Day 2 - Département de danse - UQAM

12:30pm-2:00pm
Buffet Lunch (provided) & Annual General Meeting
Phoenix Theatre
2:15pm
a) Pedagogies of Canadian Theatre, or “Professor, There’s a Country in My Discourse!” George
(to 5:30pm)
Seminar Organizer: Robin C. Whittaker (St. Thomas University). Participants: Nancy Copeland
(University of Toronto), Reina Green (Mt. St. Vincent University), Sasha Kovaks (University of Toronto),
Michelle MacArthur (University of Toronto), James McKinnon (Victoria University of Wellington), Zita
Nyarady (York University), Emily A. Rollie (University of Missouri), Eugenia Sojka (University of Silesia).
Whether from within a Theatre, Drama, Performance Studies, English, or Interdisciplinary department, most universities in
Canada offer a dedicated course on “Canadian Drama/Theatre.” Indeed, “Canadian” is the most commonly professed theatre
specialization in these departments, after “Shakespeare” (Whittaker “Casting and Makeup…”). Despite this widespread
national self-interest, there has been scant study, or even discussion, of what “Canadian” plays, playwrights, companies, and
histories appear on our syllabi, how we are teaching them, and to what end. What constitutes the pedagogy of Canadian
drama, theatre, and performance in the undergraduate and graduate classroom, both here in Canada and abroad?
In recent years, CATR has featured a number of well-received seminars on theatre pedagogy, and Kim Solga’s edited
issue of CTR on “Performance and Pedagogy” illuminates the topic as it relates to what she refers to as the “activist” student in
the classroom. As a Canadian theatre researcher who teaches a range of dramatic literature, theatre theory, and performance
practice courses from within an English Department, I have become particularly interested in the “special case” of Canadian
theatre in which students navigate the ubiquitous (“Canadian”) and the provocative (“theatre”) in an apparent feedback loop
generated by Canadians teaching Canadians about Canadian theatre in Canada. I am interested in troubling this feedback
loop by comparing some of our extant materials and approaches, then developing new ones.
This seminar proposes to wade into the collective consciousness of post-secondary Canadian theatre instruction in order
to unearth those iterations of Canadian drama, theatre, and performance that influence future scholars, practitioners, and
citizens. Is the post-Massey Commission “maturation discourse” of a “national theatre” (Alan Filewod, “Erect Sons…” and
Performing Canada) the prevalent discourse in the classroom, whether overt or implied? Are the Wasserman volumes Modern
Canadian Plays so ubiquitous as to function canonically? How else do we re/frame the relationship between “Canada” and
“theatre” for our students? This seminar intends to generate guided and meaningful discussion among those who teach
Canadian plays, theatre histories, performances, and practices in order to examine what “Canadian” topics—however broadly
defined—are covered at universities, and to what end.
b) Edgy Counter-Publics: Historicizing Girls’ and Women’s Place in Performance Bishop
(to 3:45pm)
Open Panel Moderator: Marlis Schweitzer (York University)
“Rethinking ‘Real American Girls’ in the Early Twentieth Century.” Marlene Mendonça (York
University)
Although the turn of the twentieth century is not a starting point for discourses on girl culture, it does, however, provide a
crucial point of visibility for debates about girlhood that moved across and was circulated by film, theatre, and literature and
through transnational borders. In taking a resolutely historical approach, this paper will link theoretical, historical and
methodological frameworks in order to open up academic discourses to new modes of thinking about the “modern girl” and the
theatre’s role in constructing, shaping and perpetuating girl culture in the early twentieth century.
By examining early-twentieth-century theatre we can begin to question and understand how girlhood was conceptualized,
how it was performed, and how it was presented. Between 1880-1920 girls in their teens and twenties ran away from their
homes in search for a career on stage. The stage-struck girl became the subject in newspaper and magazine articles, short
stories, plays and even films. This paper is a close examination of Canadian born stage-struck girls: Marie Dressler, Mary
Pickford, Margaret Anglin and Clara Morris, who were all—born in Ontario—and ironically considered “real American Girls,”
and whose characters, on and off stage fed into debates about modernity and girlhood. Together these examples illustrate the
role that these young Canadian girls had in shaping the social structures of American “girls.” They were instrumental in helping
girls achieve a political voice both in and outside the theatre, while also positioning girls as active agents in the realm of labour
and cultural politics.
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