“Performances of the Future—Now”
May 5th & 6th 2017 | SFU Woodwards | Rm. 4350
Our Theatre Studies PhD candidates Katrina Dunn and Claire Fogal join with their colleagues from Simon Fraser University and University of Victoria for this exciting event produced entirely by the graduate students of all three universities. Last year the conference was at the beautiful Green College at UBC and this year, it will be at SFU.
The 2017 Tri-University Colloquium for Theatre and Performance Research completes its first full cycle with the 3rd annual event. The first two cycles, hosted by the University of Victoria and the University of British Columbia, focused on Creating Legacies and [Co]memoration respectively. This year’s colloquium, hosted by Simon Fraser University, seeks to build on these themes by looking at the ways in which contemporary performance and theatre, as well as other creative practices, are grappling with the idea of the future.
The Tri-University Graduate Student Colloquium was formed in 2014 to offer vital professional development opportunities to graduate student scholars at UBC, UVIC and SFU working in the areas of theatre and performance studies. The initiative is entirely student-led, and its annual colloquium event in April/May rotates between the three universities. Its goals are to create scholarly conversation and build community, to offer skill-building opportunities in conference organization and presentation, and to generate structures that promote useful feedback and growth for graduate students.
On May 5th and 6th, students from all three universities will share papers and performances that explore dimensions of the colloquium theme in an atmosphere of exciting critical exchange. The colloquium keynote speaker, Dr. Laura Levin, will lead off the conversation at 12:15 pm on Friday. Levin is Associate Professor of Theatre at York University. She is Director of York’s MA/PhD Program in Theatre & Performance Studies and teaches courses on contemporary theatre and performance art, devised theatre, and practice-based research. Her research focuses on site-specific, immersive, and urban intervention performance; performing gender and sexuality; political performance; intermedial and digital performance; methodologies of practice-based research; and performance theory. She is the author of Performing Ground: Space, Camouflage, and the Art of Blending In (Palgrave, 2014).
A keynote panel, featuring local performance and art programmers and curators from several media, including dance, theatre, new media, and visual arts, will follow Levin’s address. At lunch on May 6th a unique roving event, “Where are We Going?: An Amble Between SFU Campuses” offers participants a series of interventions at sites, places, or monuments on or between SFU Harbour Centre and SFU Woodwards, allowing them to think about the future of space, place, and performance. The Colloquium is augmented in the evenings by performances created by SFU’s MFA students part of their Spring Exhibition.
For full colloquium information go to triuniversitycolloquium.wordpress.com
For more info: Katrina Dunn at tri.uni.colloquium@gmail.com
Katrina Dunn. Photo credit: David Cooper
Katrina Dunn Biography:
Katrina Dunn is a scholar, teacher and stage director based in Vancouver. She is currently completing a PhD in Theatre Studies at UBC under the supervision of Dr. Kirsty Johnston. Her area of research looks at the spatial manifestations of performance as realized in the built and natural environments. Her MA thesis, Back-in-the-Land: Space and Anglophone Theatre’s Professional Farm Theatres, looks at performance in rural space. She has published short works in Canadian Theatre Review (166) and Performance Research (21.2), and is the 2015 recipient of the Robert G. Lawrence Prize for an emerging scholar from the Canadian Association for Theatre Research. She has worked professionally in Canadian theatre for twenty-five years and co-founded the PuSh Festival with Norman Armour in 2003.
Claire Fogal
Claire Fogal Biography:
A Vancouver actor, director and teacher, Claire holds a BA in Theatre and English Lit from UBC, an MFA in Directing from UofA, and is a graduate of Tooba Physical Theatre Centre. Her areas of teaching specialization are: acting, collective creation or play making, directing, Grotowski & Decroux based physical theatre, movement, Shakespeare, and text analysis. Claire’s research examines the artistic significance of the double lineage of Decroux and Grotowski for Canadian performance.
Principal mentors are Kate Weiss and Dean Fogal, and she has also studied with Linda Putnam, David MacMurray Smith, Charles Marowitz, da da kamera, Foresight Theatre, Mascall Dance, the National Voice Intensive, Boca del Lupo, and Margie Gillis, and been commissioned by Edmonton’s Catalyst Theatre to create Sixth Sense.
Directing credits include Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba, Judith Thompson’s adaptation of Hedda Gabler, Mud by Maria Irene Fornes, and Lady Macbeth, an original creation based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
Acting credits include the title role in Moo, Estragon in Waiting for Godot, and Lady Macbeth.
Claire has taught at UofA, UBC, and The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow. She was the Director of Educational Programming and lead Acting Teacher at Tooba Physical Theatre Centre. Claire co-founded Velvet Bone Theatre and Cor Departure Theatre Ensemble, now reincarnated as Minotaur’s Kitchen, where she is the Artistic Director.
Western Canadian theatre artists have made unique and valuable contributions to the creative lineages of world renowned European masters Etienne Decroux and Jerzy Grotowski, and yet this work remains almost entirely undocumented. My research places special emphasis on our senior artists, in an effort to record and analyse the key innovations we’ve made to physical theatre forms that require years of practice to master. Canadian work integrates a deep respect for the place, the individual and the group; building upon my mentor Dr. Virginie Magnat’s approach, my research also aims to investigate and articulate the Indigenous epistemologies at play within Canadian evolutions. With the roots of this work in Europe, and key practitioners in America, my study of our local contributions fits within a global network of scholarship and evolving artistic practice.
