From republicans to hacktivists: recent inclusion initiatives in Canadian theatre

ABSTRACT

Could targeted inclusion initiatives press Canada’s professional theatre community to tap the vast reserve of disabled people disenfranchised by its current practices? In 2015/2016, several long-standing professional institutions dedicated to fostering Canadian theatre joined with Canadian disability theatre artists in order to mark and understand the exclusivity of current practices and innovate in response. In this paper, I compare five such initiatives. Informed by the theoretical work of Carrie Sandahl and Shannon Jackson, I analyse their forms, aesthetics and rhetorical strategies. Why are they happening now and how does each seek to re-energise Canadian professional theatre by extending the franchise to include disabled people?

KEYWORDS:

• Disability
• theatre
• performance
• inclusion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Kirsty Johnston is an associate professor in the Dept. of Theatre and Film at UBC. Her book, Stage Turns: Canadian Disability Theatre (MQUP 2012), received the 2012 award for ‘Best Book in Canadian Studies’ from the Canadian Studies Network-Réseau d’études canadiennes. Her 2016 book, Disability Theatre and Modern Drama: Recasting Modernism, was published by Methuen Press.

Notes

1. For a longer account of this dynamic and process, please see Johnston (2012).

2. For further accounts of the event's impulses, aims, and challenges, please Bulmer (2016), Chandler (2016), Newman (2016) and the following Howlround website: http://howlround.com/livestreaming-convening-the-republic-of-inclusion-on-accessibility-in-the-arts-progress-festival.

3. For further information, please see Derbyshire (2016) as well as the following website: http://www.playwrightstheatre.com/about-us/ack-lab/

4. Please see Stanley and Ware (2016) as well as Stanley (2016).

5. For example, in addition to the regular seasons of Canada’s leading disability theatre companies, a survey of disability theatre in 2015–2016 would consider Tangled Art + Disability’s co-presentation with Ping Chong + Company of PUSH! Real Athletes. Real Stories, Real Theatre. This was a large-scale production offered as part of the TORONTO 2015 Pan Am/Parapan Am Games arts and culture festival, PANAMANIA. The survey would also note the cultural provocations created by Swiss company Theatre Hora’s production of its controversial Disabled Theater in both Toronto and Montreal. Authors Zien (2016), Dokumaci (2016) and McAskill (2016) each contributed articles about these provocations to the disability and performance-focused issue of Theatre Research in Canada 37, no. 2: 2016. The same issue contains an analysis of the PANAMANIA shows by Pippa Ruddy (2016) as well as Jenn Stephenson’s (2016) examination of the provocative 2015 production entitled RARE by internationally acclaimed playwright Judith Thompson.

6. To see this quote in its original context, please see Neworld Theatre (2016a).

7. Please see the following website for more details: https://nac-cna.ca/en/englishtheatre/collaboration

8. From this vantage point, collaborator Marcus Youssef posted a self-critical blog entry on a site dedicated to sharing performance questions across Canada. See Youssef (2016). For more details please Neworld Theatre (2016b).

9. Please see Cripping the Arts Symposium (2016).

10. For the source of this definition, please see ‘Republic’ in the 2014 Oxford World Encyclopedia.

11. For the source of this definition, please see ‘Hacktivism’ in the 2016 Oxford Dictionary of Social Media.

12. For the source of this definition, please see ‘Summit’ in Stearns (2008) Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World.

13. For the source of this definition, please see ‘Knight’ in Stearns (2008) Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World.

14. Sandahl (2008, 204, fn. 5). In this footnote, Sandahl explains, ‘I became aware of the term “cripping up” from the disability arts community describing non-disabled actors playing disabled roles. I believe that this term was coined by Kaite O’Reilly, a disabled U.K. playwright.’ Sandahl then refers readers to the work of Komparály (2007).

15. Here is Jackson’s citation of Plato in full:

Picture further the light from a fire from a burning higher up and at a distance behind them, and between the fire and the prisoners and above them a road along which a low wall has been built, as the exhibitors of puppet shows have partitions before the men themselves, above which they show the puppets.

‘All that I see’, he said.

See also then, men carrying past the wall implements of all kinds that rise above the wall, and human images and shapes of animals as well, wrought in stone and woods and every material, some of these bearers presumably speaking and others silent.

‘A Strange image you speak of’, he said, ‘and strange prisoners’. Plato, The Republic 514b (qtd. in Jackson 2011, 30).

16. See Weaver.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Stages of Access: Theatre and Inclusion in Canada).