-absorbed millennials; and Jagged Little Pill (2018, music by Alanis Morissette and Glen Ballard, book by Diablo Coady), which transforms the eponymous iconic album (and soundtrack to Gen Y’s coming-of-age) into a Broadway musical. It argues that in addition to sharing thematic concerns, these plays are united by common dramaturgical approaches emerging from millennials’ tentative relationship to the past, their paradoxical need to both return to the past for comfort and to reject it in order to move forward. Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship, this paper theorizes a working definition of ambivalent nostalgia as it applies to millennial dramaturgy

“Resistant Nostalgia in Western Gold Theatre’s The Ballad of Georges Boivin.” Julia Henderson (Concordia University)

According to scholar Deidre Heddon, “Nostalgia (like autobiography) is also a means of engendering a coherent and continuous identity as we remind ourselves in the present of who we werein the past” (95). She argues nostalgia can be thought of as “an active ‘resistance’ to the present, rather than simply romanticism of the past” (98). The Ballad of Georges Boivin, by Martin Bellemare, translated into English by Jack Paterson and Johanna Nutter, employs a resistant form of nostalgia to offer its old-aged characters performative age identities that demonstrate what Anne Davis Basting calls “temporal depth” through profound interrelational connection. By re-performing and re-embodying the past in the present, the main character, Georges Boivin, evokes a glimpse of a changed future and resists old age stereotypes of being stuck in the past, overwhelmed by decline, and incapable of change. This paper will explore how the play’s English language premiere at Western Gold Theatre in Fall 2021 also uses nostalgic visual imagery and music to help locate the characters in extended duration (Kotarba 93) and establish the character’s personal and generational continuity across time. Finally, the one-person production casts two well-known older actors in repertory who both return to the stage after 7-10 years away from theatre. Talkbacks after every performance also enhanced this aspect of the production’s reception. The production thus draws on audiences’ own nostalgia about the actor’s careers, layered with their current performances, to inspire reflections on age identity.

Hamish Hutchison-Poyntz is a 4th year student in the Dan School of Drama and Music at Queen’s University.

Your Own Personal Resilience (Paper Panel)

Moderator Heather Davis-Fisch. Papers by Liam Monaghan, Ric Knowles, and Sasha Kovacs

In-Person Location: W514

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Paper Panel Moderator: Heather Davis-Fisch (University of the Fraser Valley)

“Strange Familiar: ‘The Queerness of Adoption’as a Life-writing Paradigm.” Liam Monaghan (University of Alberta)

My proposed M.F.A. thesis project will consist of two parts: an autobiographical theatre piece, tentatively titled Strange Familiar, and an accompanying research-based supporting essay. Currently, I am exploring my lived and living experience as a queer adopted person, not only to produce original life-writing, but also to extrapolate the paradigm of “the queerness of adoption” as a methodological entry point onto the practice of life-writing for myself and others. At the CATR 2022 conference, I propose toexplore (1) this methodological foundation of my thesis (10 min) as well as (2) an excerpt of my original theatre piece (10 min).

It is my intention that, like the queer metaphor of the “chosen family,” “the queerness of adoption” will have the potential to make strange those things which are most familiar, and familiar those things which are most strange. To be adopted (involuntarily), as to come out (voluntarily), is to cross a threshold, to occupy a liminal zone where difficult transformations are enacted and performed. In such zones, reductive debates—e.g., “nature vs. nurture,” “essentialism vs. constructivism,” and even “straight vs. gay”—are reopened for interpretation. To write and to perform the queerness of adoption, then, is to insist upon nuance, complexity, and contingency, and to refuse one-size-fits-all answers to questions of identity, sexuality, or family belonging. To queer adoption is to open a horizon of existential and heuristic quandaries whose implications extend far beyond the livesof queer or adopted people. It gets us to the heart of the matter. Why am I/you here? To what do I/you owe the quality of my/your being? What does it mean to be (il)legitimate; (in)authentic; (un)truthful? What is the meaning of my/your life? And how can I/you live well?

“Emerging from War: The Refugee Theatre of Ahmad Meree.” Ric Knowles (University of Guelph)

Ahmad Meree came to Canada as a Syrian refugee in 2016, co-sponsored by the MT Space Theatre in Kitchener, Ontario. His work tracks his own emergence from civil war in Aleppo and from the refugee experience itself. Meree trained as an actor at the Egyptian Academy of Arts in Cairo. When he arrived in Canada, he spoke little English but quickly established himself as an actor and Artistic Associateat MT Space and core member of Theatre Mada. In the five years since his arrival, he has also established himself as a Canadian playwright with a unique semi-autobiographical perspective on the refugee experience. His first two plays, Adrenaline (2017) and Suitcase (2019), both premiering in Arabic with English surtitles at the Registry Theatre in Kitchener, have toured to festivals in Canada, were performed together as part of Theatre Passe Muraille’s main stage season in 2020, and were published together in Arabic and English by Scirocco Drama. His latest work, I Don’t Know, premiered at the IMPACT International Theatre Festival in 2021, and is his first play written almost entirely in English.

Uniquely among what Yana Meerzon has labelled “exilic” drama, Meree’s work deals with the absurdity of the refugee experience largely through the destabilizing lens of a theatre-of-the-absurdist brand of searing humour. This paper, based on the scripts and performances, on interviews with Meree, and on my experience working on both Suitcase and I Don’t Know, offers a dramaturgical analysis of the arc of Meree’s career to date

“‘A student complained about you’: The Professor’s Emergence in 2021 Canadian Theatre” Sasha Kovacs (University of Victoria)

Between 2020-2021, a torrent of disclosures regarding experiences of trauma in drama and theatre schools across Canada, the United States and the UK circulated across social media platforms and websites (see Diane, 2021; “Letter from UVIC Phoenix...”, 2020; Hemley, 2020). For many survivors of theatre education who had previously advocated publicly for change, these revelations were not surprising (Cieslar, 2008; Robinson, 2017; Robbins, 2019). The various petitions, open letters, and anonymized reflections document experiences of sexual harassment, ableism, racially-motivated hate, physical assault, and other forms of emotional manipulation and abuses of power, particularly between students and professors within theatre training programs (including the one wherein I now work). At the same time as these materials were disseminated, a number of celebrated plays were published in 2021 that also stage the professor’s role in the university classroom as navigating the “front line of a culture war” (Sizemore-Barber). This paper will consider the approach to representing the arts professor and the University arts classroom in two Canadian plays published in 2021 during the height of a student-led public critique of theatre education: Norman Yeung’s Theory and Hannah Moscovitch’s Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes. This paper offers a critical reading of these contemporary plays in relationship to the emergent archive of theatre school trauma while situating their representation of the professor within a genealogy of Canadian theatre’s interest in and critique of university politics.

Hamish Hutchison-Poyntz is a 4th year student in the Dan School of Drama and Music at Queen’s University.

17:45-18:00 MT

Break

18:00-18:30 MT

Closing Remarks Mentorship Roundtable

Led by Christine (cricri) Bellerose. Mentees: Tracey Guptill, Ibukun Fasunhan, Sheetala Bhat, Kelly Richmond

Roundtable Organizer: Christine (cricri) Bellerose (Unaffiliated/Independent Artist)with Robin Whittaker (Conference Chair, St. Thomas University)

As part of the CATR Mentorship Program led by Christine (cricri) Bellerose, this session features students new to CATR and conference-going generally. The panelpresents an exercise in listening, synthesizing,interpreting information, and shaping comments while making connections to theories, theorists, and panelists. Importantly, it is alsoan exercise in mindfulnessand diversity.

Led by cricri, the CATR Mentorship Program operates two strands: The mentorship pairing program runs all year. It is structured as a mutual aid / well-being culture in academia. Pairs are matched according to their needs and gifts—this might be a traditional pairing such as an emerging scholar with an established scholar. More and more, we are seeing pairing based on life/work balance (parenthood in academia, neurodivergence, visiting international scholars, BIPOC scholars, isolation and social wellness balance). Pairs may choose to meet in-person during the conference. The Program, initiated in 2021 as an online mentoring initiative, developed in its current mentoring summer institute (MSI) with hybrid online chat, continuous conference panel attendance, and in-person networking facilitation. The MSI accepts 10 participants from across Canadian universities—all ages (undergraduate to doctoral students) are recruited through a lottery system (based on the Fringe festival selection process). The program is facilitated in French and English, and includes preparatory conference workshops, assisting throughout the conference, co-creation of a closing remarks roundtable, and grant writing workshop leading to a bilingual co-written article to be published in a peer reviewed journal.

18:30-19:00 MT

Break

18:00-18:30 MT

Banquet. University of Lethbridge Science Commons Atrium.

Note: this event will be in-person only

Contacts

For inquiries related to the CATR 2022 Conference web page, please email Josh at josh.catr@gmail.com.

For inquiries related to the Theatre Agora website in general, please email Jake at info@theatreagora.ca.

For inquiries involving CATR membership, please email Alessandro at register.catr@gmail.com.

For inquiries regarding accessibility at CATR. please email Becky at catr.accessibility@gmail.com.

For all other inquiries, please email Baz at baz.catr@gmail.com.

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Contacts

Pour toute question relative à la page web du colloque de l’ACRT 2022, veuillez envoyer un courriel à Josh à josh.catr@gmail.com.

Pour toute question relative au site web du Théâtre Agora en général, veuillez envoyer un courriel à Jake à info@theatreagora.ca.

Pour toute question concernant l’adhésion à l’ACRT, veuillez envoyer un courriel à Alessandro à register.catr@gmail.com.

Pour toute autre demande, veuillez envoyer un courriel à Baz à baz.catr@gmail.com,

Credits

Conference Committees and Staff List

Conference Chair

Robin Whittaker

Conference Co-hosts

Robin Whittaker (STU, May 27-28), Barry Freeman and Carla Melo (UTSC, June 6-7), Shelley Scott and Justin Blum (U Lethbridge, June 12-14)

Committees

Conference Advisory Committee: Yana Meerzon (Board President), Andy Houston (Board Vice-President), Katrina Dunn (Board Treasurer), Alessandro Simari, Robin Whittaker (Board Atlantic Rep, Conference Chair)

Organizing Committee: Robin Whittaker (Co-Chair), Baz Skinner (Conference Coordinator, Co-Chair), Josh Carroll (Technical Director), Yana Meerzon, Katrina Dunn, Andy Houston, Alessandro Simari, Barry Freeman, Justin Blum, Shelley Scott, Matt Jones, Sebastian Samur, Fraser Stevens, Signy Lynch, Carla Melo, Becky Gold

In-Person Host Committee: Shelley Scott (Chair), Baz Skinner (Conference Coordinator), Amanda Berg (Fine Arts Operations Manager), Justin Blum, Mia van Leeuwen, Nicola Elson, Christopher Grignard

Programming Committee: Robin Whittaker (Chair, STU), Taiwo Afolabi (U Regina), Eury Chang (UBC), Jenn Cole (Trent U), Matt Jones (PhD), Yana Meerzon (U Ottawa), Carla Melo (UTSC), Jess Riley (U Winnipeg), Alessandro Simari (PhD), Kailin Wright (St. FX), Christine (cricri) Bellerose (PhD), Jenn Boulay (U of T student), Shelley Scott / Justin Blum (U Lethbridge)

Fundraising and Financial Management Committee: Katrina Dunn (Chair), Taylor Graham, Alessandro Simari, Alice Hinchliffe, Lauren McLean

Digital Dramaturgy Committee: Fraser Stevens (Co-Chair), Signy Lynch (Co-Chair), Josh Carroll (Technical Director), Robin Whittaker (Programming Chair), Baz Skinner (Conference Coordinator)

Translation Committee: Sebastian Samur (Chair, Translation Coordinator), Kaikoura Gutteridge, Liviu Dospinescu, Haneesha Bhoyroo, Maxime Batiot, Frédéric Giguère, Gabrielle Houle, Katherine Turnbull, Anna Vigeland

Accessibility Committee: Becky Gold (Chair), Drea Flyne, Jess Watkin, Jayna Mees, Megan Johnson, Nicola Elson, Matthew Tomkinson, Stefan Honisch, Jenn Boulay

Communications Committee: Matt Jones (Communications Coordinator), Amanda Attrell, Shaghayegh Yassemi, Fan Yi

Staff

Conference Coordinator: Baz Skinner
Communications Coordinator: Matt Jones
Technical Director (Mar-June): Joshua Carroll
Technical Director (Oct-Feb): Fraser Stevens
Accessibility Coordinator: Becky Gold
Translation Coordinator: Sebastian Samur
Membership and Registration Coordinator: Alessandro Simari
Virtual Book Table and Meet the Editors Coordinator: Taylor Graham
Synchronous Zoom Assistants: Juan Anez, Chris Bernhardt, Nicolas Crespo, Laura Ferguson, Cole Pryor, Nole Richardson, Fan Yi

For the Canadian Association of Theatre Research

Board of Directors

Scholarly Awards Coordinators

Keren Zaiontz and Kimberly Skye Richards

Jean-Cléo Godin Award

Joël Beddows (Chair), Art Babyants, Alexandre Gauthier

Ann Saddlemyer Award

Ric Knowles (Chair), Kristin Moriah, Paul Halferty

Richard Plant Award

Jimena Ortuzar (Chair), Siyuan Liu, Benjamin Gillespie, Matt Jones

Patrick O’Neill Award

Michelle MacArthur (chair) Nikki Cesare Schotzko, Jenn Cole, Heather Fitzsimmons Frey, Kim McLeod, Dennis Gupa

Robert G. Lawrence Prize Committee

Jessica Riley (chair), Lindsay Lachance, Peter Kuling, Carla Melo, Michelle MacArthur, Eliza Gardiner

CATR 2022 Supporters

Acts I, II, and III Hosts

Foundations and Institutes

MISC IECM - McGill Institute for the Study of Canada

Presses

UTP Journals - University of Toronto Press

University Department Sponsors

Lead Sponsors

University of Toronto, Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies
Queen’s University, The Dan School of Drama & Music
University of British Columbia, Department of Theatre and Film
Dalhousie University, Fountain School of Performing Arts

Associate Sponsors

Concordia University, Department of Theatre
University of Ottawa, Department of Theatre
University of Manitoba, Department of English, Theatre, Film & Media
University of Victoria, Department of Theatre
York University Department of Theatre & Performance
University of Guelph, School of English and Theatre Studies

Contributing Sponsors

Brock University, Department of Dramatic Arts
Carleton University, Drama Studies Program, Department of English Language and Literature
Simon Fraser University, School for the Contemporary Arts
University of Regina, Department of Theatre

CATR Conference 2022

Performing Emergence: RePlay, ReCollect, ReExist

St. Thomas University

Act 1 - Online May 27-28

University of Toronto, Scarborough

Act 2 - Online June 6-7

University of Lethbridge

Act 3 - In-Person/Online June 12-14

Keynote Speakers

Dylan Robinson

Stó:lō scholar and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Arts at Queen’s University

Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu

Obsidian Theatre’s Artistic Director

Tara Beagan

Article 11’s Ntlaka’pamux / Irish cofounding Artistic Director

Dear CATR 2022 Delegates,

Chers délégués de l’ACRT 2022,

Dear CATR 2022 Delegates,

Chers délégués de l’ACRT 2022,

Access Information

Asynchronous Paper

Virtual Book Table

St. Thomas University

Online May 27-28

Friday, May 27th

10:15-12:30 AST

Welcoming Remarks and Keynote - Dylan Robinson

Sponsored by McGill Institute for the Study of Canada

Keynote- Dylan Robinson

House | Hall

Maison | Salle

12:30-12:45 AST

Break / Pause

12:45-14:15 AST

Indigenous ReExistence in Practice (Paper Panel)

Moderator Kailin Wright. Papers by Sara Schroeter and Virginie Magnat.

Food for thought: Collaborative Devising on Treaty 4 Territory

Sara Schroeter(University of Regina)

App, Paper, Scissors: Dramaturgies of Emergence in Participatory Performance (Curated Panel)

Moderator Jenn Stephenson. Papers by Mariah Horner, Jenn Stephenson, and Hamish Hutchison-Poyntz

Sponsored by Queen’s University, The Dan School of Drama & Music

Curated Panel Moderator Jenn Stephenson

14:15 - 14:30 AST

Break / Pause

14:30-16:00 AST

Performing Care: Gender and Labour in Precarious Times (Curated Panel)

Moderator Robin Whittaker. Papers by Morgan Johnson, Alexandra Simpson & Peyton Lebarr, and Lisa Marie DiLiberto & Susie Bupree

Curated Panel Moderator Robin Whittaker

Sh!t-Disturbers: Contract Instructors as Disruptors & Change-Makers Phase I (Seminar)

Led by Neil Silcox. Participants: Rebecca Comer, Rosanna Saracino, Steffi Santhana Mary, Leah Cherniak, Mandy Roved, Nicole Wilson, Kevin Hobbs, and Matt Jones.

Seminar Organizer: Neil Silcox (Contract Instructor, Artist)

16:00-16:15 AST

Break / Pause

16:15-17:45 AST

Strengthening Structures, Freeing Art Practice: An International Theatre Collaboration Roundtable (Roundtable)

Led by Deneh'Cho Thompson. Participants: Jack Patterson, Makram Ayache, and Vanka Salim

Sponsored by University of British Columbia, Department of Theatre and Film

CONTINUED / CONTINUÉ: Sh!t-Disturbers: Contract Instructors as Disruptors & Change-Makers Phase I (Seminar)

Led by Neil Silcox. Participants: Rebecca Comer, Rosanna Saracino, Steffi Santhana Mary, Leah Cherniak, Mandy Roved, Nicole Wilson, Kevin Hobbs, and Matt Jones

Seminar Organizer: Neil Silcox (Contract Instructor, Artist)

17:45-18:00 AST

Break / Pause

18:00-19:30 AST

Wreckonciliatory Acts (Roundtable)

Led by Jill Carter. Participants: Spy Dénommé-Welch, Lindsay Lachance, and Monique Mojica

Sponsored by The Gatherings Project

Roundtable/Longtable Organizer Jill Carter (Anishinaabe/Ashkenazi, University of Toronto)

19:30-19:45 AST

Break / Pause

19:45 AST

Ice Age Coming (Performance)

By Corenski Nowlan

An online play by Corenski Nowlan

Saturday, May 28th

10:30-11:00 AST

Get together in Kumospace

11:00-12:30 AST

ReCollecting Settler Encounters: Motherhood, Nationhood, Minstrelsy (Paper Panel)

Moderator Jess Riley. Papers by Kailin Wright, Roberta Barker, and Taylor Graham

Sponsored by University of Guelph, School of English and Theatre Studies