Papers

Algorithmyth: Revealing the Techné in Algorithms Through Devised Performance
With every click, beep, or update of your smartphone, corporations are developing a picture of your personal behaviour; algorithms are at work, swiftly organizing information left behind from your on-line activity. The data compiled and the portraits of each of us created are detailed to the point of being problematic because this activity is invasive, secret, and to most of us, obscure to the point of being a mystery. Hidden algorithms can make or ruin reputations, decide the destiny of corporations, or devastate an entire economy...

From Solitary to Solidarity: Approaching Ashley Smith through Performance Epistemology
The Latin root for the word ‘secret’ means to segregate, to remove from understanding. In 2003, fifteen-year-old Ashley Smith was incarcerated for a minor offence at the New Brunswick Youth Centre, where she spent 27 of 36 months in solitary confinement. Locked in segregation for repeated misdemeanors, she continued to misbehave, and the response of those overseeing her punishment was to repeatedly react in the same way: more solitary confinement...

Gaming with the Spectacle of Community in The Bonfire of the Humanities
I am a site-specific theatre creator. This means I often work on the creation of performance in spaces other than theatres, wherein the site is the source of the work, and as such it can be animated in various ways. In the case of Bonfire of the Humanities, the sites – the campuses of the Universities of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier – were important, but more so was the social geography of these places...

The Risks of Empathy and the Lessons of Self-Reflexive Dramaturgy in DIFFER/END: The Caledonia Project
The problem is a crisis that erupted over an aboriginal land claim in Caledonia, Ontario, in early 2006. Caledonia is a small town that is quickly becoming an upscale bedroom community for Hamilton, a city about a 15-minute drive away...

Collaborating with Audiences in the Creation of Site-Specific Performance
I am an artist-researcher who might otherwise be considered a ‘director’ of site- specific performances. I don’t always call myself a director because when I am not working in the theatre, this title can sometimes be inaccurate. I have created site-specific performances for seventeen years...

Risking Confrontation With the Other in DV8's Physical Theatre
"DV8 Physical Theatre's work is about taking risks, aesthetically and physically..." So says the company's publicity, and not unlike many physical theatre companies, the performance DV8 offers is every bit the embodiment of risk...

Walking our Way Through Garden/ /Suburbia: Auto-Topography as Performance in Lawrence Park
Initially I was a long distance consultant on Garden/ /Suburbia. Melanie Bennett and I have worked on a number of projects together, but since 2006 she had moved around the country for grad school, and it was becoming common for us to discuss our respective work – projects we were doing with other people – over the phone...

The Spectre of the Real in Theatre
In January, 2000 I took a position in the Theatre Department of the University of Regina. Not sure if I would stay there, and not keen on the idea of moving my family across Saskatchewan in the middle of winter, I decided to live there on my own for the first term and get my bearings...

Performance on the Canadian Periperhy - An Aesthetics of Transgression
I lived in Edmonton, Alberta from 1989 to 1992. During my time there as a student, critic, and practitioner of theatre, dance, and popular theatre, I experienced a variety of performance which, though it came to me in many different forms, had a similar effect upon me...

Site-Specific Performance: The Thirdspace of Canadian Theatre
In Canada, 2006 began with a great deal of anxiety about the environment. In most parts of the country the temperatures were about 10 to 15 degrees warmer than they should be in January. The media, and it seemed a good deal of casual conversation, focused on questions concerning the apparently dire state of the planet and how we may address our problematic relationship with the world...

THE unMARKED MEASURE
As a theatre practitioner, an evaluation of the body in performance is a crucial aspect of what I do. I ask myself, how do I know the body in performance? How is the body perceived? How do we evaluate its performance? How do these considerations constitute a measure?...