Read the manifesto HERE.

Theatre Pedagogy in the Era of Climate Crisis: An online symposium Backgrounder

To launch the publication of Theatre Pedagogy in the Era of Climate Crisis, the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts is hosting an online symposium as part of the Walker Cultural Leader Series Saturday 20 – Sunday 21 March 2021. 

Convened by volume co-editors David Fancy (Brock) and Conrad Alexandrowicz (Victoria), this two-day event features four online panel discussions with contributing authors of the volume, each a theatre scholar and/or practitioner. This event centers on the question of how theatre pedagogy can be transformed in response to the global climate crisis. 

Each panel is based on a theme in the anthology, such as Intersectionality and the Body of the Earth; Eco-Aesthetics in Performance and Design; Eco-literacies in Teaching Theatre, and so forth. These panel discussions will provide audiences with an introduction to and extension of analysis and discussion from the publication. A summary of the overall aim of this volume can be found in a manifesto signed by all contributing authors; the epilogue of the book. 

“Nothing could be more pressing than understanding how to evolve our theatre training and pedagogy to address the climate crisis,” says Fancy. He continues by noting that, “the volume’s authors unpack how supremacy thinking informing the climate crisis — that humans are more important than nature — is echoed across racial and gendered violence in contemporary societies.”

Panelists are purposely divided into groups to mix their different expertise — encouraging a rich and invigorating discussion.

Structured as a online pre-book pre-launch, each panel will feature a variety of practitioners; historians, theatre practitioners, playwrights, professors, designers, activists; answering the question of how theatre pedagogy can be transformed in response to the global climate crisis.

Audiences can watch the free, live event on the MIWSFPA YouTube channel (no registration required). 

Saturday 20 March 2021
1-2:15pm ET – Theatre Pedagogy and the Climate Crisis
Moderator: David Fancy, with Lara Aysal, Derek Davidson, Katrina Dunn, Beth Osnes
Watch the live event on the MIWSFPA YouTube channel.  

David Fancy is professor and chair in the Department of Dramatic Arts, Brock University. He brings his philosophical interest in immanentist thought to performance studies, science and technology studies and critical disability studies. Recent publications include Fancy, David and Hans Skott-Myhre, Eds. Immanence, Politics and the Aesthetic: Thinking Revolt in the 21st Century. McGill-Queens University Press, 2019; and Fancy, David and Lillian Manzour Eds. Teatro de Tres Americas: Antología Norte. Ediciones Sin Paredes, 2020. Fancy has an extensive practice as a playwright, and director of theatre, opera and circus; he is the editor of a website on the subject of actor training and diversities.

Lara Aysal is a climate justice and human rights activist, performance artist and facilitator of community-oriented projects. Her work mainly focuses on migration, ethnic minority conflict and climate crisis. She is one of the co-founders of AA+A Contemporary Performance Research Project and Ray Performance Collective. She gave acting classes at Beykent University. She is interested in the role of theatre to address, organize and take action within climate justice context though decolonizing methodologies. Lara recently completed her artist in residence at Greenpeace Canada and International Center of Arts for Social Change. She is currently a PhD student at UBC Interdisciplinary Studies.

Derek Davidson teaches playwriting, dramatic literature and theatre history at Appalachian State University. Davidson is also artistic director of In/Visible Theatre (a professional company in Boone, North Carolina), a playwright, director and AEA actor. He has worked as an associate artistic director and coordinator for the Appalachian Festival of Plays and Playwrights at the Barter Theatre in Virginia. Davidson is co-facilitator of the university-wide Climate Stories Collaborative, for which he has conducted several Forum Theatre workshops; his short play “Blackjack,” has been performed internationally as part of the Climate Change Theatre Action.

Katrina Dunn is assistant professor in the University of Manitoba’s Department of English, Theatre, Film & Media where she teaches in the Theatre Program. Her scholarly work explores the spatial manifestations of theatre as well as ecocritical theatre. Katrina’s long career as a stage director and producer has had considerable impact on the performing arts in western Canada and has been recognized with numerous awards. Malus fusca is a North American species of crabapple tree. The singular tree that contributed to this chapter has its roots in Fort Garry in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Beth Osnes PhD, is an Associate Professor of Theatre at the University of Colorado Boulder, and is an associate of the Environmental Studies faculty. She engages in performance to co-author and actualize an equitable, survivable, and thrive-able future for all life and the ecosystems upon which all life relies. This applied approach to performance is explicitly for positive social change and is characterized by process-oriented work on an issue identified by the community. As an Associate Professor of Theatre and Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado Beth is co-director of Inside the Greenhouse, an initiative for creative communication on climate. She  toured an original musical Shine to Rockefeller Foundation 100 Resilient Cities locations to facilitate youth voices in resilience planning, and published the book Performance for Resilience: Engaging Youth on Energy and Climate through Music, Movement, and Theatre. Beth’s book Theatre for Women’s Participation in Sustainable Development includes her work specific to gender equity in Panama, Guatemala, India, Nicaragua and the Navajo Nation.

Saturday 20 March 2021
3-4:15pm ET – Eco-Aesthetics in Performance and in Design
Moderator: Conrad Alexandrowicz, Tanja Beer, Rachel Bowditch, Joan Lipkin, David Vivian
Watch the live event on the MIWSFPA YouTube channel. 

Conrad Alexandrowicz, MFA, is an associate professor in the Department of Theatre at the University of Victoria, where he teaches movement for actors. Over a decades-long career in performance he migrated from dance to theatre and has been a dancer, choreographer, writer of texts for dance, playwright, actor, director and producer. He created over fifty dance- and physical theatre works, many of which were presented across Canada, and internationally. His writing has been published in Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, Studies in Theatre and Performance and Theatre Topics. His first book, Acting Queer: Gender Dissidence and the Subversion of Realism, was published by Palgrave in February 2020.

Tanja Beer is an ecoscenographer and community artist who is passionate about co-creating social gathering spaces that accentuate the interconnectedness of the more-than-human world. Originally trained as a performance designer and theatre maker, Tanja’s work increasingly crosses many disciplines, often collaborating with landscape architects, urban ecologists, horticulturists and placemakers to inspire communication and action on environmental issues. Her most celebrated project is The Living Stage: a global initiative that combines spatial design, horticulture and community engagement to create recyclable, biodegradable, biodiverse and edible event spaces. The Living Stage has been realized in Castlemaine, Cardiff, Glasgow, Armidale, New York and Melbourne, with outcomes of the work exhibited at the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space and the V&A in London. Tanja is currently a senior lecturer in design (spatial/interior) at Griffith University.  

Rachel Bowditch (PhD/Full Professor) is the director of graduate studies in the School of Film, Dance, and Theatre in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts overseeing eight graduate programs: MFA in Theatre for Youth, MFA in Dance, MFA in Directing, MFA in Performance, MFA in Dramatic Writing, and MFA in Interdisciplinary Digital Media as well as the PhD in Theatre for Youth and PhD in Theatre and Performance of the Americas. She was a fellow at the Harvard Mellon Institute for Performance Research in “Public Humanities,” in 2018 and was featured as one of the “Top 100 Creatives,” by Origins Magazine in 2015.

She is a theatre director and author of three books, “On the Edge of Utopia: Performance and Ritual at Burning Man” (Seagull/University of Chicago Press 2010), “Performing Utopia” co-edited with Pegge Vissicaro (Seagull/University of Chicago Press 2018) and “Physical Dramaturgy: Perspectives from the Field” co-edited with Jeff Casazza and Annette Thornton (Routledge 2018). She is currently working on her fourth book under contract with Routledge about Richard Schechner’s performance workshop and Rasaboxes with Paula Murray Cole and Michele Minnick (expected publication 2020).

Joan Lipkin is the Producing Artistic Director of That Uppity Theatre Company in St. Louis, Missouri where she founded the nationally acclaimed Alternate Currents/Direct Currents Series, The DisAbility Project, the Louies and Apple Pie. A strong proponent of collaboration, she also co-founded Women CenterStage! with the Center of Creative Arts, the Nadadada Festival at The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Democracy on Stage with the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Mid-Sized Arts Cooperative. A playwright, director, activist, educator, and social critic, her award-winning work has been featured on network television, National Public Radio, the BBC and the Associated Press. Her work has been published and presented throughout the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Europe, Australia and Asia. She was an Artist-in-Residence at Washington University for five years and served on the faculty of the Community Arts Training Institute for three years.

David Vivian, MFA, ENTC/NTSC, is the scenographer in the Department of Dramatic Arts at Brock University, and Director of Brock’s Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts. Formerly with Concordia University in Montreal, his designs for theatre, film, television and industry have been seen across Canada. His work at Brock has included the set and costume designs for the Mainstage productions since 2004. He teaches theatrical design, production and stagecraft at Brock. David researches marginalized and virtual spaces through visual arts and theatre design, the application of digital technologies to the collection of performance ephemera and regional identity construction and transmission through scenographic practice and research.

Sunday 21 March 2022
1-2:15pm ET Eco-Literacies in Teaching Theatre
Moderator: Sasha Kovacs, with Mary Anderson, Dennis Gupa, David Fancy
Watch the live event on the MIWSFPA YouTube channel. 

Alexandra (Sasha) Kovacs is an assistant professor at the University of Victoria (Canada) where she teaches and researches Canadian theatre historiography. She is currently completing a monograph concerning the performance history of late Mohawk (Kanien’kehá:ka) Six Nations woman E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake). Kovacs’ research is published in Performance Research, Shakespeare International Yearbook, Canadian Theatre Review and the collection Space and Place: Cultural Mapping and the Digital Sphere. Kovacs is currently a co-investigator on the SSHRC Partnership Development research project Gatherings: Archival and Oral Histories of Performance. More information about her research can be found on that project’s website: gatheringsparthernship.com.

Mary Anderson is the chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance at Wayne State University. She is interested in heuristic processes, the convolutions of remembering through writing and objects in performance.  Her articles have appeared in Performance Matters; About Performance; Body, Space & Technology; Canadian Journal of Practice-based Research in Theatre; Theatre, Dance & Performance Training; Teaching Artist Journal; Research in Drama Education; Journal of Dance Education; International Journal of Education & the Arts; and Arts Education Policy Review.

Dennis D. Gupa is a theatre director, educator and dramaturg. His dissertation in applied theatre at University of Victoria focuses on refiguring climate crises, decolonial theatre and the dramaturgy of care. He is a fellow of UVic’s Center for Studies in Religion and Society and was a research fellow of the UVic’s Center for Asia-Pacific Initiatives. He obtained an MFA Theatre (Directing) degree from the University of British Columbia and MA Theatre Arts at the University of the Philippines. He co-authored articles published by Text and Performance Quarterly, Global Performance Studies international and Arts Praxis. Dennis is a Vanier Scholar.

David Fancy is professor and chair in the Department of Dramatic Arts, Brock University. He brings his philosophical interest in immanentist thought to performance studies, science and technology studies and critical disability studies. Recent publications include Fancy, David and Hans Skott-Myhre, Eds. Immanence, Politics and the Aesthetic: Thinking Revolt in the 21st Century. McGill-Queens University Press, 2019; and Fancy, David and Lillian Manzour Eds. Teatro de Tres Americas: Antología Norte. Ediciones Sin Paredes, 2020. Fancy has an extensive practice as a playwright, and director of theatre, opera and circus; he is the editor of a website on the subject of actor training and diversities.

Sunday 21 March 2022
3-4:15pm ET Intersectionality, Solidarity, and the Body of the Earth
Moderator: Rachel Rhoades, with Gloria Akayi Asoloko, Soji Cole, Conrad Alexandrowicz
Watch the live event on the MIWSFPA YouTube channel. 

Rachel Rhoades currently serves as assistant professor of applied theatre at Brock University. She has worked as an applied theatre practitioner, educator and researcher with young people from Grade 1 to the graduate level for 14 years. Her current community-based research interrogates the potential for ensemble devising to serve as a site for cultural sustainability, social resilience and equitable acculturation with refugee and newcomer adults to the Niagara region in Canada. Her doctoral research examined how racialized, socioeconomically under-resourced secondary school-age youth in Toronto conceptualize their current and future roles within contemporary social movements and the larger political sphere through ethnodrama. 

Gloria Asoloko is a Nigerian scholar, and a development worker with a Master of Arts Degree in Development Communication. She is the co-founder of Framework Advocacy and Development Initiative (FAD Initiative), a non-profit organization aimed at community development in Nigeria. She is a consultant with RNW Media, The Netherlands, where she is involved in developmental projects. Her play, “Who Knows Amanda,” won the Society of Nigerian Theatre Artist (SONTA) drama prize and the African Writers Award for Drama. She is currently a staff of the Institute of Strategic and Development Communication (ISDEVCOM), Nasarawa State University, Nigeria.

Soji Cole is a theatre creator and scholar. He has a Diploma, B.A., M.A. and PhD degrees, in Theatre Arts, from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He has won the African Theatre Association (AfTA) Emerging Scholars’ Prize, the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR) New Scholars’ Prize, the Association of Nigerian Authors’ (ANA) Playwriting Prize and the NLNG/Nigeria Prize for Literature (the biggest literature prize in Africa). He was a Fulbright Fellow at Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas (2014-15). He taught playwriting and theatre sociology in Nigerian universities, before moving to Canada, where he currently studies for a second PhD at Brock University.

Conrad Alexandrowicz, MFA, is an associate professor in the Department of Theatre at the University of Victoria, where he teaches movement for actors. Over a decades-long career in performance he migrated from dance to theatre and has been a dancer, choreographer, writer of texts for dance, playwright, actor, director and producer. He created over fifty dance- and physical theatre works, many of which were presented across Canada, and internationally. His writing has been published in Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, Studies in Theatre and Performance and Theatre Topics. His first book, Acting Queer: Gender Dissidence and the Subversion of Realism, was published by Palgrave in February 2020.

Beginning in 2011 the academic programs of the Marilyn I. Walker School have celebrated the legacy of Marilyn, her gift and her vision by programming the Walker Cultural Leaders (WCL) Series. The ongoing development and refinement of the WCL program facilitates invitations to recognized cultural leaders, top researchers, visiting artists, scholars, professionals, theatre companies, producing and presenting organizations, associations, and others to contribute to the intellectual and creative life of the School and the Niagara region.

To learn more, please visit the Walker Cultural Leaders webpage.