Department of Arts and Cultural Management
Permanent link for this collection
Browse
Recent Submissions
- ItemProducing the past: the changing protagonists of Canadian heritage(2022) Gunter, Christopher; Nelson, RobinThe Canadian private sector also contributes to the heritage commemoration landscape by working with the government and accessing support programs. Arguably, one of the most impactful contemporary examples of the private sector’s heritage commemoration involvement are the Heritage Minutes (Minutes), which are sixty-second videos depicting historical narratives of events and people from Canadian history. Given their notoriety, the production and story selections for each Minute raises questions about the Canadian heritage landscape: who and what is represented or missing, and what are the implications? By examining these questions, this article aims to hold these Minutes—financed and authorized by government—to account and to understand what themes and messages these vignettes aim to impart on and authorize as ‘commemorative worthy’ to the Canadian public. This article focuses on examining the Minutes and documenting their thematic trends with a specific emphasis on identifying how marginalized groups are represented in the Minutes.
- ItemHarnessing the power of flight: devising responsive theatre for the very young(2022) Ayles, Robyn; Fitzsimmons-Frey, Heather; Mykietyshyn, MargaretSuccessful theatre hinges on relationships. In our research, we devised an immersive theatre piece about urban wildlife through key early childhood education concepts outlined in the Canadian document Flight: Alberta’s Early Learning and Care Framework. The project’s guiding question was: How could we better understand audience engagement in the early years demographic by using the reflective process, rights-based perspectives, and holistic play-based goals of the Flight framework to interpret children’s experiences? Our creative team aimed to develop democratic and playful relationships with children during theatrical exploration, and using the Flight framework to analyse what children were communicating grounded our theatre creation and dramaturgy in respectful and agentic relationships between actors, theatrical objects, and young children.
- Item"True when no one would listen": scripts for young readers and young audiences(2022) Fitzsimmons-Frey, HeatherPlayscripts present the vision of the playwright, while simultaneously opening spaces for multiple voices to tell stories their own ways. Since characters in a playscript are meant to be embodied, they immediately invite interpretation. And since scripts rarely, if ever, answer all the questions a reader, actor, director, or educator may have, they encourage complex ways of listening and having conversations. Selfie by Christine Quintana, A Bear Awake in Winter by Ali Joy Richardson, and Winky & Stinky by Curtis Peeteetuce are all recently published scripts that engage with some similar issues: consent, agency, voice and choice, bodily autonomy, gendered expectations, and controlling your own narrative. Selfie, published by Playwrights Canada Press as a standalone script, was first performed in English in 2018 (Young People’s Theatre Toronto), and in French in 2015 (Théâtre la Seixième in Vancouver). A Bear Awake in Winter was first workshopped in 2018 (Canadian Stage Toronto) and produced by Binocular Theatre in 2019 in Toronto. Finally, Winky and Stinky is part of Boca del Lupo’s pandemic project Plays2Perform@Home, which features five box sets containing four scripts each: British Columbia, Prairie, Ontario, Québec, and Eastern Canada. Winky and Stinky is part of the Prairie Box Set and was created with support from Persephone Theatre in Saskatoon.
- ItemGumshoes and blanket wings: care in pandemic performances for youth(2021) Fitzsimmons-Frey, HeatherWhen Canadian theatrical performances halted because of the pandemic, artists everywhere bravely reimagined their work. Creating for any remote audience is difficult, but young audiences present particular challenges. Danish artists Peter Manscher and Peter Jankovic (qtd. in Reason 46) explain that in successful child-focused work, spectators “must have the feeling that it would have been different if they hadn’t been there—that their presence matters.” How can children feel their presence matters if a performance streams regardless of a child’s presence? Foolish Operations’ Artistic Director Julie Lebel asserts “Working with children in general and the very young especially implies interactivity. To provide static content doesn’t do the job.” The issue of presence is also related to a second challenge of utmost importance for young audiences: relationship. What kinds of meaningful performance-fostered relationships are possible during this pandemic? In response to pandemic restrictions, Outside the March (Toronto) and Foolish Operations (Vancouver) reimagined projects for young audiences thoughtfully and very differently, but both companies decided that some of their pandemic pivots would avoid screens altogether, and their creative work would focus on intimacy, interactivity, and relationships. Outside the March’s Ministry of Mundane Mysteries Playdate Edition, and Foolish Operations’ Moving, Resting, Nesting boldly use limitations placed on artists and audiences to create opportunities in which a child’s presence matters. While Outside the March is interested in forging relationships between people who cannot be together because of the pandemic, Foolish Operations was interested in “supporting the family unit as the site of the experience.” Through content and dramaturgy that centralize relationships, intimacy, and audience care, each project considers what young people and their caregivers might be craving from a performance experience right now.
- ItemReenacting the past(2022) Fitzsimmons-Frey, Heather; Schweitzer, MarlisThis chapter explores cultural practices of reenacting the past in the present. How have understandings of reenactment, embodiment, and lived experience shaped, constrained, and misdirected interpretations of people’s actions in the present that purposefully reference the past? What is the state of this scholarship? What are the principal critiques and new directions?