Abstracts
Abstract
This special issue examines the advocacy for and significance of discussing performance for/by/with young people in Canada. It asks how thinking about young people as audience members, creators, and co-creators can expose ideas about who they are, what they want, and what adults believe is good for them. The nineteen writers who contributed full-length articles and forum essays to this special issue demonstrate how attentive consideration to young people complicates creation ethics, aesthetic choices, affective impacts, content decisions, approaches to training, working conditions, and ideas about risk in connection to the performing arts. As the authors discuss how young people imagine, witness, train, and perform, they are simultaneously advocating for the young people they write about, for the specific issues that concern them, and for these perspectives to expand and invigorate broad conversations about Canadian performance for all ages.
Keywords:
- for/by/with,
- young people,
- Canada,
- Canadian,
- performance,
- theatre,
- ethics,
- advocacy
Download the article in PDF to read it.
Download
Appendices
Biographical notes
Sandra Chamberlain-Snider is a doctoral candidate in Theatre History at the University of Victoria. Her doctoral research investigates the historical and contemporary presence of theatre training in the lives of young people in English Canada. Traversing across theatre history, Canadian theatre, and Canadian cultural studies, her research considers what the art of theatre may reveal about Canadian youth as they imagine, construct, and challenge themselves in Canadian society. Along with Claire Carolan, Sandra co-founded the Tri-University Colloquium in 2015 as a space for West Coast graduate students’ scholarship in theatre and performance, a successful endeavour that continues. Recent collaborative work is published in Canadian Theatre Review (Spring 2018, vol. 174) and a chapter in Web of Performance: An Ensemble Workbook (U of Victoria, 2018). Sandra actively volunteers in the Vancouver theatre community as a board member of Boca del Lupo and a past chair of the Theatre for Young Audiences category of the Jessie Awards.
Heather Fitzsimmons Frey is an Assistant Professor of Arts and Cultural Management at MacEwan University in Edmonton. Using archives, qualitative research, performance-based historiography, and practice-based methodologies, her research focuses on the arts, performance and young people, in contemporary and in historical contexts. Recent youth-centred work is published in Girlhood Studies, Jeunesse, Journal of Childhood Studies, Oxford Review of Education, Performance Research, Theatre Research International, Theatre Research in Canada/Recherches théâtrales au Canada, Youth Theatre Journal, as chapters in Children’s Literature and Imaginative Geography (Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2019), Moving Together (Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2020), and in her edited collection Ignite: Illuminating Theatre for Young People (Playwrights Canada Press, 2016). Heather is on the International Theatre for Young Audiences Research Network (ITYARN) Board of Directors, and is a co-investigator for SSHRC-funded projects Youthsites (principal investigator, Stuart Poyntz) and Gatherings: Archival and Oral Histories of Performance in Canada (principal investigator, Stephen Johnson), and is principal investigator for Young People as Living History.
Bibliography
- Baer, Pamela. “Queer Isn’t a Choice! Queer Is My Family!” Theatre Research in Canada, vol. 41, no. 2, 2020, pp. 313–17. UTP Journals, https://doi.org/10.3138/tric.41.2.f09.
- Bains, Alysha. “Expanding Conversations of Race and the Nation: A Closer Look at The Fish Eyes Trilogy by Anita Majumdar.” Theatre Research in Canada, vol. 41, no. 2, 2020, pp. 283–86. UTP Journals, https://doi.org/10.3138/tric.41.2.f02.
- Carolan, Claire. “Volunteerism and Calgary’s ‘infa-Moose’ Community Impro Theatre.” Theatre Research in Canada, vol. 41, no. 2, 2020, pp. 300–03. UTP Journals, https://doi.org/10.3138/tric.41.2.f06.
- Christie, Sheila. “Youth as Subjects and Agents of Artistic Research: A Comparison of Youth-Engagement Models.” Theatre Research in Canada, vol. 41, no. 2, 2020, pp. 308–12. UTP Journals, https://doi.org/10.3138/tric.41.2.f08.
- Conrad, Diane. “Youth Participatory Action Research and Applied Theatre Engagement: Supporting Indigenous Youth Survivance and Resurgence.” Theatre Research in Canada, vol. 41, no. 2, 2020, pp. 258–77. UTP Journals, https://doi.org/10.3138/tric.41.2.a04.
- DiLiberto, Lisa Marie. “Balancing Act.” Theatre Research in Canada, vol. 41, no. 2, 2020, pp. 304–07. UTP Journals, https://doi.org/10.3138/tric.41.2.f07.
- Gallagher, Kathleen, and Andrew Kushnir. “The Aesthetics of Towards Youth: Making Relations in and through Theatre.” Theatre Research in Canada, vol. 41, no. 2, 2020, pp. 204–20. UTP Journals, https://doi.org/10.3138/tric.41.2.a01.
- Henderson, Julia. “Disrupting Age Stereotypes in Theatre for Young Audiences with Older-Bodied Puppets.” Theatre Research in Canada, vol. 41, no. 2, 2020, pp. 239–57. UTP Journals, https://doi.org/10.3138/tric.41.2.a03.
- Howarth, Caroline, Mieko Ouchi, and Kelsie Acton. “A Conversation about Songs My Mother Never Sung Me.” Theatre Research in Canada, vol. 41, no. 2, 2020, pp. 296–99. UTP Journals, https://doi.org/10.3138/tric.41.2.f05.
- Meerzon, Yana. “Traversée: Crossing Borders in Search of the Emancipatory Theatre for Children.” Theatre Research in Canada, vol. 41, no. 2, 2020, pp. 221–38. UTP Journals, https://doi.org/10.3138/tric.41.2.a02.
- Nadeau, Anne. “Accompagner la sortie au théâtre par la médiation culturelle en classe : une expérience riche pour les élèves et les enseignants.” Theatre Research in Canada, vol. 41, no. 2, 2020, pp. 291–95. UTP Journals, https://doi.org/10.3138/tric.41.2.f04.
- Shaffeeullah, Nikki, nevada jane arlow, Jenn Boulay, and Senjuti Aurora Sarker. “Manifesting the Future.” Theatre Research in Canada, vol. 41, no. 2, 2020, pp. 278–82. UTP Journals, https://doi.org/10.3138/tric.41.2.f01.
- Tomkinson, Matthew. “Staging Anxiety in Rachel Aberle’s Still/Falling.” Theatre Research in Canada, vol. 41, no. 2, 2020, pp. 287–90. UTP Journals, https://doi.org/10.3138/tric.41.2.f03.