1. How does the act of ‘alienating’ an actor from a role they are portraying provide the opportunity for the audience to engage in a more critical conversation with the work of art? How could such a model of increased critical conversation serve to intervene in the industry in Canada?
2. How can subverting onstage-signs related to representations of race/ethnicity/gender/class/ ability (and so forth) add complexity to theatrical texts that take these realities to be natural and inevitable social ‘givens’ rather than social and historical constructions?
3. Think of the ways in which a practice such as cross-dressing can be utilized to ‘delaminate’ the character from the actor. Conversely, also think about the ways in which such a practice can be directed in order to perpetuate harmful stereotypes.
4. Discuss a play that stages problematic representations of race/ethnicity/gender/class/ability (and so forth), and discuss how such representations can be challenged using alienation techniques deployed by actors in a production of the play.

Brecht, Bertolt. Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic. Ed. and trans.

Derrida, Jacques. Margins of Philosophy.  Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.

Diamond, Elin. Unmaking Mimesis: Essays on Feminism and Theatre. New York: Routledge, 1997.

Diamond, Elin. “Brechtian Theory / Feminist Theory.” A Sourcebook on Feminist Theatre and Performance. Ed. Carol Martin. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. 120­135.

Jackson, Shannon. Professing Performance: Theatre in the Academy from Philology to Performativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.