Media releases

• The show must go on: Brock prof encouraged by theatre’s resiliency in midst of cancellations

  Wednesday, April 08, 2020 | By Brock University

  MEDIA RELEASE: 8 April 2020 – R0064

  The COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating blow on the performing arts, but a Brock University Dramatic Arts professor is encouraged by what she has seen from the industry.

  “A vibrant industry went to ground over a matter of days, with theatres at first announcing cancelled or postponed productions and then, in most cases, cancelling the remainder of their winter-spring seasons,” says Karen Fricker, Associate Professor of Dramatic Arts and theatre critic for the Toronto Star. “Most performing artists are precarious gig workers who are seeing current and future bookings evaporate.”

  In St. Catharines, arts organizations including the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre, the Meridian Centre, Essential Collective Theatre and Carousel Players are among those that have cancelled or postponed programming through May.

  The Stratford Festival has cancelled performances through to late May, and Niagara-on-the-Lake’s Shaw Festival through June. While Shaw has not laid off workers and is conducting rehearsals online, Stratford has temporary laid off 470 employees, including actors, technicians and box office workers.

  But Fricker sees hope among the gloomy news.

  “Theatre companies and artists have been demonstrating amazing resilience and ingenuity during this time of crisis,” she says. “A lot of activity has gone online.”

  Essential Collective Theatre is turning its annual vaudeville fundraiser into an online affair. “Quarantine Cabaret” will feature short video recordings of various acts, including singing, magic, clowning, drag and melodramatic readings, which will be livestreamed at the end of April.

  Several Toronto-based companies are putting on telephone plays: one-on-one shows in which an audience member gets a hand-made personal story delivered to them over the phone, says Fricker.

  “DLT (DopoLavoro Teatrale), known to local audiences for their immersive shows including That Ugly Mess that Happened in St. Catharines, is producing a series of phone and online performances,” says Fricker. Some of the performances are inspired by Boccacio’s Decameron, a 14th^–century collection of novellas about a group of youth sheltering outside Florence to escape the Black Death.

  “I have been uplifted by engaging with online theatre over the past few weeks,” Fricker says.

  “Watching theatre this way is not the same as sharing the same physical space and time with fellow audience members and the artists themselves, but that doesn’t mean it’s a lesser experience. It’s different, and theatres and audiences alike are adapting to what is, for now, the new normal.”

  Brock University Associate Professor of Dramatic Arts Karen Fricker is available for media interviews.

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:

  * Dan Dakin, Manager Communications and Media Relations, Brock University ddakin@brocku.ca, or 905-347-1970

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  Categories: Media releases

• Brock team begins online study of children’s experiences during COVID-19

  Tuesday, April 07, 2020 | By Brock University

  Media Release: 7 April 2020 – R0063

  It was a news report on the dramatic rise in calls to Kids Help Phone that moved Rebecca Raby to action.

  As a researcher with a long history of working with children and youth, the Brock University Professor of Child and Youth Studies was concerned, and curious, about how young people are coping with the COVID-19 pandemic.

  Raby and her research team of six graduate students have now launched their online study of children’s and young people’s experiences at home during the pandemic.

  “Clearly, there are children who are in a lot of distress out there,” says Raby. “But I suspect we’re also going to hear stories about really cool, compelling things that kids have started to initiate at home with parents, siblings, on their own or online.”

  Raby and her team are starting one-on-one online interviews this week with up to 30 children and youth from ages eight to 15.

  The research team member is asking participants a number of open-ended questions, says Raby. Some example questions include:

  • How are you feeling?
  • What’s your favourite thing to do each day?
  • What are you finding hardest about this situation?
  • Have the rules of your household changed?
  • How has the situation changed your extra-curricular activities and your job, if you have one?

  The team will do another round of online interviews in two weeks, asking the same questions, and then they’ll repeat that every two weeks over the next few months. In between the major sessions will be “mini-interviews” to stay in touch with participants, says Raby.

  “I think that this is an opportunity for some kids to have extra social contact,” she says.

  Raby and her team sought to recruit children and youth from a wide diversity of backgrounds and age ranges. They’re still seeking participants from lower-income families.

  “The experiences of children during the pandemic are going to vary so greatly depending on a number of factors, including if they have disabilities, are lower income, the size of their living space, whether they are travelling back and forth between parents,” she says. “All of those kinds of things can shape what their experiences of the pandemic will be.”

  Raby says the pandemic has greatly accelerated the team’s research process, and that she’s been “really impressed” that Brock’s Research Ethics Board has been open to quickly reviewing research applications related to the pandemic.

  As soon as patterns and themes start emerging from the interviews, Raby plans on sharing the findings with media so that the wider public is aware of children’s and young peoples’ experiences right away.

  “I suspect we’re going to learn a lot about personal coping, family dynamics and online peer friendships,” says Raby, “providing us with a sense of how children are dealing with this difficult situation.”

  Such knowledge might help families by offering ideas and coping strategies arising from the young people themselves, she says, and provide government and service organizations with ideas on how to better support children who are having a hard time.

  Down the road, the team aims to publish their findings, partly as an historical record of this time and also “to inform thinking about children’s experiences in social isolation in general,” says Raby.

  “There are children who are in social isolation quite regularly, even in normal life.”

  Professor of Child and Youth Studies Rebecca Raby is available for media interviews.

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:

  * Dan Dakin, Manager Communications and Media Relations, Brock University ddakin@brocku.ca, 905-347-1970

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  Categories: Media releases