Panels

Panel 1: Learning from/in/through Performance

Friday February 3, 10.15am – 12.00pm

• Dr. Sasha Colby “Literary Pages, Public Stages: Teaching Literature Through Theatre” — Working from my experience touring my twenty-four character one-woman production about modernist poet, H.D. (Hida Doolitle) as well as theory drawn from performance and literary studies, I will consider the ways in which drama presents possibilities for enlivening the presentation of the literary tradition. In particular, I will focus on the ways in which the narrative dimensions of drama provide an important (and often overlooked) opportunity for learning about literature.  During the course of my presentation, I will perform a short excerpt from “H.D.: A Life” in order to illustrate the theoretical dimensions of dramatizing literary scholarship.
• Brittany Ross-Fichtner “Eco-Monster Lessons: Environmentalist Themes in Toronto’s Production of The Toxic Avenger” — The Toxic Avenger ran at Toronto’s Danforth Music Hall from October 31^st, 2009 to January 2^nd, 2010 and used the medium of musical theatre to playfully address issues of environmental pollution. The musical follows hero Melvin Ferd the Third’s attempts to stop evil polluters from turning his hometown into a radioactive toxic waste dump. The production was uniquely conscious of environmental justice issues and consequently was marketed as “an eco-monster musical-comedy” by Dancap Productions president Aubrey Dan. This paper uses a materialist approach to investigate the types of environmental lessons taught to Toronto audiences by The Toxic Avenger.
• Cassandra Silver “Digi-Applied Theatre: Bringing Boal into the 21st Century” — Toronto company Praxis Theatre have updated Boal’s project of using theatre as a didactic tool by incorporating new social media into the theatrical event in a form of live performance they have dubbed ‘open-source theatre.’ Praxis invites their spectators to contribute textually, in real-time, to the creation of a live staged performance using their cell phones and other ubiquitous digital accoutrements rather than physical intervention in the unfolding action. I will examine their recent work-in-progress project, Section 98 (which explores the histories and realities of Canadian civil liberties) in terms of its how-to pragmatics. I will also offer an exploration of the effectiveness of this disembodied-applied theatre tactic, questioning its value as a teaching tool and method of spectatorial engagement.

Panel 2: Teaching and Training

Friday February 3, 1.00pm – 2.00pm

• Dr. Mary Anderson “Preparation, Practice and Professionalization: International Case Studies of Teaching Artists in Theatre” —The rise in prominence of the “teaching artist” over the past decade is a visionary example of the rethinking of the limitations of artist versus educator binaries. This presentation offers analysis of survey data and in-depth interviews from a mixed-methods qualitative study of teaching artists (n=168) working in Australia, New Zealand, Southeast Asia, the UK and the US. Illuminating study participants’ perspectives on their preparation and practice, the presentation will focus on: the ways teaching artists value and assess their work; challenges and obstacles to practice; comparative philosophical, artistic and pedagogical issues; and beliefs and attitudes regarding teaching artist credentialing.
• Noam Lior “New Stories for Old: Studying Early Modern Plays in Performance or Where Do We Go From Here?” — ‘This text seems dull, pedantic, and unplayable on the page, but when we attempted to stage it, we discovered that it was well-crafted, lively, and entertaining.’ This formulation, or some variation of it, accompanies numerous (often academic) productions of obscure historical texts. At the same time, the canon of texts that are generally produced—or used for actor training—is substantially unchanged. Is there a disconnect here? Are there different points we should be considering? How can we connect academic performance, professional training, and commercial performance? And should we?

Panel 3: Theatre for Social Change

Friday February 3, 3.45pm – 5.15pm

•  Kathy Bishop “A PhD Student’s Search for a Moral Imperative in Research-Based Theatre” — Seeking a moral imperative to guide my work in research-based theatre, I surveyed six leading applied theatre practitioners. Namely, Johnny Saldana, Jim Mienkowski, Kathleen Gallagher, Tim Prentki, Anthony Jackson and James Thompson. I address the moral imperative each suggested within an enhanced Shapiro and Gross (2008) multiple ethics paradigm (MEP). Thinking about theatre for social change, the MEP provides a framework for ethical discussion and questions such as: What is the impact of telling stories? How is the research a form of enmeshed public/private practice? How is the art form valued? Why are you making the choices you are making?
• Dr. Monica Prendergast & Prof. Juliana Saxton “Applied Drama Facilitation: Articulating and Challenging Community Concerns” — Applied drama—educational drama practice in community contexts outside regular classrooms—is intended to build skills in and commitment to group dramatic process.  Much of the research points to the emergence of applied drama from the field of drama/theatre education in which process, role and improvisation are central concepts.  We present four key questions and a range of responses that offer a deeper understanding of applied drama facilitation: how is applied drama different from applied theatre?; what are the foundational concepts of applied drama practice?; what competencies are required for effective applied drama facilitation?; what are the particular challenges of applied drama practice?
• Amanda Wager “Learning Out of the Ordinary: Street Youth Embodying Critical Pedagogy Through Applied Theatre” — This paper presentation is accompanied by a short screening of Surviving in the Cracks, a theatrical production, applied research project and documentary film co-created with seven street-involved youth and five university researchers about the closings of underage safehouses in 2004.  The paper explores the research project’s theory of change as seen through the lens of a ‘desire-based’ research framework (Tuck, 2009), which draws on the complexities of the youth and researchers’ everyday lives emulated through self-determination and contradictions.  It will also problematize this analysis through examples of how the accompanying documentary at times positioned the research as ‘damage-centered’ research.

Panel 4: Drama and Second Language Education

Friday February 3, 5.30pm – 6.30pm

• Profs. Joelle Aden & Enrica Piccardo “Exploring Empathy Through Narratives and Theatre in Second Language Learning” — This paper presents a study in progress which intent is to shed new light on the cognitive links between theatre techniques and second language education by bridging the gap between emotion, physical and verbal competence. The study tackles two questions: the impact theatre techniques can have in facilitating written comprehension and the role empathy plays in the learners’ performance. In the study, theatre techniques are used as experimental approaches to more fully engage students with literature. We posit that supporting students in developing an empathetic attitude and therefore to acquiring an open attitude towards intercultural experiences and communication can also contribute to prevent phenomena of intolerance and bullying.
• Burcu Yaman Ntelioglou “Multimodal and Embodied Language Learning Through Drama” — Drawing on theoretical work in drama education, second language education, post-colonial framework and multiliteracies pedagogy, the paper shares findings from an ethnographic study in an urban high school drama classroom with students who are speakers of English as a second/additional language. The paper explores language learning and meaning-making processes through drama, considering several aspects of the verbal and the embodied: from concrete, physical and kinesthetic aspects, to relational ones.

Panel 5:  “(Off) Balance:  Body and Mind (Dis) Equilibrium in Theatre”

Saturday February 4, 10.00am – 11.00am

• Profs. Juliana Saxton & Carole Miller ”The Complex Ways of Arts Experiences” — The predisposition of the brain to lay previous knowledge and feelings over incoming experience robs us of the ability to see things freshly.  We explore how three drama activities (decoding text, reading visual image, creating tableau) disturb invariant representations so that participants enter the heart of story in a state of disequilibrium that subtlety mirrors the protagonist’s state of mind.
• Profs. Sallie Lyons & Gina Lori Riley ”Threads of Influence” — As two practicing dance artists of the 1970s, we saw this fertile period incubate a fundamental shift in artistic perspective – one that put the body first as the primary source of knowledge, expression, and creativity. This paper and presentation will examine specific threads that created the fabric from which the authors observed and participated in this transgression of artistic boundaries, connecting the threads to theatre trainings today; specifically Suzuki, Viewpoints, and composition/devised trainings. Principles that were initially examined through dance are now being taught to a new generations of acting and directing students by dance artists, including the authors.

Panel 6: Drama Classroom

Saturday February 4, 11.15am – 1:15pm

• Dr. Charles Curran “Readers Theatre; Verified Claims for Efficacy in School Environments and Potential for Use in Others” — Readers Theatre (RT) involves participants in reading play scripts, transcripts from radio dramas or comedies, or from scripts prepared especially for RT. The participants read lines; they do not memorize, use costumes, or employ props.  The chief aim of RT is to provide enjoyment through involvement in story telling.  Classroom and library settings provide the most often used venues for RT, but interest in using RT in other, perhaps non-traditional, settings is growing.  This increase in interest in the utility of RT, in health care environments for example, is based upon findings of two types.  One is anecdotal and consists chiefly of responses from facilitators and participants.  The other presents findings by investigators who have studied the benefits claimed for RT.  Evidence shows that participants enjoy RT; that RT can improve reading, retention, and vocabulary skills; and that RT can have a rightful place in school curricula, even those which appear to be focused substantially on preparing students to score well on standardized tests. *sponsored by the School of Library and Information Science & the Department of Theatre and Dance, University of South Carolina
• Prof. Mia Perry “Deterritorialising Drama: Places of Learning in Failing in Education” — This paper begins with failure. Discourses of failure in contemporary cultural practices are uncommon; failures in education are unapproved of. This paper explores the place and possibility of failure in contemporary cultural practices, with particular attention to devised theatre. From here, I introduce a devised theatre project with secondary students that I carried out as part of a broader research project (2006 – 2010). In the context of this empirical work, and the theoretical landscape of Deleuze and Guattari, I consider the failure intrinsic to the process of devised theatre, and explore it’s potentials and pitfalls in the context of education.
• Dr. Monica Prendergast “The Importance of Utopia as a Good-Place/No-Place in Drama Education” — What might we in drama/theatre education and applied drama/theatre gain from drawing upon utopian studies to enhance the ongoing theorization of what we do? This paper presentation investigates key concepts from philosopher and literary theorist Fredric Jameson’s (2005) Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. Jameson’s study of the utopian form in literature and film, a reclamation project he calls “anti-anti-utopianism” (p. xvi), will be examined in dialogical relation to contemporary drama/theatre education practices, such as; Australian drama education scholars’ concept of drama as social dreaming, Jonothan Neelands’ work on socially-committed pedagogy, ensemble and democracy, Cecily O’Neill’s process drama, and Dorothy Heathcote’s Mantle of the Expert approach to education.
• Anne Wessels “Hedging Difference: Youth Site-Specific Performance in a Suburban/Edge City School” — As gentrification of the inner city of Toronto has forced some residents to seek more affordable housing in the high-rise towers of the older suburbs that ring the city, the region faces documented rates of increasing and racialized poverty. At the same time, myths of the suburbs persist that conceptualize it as a garden and the place of utopic escape from the inner city. How youth negotiate these social changes and persistent myths in a suburban/edge city school is the focus of this ethnography that inquires into the ways that site-specific performance created by suburban youth can offer perspectives that challenge the myth of the suburban/urban divide.

Panel 7 & Keynote Address: Theatre for Young Audiences

Sunday February 5 10.30am – 12.00pm

• Dr. Belarie Zatzman “Teaching Difficult Knowledge Through Drama Education: Remembering and Representing the Holocaust” — Focusing on personal and public memory, this paper asks how theatre and drama pedagogy can stage absence and young peoples’ multiple conceptions and representations of memory.  Addressing difficult knowledge through theatre can help negotiate embodied, documentary and imaginative pedagogical encounters.  Contemporary drama education practices can respond to archival ephemera and artifacts as performative traces/ spaces, in which we can explore diverse perspectives and locations, as well as the complexities of post-memory. New Canadian scripts and the drama education work designed around them will be considered, e.g., Hana’s Suitcase (Levine; Sher, 2006), and The Children’s Republic (Moscovitch, 2011).
• Lois Adamson “Why Bring Students to the Theatre? An Exploration of the Value of Professional Theatre for Children” — Experienced by thousands of children every year, professional theatre for young audiences (TYA) is still a relatively understudied phenomenon in Canada. The purpose of this research has been to learn why teachers bring their students to the theatre, specifically Young People’s Theatre
  (YPT). In order to understand the complexities of the impetus to bring students to YPT, this ethnographic study was situated at the intersection of spatial and curriculum theories. This research provides greater understanding of the challenges and benefits of including theatre-going in one’s educational repertoire and contributes to contemporary scholarship on aesthetic education, arts-based community building and the value of teaching and learning through theatre.