Canadian Association for Theatre Research Panel

 

Scholars of theatre and performance studies know that performance is a “mobile critical paradigm,” as Kathleen Gallagher and Barry Freeman provocatively write in the introduction to In Defense of Theatre (2015). Our deep familiarity with performance’s power as a cross-disciplinary learning modality, however, means we can easily forget that this isn’t common knowledge. We know that working through performance can lead to everything from technical innovation and social change to increased individual and community wellbeing; the leaders of our major institutions – including our universities – often have no clue.

 

Over the last three years we have been engaged in a campus-based teaching research project that begins from the premise that performing arts-led, interdisciplinary teaching can have profound real-world benefits for undergraduate students from a wide range of fields. Our project ran a pilot class with 18 students from 7 of Western’s 13 faculties in 2022-23, and our data from their experience underscores how utterly transformative the class was for all of them – especially those from STEM backgrounds.

 

We’re thrilled at what we’ve achieved so far, but we also know we aren’t alone: many of us are working to integrate performance into broader curricular change across the country. In this roundtable, we will gather a mix of those voices to hear what you are doing, how you are doing it, and (especially) how you are communicating performance’s powers to innovate across fields and to support students, faculty, staff, and community wellbeing to those who need most to hear about it.

 

We’re interested in hearing about:

–       Innovations at classroom level

–       Collaborations with instructors in other disciplines

–       Curricular innovations at school/faculty level

–       Integrating performance-based or embodied learning outside theatre and performance programs

–       Interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary curricular innovations led by performance

–       Innovations that use performance to develop, support, or advance equity initiatives

–       Creative pedagogies that foster a community of care in the classroom 

–       Embodied learning approaches geared towards advancing collective well-being

–       …something amazing you’re working on that we just cannot even imagine yet.