CATR Call for Participants: Roundtable "Where do we go from here? Solutions for acting training in English Speaking Canada"

[Magnat, Virginie]

Canadian Association for Theatre Research / Association Canadienne de la Recherche Théâtrale Conference, 24-27 May 2014, Brock University

Call for Participants: Roundtable "Where do we go from here? Solutions for acting training in English Speaking Canada"

Diana Belshaw (Humber) and David Fancy (Brock) have curated a series of discussions on the subject of Acting Training in English Speaking Canada at the 2011 Magnetic North Festival, the 2012 CATR conference, and through a series of mediated online group discussions on selected themes in 2013 for an upcoming issue of Canadian Theatre Review on Acting Training in English Canada. Participants included actors, artistic and independent directors, educators – many of whom combined these roles. 

Commonalities have appeared among the panels with respect to the challenges actor trainers face: the dominance of realism; pervasive patriarchal assumptions around gender and culture; insidious assumptions around the dominance of white bodies in training; the lack of aesthetic risks taken by dominant theatre institutions in general; lack of communication between training institutions and professional theatre companies. 

Fancy, Belshaw and Virginie Magnat (UBC) are calling for acting trainers, actors, directors, scholars and others (or any combination thereof) who can propose possible solutions and ways forward for these and related challenges. The roundtable will take the form of a group discussion facilitated by the conveners, followed by an open dialogue with audience members who will be invited to contribute their testimonies and provocations. 

By creating an intellectually focussed and discerning space, but also one that allows for dynamic on-the-spot exchange with the audience and amongst the panelists, we wish to model the kinds of rigorous and creative exchanges that can occur between people throughout the theatre and academic worlds, in the hope of creating the crossover spaces which are the real engines of change.

Background:
“There has been for some time now a feeling that a study should be done of theatre training in Canada
” So begins the Canada Council’s 1971 Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Theatre Training in Canada. Many of the suggestions the report makes about acting training—that training institutions should affiliate with theatres, that people who teach should be active in the profession, etc.—stand today. However, many of the issues touched on in the report (the perceived lack of cultural diversity among graduates, for instance) have yet to be addressed. 

The fundamental questions are as urgent today as they were forty years ago: who are we training? How are we training them? What are we training them for? Given the complex overlapping of cultural heritages in contemporary Canadian society, and also given that much contemporary creation works away from psychological realism, there is an urgent need for a discussion on the issue of diversity in acting training in Canada, with respect to culture and to theatrical styles, and any resonances that can be drawn between them.

Interested individuals are invited to email a 250 word statement and short bio by January 13, 2014 to David Fancy (dfancy at brocku.ca), Diana Belshaw (Diana.Belshaw at humber.ca), and Virginie Magnat (virginie.magnat at ubc.ca). All accepted participants are required to join CATR/ACRT.  For more information on CATR and to join or renew your membership please visit http://catracrt.ca/

Timeline: 
March 15th, 2014:  Each invited participant will share electronically with the group a 500 to 1000 word testimony/manifesto/provocation.

Between March 15th and April 15th: The whole group will engage in an online dialogue spurred by each participant's contribution.

After April 15th: Participants will be organized into sub-groups according to shared interests and will engage in a pre-conference exchange during which a list of key questions/comments/ possible solutions will be drafted in preparation for the roundtable.






Virginie Magnat, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Performance
http://www.ubc.ca/okanagan/fccs/faculty/vmagnat.html

Just Published: Grotowski, Women, and Contemporary Performance: Meetings with Remarkable Women
Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies Series
http://www.routledge.com/9780415813594

Link to Author Interview on the Routledge Theatre & Performance Studies website:
http://www.taylorandfrancis.com/articles/an_interview_with_virginie_magnat_author_of_grotowski_women_and_contemporar/

Watch the book's companion Documentary Film Series on the Routledge Performance Archive
http://www.routledgeperformancearchive.com

Contact Information:
Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies
University of British Columbia's Okanagan Campus
CCS Building, 3333 University Way,
Kelowna, BC Canada V1V 1V7
Tel: 250-807-8441 


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