Jump to: May 26 (Monday) – May 27 (Tuesday) – June 24 (Tuesday) – June 25 (Wednesday) – June 26 (Thursday) – June 27 (Friday) – June 28 (Saturday)
Monday, May 26
Welcoming Remarks and Keynote Address/Mot de bienvenue et conférence invitee – Jill Carter
Keynotes Welcome EventLocation: Zoom Room A
Online Session
CATR
Event Details and Description
10:30am–12:30pm EST / 10h30–12h30 HAE
Location: Zoom Room A
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/8075386377?pwd=QGMSB3uhyUxwIbvOIzkUanoMoqRkOX.1
Online Session
Working Title: When They Left the Dust Remembered: Indigenous Land-Based Dramaturgy / Connection / Disconnection / Cellular Memory/
Metis performer-playwright P.J. Prudat’s latest work in development kiskisiwin nimihko/my blood remembers is a throbbing meditation on the dizzying constellation of cells that feed, form, and carry the human body through its natural life even as they carry the biota with and within which that body interacts, the memory of the bodies that precede it, and the seeds of possibility for future descendants within whose cellular galaxy ancestral memory will continue to reverberate.
Prudat—as archiver, archivist, and fleshly archive– narrates a personal memoir that spirals outwards beyond the temporal and spatial bounds of one life: her interior present rests upon the bones of countless colonial violations. These traumatic events are carried within the one hundred trillion cells that make up Prudat’s being. Carried, too, are the “land, sky, water, [and] fire” that sustained the ancestors whose cells dance in Prudat’s blood and marrow and that will continue to sustain and be stewarded by the descendants whose cells dance with them (Native Earth, Program Note).
This paper brings Prudat’s work into conversation with my own investigations as a land based dramaturg and with several land-based works-in-progress by several emerging Indigenous artists in Tkaron:to. Here, I continue to explore the project of anti-colonial reworlding through somatic praxis (see Castillo 57-58) as it navigates the tensions between connection/disconnection and the generative possibilities they offer to the Indigenous land-based dramaturg whose “approaches to new play development [are] rooted in [recovering and] maintaining relationships with the land, waterways, or skyworld” (Lachance 54).
Jill Carter
Based in Tkaron:to where she was born and largely raised, Jill Carter is an Anishinaabe-Ashkenazi theatre-practitioner, researcher and educator at the University of Toronto. Her research and praxis base themselves in the mechanics of story creation, the processes of delivery, and the mechanics of Affect.
Resources and Keywords
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Break/Pause – 15 minutes
Event Details and Description
12:45–2:15pm EST / 12h45–14h15 HAE
Location: Zoom Room A
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/8075386377?pwd=QGMSB3uhyUxwIbvOIzkUanoMoqRkOX.1
Online
• Christine Balt, “How to Thrive in a Crisis: Generating the ‘Conditions of Possibility’ for Living Well (Enough) in Drama Spaces”
| This paper engages with ‘thriving’ as a productive concept for thinking about ‘living well’ amid the many ‘economies of abandonment’ of our current era of late-stage capitalism (Povinelli, 2011). Drawing from conceptual and empirical material exploring the significance of drama spaces in the lives of young people in a time of crisis – marked by the myriad ‘abandonments’ of thwarted climate goals, ongoing war, pandemic, and the unregulated proliferation of destabilizing technologies – the paper asks if drama classrooms and rehearsal halls can emerge as interior spaces where the ‘conditions of possibility’ (Coffey, 2022) for collective thriving can be nurtured. Thriving has become a popular concept in ‘discourses of transition’ seeking out alternatives to what Amit Singh Chaudhuri (2024) sees as late capitalism’s ‘extractive circuit:’ economic theorists like Kate Raworth (2017) have proposed ‘thriving’ rather than ‘growth’ as a more sustainable measure of a nation’s wealth in the climate crisis, while ‘buen vivir’ (‘living well’) is a principle driving Latin American Indigenous and Afro-descendent resistance efforts against colonialism and resource extraction. I engage with ‘thriving’ as a performative that can be generated in drama spaces. Leveraging Amartya Sen’s (1999) contention that a flourishing life is measured according to what one is able to do (as opposed to what one owns) and Julia Coffey’s (2022) framing of ‘collective wellbeing’ as a non-personal capacity that arises from its ‘conditions of possibility,’ I ask if it is within the aesthetics and ethics arising in the collective artistic encounter that the roots of social and planetary thriving can be nurtured. |
• Kimber Sider, “Where Does the ‘Wild’ Begin?: Interspecies Lessons from a Shared Expanse of Green”
| Where Does the “Wild” Begin?: Interspecies Lessons from a Shared Expanse of Green In The Urban Bestiary Lyanda Lynn Haupt speaks of a “lost boundary” (p. 15), acknowledging that though we may still conceive of “nature” as elsewhere, a pristine and untouched expanse of wild that exists beyond human reach, this place no longer exists. The wild is equally discovered within and amongst human communities. It is found within the green spaces that we often consider our own (human) domains— within parks, yards, and often (against our wishes) within the walls of our homes. These liminal spaces, where interior “home” intertwines with exterior “nature,” offer the potential for a community space of interspecies meeting. A domain where we are invited, and challenged, to release our grip of colonial ownership over the land and acknowledge that these expanses (even when urban or suburban) were never ours to begin with. In this paper, through interspecies entanglements in my “own” backyard, and how my students perceive (and learn to see) the interspecies community of the University of Waterloo campus, prompted by a series of performance-based observation activities, I explore how these liminal spaces of “wildness” invite us to recognize, engage with, and more equitably cohabit with our nonhuman neighbours? How might performance be used to bring our own “wild life” forward (Haupt 14)? How might these urban wilds offer an opportunity for humans to become more positively intertwined within the interspecies community which supports us all? |
• Lisa Woynarski, “Imagining Urban Ecologies through Indigenous Performance”
| As most of the world now lives in cities, they reflect the inequalities of society at large and embody historic nature/culture divides, histories of displacement and dispossession, anthropocentrism and material inequalities. Pervasive future ecological visions of cities are often built on representations on apocalypse, natural disasters destroying urban environments. These representations of apocalypse can foreclose the possibilities of other possible futures. In this presentation, I look to performances that ask: what happens if we reject the apocalyptic future of the city? How can we live together in more just and ecological ways? Dismantling the urban/nature binary and understanding the city as a liminal space where histories and futures collide, the two performances included here imagine the urban futures in hopefully and optimistic ways based on community action, regeneration and decolonization. Peter Morin’s (Tahltan Nation) Cultural Graffiti in London (2013) embodies Indigenous knowledge and culture by foregrounding how legacies of colonialism are living in the structures of contemporary cities. In this site-based work, Morin sang Tahltan songs to different monuments in London (UK), bringing Indigenous awareness, existence and art into the city where Indigenous presences have been wilfully forgotten or erased. The Unplugging (2014) by Yvette Nolan envision a pluralistic future through envisioning a post-electricity world in which Indigenous values build community. I argue that both of these works allow us to see the potential of performance in imagining a more climate just future, by taking colonial marked systems and transforming them into decolonized, community-driven ones that prioritise Indigenous knowledge and environmental justice. |
Biographies
Christine Balt
| Christine Balt is a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Toronto. She is interested in ecological performance and finding ‘collective wellbeing’ in the drama classroom. Winner of CATR’s 2024 Richard Plant Award, she has published articles in Theatre Research in Canada, Research in Drama Education, Studies in Theatre and Performance and The International Journal for Qualitative Studies in Education. |
Kimber Sider
| Kimber Sider is a multimodal storyteller and eco-scholar working predominantly in performance and documentary film. Sider is the Artistic Director of the Guelph Film Festival, holds a PhD in theatre from the University of Guelph, and is a Lecturer in Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo. |
Lisa Woynarski
| Lisa Woynarski (she/her) was born on traditional Anishinabewaki territory in Ontario, Canada. She is Associate Professor in Theatre at the University of Reading, UK. Her work connects performance and ecology, from an intersectional lens, foregrounding decolonisation. She is the author of Ecodramaturgies: Theatre, Performance and Climate Change (Palgrave, 2020) and the forthcoming Performing Urban Ecologies (Cambridge). |
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Event Details and Description
Online/En Ligne
Date: Monday, May 26 / Lundi 26 Mai
Location: Zoom Room B / Salle Zoom B
Time: 12:45 – 2:15pm EST / 12h45 – 14h15 HAE
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/5324702280?pwd=yuo077u9YJNihv59FvXxbosHNeVpvv.1
• Michelle MacArthur, “Making a Stink: Feminist Killjoy Criticism and the Case of Women Against Sexist Humour”
• Kirsten Sadeghi-Yekta and Tara Morris, “Tracing Interiority of Voices on Stage: Indigenous Theatre Festival”
| On September 2025 the University of Victoria, BC, Canada will host the second Indigenous Theatre Festival, featuring works presented in multiple Indigenous languages. The festival has been designed to respond to the needs of Indigenous artists to gather and address the isolating aspects of creating work with a goal of language transmission. The festival will include workshops and panels on designing plays, addressing the unique challenge of performing for audience members who mostly do not understand the language. By bringing stories to life in dramatic performances that will hold the interest of language speakers, language learners, and the general public, these talented performers will showcase their languages and their cultural traditions. Resources developed by this project will be made available to communities who seek to integrate drama into their language programs. Morris and Sadeghi-Yekta are both organizers of this festival and they will be discussing the complexities of language loss and how events such as this festival could improve the social, spiritual, and cultural well-being of the Indigenous participants by grounding them in their identity, heritage, and traditional knowledge. The plays include important life lessons about building one’s confidence, persisting, overcoming adversity, and helping others. They bring out messages of sorrow and reconciliation, loss and hope |
Biographies
Michelle MacArthur
| Dr. Michelle MacArthur is an Associate Professor at the University of Windsor’s School of Dramatic Art. Her SSHRC-funded research examines three main, intersecting areas: feminist theatre, contemporary Canadian theatre, and the theory and practice of theatre reviewing. |
Kirsten Sadeghi-Yekta
| Kirsten is an Associate Professor in the Theatre Department at the University of Victoria. She is currently working on a SSHRC Insight Grant focussing on global ways we can integrate theatre as a tool for languages and language reawakening in primary schools. |
Tara Morris
| Tara Morris is a PhD student at the University of Victoria, focusing on theatre, Hul’q’umi’num’ language, and linguistics. She holds a Master’s in Linguistics of a First Nations Language from Simon Fraser University and a Bachelor’s of Education from the University of British Columbia. She co-organizes the Indigenous Theatre Festival, which explores theatre as a tool for language reawakening. |
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Event Details and Description
12:45–2:15pm EST / 12h45–14h15 HAE
Location: Zoom Room C
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/2520107866?pwd=Z7R43MTNhjgQvzQPTQjuzkaQYq7H91.1
Moderator: Robin C. Whittaker
• Marcia Blumberg, “Staging the Liminality of Exile in Janusz Glowacki’s Antigone in New York”
| Staging the Liminality of Exile in Janusz Glowacki’s Antigone in New York (1992). Liminality is a state of transition or in-between-ness, marked by disruption, uncertainty, or disorientation. It acknowledges a previous spatiotemporal position and assumes a new, more stable state, once the liminal threshold has been traversed. I employ Edward Said’s Reflections on Exile (1984) that they “are cut off from their roots, their land, their past . . . . [and] take on an urgent need to reconstitute their broken lives. . . . Homecoming is out of the question” (177). This final phrase troubles the usual notion of liminality since being in-between in the play appears to remain resolutely in the present as the only destination for these exiles. My paper interrogates how liminality operates in the underlying forces of exile through an exploration of Glowacki’s play which focuses upon unhoused exiles, who are denizens of a New York City Park. His re-visioning of Sophocles Antigone transforms an Ancient Greek tragedy into a multiply faceted liminal genre that includes black comedy, vaudeville, slapstick, farce, and absurdist theatre. Although it enacts a comedic dynamic the trajectory of Glowacki’s play leaves no doubt about the devastating situation of the characters, Anita (erstwhile Antigone) from Puerto Rico, Flea from Poland, and Sasha from Russia. They exhibit a tenacious will to survive amidst the daily chaos and police raids despite the severe form of dislocation that homelessness imposes. Clive Barnes maintains that for Glowacki: “Homelessness. . . . is more than just the lack of a roof. It’s a condition of the soul” (235). How does Glowacki stage this liminal exilic condition of the soul? |
• Cal Smith, “Synecdoches for Home?: National Consciousness in Othello and Visions of Home in Harlem Duet”
| Harlem Duet demands its audience consider the representational power of Harlem as a synecdoche for home. What, then, is the power of its absence in Canada? Visions of Harlem and significant moments in African American history expound via the speeches, songs, and interviews that begin each scene of Harlem Duet, and this paper wrestles with how these historical cues function in a Canadian context. I begin this paper by considering how Harlem Duet’s source texts, Shakespeare’s Othello also negotiates visions of internationally distant spaces. I ask what it means for Shakespeare, as he did with almost all of his plays, to stage Othello in Venice and Crete, as the paper also considers the nature of identification within the play. Following this discussion of Othello, I question how Harlem Duet’s vision of Harlem differs substantially from Othello’s Venice. I inquire on Sears’s vision of an Afrodiasporic home that is equally physical and symbolic, a home located beyond Canada, beyond national borders, beyond Harlem. In part, that home is on the stage. While Ric Knowles writes in “Othello in Three Times” that “Harlem Duet is not centrally concerned with Canada,” (371), this paper challenges that claim. I argue Harlem Duet negotiates Harlem’s significance in a broader North American context as a longing for a space that feels like home. This paper will interrogate the nature of this longing as well as how the play situates itself in relation to its “Canadian” audience. |
• Keren Zaiontz, “The Russian Play after the Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine”
The Russian Play is a date stamp of a formative moment in Hannah Moscovitch’s maturation as a playwright. First performed in Toronto’s SummerWorks Festival, in 2006, The Russian Play won the jury prize for Outstanding New Production, and was later produced as a double bill, in 2008, with Essay, at Factory Theatre, establishing Moscovitch as a fixture on the mainstages of the city’s theatre scene. It is in The Russian Play that we can glimpse many of the representational pressure points that recur in
Moscovitch’s writing: the story of a young woman living on the margins carrying an unwanted pregnancy; the visual staging that shows that same young woman aborting the pregnancy on her own; and the heterosexual desire that precedes both pregnancy and abortion and culminates in calamity. In this paper, I discuss how The Russian Play sets into motion both Moscovitch’s reputation as a playwright who infuses well-made plays with explicit theatricality and establishes her recuring interest in romantic desire
and devalued women. But for all it sets into motion, I also use this paper to discuss what might appear to be a provocative, but necessary question: is it time to shelve The Russian Play? Set in a “small Russian town,” the imagined place of “Vladekstov,” The Russian Play features the protagonist, Sonya, a sixteen-year-old flower girl who falls in love with a gravedigger, Piotr. While not intended to function as a historical drama, the play references life in “new Russia” under Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin, and describes
Sonya’s arbitrary interrogation and imprisonment by the secret police. Almost two decades after it was first produced, what stands out about The Russian Play is not its pathos but its wild inaccuracies and the eroticization of regime violence under Stalin. These issues carry additional weight in the current geopolitical context. Almost three years after Russia’s full-scale invasion and partial occupation of Ukraine, The Russian Play stands out for who—outside Russia’s borders, but within its Soviet empire—is not
depicted onstage. How should we mark the Ukrainian absences in The Russian Play? Or do some plays have a shelf life?
Biographies
Marcia Blumberg
| Dr Marcia Blumberg is an Associate Professor in the English Department at York University, Toronto. She specializes in Contemporary International Drama, theatre from South Africa, and international re-visionings of Ancient Greek Classics. She co-edited a book on South African theatre with Dr Dennis Walder and has published widely and presented papers at many conferences internationally. Her contact email is blumberg@yorku.ca |
Cal Smith
| Cal (he/him) is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. His research explores early Canadian queer comics in collective zines from the 1980s and 1990s. His research interests include contemporary North American literature and theatre, and the prevalence of AI in what we read and write. |
Keren Zaiontz
Keren Zaiontz is an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia. She is the author of Theatre & Festivals and co-editor of Sustainable Tools for Precarious Times: Performance Actions in the Americas, winner of the ATHE Award for Excellence in Editing. Her current book project is a cultural examination of global north authoritarian power from the perspective of dissident artists who risk everything and model
perseverance in the face of repressive rule.
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Break/Pause – 15 minutes
Event Details and Description
2:30–3:30pm EST / 14h30–15h30 HAE
Location: Zoom Room A
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/8075386377?pwd=QGMSB3uhyUxwIbvOIzkUanoMoqRkOX.1
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Break/Pause – 15 minutes
University of Toronto Press Journals Launch / Lancement de revues de l’University of Toronto Press
Book/Journal LaunchLocation: Zoom Room A
CATR
Event Details and Description
Location: Zoom Room A / Salle Zoom A
Time: 3:45 – 5:15pm EST / 15h45 – 17h15 HAE
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/8075386377?pwd=QGMSB3uhyUxwIbvOIzkUanoMoqRkOX.1
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Break/Pause – 1 Hour
Graduate student meet and greet / Séance d’accueil pour les étudiant.es aux cycles supérieurs
Welcome EventLocation: Zoom Room A
CATR
Event Details and Description
6:00–7:00pm EST / 18h00–19h00 HAE
Location: Zoom Room A
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/8075386377?pwd=QGMSB3uhyUxwIbvOIzkUanoMoqRkOX.1
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Tuesday, May 27
Event Details and Description
Location: Zoom Room C
Time: 10:00am – 12:00pm EST / 10h00 – 12h00 HAE
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/2520107866?pwd=Z7R43MTNhjgQvzQPTQjuzkaQYq7H91.1
Convenors: Sheetala Bhat, Yana Meerzon, and Steve Wilmer
| Distinctions between inside and outside animate discourses on migration, borders, identity, and culture among other things pertaining to global movements across nations. How do performance artists navigate and complicate the distinction between the inside and outside of national borders? How is migrant interiority staged? How do acts of border crossing challenge the assumed interiority of nation-states? We invite proposals that speak to these and similar questions both in relation to Canada and other geographical areas. After receiving expressions of interest, moderators will ask participants to submit short papers (3-5 pages) by May 1, 2025. When submitting their paper, we will ask each participant to identify which of the proposed axes of the conference theme– borders, identity, and culture – they would like to discuss in their papers. We will break the group into three subgroups based on the participants’ choices and will ask members of each subgroup to exchange their research-papers among each other. We will provide two research questions to be discussed by each subgroup. We will also ask each subgroup to create an outline of the major themes raised in their online discussions. At the conference, each participant will briefly present their position statements for the group (40 min); the participants will then go into three “breakout rooms” based on their subgroup where they will continue the conversation (45 min). After a short break, the entire group will reconvene in the major room to finish the discussion and to outline next steps for the group’s meetings in 2026-2027. |
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Curated Panel/Panel Organisé: Carlos Morton’s Trapped in Amber: Bringing the Exteriority to Bear on the Interior or Making the Invisible Visible
Curated PanelLocation: Zoom Room A
Online/En Ligne
CATR
Event Details and Description
Online/En Ligne
Date: Tuesday, May 27 / Mardi 27 Mai
Location: Zoom Room A / Salle Zoom A
Time: 10:30am – 12:00pm EST / 10h00 – 12h00 HAE
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/8075386377?pwd=QGMSB3uhyUxwIbvOIzkUanoMoqRkOX.1
| TRAPPED IN AMBER: The story of how a Mexican-American and Jewish-American Director got involved in writing a play about the history of Gdansk, Poland and how the play was first produced and given a staged reading in English, and subsequent full production in Polish at the University of Gdansk. The play has since been published (2024) in English and Polish. |
• Carlos Morton, “The Writing of a Polish Play”
• Grzegorz Welizarowicz, “Trapped in Amber in Praxis and Theory”
• Malgorzata Ziolek-Sowinska, “Reception and Reaction”
Biographies
Carlos Morton
| CARLOS MORTON has over one hundred theatrical productions, both in the U.S. and abroad. He is the author of The Many Deaths of Danny Rosales and Other Plays (1983), Johnny Tenorio and Other Plays (1992). He is currently Professor Emeritus of Theater at the University of California, Santa Barbara. |
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Panel: Postcolonial and Diasporic Representation in Canada
Open Paper PanelLocation: Zoom Room B
Online/En Ligne
CATR
Event Details and Description
Online/En Ligne
Date: Tuesday, May 27 / Mardi 27 Mai
Location: Zoom Room B / Salle Zoom B
Time: 10:30am – 12:00pm EST / 10h00 – 12h00 HAE
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/5324702280?pwd=yuo077u9YJNihv59FvXxbosHNeVpvv.1
• Sungwon Cho, “Eating the Other: Food-Performance Aesthetics in Asian Canadian Theatre”
| In the years following COVID-19 lockdown, there has been an emerging pattern in Asian Canadian performance which positions food as a central object across different works; dinner and a show has made a comeback. Rather than the evocation of food through mimetic gestures, actors and audience at these experimental food-performance events consume food during and after performances. Critically, the inclusion of food in these events is not only a form of interactivity, but also a locus for diasporic identity formation. With this in mind, what does food facilitate in these works of Asian Canadian Performance? How does the food-body link of diasporic subjectivity serve those who perpetuate it? What does the sociality of these food-performance events suggest about diasporic cultural production? Engaging with these questions, I engender three works of Asian Canadian performance that have been staged in Toronto between 2023 and 2024: Silkbath Collective’s Woking Phoenix, Amanda Lin’s Between a Wok and a Hot Pot and So Tasty?! a drag anthology hosted at the University of Toronto. Taking up the work of food studies scholar Anita Manuur and her notion of intimate eating publics, this paper frames these food-performance events as radical and liminal spaces which leverage the intimacy of eating to challenge the appetites of a normative Canadian audience hungry to consume the Other. |
• Taylor Marie Graham, “Theatre, Ghosts, and the Southwestern Ontario Gothic”
| Stages all across Southwestern Ontario are haunted. As Marvin Carlson asserts, “the relationships between theatre and cultural memory are deep and complex” and theatre buildings themselves act as memory machines for those who inhabit their structures (2). Michael Hurley argues that “there is a disturbing break-boundary recognition of, and insistence upon, gothic discontinuities and contradictions” in the “spirit of place of Southwestern Ontario” (156-7). Specifically he links the area’s gothic narratives with “periods of cultural disorder or upheaval” and twentieth century postcolonial tensions embedded in the search for a so-called Canadian identity (161). This region is deeply complicit in the layers of colonial violence which are felt all throughout Turtle Island. By examining three ghosts, caught in that liminal space between life and death, from three plays performed on stages in this region, a discussion concerning the colonial injustices present on this land and its stages begins to emerge. First, the ghost child in Falen Johnson and Jessica Carmichael’s Ipperwash remaps the Blyth Festival Theatre within Indigenous space on Canada’s 150th birthday, and reveals federal, provincial, and local violences enacted on Indigenous people in this area. The Wilberforce Hotel by Sean Dixon spotlights the ghosts of the Wilberforce Settlement, Black settlers just outside London, Ontario, in the 1830s. Amal by MT Space is a collective creation about the Arab Spring in the early 2010s, and the ghosts of the migrants’ ancestors that they attempt to bring with them to their new home in Kitchener, Ontario. |
• Izuu Nwankwọ, “From Lagos with Love: Inua Ellams’ Three Sisters’ Garbing of Chekhov in Danshiki”
| This paper explores Inua Ellams’ innovative transposition of Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters into a Nigerian setting by taking the place and matter of action from pre-revolutionary Russia to late 1960s Nigeria, shortly before the Nigerian-Biafran War. Ellams’ Three Sisters was staged in Toronto to high acclaim, becoming part of the meagre, albeit emergent Canada-Africa theatre connections. My examination of the play is centred around the motif of the danshiki—a long flowing gown worn by men in parts of Nigeria—used here to denotate the concurrent specificities of difference and sameness between Ellams’ and Chekhov’s texts, and how they figure in the imaginations of a multicultural North American performance setting. Consequently, this paper examines the universal themes of longing, displacement, and familial bonds that undergird the story structure for the initial Russian society, then the Nigerian environment in which the play is set, and for the multicultural Canadian audiences that saw the play staged at Soulpepper Theatre in March 2024. The methodological purview of the enquiry is hinged on performance and textual analyses coupled with perspectives drawn from performance and play adaptation theories as well as from postcolonial and decolonial studies. Through comparative interrogation of character, language, and particularities of staging, this paper posits Ellams’ Three Sisters as one that enriches Chekhov’s by eliciting newer epistemes and ways of seeing, in turn making the text more relevant and poignant for contemporary audiences regardless of whether they live in Canada or anywhere else. |
Biographies
Sungwon Cho
| Sungwon Cho (He/They) is a PhD Candidate at York University’s Department of Social Anthropology and a theatre practitioner with a focus in directing. His research interests include food cultures, diaspora and transnational studies and experimental performance mediums. |
Taylor Marie Graham
Izuu Nwankwọ
| Izuu Nwankwọ is an assistant professor at CDTPS, University of Toronto. He is a theatre scholar, teacher, playwright, and essayist whose research interests revolve around African and African diaspora theatre, performances, and popular culture. He has researched particularly taboo, self-censorship, and the limits of humour in African (diaspora) stand-up and online humour acts. |
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Break/Pause – 15 minutes
Panel: Methodologies of Research Creation
Open Paper PanelLocation: Zoom Room A
Online/En-Ligne
CATR
Event Details and Description
Online/En Ligne
Date: Tuesday, May 27 / Mardi 27 Mai
Location: Zoom Room A / Salle Zoom A
Time: 12:15 – 1:45pm EST / 12h15 – 13h45 HAE
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/8075386377?pwd=QGMSB3uhyUxwIbvOIzkUanoMoqRkOX.1
• Francesca Marini, “‘No Archive without Outside’: Embodied Archives and Autobiographical Performance”
| In Archive Fever, Jacques Derrida writes: “There is no archive without a place of consignation, without a technique of repetition, and without a certain exteriority. No archive without outside.” This quote can be applied to performance and performers, viewed as embodied archives. In this paper, I address the conference’s theme of interiority, and these topics: “the relationship between interiority and embodiment,” and “identity work and the performance of self.” I analyze works by Sigmund Freud, Jacques Derrida, Diana Taylor (The Archive and the Repertoire, and “Save As”) and other authors. Based on this analysis, I create a framework for understanding artists as embodied archives. I specifically examine autobiographical performance, in which artists use the creative process to manifest their “interior” (ideas, values, life experiences, memories, thoughts, feelings, trauma…) via the “exterior act” of performance. I apply this framework to Spalding Gray’s Swimming to Cambodia. I compare the 1987 movie version to the 2002 live version that I witnessed in Los Angeles, which sadly revealed the artist’s suffering at the time (Gray died by suicide in 2004). Gray’s work is an example of how artists use the “exterior act” of performance to convey meaning and invite audiences into their “interior.” The resulting bond may have lasting effects on the audience. This paper concludes with a brief discussion of future steps, to further develop and apply the framework presented. |
• Shabnam Sukhdev, “Practice Makes: An Iterative Approach to Developing Research (Creation) Methodology”
| My paper explores the role of iterative research methodologies in understanding performance, with a focus on identity and embodiment. It complicates the interplay between interiority and embodiment, revealing a dynamic relationship that challenges traditional dichotomies of inner thought and outward expression. Drawing on Tim Ingold’s exploration of “lines” as emergent pathways shaped through interaction (2007), the essay considers how cycles of experimentation, reflection, and adjustment, much like desire lines that emerge over time, can illuminate the dynamic interplay between interiority and embodiment. Building on Natalie Loveless’s argument that research-creation generates knowledge through creative practice (2019), the essay explores how iterative methodologies position artistic processes as integral to understanding identity and performance. It also interrogates how these practices help bridge the gap between the transient nature of live performance and the permanence of recorded mediums. How might technological tools transform our understanding and documentation of embodied practices without diminishing the immediacy and intimacy of live performance? By exploring how performers negotiate these tensions, the essay highlights how Judith Butler’s concept of performativity (1990) – as (gender) identity formed through repeated acts – resonates with iterative research. Finally, the essay considers pedagogical implications, asking: How can iterative research, informed by Loveless’s research-creation framework and technological interventions, guide the teaching of performance, encouraging both creative exploration and critical reflection? Blending traditional practices with innovative approaches, this paper constructs a framework for capturing and studying the ephemeral while expanding possibilities for knowledge creation in the field. |
• Sarah Waisvisz, “Creating and Collaborating on the Edge (of the River): Symbiosis/Symbiose in Action”
| My paper will give an overview and a state-of-the project reflection on a project that is “liminal” in many ways. As a theatre artist, I find myself working at the edge of my own comfort zone as I seek to navigate a nature-based, bilingual, community arts project with two visual artists who live in different cities and countries (Ottawa Canada and Paris France). First conceived of just before the Pandemic, then moving to online meetings, then eventually to an in-person residency in Ottawa in the summer of 2024, Team Symbiose / Symbiosis is still hanging on, sometimes just by a thread, to our united idea to work together to explore the tension between the urban and the natural worlds, revel in experiences of nature, and to encourage life-long stewardship of the natural world. Symbiose / Symbiosis engages with the current critical climate emergency by inspiring love and awe for the natural world and underlining our role in protecting it, with a focus on liminal environments where nature meets urban development. Our planned capstone project is an immersive artistic experience which will invite participants into close relationship with the river. As they walk, cycle, roll, or otherwise ambulate along a designated accessible route on the Pasāpikahigani Zībī – Rideau River, participants will encounter art installations, growing gardens, site-specific theatre performances, teach-ins, and practical workshops about how to live in good relationship with the natural world. My presentation for CATR will offer an account of our progress so far, including an attempt to garden with preschoolers; our imperfect engagement with local Indigenous elders; how motherhood changed my approach to time; and the challenges I face as I try to make theatre magic happen with visual artists and community members who don’t necessarily work in my way, but with whom I want to be in good relation. |
Biographies
Francesca Marini
| Dr. Francesca Marini (she/her) is an Associate Professor at Texas A&M University, College of Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts. Her research focuses on performing arts documentation and archiving, and on theatre history. She teaches courses on aesthetics of activism, devised theatre, applied theatre, and arts archiving and documentation. |
Shabnam Sukhdev
| Shabnam is a multimedia artist, educator, and performance scholar. Grounded in community-engaged scholarship, her interdisciplinary research explores the dynamic interplay between individuals, families, and societies through sociological, psychological, and critical disability frameworks. Her SSHRC-funded inquiry investigates the role of spontaneous performance in fostering authentic connection and communication. |
Sarah Waisvisz
| As a mixed-race and multi-lingual theatre artist, writer, and scholar, Sarah Waisvisz understands personal and professional liminality. She has created many works for the theatre, both for the stage and beyond, and loves making magic out of nothing with like-minded collaborators. |
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Roundtable: Staying with the Trouble in the Climate Crisis: Performance, Pedagogy, and the Liminal
RoundtableLocation: Zoom Room B
Online/En Ligne
CATR
Event Details and Description
Online/En Ligne
Date: Tuesday, May 27 / Mardi 27 Mai
Location: Zoom Room B / Salle Zoom B
Time: 12:15 – 1:45pm EST / 12h15 – 13h45 HAE
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/5324702280?pwd=yuo077u9YJNihv59FvXxbosHNeVpvv.1
• Session co-organizers:
Christine Balt and Kathleen Gallagher
| This 90-minute roundtable session invites participants to grapple with the ‘discontents’ of teaching, learning, and creating in our climate emergency. Reckoning with an increasingly more emphatic turn towards authoritarianism in political life, and what Naomi Klein (2019) has termed ‘climate barbarism,’ we consider what it means to “stay on the right side of an increasingly thin line… between wellness and malaise” (Gallagher and Balt 1) and ask what performance can offer as a modality for living well (enough) in the midst of our myriad social, political, and ecological global discontents. Guiding the conversation will be the recently published (October 2024) edited collection, Global Climate Education and its Discontents: Using Drama to Forge a New Way. This book takes ‘discontent’ – restlessness, vexation, unease – as a productive disposition for troubling accepted, simple, and ‘solutions-oriented’ climate narratives. Opting to “stay with the trouble” (Haraway, 2016), the book proposes that performance can orient us towards more complex, emergent, and unsettled epistemological approaches as we live and learn together in a crisis. To that end, the roundtable will commence with a brief introduction to the book, and then engage with the following provocations: • What can performance do to augment our capacity for, and experience of, agency in the climate crisis? • How can performance help us “live the contradictions” (Gallagher and Balt 1) between wellness and malaise in these times? • What can ‘liminality,’ proffered by Victor Turner’s (1980) thesis on performance, transformation and the social, offer as a way to avoid the rush to simplified solutions and uncritical utopian ideals in climate performance and pedagogy? Participants interested in the many ‘discontents’ of performance in the climate crisis are welcome to join the roundtable and engage with these and other questions in a lively and collegial setting. |
Biographies
Christine Balt
| Christine Balt is a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Toronto. She is interested in ecological performance and finding ‘collective wellbeing’ in the drama classroom. Winner of CATR’s 2024 Richard Plant Award, she has published articles in Theatre Research in Canada, Research in Drama Education, Studies in Theatre and Performance and The International Journal for Qualitative Studies in Education. |
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Praxis session/session pratique: Acting Curriculum to Travel Across Interior and Exterior Realities and Liminal States of Being
Praxis SessionLocation: Zoom Room C
Online/En Ligne
CATR
Event Details and Description
Online/En Ligne
Date: Tuesday, May 27 / Mardi 27 Mai
Location: Zoom Room C / Salle Zoom C
Time: 12:15 – 1:45pm EST / 12h15 – 13h45 HAE
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/2520107866?pwd=Z7R43MTNhjgQvzQPTQjuzkaQYq7H91.1
• Kara Flanagan and Joe McCoy, “Acting Curriculum to Travel Across Interior and Exterior Realities and Liminal States of Being”
| The practice of acting moves between interior and exterior realities and engages liminal states of being. However, working across such large terrain requires the actor to have a tremendous capacity for applying curriculum with refined introspection and extrospection skills. Here’s the problem: acting education is predominantly an oral tradition, which largely neglects the opportunity for students to engage in documenting their approach and challenges students in recalling vast amounts of instruction from memory every time they create a new character. This workshop focuses on new curriculum and pedagogy for training actors; excerpts from a forthcoming acing book will be shared and workshopped. New acting terms will be presented and put into context for teaching. The primary audience of this book are first year acting students in post-secondary programs and this book also serves as a reference for instructors. With the diversity in learning needs and with the authors’ experiences working with students with a range of abilities and disabilities, visual templates are often very useful to facilitate students’ learning, improve their work habits, and provide a sense of agency in their work, which is extremely important, especially after they graduate and begin working as a professional. Many of these worksheets were created over a 10-year period and have been effective as a practical approach for acting and scene study. Acting—as a technique, an art form, and an experience—can be transformative. It is our belief that this transformation can only take place when an actor’s creative process is focused. |
Biographies
Kara Flanagan
| Kara Flanagan is a PhD candidate (Education Studies Program) in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Faculty of Education, University of Victoria with a research focus on acting and music education. Kara is a co-founder of an acting conservatory, the Victoria Academy of Dramatic Arts, regulated by British Columbia’s Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills. |
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Break/Pause – 15 minutes
Curated panel /Panel organisé: Inside Looking Out: Mobilizing Community-Driven Research Methods across Staging Better Futures, Governance, Ethics, Platforms
Curated PanelLocation: Zoom Room A
Online/En Ligne
CATR
Event Details and Description
Online/En Ligne
Date: Tuesday, May 27 / Mardi 27 Mai
Location: Zoom Room A / Salle Zoom A
Time: 2:00 – 3:30pm EST / 14h00 – 15h30 HAE
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/8075386377?pwd=QGMSB3uhyUxwIbvOIzkUanoMoqRkOX.1
• Sunita Nigam, “Governing Better Futures: Piloting New Approaches to Equitable Governance in Academia and Beyond”
• Jeff Gagnon, “Community Driven Research at SBF/MSMA: Scaling Up Relational Ethics”
• Luciano Frizzera, “Archiving Better Futures: Platform Governance and Data Sovereignty in Community-Driven Archive Collections”
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Event Details and Description
Location: Zoom Room B / Salle Zoom B
Time: 2:00 – 3:30pm EST / 14h00 – 15h30 HAE
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/5324702280?pwd=yuo077u9YJNihv59FvXxbosHNeVpvv.1
• Megan De Roover and Kim McLeod, “A Space of Possibility: Theatre’s Place in the Landscape of Experiential Learning”
| Experiential Learning (EL) can be construed as a liminal space, bridging the classroom and the community, the academic and the professional, the personal and the public. As EL becomes increasingly valued and required within institutions, we believe that theatre offers a unique and valuable perspective as it already champions what is now identified as high-quality EL in meaningful ways. Yet, within the scholarship of EL, theatre is often overlooked despite this natural affinity. We aim to highlight the crucial role theatre plays in EL pedagogy and make visible how this already robust practice can have a larger impact on the academic community and beyond by highlighting its role in liminal contexts. Theatre has the opportunity to be recognized as a leader in curricular EL because of the practices, methods, and knowledges embedded in the discipline. Using examples of two EL projects involving theatre students, non-theatre students and community collaborators, we will outline various possibilities and challenges for how theatre programs might influence institutional approaches to EL going forward. Both projects demonstrate how skills developed in theatre programs can be deployed in interdisciplinary EL projects centered on knowledge mobilization. In addition, both provided avenues for students to work outside their main disciplines and connect with the larger community beyond the university. While recognizing the potential for theatre approaches and skills to innovate EL models, we also point to conversations within theatre and performance studies around care, consent and ethical engagement with communities that might challenge some existing approaches to EL within universities. |
• Melanie Dreyer-Lude, “From Outsider Artists to Insider Specialists: How Shifting the Message Can Help Save Theatre Programs”
| Budgets cuts across the country are reducing student access to arts and humanities programs. Seen by many as optional, when a fiscal crisis hits, administrators and board members choose to jettison those programs that tend to underperform on the following metrics: 1. Number of students per class, 2. Number of majors, and 3. Full-time employment in the field within a few years of graduation. Theatre programs in Canada tend to fall short on all three of these performance metrics due to the specific characteristics of the discipline. It is not possible to use an Art for Art’s sake strategy when arguing for the value of theatre education. What we need to do is flip the script. The transferable skills a theatre education provides are essential for employability in the contemporary job market. By getting outside of our departments and classrooms and adding more educational opportunities and workshops for those outside of the discipline, we can demonstrate the clear value of our educational stream to those who live and work outside of our normal spheres of influence. By teaching engineering students to use creative problem-solving, medical students to improve their interpersonal skills, and business students to shine in front of an audience, we can shift our status in the academy from a fringe specialization to an essential learning track that will help make all students more employable. This paper will offer specific strategies for helping make theatre programs essential to all students on campus. |
Biographies
Megan De Roover
| Megan De Roover is an Educational Developer with a Ph.D. in theatre and performance. She supports experiential learning, curriculum design, scholarship, and community-engaged learning in the Office of Teaching and Learning at the University of Guelph. |
Kimberley McLeod
Kimberley McLeod is an Associate Professor in the School of Theatre, English and Creative Writing at the University of Guelph and an Associate Editor of Canadian Theatre Review.
Melanie Dreyer-Lude
| Melanie Dreyer-Lude specializes in intercultural and multilingual theatre projects. Her current research focuses on locating, archiving, analyzing, and adapting traditional stories from small villages in Uganda. Her most recent book, The Adaptable Degree, offers statistical evidence for the employability of theatre graduates across all work sectors. |
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Roundtable: Staging Our Voices: Indigenous Language Reawakening through Theatre
RoundtableLocation: Zoom Room C
Online/En Ligne
CATR
Event Details and Description
Location: Zoom Room C / Salle Zoom C
Time: 2:00 – 3:30pm EST / 14h00 – 15h30 HAE
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/2520107866?pwd=Z7R43MTNhjgQvzQPTQjuzkaQYq7H91.1
• Session co-organizers:
Amanda Wager, Laura Cranmer, Kirsten Sadeghi-Yekta, and Tara Morris,
| In Canada geographical categories pinned First Nations populations to defined areas, subject to federal laws seemingly sprung whole cloth from the settler imagination of the alien other informed by scientific racism theories of the early colonial era. Part and parcel of the colonial agenda was the objective of erasing the cultural identity of Canada’s diverse First Nations through a ban on speaking the great diversity of languages in residential schools. The Canadian Association for Theatre Research conference theme of ‘interiority in general’ spurs thoughts of how Western theatre tradition might serve as a door opener to the liminal space of re-learning one’s language; that is simultaneously embodied, bound up and overlayed with layers of shame learned from historical colonial institutions. The Western theatre tradition, writ large, offers that open door through which Indigenous language learners/actors step to create a delimited space to explore together and creatively center, elevate, and express their language learning. In this Round Table titled: “Staging our voices: Indigenous Language reawakening through Theatre” that brings together students of theatre, students of Indigenous languages, seasoned academics who also mentor Indigenous scholars using theatre to reawaken their own languages will discuss the ways theatre has emerged as a transformative medium for cultural expression and intergenerational learning. |
Biographies
Laura Cranmer
| Laura Cranmer was born to Pearl Weir of Old Masset, David Cranmer of the ‘Namgis First Nation in Alert Bay, and raised by her grandparents, Chief Dan Cranmer and Agnes Cranmer. Dr. Laura Cranmer is a retired professor of Indigenous/Xwulmuxw Studies Department at Vancouver Island University. |
Kirsten Sadeghi-Yekta
| Kirsten is an Associate Professor in the Theatre Department at the University of Victoria. She is currently working on a SSHRC Insight Grant focussing on global ways we can integrate theatre as a tool for languages and language reawakening in primary schools. |
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Break/Pause – 15 minutes
Panel: Community-Engaged Art and Accessibility
Open Paper PanelLocation: Zoom Room A
Online/En Ligne
CATR
Event Details and Description
Online/En Ligne
Date: Tuesday, May 27 / Mardi 27 Mai
Location: Zoom Room A / Salle Zoom A
Time: 3:45 – 5:15pm EST / 15h45 – 17h15 HAE
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/8075386377?pwd=QGMSB3uhyUxwIbvOIzkUanoMoqRkOX.1
• Julia Henderson and John Jack Paterson, “Ageing in the Performing Arts Test Kitchen: A Performance Analysis of Anti-Ageist Active Access Design”
| The number and quality of opportunities for theatre professionals (performers, directors, stage managers, designers etc.) diminishes as they age, limiting their opportunities for creative expression, their ability to sustain an active and meaningful career, and their opportunities for income and associated benefits such as extended health care coverage. Professionals with disabilities can likewise encounter barriers to access and participation. The intersection of ageism and ableism is still an emerging area of study. This paper’s authors developed the community-engaged, Canada Council-funded intergenerational Creatus Project to explore these issues, holding that creative approaches have the potential to challenge existing ageist and ableist structures and practices, and open up opportunities for old(er) professionals and performers living with disabilities, and to create intergenerational connections which have the potential to shift the industry over time. This paper represents a performance analysis of a public sharing event devised by the Creatus Project’s Playwriting and Creation working group. “Ageing in the Performing Arts Test Kitchen” was presented at Vancouver’s Performing Arts Lodge. Using observations of the production, audience feedback, and participant brief reflections, we analyse how the performance employed creative accessibility strategies (including virtual participation), and shared content about ageism, ableism, and potential creative solutions related to design, directing, rehearsing and production, playwriting and devising, and institutional structures within the industry (e.g. unions, grant structures). We argue that the performance highlighted key issues related to the little-studied intersections of ageism and ableism in theatre, furthered practices of accessibility and inclusion, and foregrounded the importance of intergenerational approaches. |
• Willow Martin, “Internally Motivated Performance Theory as Defined Through an Autistic Performance Tradition”
| As Western Performance traditions continue to develop, predominant methodologies remain rooted in the Aristotelian theories of realism. His central notion of the “Well-Balanced” narrative is rooted in its substantiation through an established singular “Real” by which it defines its credulity. In order to establish this singular “Real”, the tradition characterizes reality through an external, essentially visual, lens. In doing so, the tenets of the practice become enmeshed in empirical rigidity, and therefore ostracize any group outside the normative experience. As a result, contemporary performance traditions isolate diverse experiences, and when attempting to portray these realities, reinforce harmful stereotypes which characterize traits through an external perspective. In defining neuro-diverse traditions, this aspect of practice becomes essential, as much of the process of identity building, and therein large parts of what Aristotle labels the plot structure, happen internally. Therefore, large parts of neuro-diverse narratives become obscured from histories, or remain entirely untold. This paper asserts a claim to an Autistic performance tradition through conversation with the seminal Aristotelian text, Poetics, as well as excerpts from Plato’s Republic. Performing a cross-examination with the journey of “Norma Khan”, the Autistic deuteragonist of the animated show Dead End: Paranormal Park, this paper questions and problematizes the history and trajectory of realist performance traditions. As Autistic identities are largely defined by “co-productions” of mimesis (as characterized by Katrina Dunn): this paper centralizes the idea of hybrid, internally motivated, uniquely embodied sensorial definitions of “Real”, and thereby establishes the foundation for an Autistic performance tradition. |
• Jessica Watkin, Macy Siu, Leslie Ting, and Blythe Haynes, “Anchoring Accessibility: Developing Meaningful Accessibility in Theatre Practice”
| In the past ten years there has been a growing desire to incorporate accessibility and Disabled audiences and artists into Canadian theatre, but not many tools to achieve this goal. Many artists and theatre organizations have good intentions, but there remains a gap between that desire and the actual practicalities of developing good relationships with Disabled audiences and artists through accessibility. We suspect that to do accessibility well, and to be in good relationship with Disabled artists and audiences, artists require a meaningful engagement with accessibility in their creative process and practices. The Anchoring Accessibility Team (Jessica Watkin, Leslie Ting, Macy Siu, and Blythe Haynes) have developed a practise-based research project engaging with artist groups who are interested in cultivating accessibility practice into their creative process. Anchoring Accessibility has two distinct avenues: the research about how to foster trust and empower artists to develop meaningful accessibility practices individually and as groups; and a protocol that offers artists the tools to engage in more meaningful accessibility practices. Based in current accessibility practices, protocols, expectations, and limitations, Anchoring Accessibility takes on the labour of developing and fine-tuning a protocol – a collection of activities that an artist group can do to surface knowledge around access and identify gaps and goals for their processes. This presentation at CATR 2025 would provide an overview ofoutline the research process and development of the Anchoring Accessibility protocol, outline our findings and learnings, and give us space to discuss some of the current questions we are thinking about in relation to our current work and future iterations of the protocol. |
Biographies
Julia Henderson
| Julia Henderson is an Assist. Prof. in the Dept. of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy at University of British Columbia, Canada. She is a registered OT and holds a PhD in Theatre. Her research with older adults uses arts-based methods, especially theatre, to redress cultural ageism and promote citizenship. Julia has published in ACH, JADT, TRiC/RTAC, and RiDE, and has recent chapters in Aging Studies and Ecocriticism, The Palgrave Handbook of Literature and Aging, and Pandemic Play. |
Willow Martin
| Willow Martin (She/They) is an MA student at the Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies at the University of Toronto. Willow’s research approaches questions of intersectionality and accessibility in performance contexts. Additionally, Willow works as a theatre practitioner, in a capacity as playwright, performer, producer, access consultant, and dramaturg. |
Jessica Watkin
| Dr. Jess Watkin (she/they) finished her PhD at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies with research focusing on Disability Dramaturgy, care, and performance. She is a blind artist, scholar, facilitator, educator, rug hooker, activist, and feminist. Her book Interdependent Magic: Disability Performance in Canada is the first anthology of Disability plays in Canada.. |
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Panel: Performance and Community in South America
Open Paper PanelLocation: Zoom Room B
Online/En Ligne
CATR
Event Details and Description
Location: Zoom Room B / Salle Zoom B
Time: 3:45 – 5:15pm EST / 15h45 – 17h15 HAE
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/5324702280?pwd=yuo077u9YJNihv59FvXxbosHNeVpvv.1
• Sarah Ashford Hart and Janneth Aldana, “Community Theatre in Colombia: Origins and Trajectories”
| There has been renewed national interest in socially-engaged arts since Colombia’s 2016 peace agreement, but the legacy of community theatre is largely ignored in pedagogy and scholarship. This article considers origins and trajectories of Colombian community theatre starting from the 1960s. While methods such as Nuevo Teatro and Theatre of the Oppressed have come to dominate the Latin American theatre cannon, we show how the influential ideas of Augusto Boal and Enrique Buenaventura were shaped through dialogue and exchange with collages who are much less known. We examine debates from the 70s about whether “teatro popular” was by or for “the people’, which have evolved into a contemporary commitment to working in community (from inside rather than outside). We consider key international encounters that occurred at regional festivals like the Festival de Manizales, which was a laboratory for the development of an anti-hegemonic Latin American theatre. Despite the extrajudicial persecution of “leftist” artists carried out across the region during the 80s, aggressive commercialization, and persistent institutional amnesia regarding creative practices of resistance, we find that “popular” theatre has endured by adapting to changing (now neoliberal) contexts, becoming “community theatre” in the 90s. We highlight the work of three active Colombian groups with long-term trajectories: Teatro Experimental de Fontibón (Bogotá), Nuestra Gente de Medellín, and Esquina Latina (Cali). All show a commitment to transgenerational collaboration and have proven resilient in contexts that are often life-or-death. This brings us to a Latin American understanding of applied theatre based in building affective connections and repairing torn social fabrics. |
• Mika Lillit Lior, “Barravento: Liminal Tensions between Interior and Exterior Landscapes of Gendered Authority in an Afro-Brazilian Ritual Performance”
| Barravento, which translates literally to a turning wind or wind that knocks you over, is a choreographic movement as well as signal of an oncoming entity in the traditionally woman-dominated Afro-Brazilian ritual matrix of Candomblé. This paper takes the barravento as a departure point for addressing the liminal tensions between internal and public negotiations of gender and sexuality at a religious compound in Bahia, Candomblé’s formative region in northeastern Brazil. Through an in-depth look at choreographies of invocation and spirit embodiment at an unofficial Candomblé ceremony held at the suburban Candomblé, Ilê Axé Opo Aganju, this paper presentation explores the barravento as a key to apprehending complex, non-Western constructions of masculinity, human and non-human agency, and religious orthodoxy in the Afro-Bahian world. Specifically, I probe the tensions between interior landscapes and intimacies between divinities and their devotees, on one hand, and exteriorized politics of authority at the temple. As part of my larger project focusing on four different Bahian Candomblé sites, this research approaches choreography as both a source of insight and methodological approach to intervene in dominant representations of Africana religious performance as unidirectional processes of ‘possession.’ Rather, as I demonstrate, spirit embodiments constitute movement-oriented, reciprocal relationships that blur the binary opposition of interiority and exteriority and can serve to both affirm and destabilize established configurations of power. |
Biographies
Sarah Ashford
| Dr. Sarah Ashford Hart is Assistant Professor of Theatre & Performance at the College of William & Mary. She is a socially-engaged performance practitioner/scholar from a Canadian-Venezuelan-American background. She completed her BA in Theatre at Barnard College, Columbia University, her MA in Devised Theatre at Dartington College of Arts, Falmouth University, and her PhD in Performance Studies at the University of California, Davis. |
Mika Lillit Lior
| Interdisciplinary dance artist-scholar Mika Lior researches ritual choreographies and their political valences in Bahia, Brazil. She is a Postdoctoral Fellow at York University’s School of the Arts and holds a PhD in Culture and Performance from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her creative practices include samba, capoeira, dance-film and contact improvisation. |
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Roundtable: Applying Theatrical Training in Pedagogical Development
RoundtableLocation: Zoom Room C
Online/En Ligne
CATR
Event Details and Description
Location: Zoom Room C / Salle Zoom C
Time: 3:45pm – 5:15pm EST / 15h45 -17h15 HAE
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/2520107866?pwd=Z7R43MTNhjgQvzQPTQjuzkaQYq7H91.1
• Session co-organizers:
Cameron Crookston, Lisa Aikman, and Matt Jones
| This round table will examine how elements of theatre training and practice can be applied to pedagogical and teacher training contexts beyond the world of theatre and invite theatre artists in the academy to consider how their own skills and training can be transferred across disciplinary boundaries in education. Participants will be educational developers and faculty members with theatre backgrounds currently developing pedagogical and training workshops, programs, and initiatives that draw on theatre skills. Topics may include using new play dramaturgy techniques in feedback and assessment in written work, stage management as a model for academic service and administration, and improvisation in training teaching assistants and first-time course instructors. The session will begin with five-minute lightning talks from participants based on their current pedagogical work. The second half of the session will consist of a moderated discussion between panelists and audience members who may ask questions or offer insights into these projects. At present, we have three members from an inter-institutional theatre pedagogy working group (UBC, U of T, Brock, TMU, and Concordia) who are interested in participating in this round table. We will also invite three additional participants via an open call circulated to CATR members and the broader instructional design community. We are particularly interested in inviting graduate students and/or early career instructors who may be able to speak to their current and recent experience in pedagogical training and development with respect to theatre and performance training. |
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Event Details and Description
Online/En Ligne
Date: Tuesday, May 27 / Mardi 27 Mai
Location: Zoom Room A
5:15–5:30pm EST / 17h15–17h30 HAE
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/8075386377?pwd=QGMSB3uhyUxwIbvOIzkUanoMoqRkOX.1
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Tuesday, June 24
Event Details and Description
2:00–5:00pm CST / 14h00–17h00 HNC
Bruno Room (Atlas° Hotel)
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Event Details and Description
Date: Tuesday, June 24 / Mardi 24 Juin
Location: The Knotted Thistle at the Atlas Hotel
Time: 6:30 – 9:30pm CST / 18h30 – 21h30 HNC
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Wednesday, June 25
Event Details and Description
Date: Wednesday, June 25 / Mecredi 25 Juin
Location: Spirit Room, Atlas Hotel
Time: 8:00am – 5:00pm CST / 8h00 – 17h00 HNC
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Event Details and Description
Date: Wednesday, June 25 / Mecredi 25 Juin
Location: Bruno Room (Atlas Hotel)
Time: 8:00 am – 5:00pm CST / 8h00 – 17h00 HNC
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June 25, 2025
08:00 – 09:00
Coffee and Refreshments/Café et collation
Location: Imperial Room, Atlas Hotel
Event Details and Description
8:00–9:00am CST / 8h00–9h00 HNC
Location: Imperial Room, Atlas Hotel
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Welcoming Remarks and Keynote Address – /Mot de bienvenue et conférence invitee – Moira Day
Keynotes Welcome EventLocation: Imperial Room, Atlas Hotel
CATR
Event Details and Description
Location: Imperial Room, Atlas Hotel
(Welcoming Remarks) Time: 9:30 – 10:30am CST / 9h30 – 10h30 HNC
(Keynote Address) Time: 10:30am – 12:00pm CST / 10h30 – 12h00 HNC
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Break/Pause – 30 minutes
Lunch/Dîner sponsored by/ commandité par: Playwrights Canada Press
Book/Journal LaunchLocation: Imperial Room, Atlas Hotel
CATR
Event Details and Description
Date: Wednesday, June 25 / Mecredi 25 Juin
Location: Imperial Room, Atlas Hotel
Time: 12:30 – 2:00pm CST / 12h30 – 14h00 HNC
Sponsored by / Commandité par: Playwrights Canada Press
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Break/Pause – 15 minutes
Open Rehearsal/Répétition ouverte au public: Weyburn, 1959
Live PerformanceLocation: Shu Box , University of Regina
CATR
Event Details and Description
Location: Shu Box (Riddell Centre, University of Regina)
Time: 2:00 – 5:30pm CST / 14h00 – 17h30 HNC
• Jonathan Seinen, Arthur Milner, c 1959 (open rehearsal)
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Event Details and Description
Date: Wednesday, June 25 / Mecredi 25 Juin
Location: Siver Room, Atlas Hotel
Time: 2:15 – 3:45pm CST / 14h15 – 15h45 HNC
• T. Erin Gruber, “Liminal Scenographies in Solo- Performance”
| Imaginative scenic environments ask an audience to engage deeply with the inner landscape of their own experience and rely less on literal scenic context. In solo performer productions one actor becomes the focal point for an entire audience and this actor’s ability to embody a multitude of characters and experiences often becomes the defining feature of such a performance. Visual dramaturgical practices offer support for these individual performers and enrich these productions. Designers, directors, and playwrights collaborate in the visual world to create emotional and highly personal landscapes on which audiences can project their own lived experiences. By weaving such a container, a solo performer production can be transformed into a breathing co-created experience which subverts audience expectations. Using three case studies from my practice of original Canadian productions I will share the techniques and dramaturgical considerations which have enabled me and my collaborators to build sophisticated emotional spaces which move beyond the literal. Whether it’s including the presence of a character’s lost mother as a link to her buried cultural birth-right, bringing the voice of the landscape into dialogic relation with the onstage characters, or conjuring the heated memories of childhood to create a Middle Eastern spark within a Canadian blizzard, I will demonstrate how liminal scenic environments conjured through the integration of projected media and solo performers can allow the intimate exploration of deeply personal topics and make them emotionally accessible for audiences. These case studies deal intimately with the intersection of land, identity, and (prairie) culture. |
• Hope McIntyre, “Tearing Down Walls Between Inside and Outside: Theatre in Rural Prison Settings”
| The Walls to Bridges program is a unique national initiative which brings students from campus into carceral settings to learn alongside incarcerated students. We refer to them as outside students and inside students to negate any us versus them mentality. In this way everyone is a co-learner in the space. In relation to the conference theme, the definition of inside and outside takes on additional meaning in a situation where certain individuals are often excluded from participation. Prisons are also intentionally removed from urban centres and separated geographically from access to participation in society. I teach at Stony Mountain Institution a 20-minute drive from Winnipeg and the Women’s Correctional Centre 10 minutes from the perimeter of Winnipeg but clearly outside the city limits. Courses such as Applied Theatre and Playwriting, have been characterized by the students as life changing. This is due to the experience of learning and creating theatre in this unique environment. Exploring other uses of theatre in prisons in Canada is part of current research work to find a model to sustain ongoing theatre practices within the reality of correctional centres located in a rural prairie location. This paper will present information on the work to remove barriers and create a liminal space where theatre is used to bring together those generally separated by both physical barriers as well as social bias. How do we create an oasis of creativity within a political institution? How can theatre and theatrical learning create a brave space where divisions are dismantled? |
• Sara Schroeter and j skelton, “Seen Elsewhere: Queer and Trans Identities as a Place of Liminal Belonging on the Prairie Stage”
| There is of course queer and trans theatre here, in Saskatchewan. There are drag shows, an Imperial Court, stage performances such as Creepy Boys (2024) and artists such as The Care Bois who use the whole public buildings as their stage (2023). Art Babayants’ multilingual play Bros / Les gars / Ախպերներ was staged by La troupe du jour in 2022, the same year Sâkêwêwak the Indigenous Storytelling festival’s chosen theme was two-spirit identities. There is an insider quality to the queer and trans theatre of here – we are telling our stories to each other, insisting on our own belonging, comforting ourselves. And, there are queer and trans stories of here that are perhaps too big for here. Too queer, too trans, too ready to tell a prairie audience about itself. Theatre that to be successful becomes multiply outsider theatre, telling queer and trans prairie stories to audiences of mixed sexual orientations and gender identities in the metropolis (places like Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, Montreal). Plays like Ayache’s The Hooves Belonged to the Deer, that debuted at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre, in 2023, telling the tale of a queer Muslim boy on the prairies. Queerness, transness, and prairie already hold each other in tension. There is already a liminality there, always, already on the horizon (Muños, 2009), always already becoming other. This paper will explore this tension, the challenges of needing to travel elsewhere to see queer and trans prairie stores writ large, the possibilities for critique that come with distance, and the possibilities for queer and trans futurity here. |
Biographies
T. Erin Gruber
| T. Erin Gruber is an award-winning set, lighting, costume and projected media designer. She is an Assistant Professor in Theatre Design (Lighting) at the University of Alberta and works professionally across Canada and around the world. In June 2019 her work was featured in the Canadian National Exhibition at the Prague Quadrennial. |
Hope McIntyre
| Hope McIntyre is an award winning playwright/director and Associate Professor at the University of Winnipeg. She has a BFA in performance and an MFA in directing. She was Artistic Director of Sarasvàti Productions for 22 years. She is a certified Walls to Bridges instructor teaching theatre in carceral settings. |
Sara Schroeter
| Sara Schroeter is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Arts Education program in the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina, where she teaches drama, art, and anti-racist education classes in French and English. |
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Event Details and Description
Date: Wednesday, June 25 / Mecredi 25 Juin
Location: Golden Room, Atlas Hotel
Time: 2:15 – 3:45pm CST / 14h15 – 15h45 HNC
• Jenn Boulay, “Performing Gymnastics: Breaking the Silence of the Multiple Versions of the Gymnast”
| Not everything is as it seems in Women’s Artistic Gymnastics (WAG). While the sport is celebrated for its spectacular performances, with gymnasts flipping in dazzling leotards and striving for gold, behind the spectacle lies a system of stringent expectations defined by the Code of Points (CoP) and reinforced by coaches. These pressures compel athletes to perform a prescribed version of themselves that conforms to ideals of whiteness, heterosexuality, femininity, able-bodiedness, “mental toughness,” and the appearance of a healthy gymnast. The “perfect gymnast” ideal leaves no room for autonomy, and those who do not meet these standards face deductions from judges and often abusive reprimands from coaches. Although these enforced versions may help athletes succeed, I argue they are dangerous and harmful. The pressure to conform can fragment a gymnast’s sense of self, making it difficult to connect with their identity both within and outside the sport. Drawing on performance studies scholar Richard Schechner’s discussion of the various types of performance in Performance Studies: An Introduction, and Tobin Siebers’ concept of the ‘versions’ of disability—where disabled people often ‘pass’ as able-bodied to navigate an ableist world—I apply these frameworks to gymnastics to explore how athletes are pressured to perform narrow and damaging versions of themselves. Through (auto)ethnographic methods and discourse analysis, I examine how these versions are produced and their impact on gymnasts’ lives. I also discuss how toxic training environments, combined with abuse by coaches and medical professionals, force athletes to compete while injured, emotionally drained, and mentally unwell. This culture of fear and control demands that athletes embody the “perfect gymnast” at great personal cost, which is held up by the code. |
• Arash Isapour, “Interior Dissent, Exterior Conformity: Staging Liminal Masculinities in Itai Erdal’s Theatre”
| This paper examines how Israeli-Canadian theatre artist Itai Erdal’s autobiographical works This is Not a Conversation (2016) and Soldiers of Tomorrow (2023) negotiate the complex tension between interior resistance and exterior conformity in representing Middle Eastern masculinities. Through metatheatrical devices—breaking the fourth wall, role-playing, self-reflexive narration—and dramaturgical choices including minimalist staging, strategic use of personal artifacts, and embodied storytelling, Erdal creates a theatrical space where the boundaries between personal critique and public performance become productively unstable. Drawing on Erdal’s unique position as both insider and outsider—former IDF soldier turned critical artist—the paper analyzes how his staging choices reflect the tension between belonging and exclusion. His placement of performers, use of military uniforms as memory objects, and carefully orchestrated movement sequences reveal theatre’s capacity to both challenge and reinforce cultural stereotypes. While his theatrical techniques successfully construct a nuanced portrayal of non-conformist Israeli masculinity, this achievement paradoxically comes at the expense of other masculine identities, which remain fixed in simplified exterior representations. The research demonstrates how contemporary Canadian intercultural theatre negotiates the complex interplay between personal resistance and collective conformity, contributing to broader discussions about representation, identity formation, and theatre’s role in challenging dominant narratives. |
• Ihuoma Okorie, “The In-Between Self: Exploring Interior and Exterior Spaces in The Cut Across”
| This paper examines how interior and exterior spaces inform the performance of identity in “The Cut Across”, a theatrical production staged at Bayero University Kano, Nigeria. It investigates the interplay of identity and spatial dynamics, drawing on Erving Goffman’s theory of identity performance, and the liminal tensions that distinguish these spaces. Using data from the performance of ” The Cut Across “, the study focuses on how the transition of the protagonists identity is influenced by spatial elements, providing insights into how interiority and exteriority shape identity work and the enactment of self. Grounded in a social constructivist framework, which posits that identity emerges through the social and cultural systems within which roles are performed, this study highlights the role of performance spaces in recognizing and reshaping the protagonists potential and agency. The findings reveal that these spatial dynamics contribute to transforming and challenging female identities in the play. The study concludes that identity has profound implications for interpersonal relationships, society, and culture. |
Biographies
Jenn Boulay
| Jenn is an emerging interdisciplinary performance artist/creator, playwright, performer, singer-songwriter, musician, theatre reviewer, and scholar. She holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts from the University of Toronto in Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies and a GrDip from Concordia University in Communication Studies. She is currently pursuing her MA at Concordia University in Media Studies. |
Arash Isapour
| A PhD Candidate in Theatre History at the University of Victoria, Arash Isapour examines theatrical narratives that challenge Middle Eastern masculinity stereotypes on Canadian stages. Following Jameson’s cultural analysis, his research explores how theatre functions within broader socioeconomic dynamics, combining performance, masculinity, and cultural studies to investigate identity representation. |
Ihuoma Okorie
| Ihuoma Okorie completed her Bachelor’s, master’s and Doctoral degree at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria Nigeria. She is presently a lecturer in the department of Theatre and Performing Arts, Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria. |
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Event Details and Description
Date: Wednesday, June 25 / Mecredi 25 Juin
Location: Hazel Room, Atlas Hotel
Time: 2:15 – 3:45pm CST / 14h15 – 15h45 HNC
• Leah Decter, “Remains: The Implicated Body, Collective Action and Stepping into Spaces of Monumental Absence-Presence”
| This paper discusses my performance, remains (2024), part of a series commissioned by Métis curator Erin Sutherland in which artists responded to the site in Kingston, Ontario where the John A. Macdonald statue stood until 2021. The reparative removal of this statue is significant in recognition of its damaging impact tied to projects of settler colonial violence Macdonald spearheaded, and his long-unquestioned position as a Canadian icon. However, the absence of such statues does not erase the harms they perpetuated, nor those caused by the figures they represent. Further, as this site demonstrates, everyday spaces are littered with referents of settler colonial whiteness that garner much less, if any, scrutiny, while often acting as “narratives of truth” that nonetheless inform policies, practices and beliefs. The third performance My third performance at this site, remains addresses the absence-presence of monuments after their removal and shines a light on less prominent trappings of settler colonial memory that linger, while implicating myself, as a white settler, in both. In this paper I consider through-lines of interior and exterior, and the affective potential of implicated embodiment and relational interaction within liminal spaces between performer, place and audience/participants. It also brings remains into conversation with works that engage with the John A. Macdonald statue in Regina and its absence, including Métis artist and writer David Garneau’s Dear John; Louis David Riel (2014) and settler artist Tomas Jonsson’s Stone in the Shoe (2021). |
• Fraser Stevens, “Performing Secrets”
| Secrets are, at their core, a performance of both something that is, and something that is not. They are imbued with theatricality–an individual pretends not to know something when they really do–while also being performative undertakings of repeat behaviour. Secrets might also be framed as instances of what Victor Turner refers to as ‘social drama’ and as interactions of a utopic theatre that bring groups together. Using a lends of Theatre/Archeology, I will analyze destroyed spaces of former residential schools and orphanages to argue for the case of reading secrets as theatrical undertakings. In doing so I hope to show how theatre can, once again, be found at the in the liminal plane of both being true and not true in the same instance, and thus demonstrate that theatrical readings can help us edge closer to the truth in instances where truth evades us. |
Biographies
Leah Decter
| Leah Decter is a Canadian-based white settler inter-media/performance artist-scholar and Assistant Professor in Media Arts/Canada Research Chair in Creative Technologies at NSCAD University. She has exhibited, presented and screened her artwork in Canada and internationally, and her writing has appeared in edited collections, academic journals and contemporary art publications internationally. |
Fraser Stevens
| Fraser Stevens is an Assistant Professor of Drama at the University of Saskatchewan. His work explores the intersection of clandestine practices and theatre and performance. Beyond his scholarship, Fraser is the co-director of Almost Human whose work has been presented in North America, Europe and the Middle East. |
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Break/Pause – 15 minutes
Event Details and Description
Date: Wednesday, June 25 / Mecredi 25 Juin
Location: Silver Room, Atlas Hotel
Time: 4:00 – 5:30pm CST / 16h00 – 17h30 HNC
• Nick Fangzheng Wang and Billy Kairan Guo, “Humanized Machine, Dehumanized Us: Exploring the Creation of an AI-Collaborated Scene”
| This paper explores the use of an AI platform in the bilingual play “They Must Have Smoked,” performed at the Calgary Fringe in August 2023. The satirical play reflects on COVID-19 pandemic injustices, following protagonists through hospitals in history and the future, ending in an AI-imagined Moon Hospital that highlights future societal conflicts. The article examines AI as a creative tool for playwrights, investigating the boundaries of AI-generated content and its incorporation of future predictions. The study finds AI tends to conform to societal values, acting as a passive assistant in interpreting human dissatisfaction. It speculates on the impact of a superintelligent AI seeking absolute righteousness, potentially reducing humans to “rabbits” under strict order. The paper also details AI’s role in translation, promotion, graphic design, and fundraising during production. It proposes a futurist creative framework, suggesting innovative modes for theatre creators to interpret the past. |
• Kara Flanagan, “From Theatre to Online Streaming: The Erosion of Democratic Principles in Isolated Media Environments”
| It could be presumed that broader and cost-effective online stakeholder engagement would endorse democratic principles. But does it? This arts-based research presented as a theatrical play show how online and in-person engagement can function to promote different principles of government control and regulation. While I watch a political drama on Netflix alone in my pajamas and yell at the TV, I get no response. In contrast, my night out at the theatre included conversations in the lobby bar, joint applause, and talk-backs—the influence of patrons’ voices clearly heard in theatre’s aesthetic drama. As I participate in an online stakeholder engagement session, muted, with no video or chat, I muse whether Netflix infiltrated a government regulatory talk when this “social drama” (Schechner, 1988, p. 215) is clearly using Schechner’s hidden staging techniques to drive political actions. Upon waking up in the middle of a political debate in my Netflix show, I wonder what political action will be taken to exert control over their stakeholders? In my fictional play, I argue that online platforms (e.g., Zoom, MS Teams) have the power to promote autocratic forms of government which undermine democratic societies by controlling and restricting the delivery of information to a muted, isolated audience, resulting in oppression of countering arguments and inequity in representation. I argue that theatre as a model for engagement and Hamilton and Chon’s (2023) dramaturgical framework for advocacy offer a structure to uphold Dewey’s (1916/2018) democratic principles in the education system, government, and society. |
• Joanna Mansbridge, “Resonance: Intermediality, Intercultural Listening, and the Inwardness of Sound in Zuni Icosahedron’s Bach is Heart Sutra“
| This paper examines Hong Kong-based theatre collective Zuni Icosahedron’s Bach is Heart Sutra, a two-part, intermedial work that took place in the aftermath of the 2019 pro-democracy protests and at a brief moment during the pandemic when theatres were allowed to open. Intimate, inwardly focused, Bach is Heart Sutra reoriented perceptions through its use of sound and image technologies and practiced a different form of gathering at a time when practices of assembling, questioning, and exploring were severely restricted. The Heart Sutra’s teachings on emptiness served as the conceptual centre of the work, while an immersive sound design, composed of Bach cello suites and sutra chanting, explored the acoustic, aesthetic, philosophical, and spiritual resonances between Bach’s music and Buddhist sutras. The use of technology was informed by Buddhist thought and called on a different mode of attention, one tuned to sensing, rather than signification, receptivity, rather than resistance, listening, rather than looking. Like the concept of emptiness, listening troubles the perceived separation between inner and outer worlds; sound envelopes and reverberates through the body, inducing an experience of resonance—an absorbing encounter, whether social, aesthetic, religious, or environmental, that dissolves the boundaries between inside and outside, subject and object. Drawing together Buddhist concepts and writings on resonance from theatre and philosophy, this paper situates reflections on Bach is Heart Sutra within a changing Hong Kong, where borders between inside and outside the territory are being redrawn, politically, infrastructurally, and psychologically, through its integration with Mainland China. |
Biographies
Nick Fangzheng Wang
Kara Flanagan
| Kara Flanagan is a PhD candidate (Education Studies Program) in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Faculty of Education, University of Victoria with a research focus on curriculum and acting and music education. Kara is a co-founder of an acting conservatory, the Victoria Academy of Dramatic Arts. |
Joanna Mansbridge
| Joanna Mansbridge is associate professor in the Department of English at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research and teaching interests span contemporary theatre, performance studies, film, and ecocritical theory. Her recent research appears in Theatre Research International, Contemporary Theatre Review, PAJ, Theatre Journal, and Public Culture. |
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Curated panel / Panel organisé: (Un)Staging Justice: Identities, Resistance and Embodying the Future through Performance
Curated PanelLocation: Golden Room, Atlas Hotel
CATR
Event Details and Description
4:00–5:30pm CST / 16h00–17h30 HNC
Location: Golden Room (Atlas Hotel)
Curated by / Organisé par: Taiwo Afolabi
Nikkole Salter, “Embodying the Future: Acting Praxis beyond Narrative Solipsism”
Gabriel Friday, “Soro Soke: A Framing Analysis of Creative Resistance during Nigeria’s #EndSARS Movement”
Khalid Y. Long, “Radical Creativity: Black Lives Matter and Performance”
Sola John, “Staging the Liminal: Canada Police Training Curriculum and Emotional Intelligence”
Sponsored by the Canada Research Chair in Socially Engaged Theatre and the Centre for Socially Engaged Theatre (C-SET), University of Regina
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Graduate student pub social / Soirée au pub pour les étudiant.es aux cycles supérieurs
Welcome EventCATR
Event Details and Description
6:30–9:30pm CST / 18h30–21h30 HNC
Location: The Knotted Thistle (Atlas° Hotel)
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Event Details and Description
Date: Wednesday, June 25 / Mercedi 25 Juin
Location: Shu Box (Riddell Centre, University of Regina)
Time: 7:30 – 9:30pm CST / 19h30 – 21h30 HNC
• Jonathan Seinen, Arthur Milner, Weyburn 1959
| We would like to present a workshop staging/reading of Arthur Milner’s new play Weyburn 1959, set at the Weyburn Mental Hospital in Weyburn, Saskatchewan when it was world centre for research into the use of LSD in the treatment of mental illness. I am serving as director and dramaturg. The play dramatizes a transformational night in the lives of the researchers, when they all ingest LSD and embark on a journey into the interior space of a psychedelic journey. Before and after this trip, they discuss the challenges of treating mental illness, the values of public health care, and how to integrate these substances into a Western medical environment. While this period of study was arrested by the banning of psychedelic drug use in the 1960s, this historical period in Saskatchewan’s past offers guidance for our own era’s Psychedelic Renaissance. Exploring this unique period of our own past, this project will see playwright, director, and a company of six actors investigate the text during a series of ‘open rehearsals’ during the conference, concluding with a performance of the script-in-development followed by a conversation with the playwright, Arthur Milner. We anticipate that holding this space of an ‘open rehearsal’ workshop activates the subtext of the conference, ‘Staging the Liminal’, by doing just this – staging the in-between of new script and full production – offering a glimpse into new play development in contemporary Canada. Supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, this workshop will continue the development seen throughout the 2024/2025 season, including a reading in Saskatoon at Persephone Theatre hosted by Sum Theatre and one at the Mackenzie Art Gallery in Regina. This project requires limited technical support by embracing the workshop nature of our proposal. |
Biography
Jonathan Seinen
| Jonathan Seinen is a theatre director, actor, creator, producer, and scholar. Directing credits: Boys In Chairs Collective’s Access Me (Dora Award for Outstanding Direction), Governor General’s Award Nominee Iphigenia and the Furies (On Taurian Land) by Jeff Ho (Theatre Passe Muraille), and Black Boys (Buddies In Times Theatre). Jonathan was awarded the 2020 John Hirsch Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts, and is currently an Assistant Professor of Theatre at the University of Regina. |
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Thursday, June 26
Event Details and Description
Date: Thursday, June 26 / Jeudi 26 Juin
Location: Spirit Room, Atlas Hotel
Time: 8:00am- 5:00pm CST / 8h00 – 17h00 HNC
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Event Details and Description
Date: Thursday, June 26 / Jeudi 26 Juin
Location: Bruno Room (Atlas Hotel)
Time: 8:00am – 5:00pm CST / 8h00 – 17h00 HNC
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June 25, 2025
08:00 – 09:00
Coffee and Refreshments/Café et collation
Location: Imperial Room, Atlas Hotel
Event Details and Description
8:00–9:00am CST / 8h00–9h00 HNC
Location: Imperial Room, Atlas Hotel
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Praxis Session /Session pratique: Live and Digital Performance Processes: Choreographic Camera Dramaturgy
Praxis SessionLocation: Shu Box, University of Regina
CATR
Event Details and Description
Date: Thursday, June 26 / Jeudi 26 Juin
Location: Shu Box, University of Regina
Time: 9:00 – 10:30am CST / 9h00 – 10h30 HNC
• Andrew Denton, Jennifer Nikolai, “Live and Digital Performance Processes: Choreographic Camera Dramaturgy”
| As creative collaborators in moving image and dance processes and performance/exhibition outcomes, our process departs from a dyadic relationship between moving subjects with recording devices; in the hands of the actor/dancer scene partner, or as a scene partner being passed, amidst improvisation. Through this praxis process workshop: we will facilitate a range of emergent approaches towards problem-finding as a dramaturgical approach to making, viewing, recording and shaping as we move, dance and observe; the outside-inside eye. How can a recording device in the hands of the improvising performer, enhance critical choreographic choices in moment-to-moment or retrospective decision-making in creative practice? The historical landscape of moving image includes a vibrant narrative of dance on screen, dance film, dance and camera, which highlight the similarities between choreographic and cinematic practices. Historically the similarities between choreographic and cinematic structures reveal a compatibility of the forms we apply to live and digital performance outcomes. As scholars and artists, we turn to moving image pioneers for provocations and subsequent contemporary contextualisation around making moving image with moving bodies, via dramaturgical inquiry. In this workshop, the maker, mover, and scene partner in all roles at once, acts as instigator and provocateur, with dramaturgical approaches to improvisation that open perspectives otherwise not considered. Perhaps it is how we as moving/image/makers react to discoveries at the moment, or as retrospective possibilities that open investigations on moving image and performance praxis as a form of choreographic camera dramaturgy. |
Biographies
Andrew Denton
| Andrew Denton (PhD) is an artist, filmmaker and scholar who is the inaugural director for the School for the Arts at The University of Saskatchewan. |
Jennifer Nikolai
Jennifer Nikolai’s (PhD) practice-oriented methods are grounded in over two decades of experience as a performance studies scholar, researcher and teacher in the tertiary sector.
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Praxis Session/Session Pratique: Making the Invisible Visible: Accessing Internal Somatic Prompts to Devise Theatre
Praxis SessionLocation: Blue Room, University of Regina
CATR
Event Details and Description
Date: Thursday, June 26 / Jeudi 26 Juin
Location: Blue Room (Riddell Centre, University of Regina)
Time: 9:00 – 10:30am CST / 9h00 – 10h30 HNC
• Shannon Holmes, “Making the Invisible Visible: Accessing Internal Somatic Prompts to Devise Theatre”
| This session aims to open up the possibilities of using one’s voice and body as key constituents in the devising process. Drawing on Tami Spry’s autoethnographic performance practices where the performer aims to “turn the internally somatic into the externally semantic” (2016) we will explore how to access internal somatic prompts in the devising process and turn those into dynamic sonic and physical actions. Through various physical and vocal exercises (usually a combination of the two), we will explore strategies to bypass our busy, overly clever minds and tap into the rich information our bodies have to offer us. We will also touch on how external prompts (sounds, text, objects) can incite a playable somatic response. This session is suitable for anyone interested in exploring voice and physicality regardless of experience. Participants should come in comfortable clothing suitable for movement. It is not suitable for observers/audience but those in the room will be encouraged to explore and work in a way that honours their own level of comfort (i.e. sitting and observing when they deem necessary). This session requires the use of a studio spacious enough for participants to move freely and suitable for floor work. Minimum number of participants; 5, maximum 20. |
Biography
Shannon Holmes
| Dr. Shannon Holmes is an Associate Professor of Theatre at the University of Regina. As a practitioner, pedagogue and performer her work employs autoethnographic performance practices as a method to free vocal expression. She is co-lead researcher of The Voice Mapping Lab, where along with her research partner, Dr. Melissa Morgan, they are developing accessible interdisciplinary approaches to voice training. Their Open Educational Resource is forthcoming (Fall 2025). |
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Break/Pause – 15 minutes
Praxis Session/Session pratique: Trickster’s Come to Play and Is Here to Stay
Praxis SessionLocation: Shu Box, University of Regina
CATR
Event Details and Description
Date: Thursday, June 26 / Jedui 26 Juin
Location: Shu Box (Riddell Centre, University of Regina)
Time: 10:45am – 12:15pm CST / 10h45 – 12h15 HNC
• Philip Geller, “Trickster’s Come to Play and Is Here to Stay”
| The trickster is a great teacher, a dissembler, a creator, a shapeshifter, a liminal space, a practice that embraces the other and the outside. In this workshop we turn towards the outsider within ourselves and our creative and academic work, what are the glorious mistakes that we need to make to move forward? In this interactive and participatory workshop, we will braid a collective trickster ethic that embraces cross-cultural mischief. In a time of absolute global upheaval where the path towards a life-affirming future seems less and less attainable the trickster rears their head, offers a sly smile and invites us to play. Profound thinker Báyò Akómláfé offers “Serious business can only be seriously approached playfully. So, the times are serious, we have to play.” In this workshop we will bring forward our unique cultural trickster stories and play and create within a container created by the host tricksters of these lands, as understood from a Michif perspective. Participants will be led through embodied exercises, writing tasks, and dialogues that collectively assembles a trickster methodology of creating performance. This praxis includes re-routing European formalized clown practices to a decolonial and community-based context. level of preparation/training required for attendee involvement: a willingness to express themselves creatively, particularly through embodied practices. space and equipment needs: a studio or space where there can be movement. minimum and maximum number of participants: 20 people observers/audiences are welcome: at this moment, I think no. |
Biography
Philip Geller
| Philip Jonah Logan Geller (they/them) is Jewish (Ashkenazi) and Red River Michif (Métis) artist, educator, and scholar who is focused on decolonizing their process. As a storyteller they have worked across Turtle Island as an actor, director, dramaturg, producer, clown, creator, and community worker. BFA in Acting (University of Alberta) and MFA in Directing (York University). |
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Break/Pause – 15 minutes
Lunch sponsored by /Dîner commandité par: Talonbooks
Book/Journal LaunchLocation: Imperial Room, Atlas Hotel
CATR
Event Details and Description
12:30–2:00pm CST / 12h30–14h00 HNC
Location: Imperial Room, Atlas Hotel
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Excursion [Off-site/Hors Site]
Praxis SessionLocation: RCMP Heritage Centre
5907 Dewdney Ave., Regina SK
CATR
Event Details and Description
Date: Thursday, June 26 / Jeudi 26 Juin
Location: RCMP Heritage Centre
Time: 2:00 – 4:30pm CST / 14h00 – 16h30 HNC
5907 Dewdney Ave, Regina SK
• Taiwo Afolabi, “Histories of (In)Justice in Canada. A Site Visit to the RCMP Museum” RCMP Heritage Centre
| Delivered under the “Staging Justice” research project, this site-specific praxis workshop will offer participants the opportunity to visit the RCMP Museum and engage with the history of policing in Canada. From archival artifacts in the museum to the interactive map, the workshop will explore issues of policing, surveillance, and justice in Saskatchewan and in Canada. |
Biography
Taiwo Afolabi
| Taiwo Afolabi is an associate professor at the University of Regina. |
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Break/Pause – 15 minutes
Event Details and Description
Date: Thursday, June 26 / Jeudi 26 Juin
Location: Silver Room, Atlas Hotel
Time: 2:15 – 3:45pm CST / 14h15 – 15h45 HNC
• Dawn Tracey Brandes, “The Beckettian Puppetry of Josh Rice’s Kayfabe”
| Each summer, the village of New Glasgow, PEI presents an outdoor spectacle called the River Clyde Pageant. Inaugurated in 2016, the Pageant invites community members of any age and skill level to join professional artists in creating a performance featuring giant puppets, singing, dancing, stilt-walking, and storytelling. The performance happens on and around the River Clyde, one of the main waterways in the community and a site of ecological concern. Like many waterways in the province, the River’s once-thriving ecosystem is being suffocated by a glut of invasive sea lettuce, an algae that is flourishing in the nitrate-rich runoff from local farms, businesses, and residences. According to the Pageant’s website, the Pageant aims to “promote environmental stewardship across generations.” This stewardship for the environment is clearly fostered through the direct engagement of performers and audience members with the natural spaces and objects foregrounded in these performances. In this paper, however, I am interested in the manmade objects – the puppets – and their place within the Pageant’s ecological ethics. In particular, I will ask whether these puppets might complicate this vision of unidirectional stewardship, unsettling what Noel Castree calls the “material essentialism” of environmental ethicists and presenting instead a more radical model of instability and transformation. |
• Emilia Fox Hillyer, “Applied Transgender Puppetry”
| Puppetry’s transformative potential empowers marginalized groups dealing with selfhood in environments hostile to expressions of identity. These projects do not effectively research what it means to work with transgender participants in an applied theatre setting. My paper addresses this issue by bringing forth a project within which transgender participants explore narratives as co-conspirators with objects, imagine a queer utopia by animating the object inhabitants of that world, and mobilize to create new mutualistic perspectives via the collective creation of artwork. An ensemble of participants from the transgender community construct performing objects and a puppet performance centered around their experiences. We generate content via playmaking and puppetry techniques, culminating in a performance constructed from devised work. I compare our findings to the work of scholars and puppeteers like Aja Marneweck and Peter Schumann, in order to prove transgender populations are some of the most ideal populations for applied puppetry. The negative privilege of puppet theatre and its subversion of monumental history; the successes of puppetry as an accessible community-engaged art form; and the learning outcomes of the often objectified transgender community from the wisdom of objects’ interiority all support my claim further research is necessary. This project, by examining puppetry and participant-led theatre for a transgender population sheds new light on the performance of self, the interiority of objects and transgender people, and the liminal tension between genders, and the animate/inanimate. |
• Mai Kanzaki, “Miniaturized Representation of Canada’s Diversity at the Canada Pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka”
| Expo 2025 Osaka will be held in 2025, 55 years after the previous Osaka Expo. Robert Lepage (1957-), an internationally acclaimed Québécois theatre director, has been appointed the artistic advisor of the Canada Pavilion for the event. Although he has demonstrated his long-term interest in World Fairs through his creations, such as The Seven Streams of the River Ota (1994), Nô (1998) and The Andersen Project (2005), this is his first involvement with the creative team of Canada Pavilion. Lepage is fascinated by Expos as they are “miniature worlds” that allow people “to understand things in a very global way in a small space” (Lepage, 2024). In the limited space of the Canada Pavilion, Lepage aims to showcase the vast territory of Canada and its “complex” and “diversified” society. Miniaturization reminds the audience of his masterpiece 887, which premiered in 2015. His technique of miniaturized representation also resonates with the landscape of Japan. Through the Canada Pavilion, Lepage will manipulate “the idea of scale” to capture the expanse of Canada. This presentation examines how the Canada Pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka will miniaturize Canada’s vast landscape and exteriorize the country’s diverse society for the local Japanese audience. |
Biographies
Dawn Tracey Brandes
| Dr. Dawn Tracey Brandes is an Instructor in the Fountain School of Performing Arts and an Assistant Dean in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her scholarly work considers the theoretical implications of contemporary puppet performance, particularly in relation to phenomenological concerns. Her work has appeared in publications like The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance and Puppetry International. |
Emilia Fox Hillyer
| Emilia is a first-generation settler on Treaty 6 territory. She likes puppets, playing the trumpet and trying to get her MFA at the University of Alberta. She is a proud founding member of Fork & Shoe Theatre Cooperative, pUbeRtykiDs, and The Goddamn Brass Band. |
Mai Kanzaki
| Mai Kanzaki is an associate professor of the Faculty of Global and Regional Studies at Doshisha University. She holds a PhD in Theatre Studies from Osaka University. Her research interests include contemporary Canadian theatre with a particular emphasis on Robert Lepage and theatre festivals. |
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Event Details and Description
Date: Thursday, June 26 / Jeudi 26 Juin
Location: Golden Room, Atlas Hotel
Time: 2:15 – 3:45pm CST / 14h15 – 15h45 HNC
• Alireza Gorgani, “Laboring Horizons: Performing Migrant Workers Future”
| This presentation examines the intersection of performance, migrant workers’ futurism, and the notion of outer space by looking at my collaborative sci-fi film project, “We Set the Table”, where participants co-created a vision of a future that transcends current educational and societal norms. Utilizing a green screen studio, the film transforms the spaceship Daanesh into a symbol of a utopian educational institution, reflecting the dreams and aspirations of migrant workers. The film’s scenes, such as the parodic border checkpoint and the utopian café on Planet Gandhara, serve as performative allegories for the migrant experience, addressing themes of racism, identity, belonging, and work. Performance plays a crucial role in this project, allowing participants to explore and express their experiences and hopes for the future. The use of green screen technology provides a flexible space for imaginative storytelling, where the boundaries of reality and fiction blur, enabling a reimagining of migrant workers’ futures in an outer space setting. This creative process highlights the potential for performance to challenge existing narratives and envision new possibilities. Through this presentation, we will explore how the film’s performative elements and how outer space setting create a unique platform for migrant workers to articulate their visions of the future, emphasizing the importance of hospitality, shared resources, and collective imagination in shaping a more inclusive and equitable world. |
• Aylin Salahshoor, “Voices From the Periphery: A Critical Analysis of Language in Theatrical Productions”
| Voices from the Periphery: A Critical Analysis of Language in Theatrical Productions The identity of a diasporic artist is shaped by the tension between belonging to multiple cultures and navigating the dominant structures of the host society. For Iranian-Canadian performers like myself, this tension is heightened by the negotiation of language, which serves as both a medium of cultural expression and a marker of social status. On stage, a foreign accent often functions as a double-edged sword—simultaneously symbolizing cultural heritage and perpetuating stereotypes of ‘otherness.’ Accents are frequently framed as obstacles rather than integral elements of an actor’s craft, reinforcing linguistic hierarchies and distorting diasporic identities in ways that spectators internalize. In response, some diasporic productions have centred native languages, creating spaces to reclaim agency and challenge dominant narratives. However, these approaches raise critical questions: How does the use of accents on stage reinforce systemic biases and shape diasporic artists’ self-perceptions? Can centring native languages fully disrupt these dynamics, or does it risk marginalisation within mainstream theatre? This paper examines these questions through three contemporary productions in which I was personally involved: Anahita’s Republic (Factory Theatre), English (Soulpepper & Segal Centre) and Earworm (Crow’s Theatre). Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence, Dorinne Kondo’s theory of race and worldmaking, and Taylor’s politics of recognition, I analyse how these works navigate language, identity, and representation. Ultimately, I argue that diasporic artists must strategically use language to challenge power structures while reshaping theatrical spaces to reflect their multifaceted identities. |
• Hurmat Ul Ain, “Performance of Hospitality: Mouth as a Liminal Border”
| In my research I explore the site of mouth as the tongue’s resting place, turning to the metonymy of tongue and its performative and linguistic meanings to address issues of cultural identity: performance through speech, taste, and sexuality. In this paper, I draw on performance theorist Peggy Phelan’s insight that, “In performance, the body is metonymic of self, of character, of voice, of ‘presence’” (150). The tongue metonymy, I argue, helps to focus discussions of hospitality around the migrant’s body, politics of identity, and place in a globalized world. I further examine definitions of hospitable spaces, using the mouth as example: it is where introductions of foreign objects take place. The image of the open mouth with tongue on display troubles ideas of intimacy and disgust or raw interiority against a polished exterior. The liminal and transient framing of the mouth as a site of negitiation of power and the encounter of possible (in)hospitality between the local/insider and the foreigner/outsider is a central setting in my project. To illustrate these connections, I analyze the work of contemporary artist, Mithu Sen who contributes to the discourse on hospitality and its limitations through a wide body of work on the subject. She repeatedly returns to the image of the mouth, its interiority, and visceral drawings/sculptures of tongue in her seminal works, To have and to hold (2002) and Border unseen (2014). In my paper, I read Sen’s performance works as troubling binaries of East/West, host/guest, public/private and colonizer/colonized. |
Biographies
Alireza Gorgani
| Alireza Gorgani Dorcheh (they/them) is a migrant worker and artivist living in Tkaronto, Treaty 13. Holding a master’s degree in Theatre Direction, they currently pursue a Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance Studies at the genocide-enabling York University, where they investigate the issues of migrant workers’ future vis-à-vis precarious status using multimodal performance. |
Aylin Salahshoor
| Aylin (Oyan) Salahshoor, a performer and playwright, currently serves as the Artistic Director of Minor Punctuation Theatre Company. She has actively pursued her passion for theatre in Toronto while concurrently working towards a Ph.D. degree in Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies at the University of Toronto. |
Hurmat Ul Ain
| Hurmat Ul Ain is a Pakistani born interdisciplinary artist and art educator. She is a PhD Candidate with the Theatre, Dance & Performance Studies program at York University. She holds an MFA in Performance Art from School of Art Institute of Chicago where she was studying as a Fulbright Scholar. |
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Artists Spotlight/Artistes à l’honneur: La Troupe du Jour
RoundtableLocation: Hazel Room, Atlas Hotel
CATR
Event Details and Description
Date: Thursday, June 26 / Jeudi 26 Juin
Location: Hazel Room, Atlas Hotel
Time: 2:15 – 3:45pm CST / 14h00 – 14h15 HNC
Moderated by Marie – Diane Clarke
Sponsored by / Commandité par: La Faculté des arts et des sciences, Université de Montréal
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Break/Pause – 15 minutes
Event Details and Description
Date: Thursday, June 26 / Jeudi 26 Juin
Location: Silver Room, Atlas Hotel
Time: 4:00 – 5:30pm CST / 16h00 – 17h30 HNC
• Amanda Attrell, “‘This new idea now appears impossible’: Maria Campbell, Jessica, and Linda Griffiths in Conversation”
| Yvette Nolan discusses the collaborative relationship between Maria Campbell and Linda Griffiths during the 1980s in Medicine Shows: Indigenous Performance Culture: “I do not think there is a more honest, painful, illuminating chronicle of the abyss between First Nations and settler descendants than The Book of Jessica” (22). Where existing scholarship on this book focuses on the text, largely arguing it contains Griffiths’s authoritative voice, in this paper I shift the object of study to the process of the project. Seeking Campbell’s voice held in archives brings her perspective into the study of this intercultural theatre collaboration. The Book of Jessica was created within theatre methods created by settler descendants, the collective creation method as directed by Paul Thompson, yet overlooking Campbell’s dedication to the project has led to inadvertently missing the important representation of her life in Jessica. Exploring archival remnants of this process and the conversations between Campbell and Griffiths form the core of this paper. Campbell suggested they record their conversations, taking this intercultural relationship to embodied interaction which is “key to the production of knowledge in Indigenous cultures,” and away from Thompson’s collective creation methods (Morra 19). Therefore, I first attend to Campbell’s discussion of “the abyss” between herself and Griffiths (22). Second, listening to Campbell’s thoughts on the project sheds light on why she helped to create Jessica using her autobiography. Jessica is Campbell’s “gift” to her community, the story of a Métis woman finding her voice by reconnecting with her past (125). By considering the entirety of their conversations rather than taking The Book of Jessica as final product I argue, with Yvette Nolan’s discussion of the play, that the relationship between Campbell and Griffiths demonstrates the need to consider this collaborative process as an ever-rippling process. |
• Allen Baylosis, “Performing Filipinx Canadian on the Vancouver Stage in a Post-Pandemic Diasporic Present”
| This paper seeks to respond to the question posed ten years ago: “Is there Asian Canadian theatre in Vancouver?” By curating a list of Filipinx Canadian theatre and performances staged in Vancouver in the post-pandemic diasporic present, this paper asserts that such transformative efforts against the concept of “museumization” allow us to reexamine the emergence and efflorescence of new Filipinx Canadian performative forms. Beyond merely providing an extensive list of productions, this study departs from a historical timekeeping to an explorative inquiry that asks: “What are the implications of theatre and performance for minoritarian world-making, which contributes to the global heritage embodied by the Filipinx Canadian artistic communities within and through Vancouver?” |
• Robin C. Whittaker, “Making Theatre/s History: Alumnae Theatre Company and Nostalgia Houses”
| In 1972, Alumnae Theatre Company was 55 and moving into a 101-year-old Edwardian firehall in Toronto’s working-class-but-gentrifying Corktown neighbourhood. Critic Urjo Kareda wrote then that there is a “special grace in the images of this building’s past, in time-stopped photos of firemen, touching displays of old equipment. Here, we feel, is a civilized, authoritative environment for theatre-going.” Alumnae’s history would now be entwined with the building’s first-responder history. They saved an elegant building from demolition by creating the city’s newest theatre; at the same time, they fell victim to accusations of being increasingly outdated in an obsolete edifice. As the youthful baby-boom generation were beginning to redefine theatre practices and audiences in North American cities, the trendsetting “Alumnae” and their new old building became one and the same: a nostalgia house. Now in their 107th year, Alumnae is North America’s longest running women-led theatre group. They are also a “nonprofessionalizing company,” which I define in my recent monograph (Alumnae Theatre Company, UTP 2024) as a group that has declined to turn professional in union affiliation or, usually, remuneration, yet operates alongside professional companies within a dynamic and reciprocal theatre ecology. Comparably, Michael McKinnie argues that Toronto’s acclaimed Theatre Passe Muraille moved into an historic building that “became a spatial commemoration of the company’s own history” (McKinnie City Stages UTP 2007, 87). I wish to further suggest that when inhabiting historic buildings, the historicity of longstanding theatres is brought to the fore in ways that, paradoxically, they may celebrate yet find disadvantageous. |
Biographies
Amanda Attrell
| Amanda Attrell’s research weaves together theatre historiography with archival analysis and exploring the work of playwrights in Canada. She has a piece on archival research on Linda Griffiths’s work published in Theatre Research in Canada and two pieces forthcoming on plays by Hannah Moscovitch. |
Allen Baylosis
| Allen Baylosis is a Ph.D. candidate in Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia, where his research focuses on contemporary aesthetic performances, popular art and culture, theorizing the notion of “kálat” (Tagalog for queer/ing hot mess) through the lens of transnational queer mess materialism, erotics, sexual politics, and the Filipinx diaspora. |
Robin C. Whittaker
| Robin C. Whittaker (STU, Fredericton) researches nonprofessionalizing theatre and Atlantic theatre histories. He is author of Alumnae Theatre Company: Nonprofessionalizing Theatre in Canada (UTP 2024), co-creator of the verbatim play No White Picket Fence (Talonbooks 2019), and editor of the play anthology Hot Thespian Action! (AUP 2008). He is also president of CATR. |
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Panel: Space, Architecture, and Research Creation
Open Paper PanelLocation: Golden Room, Atlas Hotel
CATR
Event Details and Description
Date: Thursday, June 26 / Jeudi 26 Juin
Location: Golden Room, Atlas Hotel
Time: 4:00 – 5:30pm CST / 16h00 – 17h30 HNC
• Andy Houston, Brooke Barnes, and Joanna Cleary, “In the Liminal Space of Fantasy, Denial, and Retail at the Mall: The Making of Mall of Maladaptive Dreaming”
| In early 2020, members of WOOMcollaborative sought inspiration for a performance project at a mall. This mall exists in the middle of Waterloo, Ontario. Similar to most malls in mid-sized cities in Canada, this mall was—and still is—dying. This death cycle seemed intriguing as a creative resource; when the COVID pandemic hit, it seemed all encompassing. For two years, we labored to realize and animate aspects of this retail landscape that addressed the very real feel of precarity we all faced. This labor assumed a form of dramaturgy that materialized the liminal space between the mall’s built environment and the natural landscape upon which it exists, between collaborators and their lived experience of retail, and ultimately between our performance practices (writing, acting, video and soundscape creation) and the practices of retail. At the core of our practice on this project is a concern for how the liminal space of misery and exploitation may exist within the euphoric fantasy and retail reality of the mall. Most retail in the 21st century, especially with almost all of it online, exists because people have the capacity to fantasize. Fantasy designates our ‘impossible’ relationship to the person, thing, or lifestyle that we most desire. What fantasy stages is not a scene in which desire is fulfilled, fully satisfied, but on the contrary, a scene that realizes—that stages—desire as such. *Mall of Maladaptive Dreaming* attempted to realize this highly theatrical liminal space of retail in this form of yearning. |
• Liam Monaghan, “The Architecture of Adaptation: Dramatizing the Lives of Arthur Erickson and Francisco Kripacz”
| Arthur Erickson (1924-2009) is perhaps Canada’s most celebrated architect. While his buildings made him famous, the story of his equally extraordinary private life—especially his partnership in work and love with the interior designer Francisco Kripacz (1042-2000)—is far less well known. David Stouck is author of Arthur Erickson: An Architect’s Life (2012), but much remains to be investigated in Kripacz’s uniquely enigmatic biography. To help revitalize Canada’s queer and architectural histories for both scholarly and public audiences, I am writing the first-ever dramatic adaptation of Erickson and Kriapcz’s story. At CATR, I will outline the project and describe my research-creation process, which includes (1) secondary research and primary archival research; (2) adapting my findings using documentary/verbatim methods; and (3) experimenting with devising and scenographic techniques to dramaturgically recreate Erickson’s architectural aesthetic, especially in a planned April 2025 workshop with director Mia van Leeuwen. I may also share a short excerpt of the script as well as future directions for the piece. CATR’s conference theme, On Interiority, resonates with my project. The play explores the liminality of architectural space, especially as practiced by Erickson, who sought to integrate site and building, and especially as translated into mise-en-scène. It historicizes and interrogates the phenomenon of the queer open secret within a mid-century Canadian milieu. And the play activates the theoretical paradoxes of dramatic biographical adaptation, which seeks, through necessarily artificial forms and exogenous performer/author perspectives, to get inside the phenomenological truths of past experiences. |
Biographies
Andy Houston
| Andy Houston (he/him/they) is an associate professor in the Theatre and Performance program at the University of Waterloo. He is a white, settler artist-researcher focused on site-specific performance to critically engage with social and political issues. He also interrogates notions of ‘place’ by experimenting with the interface between digital and live events. Andy has published broadly in his field. For more information see: andyhouston.ca and WOOMcollaborative.com. |
Liam Monaghan
| Liam Monaghan is an award-winning writer, artist-researcher, and educator. He specializes in playwriting and performer-created theatre, academic and creative writing pedagogies, and cultural theory. He is currently Writing Centre Programs Specialist at MacEwan University Library and also teaches in the Faculty of Fine Arts and Communication. |
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Event Details and Description
Date: Thursday, June 26 / Jeudi 26 Juin
Location: Hazel Room, Atlas Hotel
Time: 4:00 – 5:30pm CST / 16h00 – 17h30 HNC
• Kara Flanagan and Cameron Crookston, “Perspectives from Emerging to Emeriti: Innovating and Adapting Canadian Theatrical Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Training to New Interior and Exterior Landscapes in Theatre and Non-theatre Education”
| Our working group is concerned with applications of theatrical principles and pedagogy to (1) non-theatre pedagogy and training, and (2) innovation in theatre education. In this conference’s theme, we explore how to adapt and innovate theatre curriculum, pedagogies, and training to travel across interior and exterior landscapes with our fellow educators and students to create an environment of support and resilience. We are looking for working group members (to review submissions) and participants (to submit their work). Submissions can take the form of curriculum or an outline, a teaching outline, or a research paper. Participants in this working group session will be assigned to a sub-group in theatre education or non-theatre education. Working group members will be assigned 3–4 submissions to review in advance and will provide feedback in a generous spirit to their peers, examining submissions with these questions: (i) what does their work address in the current landscape of theatre or non-theatre education, (ii) what are strengths in their work, (iii) what thought-provoking questions do you have for them, and (iv) what are areas of development? This in-person session consists of short introductions by all participants, break-out sessions with sub-groups, and concludes with learnings and key themes presented by each sub-group, and a discussion of trends for future working group sessions. Scholars and educators at all stages of their career are encouraged to apply as working group members or participants! |
Biographies
Kara Flanagan
| Kara Flanagan is a PhD candidate (Education Studies Program) in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Faculty of Education, University of Victoria with a research focus on curriculum and acting and music education. Kara is a co-founder of an acting conservatory, the Victoria Academy of Dramatic Arts. |
Cameron Crookston
| Cameron Crookston is a lecturer in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at UBC Okanagan where he teaches classes on media, queer theatre, drag, and pedagogical development. His research focuses on drag, LGBTQ2+ cultures, and pedagogical training. He has also worked as an instructional designer and legal consultant. |
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Performance – A Community Telling of Pawâkan Macbeth
Live PerformanceLocation: Darke Hall
2255 College Ave, Regina
CATR
Event Details and Description
Date: Thursday, June 26 / Jedui 26 Juin
Location: Darke Hall, 2255 College Ave, Regina
Time: 7:30 – 9:30pm CST / 19h30 – 21h30 HNC
Ticket Discount Instructions
Use Promo Code CATR30 for $30 tickets! / Saisissez le code promotional CATR30 pour des billets à 30$ !
- Go to https://purchase.darkehall.ca/EventAvailability?EventId=358&ref=bookNow&scroll=timeAndDates.
- Choose the Thursday evening performance.
- Select the number of seats you wish to book. Only the blue seats are eligible. Click the green CONTINUE button.
- On the next page, click the green CONTINUE button.
- Enter CATR30 into the promo code line and click the green APPLY CODE button. This will change the ticket price to $30.
- Complete your purchase.
Or you can call box office at 306-523-2751
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Friday, June 27
Event Details and Description
Date: Friday, June 27 / Vendredi 27 Juin
Location: Spirit Room, Atlas Hotel
Time: 8:00am – 5:00pm CST / 8h00 – 17h00 HNC
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Event Details and Description
Date: Friday, June 27 / Vendredi 27 Juin
Location: Bruno Room (Atlas Hotel)
Time: 8:00am – 5:00pm CST / 8h00 – 17h00 HNC
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June 25, 2025
08:00 – 09:00
Coffee and Refreshments/Café et collation
Location: Imperial Room, Atlas Hotel
Event Details and Description
8:00–9:00am CST / 8h00–9h00 HNC
Location: Imperial Room, Atlas Hotel
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Roundtable: Listening towards Justice: Working inside Academic and Artistic Institutions
RoundtableLocation: Imperial Room, Atlas Hotel
CATR
Event Details and Description
Date: Friday, June 27 / Vendredi 27 Juin
Location: Imperial Room, Atlas Hotel
Time: 9:00 – 10:30am CST / 9h00 – 10h30 HNC
• Session co-organizers: Jenn Boulay (Concordia University) and Signy Lynch (University of Toronto Mississauga)
Institutions, including theatre and performance ones, have historically been and continue to be spaces of exclusion where those ‘inside” and normative structures shape who is admitted into the interior or expelled.
Our roundtable session seeks to explore the role of listening in challenging these structures of power and oppression within theatre and performance institutions, including universities and theatre companies. We invite roundtable participants to lend Sara Ahmed’s “feminist ear” to consider what it means to listen, to attend to, or engage in other parallel practices towards more just and equitable spaces for theatremakers, arts workers, students, and faculty.
The session’s focus on listening also foregrounds allyship, which recent conversations, like those invoked in Canadian Theatre Review vol. 190 “Intersections of Allyship, Action and Artistic Access,” have centred the importance of to justice work. Allies are those who are often called to do work “from the inside,” and our discussion will consider how allies can apply a listening practice towards their privileged positionalities in order to enact change onwards the aim of justice (including disability justice). By drawing on disability justice and listening, we strive to question what it means for allies to be a part of creating sustainable spaces, using collective access for those who experience barriers within DTPS institutions
This session builds from the co-organizers’ work over the past three years of CATR conferences (Seminars: “Performing Complaint”, “Burning it All Down”; Roundtable: “Reflections on staging justice”), and brings together those involved in justice work within theatre and performance institutions like CATR (including members of the anti-racism and conduct committees), with the the goal of engaging the membership in a conversation about the organization’s ongoing justice initiatives and parallel initiatives outside of it.
• Works Cited
“10 Principles of Disability Justice” Sins Invalid, sinsinvalid.org/blog/10-principles-of-disability-justice
Ahmed, Sara. Complaint!. Duke UP, 2021.
Biography
Jenn Boulay
| Jenn is an emerging interdisciplinary performance artist/creator, playwright, performer, singer-songwriter, musician, theatre reviewer, and scholar. She holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts from the University of Toronto in Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies and a GrDip from Concordia University in Communication Studies. She is currently pursuing her MA at Concordia University in Media Studies. |
Signy Lynch
| Signy is an Assistant Professor at UofT Mississauga, and the Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies. She is a scholar, educator, and critical dramaturg, whose research investigates topics including theatre criticism, audience studies, and contemporary interdisciplinary, intercultural, and Black theatre in Canada. She is co-director of the Centre for Spectatorship and Audience Research. |
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Break/Pause – 30 minutes
Associateship and scholarly awards ceremony / Cérémonie des prix hommage et des prix scolaires
Award CeremonyLocation: Imperial Room, Atlas Hotel
CATR
Event Details and Description
Date: Friday, June 27 / Vendredi 27 Juin
Location: Imperial Room, Atlas Hotel
Time: 11:00am–12:30pm CST / 11h00–12h30 HNC
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Event Details and Description
12:30–2:00pm CST / 12h30–14h00 HNC
Location: Imperial Room
Sponsored by / Commandité par: The Department of English Language and Literature, St. Thomas University
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Break/Pause – 15 minutes
Event Details and Description
Date: Friday, June 27 / Vendredi 27 Juin
Location: Silver Room, Atlas Hotel
Time: 2:15 – 3:45pm CST / 14h15 – 15h45 HNC
• Charlotte Peters, “‘All Doing the Same Nothing’: Ghost Lights and Covid-19”
| This paper is offered as an ethnographic exploration of ghost lights’ symbolic uses during Covid-19 in English-speaking Canada. Research methodology is guided by the field of folkloristics, and aims to highlight the seemingly mundane through viewpoints shared by those who work in the industry. The analysis is influenced by literature from the field of Folklore and Performance Studies, and finds its theoretical bases in performance theory, through exploration of the manifest bodily expressions of this occupational group’s tradition. With an emphasis on spotlighting the voices of career technicians, this paper analyzes the liminality of live performance venues mid-pandemic shutdown, and how ghost lights became iconographic of theatre workers’ grief and creative response to hardship. Ultimately, these expressions problematize how we define who is an insider and who is an outsider to cultural practices, and how important spaces and objects, such as the theatre and the ghost light, can not only contribute to a definition of community, but become a part of it. |
• Jacob Pittini, “Thinking Outside the Box: Shifting Audience Spaces at SummerWorks Performance Festival 2024”
| In PLAY: Dramaturgies of Participation, Jenn Stephenson and Mariah Horner explain how in some participatory performances “we experience the effects of seeing the world afresh through our active engagement in it” (11). This paper will consider what can happen when performances move participants inside outside, into the world. To do so I will reflect upon three performances I attended in August as part of the 2024 SummerWorks Performance Festival in Toronto: AWAKE & STILL DROWNING, Home Buddies and Sur-Veil Salon. I read these performances as liminal in how they combine the space of the performance with the space of the real world and move audiences outside conventional theatre settings. In Gareth White’s Audience Participation in Theatre: Aesthetics of the Invitation, he writes how in immersive theatre “an audience inhabits and moves through the space of a performance rather than sitting outside it” (170). This paper will explore this act of inhabiting and moving outside, being immersed in the frame of a performance while also immersed outside of it simultaneously. Employing dramaturgies of roving and virtual reality, these performances transport audiences elsewhere, whether physically by moving outside, or digitally through VR-headsets. Such movement renders participants drifters, “actively engaged with the environment in a disciplined way” (Bradby and Lavery 47). This paper will consider the embodied properties of these experiences and how they creatively position audiences in communities broader than those attending the performances and in relation to social concerns such as climate change, housing crisis and living in a surveillance state. |
• Alessandro Simari, “Dinner and a Show: Theatre, Food, and Capital Circulation”
Biographies
Charlotte Peters
| Charlotte Peters (she/her) is an early-career stage manager and scenic painter from Southern Ontario. She is currently pursuing her Master’s in Folklore at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, focusing on theatre technicians as an occupational folk group. Her thesis research is all about ghost lights. |
Jacob Pittini
| Jacob Pittini (he/him) is a PhD student at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies. He is invested in research methodologies for ethically co-theorizing with audiences of contemporary Canadian theatre and exploring how participatory performance can allow audiences to collectively and creatively engage with social issues. |
Alessandro Simari
| Dr Alessandro Simari is a Toronto-based scholar and theatre director/playwright whose research focuses on the cultural politics and political economy of theatre through the lens of theatre history and contemporary (Shakespeare) performance. Current projects include: a monograph on the history and economics of theatre ushers and a collectively-written monograph about the aesthetics and political economy of Commercial Performance. He is part of the steering committee of the Performance & Political Economy Research Collective (www.pperesearch.com). |
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Event Details and Description
Location: Golden Room, Atlas Hotel
Date: Friday, June 27 / Vendredi 27 Juin
Time: 2:15 – 3:45pm CST / 14h15 – 15h45 HNC
• Mélanie Binette, “Trading Interiorities: A One-on-One Audiowalk on Bereavement”
Errances is a one-on-one audiowalk that I created and performed in 2019 at the site where my father died of a heart attack in 2002: the underground entrance of a venue in Montreal’s Place des Arts. As I led each solo spectator hand in hand through every corner of the complex’s outdoor and indoor public spaces, we followed an invisible line of liminal space between life and death, between past and present, walking my father’s very last steps. The recorded track, that both the spectator and I were listening to as we were holding hands, exposed my grieving process intertwined with critical accounts of the site’s many transformations, digging through layers of history as if we were walking outside of a particular time. The disappearance of an entire block in a disadvantaged neighbourhood, the political upheavals following an inauguration led by Montreal’s economical elite: my father’s ghost was doubled by the former mayor’s ghost, the public sphere encompassing my personal narrative. The headphones were paired with binaural microphones, which enabled mixing the live sound environment with the recording, creating an eerie effect of disembodiment, as if I was communicating through telepathy. The performance ended in a quiet space, to encourage intimate conversations.
Many spectators shared their own bereavement stories before leaving. This intimate encounter with each of them also felt like crossing a boundary we rarely transgress in our relationship with audiences. I hereby suggest that interiorities were traded to become part of an ad-hoc community of bereaved wanderers.
• Symphorien Mutombo Kabantu, “La poétique de l’espace dans La Villa belge de José Tshisungu wa Tshisungu”
Le procédé par lequel le dramaturge Tshisungu dénonce la dichotomie entre les gouvernés et les gouvernants, Les riches et les pauvres, les partenaires politiques du Sud et du Nord, ainsi que celle des Blancs et des Noirs réside dans l’exploitation dramatique de l’espace. L’on distingue deux espaces dans cette pièce : l’espace actuel et l’espace virtuel. La villa belge comprend deux espaces actuels : où se déroulent la grande majorité des scènes, soit sept scènes, et le domicile de Luc-Michel, qui sert de décor de la première scène du deuxième acte. Quelques espaces virtuels sont évoqués dans la pièce. Ils apportent une certaine précision sémantique aux espaces actuels en inscrivant l’action dans un espace qui se prolonge au-delà du cadre scénique. Ainsi, tout au long de notre communication, nous allons analyser les différents espaces contenus dans la villa belge.
• Manvendra Singh Thakur, “Fluid Objects, Fluid Bodies, Fluid Homes: Queer Narratives through Performance Art”
In the realm of performance art, the body serves as both canvas and conduit, challenging societal norms and reshaping narratives of identity, particularly within the context of queerness, homes, and the performative realm. This proposed paper explores the intersection of queer identity and domesticity through my performance, Let’s Make A Home, which disrupts traditional notions of inheritance and domesticity. The piece interrogates how queer individuals negotiate space and belonging, both within the home and in public contexts, offering a nuanced perspective on how these spaces are staged and embodied.
By inviting participants to exchange objects that symbolize home, the performance addresses heteronormative constructions, providing insight into alternative queer modes of sharing, connection, and belonging. This intimate act becomes a radical gesture of reimagining familial bonds and communal spaces, highlighting the fluidity of home-making practices that defy societal and geographical boundaries. The performative body, in this context, becomes a site of resistance—redefining its relationship with space, memory, and identity in a dynamic tension with both interior and exterior worlds.
Drawing on my personal research and artistic practice, this paper will delve into how performance art can serve as an inquiry into queer identities, particularly in the liminal spaces between the home and the outside. Through this examination, I aim to explore the transformative potential of performance in challenging and reimagining notions of queerness, belonging, and home in the contemporary Indian context specifically New Delhi, while also considering how these concepts can inform and complicate understandings in the Canadian setting.
Biographies
Mélanie Binette
Mélanie Binette is an interdisciplinary artist, performer and researcher. She is the co-founder and director of Milieu de Nulle Part, an in situ and in socius art collective. She is particularly interested in the way performance transforms sites by creating virtual, alternative and mythical spaces: blurring the boundaries of the so-called real world.
Symphorien Mutombo Kabantu,
Directeur artistique du groupe cherad school.Professeur a l’école supérieure du savoir plus.
Manvendra Singh Thakur
Manvendra is a researcher, performance artist, and filmmaker with an expansive background in Performance Studies. Their work explores the intersections of performance, identity, and social inquiry, with a particular emphasis on the concepts of home and belonging. Passionate about digital and everyday performances, Manvendra creates both virtual and real-time performance art pieces that serve as platforms for imagining an alternative.
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Roundtable: The Magic Circle In Participatory Performance: Play Frames for Gameful Dramaturgies
RoundtableLocation: Hazel Room, Atlas Hotel
CATR
Event Details and Description
Date: Friday, June 27 / Vendredi 27 Juin
Location: Hazel Room, Atlas Hotel
Time: 2:15 – 3:45pm CST / 14h15 – 15h45 HNC
Co-Convenors: Derek Manderson (PhD Candidate, Theatre & Performance Studie, York University) and Laurel Green (PhD Student, Theatre & Performance Studies, York University)
Roundtable Participants: Mariah (Mo) Horner (PhD, Queen’s University), Jenny Salisbury (PhD, University of Toronto), Nicholas Orvis (DFA Candidate, Yale School of Drama)
| In game studies, the “magic circle” is a popular theoretical term (coined by Huizinga) that imagines an invisible barrier between the action of a game and reality. This topic continues to provoke debate – see “In Defence of a Magic Circle: The Social, Mental and Cultural Boundaries of Play”, where Stenros unpacks the concept of the magic circle, its criticism and the numerous other metaphors that have been used to capture the zone of play or the border that surrounds it. Theatre scholars will recognize it as a play frame, not unlike theatre’s ‘proscenium,’ for its ability to change the meaning of the actions inside of it. As boundaries of play continue to shift alongside our media and the gamification of performance, new defences, skepticisms, or transformations of the magic circle might be offered from a theatrical perspective. When read through the language and theory of games, participatory performance becomes an experientially rich site to interrogate, rehearse, and transform systems, relationships, and the roles we play in a collective ecosystem. Through invitation, audiences become active agents with the ability to shift between their roles as spectator, player, co-author, and labourer within a reciprocal network. This roundtable investigates the intersection of games and theatre, focusing on fricative moments where the world of the game/performance and exterior life overlap. We hope to spark a necessary collective interdisciplinary inquiry into new gameful dramaturgies, and approaches to framing play. Through participation in this roundtable, we invite members of the CATR/ACRT community to explore the following questions and provoke new ones: • How does play inside the magic circle impact the ways in which we play together outside, and vice versa? • When does the magic circle become blurred and perforated, or abandoned altogether? • How do play frames invite collective displays of care? • Can games help us negotiate new social contracts with audiences? At our Roundtable, panel participants will present a brief case study about their research topics and then we will facilitate a larger discussion. Participation from all in the room is encouraged. |
Biographies
Derek Manderson
| Derek Manderson is an interdisciplinary scholar, educator, and PhD candidate in Theatre and Performance Studies at York University. His research imbricates participatory performance, game studies, and care ethics to unpack the dramaturgical structures of collaborative play. His writing has appeared in Canadian Theatre Review, Theater, and CANNOPY. |
Laurel Green (she/her)
Laurel Green is a dramaturg, producer, and interdisciplinary collaborator who designs gameful performances as invitations to participate and provocations for change. A PhD Student in Theatre and Performance Studies at York University, Laurel is also a Connected Minds Trainee. Her creative research was recently published in Canadian Theatre Review, and the SSHRC-funded pilot project Performance in the Pacific Northwest.
Dr. Mariah “Mo” Horner
Dr. Mariah “Mo” Horner is a theatre artist, musician, emcee, and assistant adjunct professor at the DAN School of Drama and Music at Queen’s University in Kingston, ON. Most recently, she co-authored PLAY: Dramaturgies of Participation with Dr Jenn Stephenson (Playwrights Canada Press, 2024). Currently, she sings in Kingston’s “folkestra” The Gertrudes.
Derek Manderson
Derek Manderson is an interdisciplinary scholar, educator, and PhD candidate in Theatre and Performance Studies at York University. His research imbricates participatory performance, game studies, and care ethics to unpack the dramaturgical structures of collaborative play, with a particular interest in how game design influences audience experiences of agency. He is currently working on his dissertation, “Game Play: Participatory Theatre in the Ludic Century.” His writing has appeared in Canadian Theatre Review, Theater, and CANNOPY.
Nicholas Orvis
Nicholas Orvis (he/him) is a DFA Candidate in dramaturgy at Yale School of Drama. His dramaturgical work includes Yale Repertory Theater, Premiere Stages at Kean University, Portland Stage Company, and more. He is a former managing editor of Theater magazine, and co-produces (with Percival Hornak) Dungeons + Drama Nerds, an ongoing podcast investigating the intersections between theater and tabletop roleplaying games.
Jenny Salisbury
Jenny Salisbury, Ph.D. is a theatre artist and educator. She teaches Critical Arts Pedagogy at the University of Toronto. She is co-artistic director of Gailey Road Productions gaileyroad.com and co-director of the Centre for Spectatorship and Audience Research www.centreforspectatorship.com. Her research is published in Theatre Research in Canada, Qualitative Inquiry, and Arts.
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Event Details and Description
Date: Friday, June 27 / Vendredi 27 Juin
Location: Blue Room, University of Regina
Time: 2:15 – 3:00pm CST / 14h15 – 15h00 HNC
As an interdisciplinary voice practitioner I seek ways of integrating my theatre and music practices into a more holistic art form by examining the liminal spaces between spoken and sung expression. My curiosity about what is contained in the divide between the two modes of expression has led to my practice of taking existing vocal musical compositions and weaving personal spoken narratives throughout the material, integrating extended vocal practices, traditional expression and movement through a single piece of music to create new music-theatre. In playing in the betwixt and between of disciplines I excavate a more nuanced form of storytelling.
Brux is a new solo devised music-theatre piece with sound media. The story explores a family in crisis using teeth as the central metaphor. It runs 15 minutes and other than needing a sound system and an operator for cues (a portable Bluetooth speaker could be used in a pinch) it can otherwise be mounted with limited technical requirements. This show has been devised using autoethnographic performance practices where as a performer I use methods that turn internally somatic experiences into external expression This connects with the conference theme as I transcribe my somatic interiority to outer expression as a means of driving my creation process. Additionally this performance will activate methods and strategies explored in my proposed praxis workshop; “Making the Invisible Visible: Accessing internal somatic prompts to devise theatre”.
Biography
Shannon Holmes
Dr. Shannon Holmes is an Associate Professor of Theatre at the University of Regina. As an voice-centered artist-scholar her research focuses on developing cross-disciplinary methods that disrupt the dividing line between speech and singing to mobilize new tools for performers. She has performed her solo-devised music theatre pieces across Canada, the US and the UK.
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Performance – Study #6 (Lumière Study)
Live PerformanceLocation: Shu Box, University of Regina
CATR
Event Details and Description
Date: Friday, June 27 / Vendredi 27 Juin
Location: Shu Box, University of Regina
Time: 3:00 – 3:45pm CST / 15h00 – 15h45 HNC
Jennifer Nikolai, Andrew Denton, Study #6
Sixth in a series of short dance films that respond to the early moving image pioneers; The Lumiere Brothers’ experiments. This piece flips the representation of the gendered dancing subject from its original, produced in 1896. This black & white rendition inspired by the 1896 piece “Ballet Dancer” invites critical commentary in 2024 contexts.
Biographies
Andrew Denton
Andrew Denton (PhD) is an artist, filmmaker and scholar who is the inaugural director for the School for the Arts at The University of Saskatchewan.
Jennifer Nikolai
Jennifer Nikolai’s (PhD) practice-oriented methods are grounded in over two decades of experience as a performance studies scholar, researcher and teacher in the tertiary sector.
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Break/Pause – 15 minutes
Event Details and Description
Date: Friday, June 27 / Vendredi 27 Juin
Location: Silver Room, Atlas Hotel
Time: 4:00 – 5:30pm CST / 16h00 – 17h30 HNC
• Gabriel Friday, “Ar(c)tivism: Examining the ‘R’ as a Catalyst for Justice in Postcolonial Contexts”
| Artivism, the fusion of art and activism, has emerged as a potent force for justice in postcolonial societies, challenging systemic oppression and fostering transformative change. This study examines the “R” in Artivism—Resistance, Resilience, Revolution, and Reclamation—as a framework for understanding how creative expressions drive social and cultural transformation. Drawing on postcolonial theory alongside decolonial methodologies, digital anthropology and ethnography, the research explores artivism’s role in resisting systemic injustices, sustaining marginalized communities, igniting revolutionary movements, and reclaiming cultural identities eroded by colonial legacies. Through case studies of movements such as Nigeria’s #EndSARS, the United States’ Black Lives Matter, Bangladesh’s mass uprisings and Canada’s Indigenous resistance, the study highlights artivism’s capacity to amplify local struggles while fostering transnational solidarities. Data collection includes analysis of artistic outputs, interviews with artists and activists, and digital ethnography focused on hashtag activism. By critically engaging with protest art, murals, songs, viral videos and performances, the study highlights the dynamic interplay between art, politics, and activism in postcolonial contexts. This research contributes a robust theoretical and practical understanding of artivism, offering insights into its transformative potential as a tool for systemic critique, identity reclamation, and societal transformation. The findings provide actionable frameworks for artists, activists, and policymakers seeking to leverage artivism for justice, equity, and decolonial futures. |
• Mariah Horner, “Rehearsing TransformativeJustice: Richard Lam’s The Candlemaker’s Game”
| As a chapter in my recently completed PhD dissertation Abolition Dramaturgies, this paper positions the process-driven space of “rehearsal,” as a kind of transformative justice arena that rehearses potentials for anti-carceral punishment as a response to harm. In this paper, I consider the ways that rehearsals have the capacity to both rewind the past and imagine new futures, theorizing rehearsal practice as a space to both analyze the past and imagine alternative futures. Influenced by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Robyn Maynard’s book Rehearsals for Living, this paper considers the very real way that abolition futures are rehearsed into existence in everyday moments of resilience and survival. Thinking alongside Maynard, a radical Black feminist scholar, and Simpson, an Anishinaabe Kwe scholar, I consider the ways that the theatrical concept of rehearsal is central to abolitionist practice. To counter a discussion of the bourgeois theatre’s intended function of rehearsals (perfection, symmetry) I consider Augusto Boal’s interpretation of theatre as a potential manifestation of the future, or “a rehearsal for a revolution,” and consider the ways that theatre can be understood as a rehearsal hall for relation, conflict management, and responding to harm. As a case study, I examine Richard Lam’s The Candlemaker’s Game, a participatory table-top role-playing game about personal conflict, as an example of the ways that rehearsal can look like transformative justice. |
• Hannah Link, “‘The Personal is Political’: Büchner’s Danton’s Death and Female Subjectivity”
| Georg Büchner’s Danton’s Tod (1835) takes place in the period of social upheaval known as the Terror, the most extreme phase of the French Revolution. The play dramatises an erosion of the borders between the public and private, depicting intimate discussions about the nature of art and existence juxtaposed with speeches at the Jacobin Club and the National Convention. It contains several long monologues and soliloquies by female characters in which their personal desires and physical sensations are described. A prostitute named Marion delivers a famous monologue to Danton in which she recounts her sexual awakening. As a girl, she says, “Things happened all around me from which I was separate” (act 1, scene V, translation by John Reddick), describing a feeling of alienation from the external world. Then, after her first lover has drowned himself, she says, “That evening I sat by the window letting the waves of evening light engulf me: I am all sensation, I connect with the world around me through feeling alone.” She has become so much a part of the outside world that she is “engulf[ed]” in it, and there is no effective distinction between her internal experience and the natural world that surrounds her. Through readings of this and monologues by other female characters (Lucille’s soliloquy in act 2, scene III, and Julie’s soliloquy in act 4, scene VI), my paper shows that Büchner conceived of revolution as an externalising process, a necessary breaking down of the divide between subjective and collective experiences. |
Biographies
Gabriel Friday
| Friday Gabriel is an experienced media practitioner with a strong academic foundation in Mass Communication and is currently undertaking a Master’s in Media and Artistic Research at the University of Regina. He has over eight years of experience working across various domains of the media landscape, including television, print journalism, radio, and public relations, advertising and film making. |
Mariah Horner
| Dr Mariah (Mo) Horner is theatre artist, musician, abolitionist, and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the DAN School of Drama and Music at Queen’s University. Along with Dr. Jenn Stephenson, Mo co-authored Play: Dramaturgies of Participation and co-edited Canadian Theatre Review 197: Participation. She currently co-facilitates a Philosophy and Creativity Discussion Group in Collins Bay Institution. |
Hannah Link
| Hannah Link is a recent MA graduate of McGill’s Department of English. She researches plays about the French and Haitian Revolutions, and combines methods from performance studies and theatre history to explore why this subject returns again and again to the world’s stages. She lives in Montréal/Tiohtià:ke. |
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Event Details and Description
Date: Friday, June 27 / Vendredi 27 Juin
Location: Golden Room, Atlas Hotel
Time: 4:00 – 5:30pm CST / 16h00 – 17h30 HNC
• John Mũkonzi Mũsyoki, “Black and Indigenous Dialogue at the Dis/Junctions of Relational Possibilities”
| A critical Black agency question and negotiation arises at the dis/junction between Black and Indigenous people. The notion of ritual archive (pro)posed by Toyin Falola, a Nigerian historian and professor of African Studies, provides a possible dis/junction for discussing Black and Indigenous dialogue on critical, creative, spiritual, and relational levels. Falola defines ritual archives as the practice where we nurture, transmit, and “store most of our Indigenous production, memories, legacies, and even the histories of our lives and ancestors” (474). Using the Arrivals Legacy Project (ALP) curated and led by Diane Roberts in collaboration with a team of sixteen (predominantly IBPoC) co-facilitators, this paper examines the activation of the ritual archive as a relational framework for broadening and grounding Black and Indigenous agency through a dramaturgical and interdisciplinary exploration of the ancestral connection among theatre and performance artists. Which conditions pro/offer a chance for intervention through solidarities, alliances, and cross-cultural collaborations? And, what contributing factors (foundational, innovative, and decolonial) shape how the intervention empowers, liberates, and nurtures Black and Indigenous agency in the Canadian theatre and performance landscape? ALP explores methodological foundations, orientations, and negotiations with the intent to model one’s rootedness and avenues of relationality (through artistic exploration) as a crucial ingredient for gesturing healthier futures. |
• Isaiah Phillip Smith, “Theatre for Development and Climate Change Awareness In South Africa”
| Theatre for Development and Climate Change Awareness in South Africa This paper forms part my ongoing doctoral research exploring Theatre for Development (TfD) and climate change awareness in the Mosuthu community of Reservoir Hills, Durban, South Africa. This study will explore how TfD can be strategically employed to engage the Mosuthu community in extensive discussions on climate change, focusing on enhancing their understanding and active participation in addressing environmental challenges. This research will probe into the lived experiences and perceptions of the community to evaluate their awareness of climate issues, their perspectives on the role of TfD, and their involvement in climate action initiatives. Paulo Freire’s Critical Pedagogy theory will anchor the study. The study adopts a qualitative research design that prioritises dialogical learning and participatory approaches. The study incorporates interviews, focus groups, and drama performances, drawing on Freire’s concepts of dialogue, conscientization, problem posing, empowerment, and community theatre. Through the development and performance of theatre pieces, participants will articulate their individual and collective experiences with climate change, thus representing Freire’s theories in meaningful and impactful ways. The study will not only utilise TfD as a methodological tool for gathering data but also as a medium to enhance critical awareness and facilitate meaningful dialogue within the marginalised Mosuthu community. The theatrical performances will play a pivotal role, functioning as both a research tool and a medium for transformative engagement, prompting discussion, reflection, and action on climate-related issues. |
Biographies
John Mũkonzi Mũsyoki
| Mũkonzi is a theatre scholar, writer, director, and dramaturg. He is currently a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Alberta in Theatre and Performance Studies. He has worked with different theatres in Canada, Kenya, and Uganda. |
Isaiah Phillip Smith
| Isaiah Phillip Smith, a PhD student at Durban University of Technology, explores theatre for development and climate change awareness in South Africa. With a bachelor’s from Olabisi Onabanjo University and a master’s from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, his interdisciplinary research leverages visual and performing arts to address societal and global challenges. |
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Roundtable: The Latest from the Department of the ‘Interiority’: Current Research at the University of Regina
RoundtableLocation: Hazel Room, Atlas Hotel
CATR
Event Details and Description
Date: Friday, June 27 / Vendredi 27 Juin
Location: Hazel Room, Atlas Hotel
Time: 4:00 – 5:30pm CST / 16h00 – 17h30 HNC
• Session co-organizers:
Jonathan Seinen, Taiwo Afolabi, Shannon Holmes, Wes Pearce, and Andrew Manera
| This roundtable will present current research within the Department of Theatre, offered as a welcome to those joining us in our city and on our campus to learn more about our ongoing work. We will feature contributions from faculty and staff, demonstrating the diversity of research activities, including: Instructor Andrew Manera on current Departmental efforts to build a bridge for graduating students as they navigate the ‘liminal’ space between training and the professional; Associate Professor Shannon Holmes on how social media can play a role in accessing voice training in order to develop and maintain a body-based vocal practice, via her burgeoning online presence on Instagram (@dr.shannonholmes); Associate Professor Taiwo Afolabi offering a review of the work of the Future Prairie Theatre initiative, and its offerings for the potentials for theatre in our region, including the latest from the C-SET (Centre for Socially Engaged Theatre); Professor Wes Pearce considers innovations in teaching and practicing devised theatre creation, and how the liminal space keeps changing and, in some way, re-defining itself, and; Assistant Professor Jonathan Seinen reflects upon contemporary new playscript development in Saskatchewan through commissioning three playwrights by his company Architect Theatre since arriving in 2022. In presenting this work, we are excited to expose conference attendees to the rich variety of research pursuits in our Department at this moment of reimagining our programs, our community connections, and our responsibilities to the prairie theatre and performance. |
Biographies
Jonathan Seinen
| Jonathan Seinen is a theatre director, actor, and creator. Directing credits: Boys In Chairs Collective’s Access Me (Dora Award for Direction), Iphigenia and the Furies by Jeff Ho (Theatre Passe Muraille), and Saga Collectif’s Black Boys (Buddies). Jonathan was awarded the 2020 John Hirsch Prize from the Canada Council, and is Assistant Professor at the University of Regina. |
Taiwo Afolabi
| Taiwo Afolabi is an associate professor at the University of Regina. |
Shannon Holmes
| Dr. Shannon Holmes is an Associate Professor of Theatre at the University of Regina. As a practitioner, pedagogue and performer her work employs autoethnographic performance practices as a method to free vocal expression. She is co-lead researcher of The Voice Mapping Lab, where along with her research partner, Dr. Melissa Morgan, they are developing accessible interdisciplinary approaches to voice training. Their Open Educational Resource is forthcoming (Fall 2025). |
Wes Pearce
Andrew Manera
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Break/Pause – 1 hour
Event Details and Description
Date: Friday, June 27 / Vendredi 27 Juin
Location: Fireside Bistro
Time: 6:30 – 9:30pm CST / 18h30 – 21h30 HNC
2305 Smith St., Regina SK
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Saturday, June 28
Event Details and Description
Date: Saturday, June 28 / Samedi 28 Juin
Location: Spirit Room, Atlas Hotel
Time: 8:00am – 2:00pm CST / 8h00 – 14h00HNC
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Event Details and Description
Date: Saturday, June 28 / Samedi 28 Juin
Location: Bruno Room, Atlas Hotel
Time: 8:00 am – 2:00pm CST / 8h00 – 14h00 HNC
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June 25, 2025
08:00 – 09:00
Coffee and Refreshments/Café et collation
Location: Imperial Room, Atlas Hotel
Event Details and Description
8:00–9:00am CST / 8h00–9h00 HNC
Location: Imperial Room, Atlas Hotel
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Event Details and Description
Date: Saturday, June 28 / Samedi 28 Juin
Location: Silver Room, Atlas Hotel
Time: 9:00 – 10:30am CST / 9h00 – 10h30 HNC
• Colleen Renihan and Mariah Horner, “Liminal Legacies: Temporality and Relationality in Transitional Care”
| Creative arts-based practices have been recognized as having the potential to help people facing life-threatening medical issues cope with sudden and often long-term hospitalization, a changing sense of self, changing relationships, and for some, impending death (see Coyle, 2006; McCormick, 2017; Organ, 2016). Arts-based interventions in these liminal contexts have tended to be reminiscence-based, an approach that has been widely used in end-of-life legacy work in medicine (see Allen, 2009; Pasupathi & Carstensen, 2003; Affleck & Tennen, 1996; Hilgeman, Allen, DeCoster & Burgio, 2007), particularly with patients living with dementia. Reminisicence often forms the basis of legacy-based work; work that is designed to out-live a person and provide a definitive set of values, based on past life events, that will stand in for a person in the years to come. This paper explores the fascinating temporal tensions inherent in theatre, music, and movement-based legacy projects with older adults in the liminal context of transitional care. Our discussion focuses on several case studies that center on music, theatre, and movement-based creative sessions with older adult artist-participants and their caregivers in a transitional care facility in Ontario, describing in particular the theoretical need for a relational and present-based arts practice in this context (see Nicholson, 2012). Extending the work of Abbate (1991), Rabey (2016), Wagner (2018), and Wittman (2017), we describe the ways music, theatre, and movement can be used to engage artist-participants in an orientation to legacy that transforms its typically retrospective nature into one that is rooted in present-based relationality. |
• Jenny Salisbury, “Building Trust with Audiences: The Interiority and Humour of Baram and Snieckus’ Big Stuff”
| In their 2024 play Big Stuff, Matt Baram, Naomi Snieckus, and Kat Sandler encourage audiences to share stories of interiority. Or as their press release quipped, they invite us to “participate in the unpacking of some big stuff” (Crows 2024). Through their training in improvisation and sketch comedy (The National Theatre of The World, Second City Toronto), Baram and Snieckus create a blended dramaturgy of scripted poignancy and audience participation. The play hinges on audience members sharing stories of their own unexpected items at home that are connected to people, childhood, and often death. Between audience stories and actor confessions, Big Stuff weaves a complicated fabric of affective trust, a trust that is built on mutual vulnerability, freedom of expression, and the common experience of losing people we love. This play offers a key example of affective trust, and the critical work collective creation and devising practices can do in building trust among strangers. Our current political moment seems to be predicated on a breakdown of trust. Francis Fukuyama, author of the 1996 book Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, has argued that over the last 20 years, the United States and much of the Western World has transformed into a low-trust society (2024). Trust, as Danish philosopher Knud Ejler Løgstrup defines it “is to lay oneself open” (Stern ‘Trust is Basic’). Perhaps another way to define it is to expose, or bring to light what lies inside: inside our basements, our closets, our hearts, and our memories. Crow’s Theatre. “Big Stuff – Streetcar Crowsnest.” Crow’s Theatre. www.crowstheatre.com/whats-on/view-all/big-stuff. Fukuyama, Francis. “The Crisis of Trust.” Persuasion. 18 Oct. 2024. www.persuasion.community/p/the-crisis-of-trust. —. Trust : The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. in Faulkner, Paul and Thomas Simpson. The Philosophy of Trust. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. |
• Bethany Schaufler-Biback, “From Compliancy to Intimacy: Cultivating Access Intimacy In and Amongst Theatre Audiences”
| In an era where theatre practitioners are striving to move beyond treating accessible practices as an afterthought, what does it mean to create spaces where disabled audiences feel truly understood– not only accommodated, but intimately seen? While discussions on accessibility have gained traction in Canada’s theatre landscape over the past decade, many accessibility practices remain rooted in what artist and scholar Alice Sheppard refers to as “compliancy” or “inclusionary thinking” in the arts–approaches that attempt to “solve” disability’s presence through surface-level interventions, often tacked on at the end of a project (“Disability Justice”). This paper examines how an understanding of access intimacy in relation to theatre audiences might reshape these approaches. Access intimacy, as first defined by activist and writer Mia Mingus, describes the elusive feelings which become when one’s access needs are deeply understood by another (“Access Intimacy”). To explore access intimacy in a theatre audience research landscape, this paper turns to The Disability Collective’s production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, featuring an all D/deaf shadow cast. Drawing on affect theory, disability studies, and audience studies, this investigation calls on theatre practitioners to embrace the slowness of interdependence, integrating practices curated by and reflective of the community. In doing so, it offers theatre practitioners integral insight on how their accessibility practices may better serve their communities by striving towards fostering the intimacy of disability in and amongst their audiences. |
Biographies
Colleen Renihan
| Dr. Colleen Renihan is Associate Professor at Queen’s University, and Senior Associate Researcher at Providence Care Hospital. She is an interdisciplinary arts humanities researcher, trained in musicology, with multiple intersecting research foci on issues of voice, gesture transmission, memory, temporality, and the role of the arts in healthy aging. |
Mariah Horner
| Dr Mariah (Mo) Horner is theatre artist, musician, abolitionist, and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the DAN School of Drama and Music at Queen’s University. Along with Dr. Jenn Stephenson, Mo co-authored Play: Dramaturgies of Participation and co-edited Canadian Theatre Review 197: Participation. She currently co-facilitates a Philosophy and Creativity Discussion Group in Collins Bay Institution. |
Jenny Salisbury
| Jenny Salisbury (she/her/elle) is a theatre artist and educator. She teaches Critical Arts Pedagogy at OISE, University of Toronto. She is co-director of The Centre for Spectatorship and Audience Research and co-artistic director of Gailey Road Productions. She has published with Theatre Research in Canada, Canadian Theatre Review, Arts, Qualitative Inquiry, and Perspectives on Urban Education. |
Bethany Schaufler-Biback
| Bethany Schaufler-Biback (she/her) is a theatre practitioner and PhD student at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies. Her research explores audience studies, concerning the intersections of care ethics, affect theory, and disability studies. As a theatre practitioner, Bethany works as a stage manager, most recently at Achura Karpa in Bogotá, Colombia. |
Resources and Keywords
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Event Details and Description
Date: Saturday, June 28 / Samedi 28 Juin
Location: Golden Room, Atlas Hotel
Time: 9:00 – 10:30am CST / 9h00 – 10h30 HNC
• Barry Freeman and Rebecca Burton, “PLEDGE@10: Inequities in the Repertoire of Theatre Training Programs in Canada”
| If you are a woman, two-spirit, trans, or non-binary (W2STNB) student studying acting at one of the 77 post-secondary schools offering theatre training in Canada, the plays you perform in during your studies will be written predominantly by straight, white men. At auditions, you find yourself competing with the approximately 70% majority of female students for supporting roles, while the 30% minority male students compete for more varied lead roles (MacArthur, “Achieving Equity”). If you are an additionally minoritized student, perhaps Black, Indigenous, or trans, you would be even less likely to see roles reflective of your lived experience. W2STNB find themselves “outside” the stories being told, underserved by their training institutions, and disadvantaged entering the industry, despite paying the same tuition. In this paper, the research team of PLEDGE (an acronym for a Production Listing to Enhance Diversity and Gender Equity) will present findings from a new repertoire survey of post-secondary theatre programs in Canada. “PLEDGE@10” is a follow-up study to historical reports demonstrating inequities in theatre training (Fraticelli; Burton; Hansen and Elser; MarArthur) and it marks the 10th anniversary of the PLEDGE Project, which is a database of nearly 600 large cast (6 characters or more) plays by Canadian woman, two-spirit, trans, and non-binary creators (www.pledgeproject.ca), co-founded by Rebecca Burton and Barry Freeman. PLEDGE@10 will add to existing knowledge by: i) tracking gender, race, sexual orientation, and ability in repertoire representation, ii) analyzing a full five-years of repertoire across the country, and iii) including French-language schools. |
• Kristy Smith, “Kissing Onstage: Canadian Drama Teachers’ Caring Practices for Staged Intimacy”
| High school drama teachers often take on the role of artistic director for extracurricular school plays and musicals, which sometimes requires embodying the role of an intimacy coordinator as well. Many musicals performed in high schools build up to a kiss between two characters as the climactic moment of the story, and such moments receive thunderous applause from audiences comprised of students’ peers, families, and teachers. These moments provoke the question: what does it mean to have high school students perform elements of intimacy for community audiences? What practices are Canadian high school drama teachers using to guide students through staged intimacy, physical contact, or performed moments of emotional vulnerability – both in rehearsal for productions, and in drama classrooms? In this presentation, I share insights from an interview study with high school drama teachers across Canada to showcase how care, caregiving, and creating communities of care among students are fundamental to drama pedagogy. Through sharing narratives from drama teachers, I illustrate how they foster communal caring in somewhat unorthodox ways. These narratives showcase how teachers mobilize care through relationship building, artistic work, and educational encounters that ignite students’ bodies, minds, and senses to foster greater connections with the world around them. I conclude by sharing a curated list of drama teachers’ ‘best practices’ for guiding students through challenging scene work in caring ways. These findings are particularly relevant following COVID-19 as we navigate bringing students back into embodied, collaborative learning that happens through sharing physical and emotional space with others. |
• Burcu Yaman Ntelioglou and Sara Schroeter, “Capturing the Liminal: Representing Pedagogic Affect in Research”
| Drawing on two research projects in K-12 classrooms in the Canadian Prairies, we grapple with the tensions and convergences between critical posthuman theory (Braidotti, 2019, 2022) and Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies (Smith, Tuck, & Yang, 2019; Tuck & McKenzie, 2015) as we aim to decolonize our research practices through responsiveness to our research contexts and communities. We’re interested in how these theories might help researchers convey rich moments of learning and how we might understand seemingly mundane, performative pedagogical experiences that, nevertheless, appear to be affectively charged, memorable, transformative moments for learners. Theatre artists and theorists have effectively discussed how the ephemerality of live performance can be affective and impactful, even though the performance is temporary and fleeting (Gallagher & Kushnir, 2022; Hartnell, 2020). Hartnell (2020) writes: “affect is a mercurial term, hard to pin down, and a central project of the affective turn has been the attempt to find language that makes affect discussable, while preserving the embodied energy that sits at its heart” (p. 5). While it may be impossible to know for certain what traces of learning remain after a moment has passed, in that moment, “something” happens that people experience collectively and individually. Although learning is sometimes conceived as an internal process, the theories we draw on highlight that learning is manifested through the intra-actions between people, plants, animals, and objects. Learning thus occurs in liminal spaces. Our aim is to legitimize the significance of affect and relationality in research, deconstructing Eurocentric orientations to what counts as significant learning and significant finding in research. |
Biographies
Barry Freeman
| Barry Freeman is the Associate Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Toronto Scarborough and the Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies. (Note we will be joined by our research team of two students, names TBD in the new year). |
Rebecca Burton
| Rebecca Burton is the Membership and Contracts Manager at the Playwrights Guild of Canada (PGC), as well as the co-founder of Equity in Theatre (2014 – 2017). |
Kristy Smith
| Kristy is a Doctoral Candidate in the Faculty of Education at York University in Toronto, Canada. Her research explores how high school drama teachers build relationships with and care for students, particularly when navigating scenework that incorporates physical intimacy, emotional vulnerability, explorations of identity, and mature or controversial topics. |
Burcu Yaman Ntelioglou
| Dr. Burcu Yaman Ntelioglou is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at Brandon University. Dr. Sara Schroeter is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Arts Education program in the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina. |
Sara Schroeter
| Sara Schroeter is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Arts Education program in the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina, where she teaches drama, art, and anti-racist education classes in French and English. |
Resources and Keywords
Keywords
Praxis Session/Session Pratique: Dyeing a Good Death
Praxis SessionLocation: Blue Room, University of Regina
CATR
Event Details and Description
Date: Saturday, June 28 / Samedi 28 Juin
Location: Blue Room (Riddell Centre, University of Regina)
Time: 9:00 – 11:00am CST / 9h00 – 11h00 HNC
• Dale MacDonald, “Dyeing a Good Death”
| Ostensibly, the corpse’s experience appears as total, inexpressible interiority; Hamlet’s “undiscovere’d country, from whose bourn/No traveller returns” rings temptingly true for the living, especially if they have encountered a dead body. But I’m not so convinced. This workshop offers participants decolonial and eco-ethical practices for our “future corpses”, as Caitlyn Doughty calls them, and subverting Hamlet’s conception of being dead. Attendants will rehearse their own toxin-free burial and colour a shroud with natural dyes in collaboration with local plant life. This exercise seeks to animate Rebecca Schneider’s claim that “the dead are living everywhere”; the choices we make once we’ve shuffled off this mortal coil are embodiments of our politics, ethics, and aesthetics. They transmit to and reside within the bereaved as well as the new life that burgeons from our decomposition. By considering how our final dispositions collaborate with the land, the corpse emerges as a site of agency. Not only do we return. We remain. Workshop attendees will be provided with the opportunity to rehearse their deaths in three stages. First: Introductions and learning current legality of disposition methods sets parameters for corpse-choreography. Second: Participants will learn and practice different burial shroud wrappings, providing opportunities to consider how their bodies will be handled and viewed by others. Third: Attendees will be guided through the process of naturally dyeing a shroud with plants and flowers. -No experience required -Technical: A room with ample space for people to move freely -Participants: No minimum-12 maximum -Audiences welcome |
Biography
Dale MacDonald
| Dale MacDonald is a writer, educator, and artist working in so-called Vancouver since 2016. Currently working towards a PhD at the University of British Columbia, Dale’s research examines settler corpse-performances, ethical rot, and interspecies collaboration. |
Resources and Keywords
Keywords
Praxis Session/Session pratique: Switching Regina
Praxis SessionLocation: Shu Box, University of Regina
CATR
Event Details and Description
Date: Saturday, June 28 / Samedi 28 Juin
Location: Shu Box (Riddell Centre, University of Regina)
Time: 9:00 – 10:30am CST / 9h00 – 10h30 HNC
• Alexandra Sproule, Naty Tremblay, Sedina Fiati, Faith-Ann Mendes, and Mojo Noble, “Switching Regina”
| Place-based theatre making can cut through stories of ‘exterior’ that actually turn out to be ‘interior’ stories when we interrogate them. Many of our stories of the world are overgeneralized, shaped by past realities and experiences that overshadow the present, or devised by people far from where we are. How does storytelling change when it is shaped by our streets, sidewalks, and parks – the places we frequent as part of our daily lives? How are our relationships with these exteriors changed when we weave them intentionally into our stories? Switch centers the unique knowledge systems, activism and artistic expressions of LGBTQ2S+, BIPOC, and intersectionality marginalized folks who varyingly experience the world as fat, mad, disabled, working class and/or criminalized. Switch devises work through a decolonial and transformative justice framework of inqueery that leverages rigorous archival research, deep site based learning, interdisciplinary collaboration and “switchy improv” to create new works in perpetual movement. After a short introduction to the Switch methodology, this workshop will offer an embodied exploration of the interplay between ‘interior’ and ‘exterior’ informed by the people and pasts/presents/futures of the place we are in. Both theatre practitioners AND non-theatre practitioners can engage in transdisciplinary Switch methodologies. In advance, Switch will connect with local queer and trans collaborators and identify existing site-relevant contextualizing research materials. Participants will experiment with Switch’s ‘inqueery’ process, an embodied form of research. They will be invited to respond to prompts designed for the space we are in using written, audio, movement-based, or visual responses, setting their own boundaries around their comfort level. Switch’s semi-improvisational inqueery and performance work invites ‘no’ and ‘maybe’ in addition to ‘yes’, necessary for collaboration rooted in deep consent and consensus. |
Biographies
The Switch Collective
| The Switch Collective is an interdisciplinary performance troupe in Tk’aronto that has been co-producing new research-creation methodologies and roving political performance works for the public sphere since 2018. The Switch Collective pushes creative and political boundaries by blending mediums and moving art & ideas through unexpected public spaces. Switch website: https://www.switch-collective.com/#/ |
Resources and Keywords
Keywords
Break/Pause – 15 minutes
Event Details and Description
Date: Saturday, June 28 / Samedi 28 Juin
Location: Silver Room, Atlas Hotel
Time: 10:45am – 12:00pm CST / 10h45 – 12h00 HNC
• Joyce Boro, “Inside Imago Theatre’s ‘Nested Circles’: Mentorship, Care, and Community”
| This paper shares some conclusions from “Mentorship and Ethics of Care in Canadian Theatre”, a collaborative research project conducted by Imago (Montréal) and scholars in theatre and wellness studies*. The project investigates the role of Imago’s mentorship program, Nested Circles (NC), within an ethics of care by investigating how Imago’s reciprocal relationships with Indigenous artists can contribute to a sustaining, nurturing environment for artists. NC configures mentorship as circles of care, inclusivity, sharing, welcome, and belonging, and responds to the documented sense of isolation and lack of support felt by Canadian artists, especially newcomers and those from marginalized groups. In this program, theatre practitioners newly arrived in Montréal are paired with established local practitioners and together work with Indigenous guest artists who specialize in land-based, place-based, and community-engaged dramaturgies. Participants share origin stories, explore connections to place, and learn how that can be woven into theatre creation. Our research analyses the perceptions of mentors and mentees in NC in relation to feelings of belonging, inclusion, and wellness. We also work with the Indigenous guest artists to gain understanding of the interconnections between Indigenous knowledge and dramaturgy, care, and mentorship and of how mentorship contributes to community-creation, belonging, and wellness. Our project shows how the decolonization of theatre working-practices and a demarginalization and centring of Indigenous dramaturgies can help create mentorship programs that can effectively foster care, community, belonging, and emotional health, so that artists can flourish. *K. Archambault (Psychoéducation, UdeMontréal), J. Boro (Littératures et de langues du monde, UdeM) K. Jackson (Artistic & Executive Director, Imago), L. Lachance (CRC Land-based and Relational Dramaturgies; Theatre and Film, UBC), J-M. Larrue (Littératures de langue française, UdeM). |
• Mike Griffin, “Staging the Internal: An Exploration of Brain Injury Through Physical Theatre”
| This presentation will examine the research and development of The Mysterious Mind of Molly McGillicuddy, a new play that explores brain injury and related mental health issues through the styles of mask and physical theatre. How can we dramatize the internal experience, bringing the medical and the theatrical together? My presentation will discuss my interaction with this question as I crafted this play with a student ensemble at Brock University. Firstly, I will share how I used the physical properties of the brain and the physiological impacts of a concussion on a brain as a springboard for a series of movement-based inquiries. I will discuss how through working with a chorus for these “internal scenes” we translated moments of breakdown and recovery, amplifying and theatricalizing what happens internally into visceral and expressionistic movement sequences. Secondly, I will outline my examination of the signs and symptoms of concussions through character-mask improvisations, which helped build much of the storyline of the play. Connected to this is the non-linear nature of the healing process, a major influence on the play’s structure. Finally, I will wrap up with an explanation of why approaching the subject of brain injury through non-verbal and physical theatrical techniques was the best choice for this project, sharing how this opened the doors into a world of imagination and whimsy. |
• William MacGregor, “Documentary Performance Pathography: Reflections on Staging Illness, the Limitations of Scholarship and Praxis, and the Potential of a New Method”
| This research presentation outlines Documentary Performance Pathography, a new method developed by the author during a research-creation project as part of the completion of their MA in Theatre and Performance Studies at York University. Quietus, a play for two performers, is comprised primarily of transcribed sections from journals kept during the author’s near-decade long experience with severe chronic pain and disability, staging their struggles with illness, sickness, impairment, and the Canadian health and social care systems. However, during Quietus’s initial development as performance autoethnography, the author’s growing discontent with the limitations and artistic trade-offs of the method, as well as how conventional expectations for illness narratives, of triumphal plot and cathartic resolution, clashed with their own illness experience (as well as the ambivalence that accompanied an eventual but unlikely recovery), led to the genesis of a new approach: Documentary Performance Pathography. Positioned at the intersection of documentary theatre, performance autoethnography, and illness narratives, this method combines the reflexive and systematic strengths of performance autoethnography, the affective power of theatrical performance, and the verifiability of documentary theatre. The presentation will outline the scholarship and artistic works that influenced the conception and development of this method, the practical theatrical considerations that shaped the play-text, before ending with the author’s reflections and insights specifically addressed to a performance-oriented audience, with the hopes that this new form can offer new opportunities for artists, scholars, and ideally everyone the means to tell more verifiable stories about illness and health experiences. |
Biographies
Joyce Boro
| Joyce Boro is Professor of English literature at Université de Montréal. She is the editor of Lord Berners’s Castell of Love (2007), Margaret Tyler’s Mirror of Princely Deeds and Knighthood (2014), and Thomas Dekker’s The Wonderfull Yeare (Maps of Early Modern London, forthcoming). She is currently editing The Taming of the Shrew for LEMDO: Linked Early Modern Drama Online). |
Mike Griffin
| Mike Griffin is an Assistant Professor at Brock University and teaches acting, directing, devising, movement, mask, and Commedia dell’Arte. He is currently a Faculty Fellows in Accessibility at Brock and recently won the Faculty of Humanities’ 2023 Excellence in Teaching Award. Additionally, Mike is an accomplished playwright and director. |
William MacGregor
| William MacGregor (he/him) is a Theatre Artist and PhD Student in the Health Policy and Equity Graduate Program at York University. His SSHRC funded research, informed by his own experience with disability, chronic illness, and chronic pain, critically examines disability-related policies and programs and poverty for PWDs in Canada. |
Resources and Keywords
Keywords
Event Details and Description
Date: Saturday, June 28, Samedi 28 Juin
Location: Golden Room, Atlas Hotel
Time: 10:45am – 12:00pm CST / 10h45 – 12h00 HNC
• Kayla McIntyre, “Sapphic Sonics: Vancouver’s Lesbian Auditory Legacy”
| Queer ecologies and hauntology can surface through expressions in liminal space. An example, I will elaborate on further is Vancouver Co-Op Radio 102.7 CFRO-FM’s The Lesbian Show (TLS). TLS was a radio station in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, beginning in 1979 that highlighted a plethora of queer feminist-centric performance related works. In this specific episode of TLS, “Poetry”, curated both musical and lyrical performances additionally centring the episode with live slam poetry, giving listeners an experience of sonic intimacy (Pettman 2017). As a group, Vancouver Co-Op Radio 102.7 CFRO-FM’s The Lesbian Show exemplified autonomy, feminism, and showcased the realities of queerness building a strengthen sapphic community. In analyzing the vocal performances in this episode (such as “Rebellious Vagina”), I will conduct an auditory performance analysis to further understand the show’s utopian qualities. Drawing on understandings of ghostly familiarity, The Lesbian Show marks its historic roots in Vancouver’s queer ecology in exhibiting sexual liberation and subverting codified norms all while bringing a sense of escapism past the states of normalcy. In this paper, I argue that in using sonic intimacy and community collaboration, this episode of The Lesbian Show curates sapphic voices that push for bodily neutrality offering uplifting queer representations of female empowerment through their phantasmic traces and the importance of historical legacy. Works Cited City of Vancouver Archives (1980). “Co-op Radio: the lesbian show”, AM1675-S4-F40-: 2018-020.7126, Box: 194-C-10. https://searcharchives.vancouver.ca/co-op-radio-the-lesbian-show . City of Vancouver Archives (Nov. 13, 1986), Lesbian Show [poetry], AM1549-S01-F05-: 2009-116.0242-: 2009-116.0242.1. https://searcharchives.vancouver.ca/lesbian-show-poetry. Pettman, D. (2017). Sonic Intimacy: Voice, species, technics (or, how to listen to the world). Stanford University Press. |
• Grahame Renyk, “Mythologies and Counter-mythologies in Come from Away and Children of God“
| This paper is a response to an article I published in 2021, entitled “Welcome to the Rock: Come From Away as Happiness Machine.” Inspired by Sara Ahmed’s ideas about the circulation of happiness, I proposed that musicals like Come From Away are happy objects capable of infusing other objects – actual or conceptual – with a similarly happy affect. Many classic American musicals, for instance, not only reflect, but reinforce the myth of American Exceptionalism by attaching their own happy affect to that concept. Come From Away makes powerful use of happy affect to craft a counter-myth of Canada as ‘exceptionally unexceptional’ in contrast to its southern neighbour. The Canada it imagines is a welcoming and uncomplicated place where community, simplicity, and tolerance overcome division and paranoia. In this paper, I explore a contrasting example – Corey Payette’s Children of God – which embraces the musical theatre form to puncture the counter-myth of Canada as a simple and welcoming place. By leaning into the tropes, sytlizations, and overtly sentimental affect of popular musical theatre, Children of God effectively foregrounds for popular audiences one of Canada’s darkest and most harmful truths, the intergenerational suffering wrought by the Residential School system. Through potent and skillful use of affect, the ‘happy’ affect so characteristic of popular musicals is repurposed to infuse the story with a spirit of what Gerald Vizenor calls survivance. The horror and suffering endured by those who were victimized is dramatized, but so too is their vitality, spirit, and joy. |
Biographies
Kayla McIntyre
| Kayla McIntyre (she/they) is a current MA student in Theatre Studies at the University of British Columbia. Their academic interests centre around performance studies, gaming studies, and how they relate to theatre. Kayla’s current thesis work investigates RPGs and queer representation and identity exploration from direct player experience. |
Grahame Renyk
| Grahame Renyk is a Lecturer in the Dan School of Drama and Music at Queen’s University and a director and performer. His PhD dissertation (at the Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies at the University of Toronto) explores how the unique social and cultural characteristics of the Canadian theatre ecology have shaped the development of the popular music theatre in this country. |
Resources and Keywords
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Break/Pause – 15 minutes
Excursion (off-site /hors site): Guided theatre tour / Visite guidée du théâtre Globe Theatre
Location: Globe Theatre
1801 Scarth St., Regina SK
CATR
Event Details and Description
Globe Theatre
Date: Saturday, June 28 / Samedi 28 Juin
Location: Globe Theatre
Time: 2:00 – 4:00pm CST / 14h00 – 16h00 HNC
1801 Scarth St., Regina SK
Resources and Keywords
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Excursion (off-site / hors site)
Farewell EventLocation: Downtown Regina / Centre-ville de Regina
CATR
Event Details and Description
4:00–5:30pm CST / 16h00–17h30 HNC
Excursion (off-site / hors site)
§ End of conference cocktails / Cocktail du cloture du colloque
Downtown Regina / Centre-ville de Regina