This article is part of our series 50 Years of Disruption, in celebration of the Department of Theatre’s 50th Anniversary. In it, we’ll ask each participant four questions about themselves and their time at York.
Cameron Crookston
1. Who are you?
Cameron Crookston (Honours BA Theatre Studies, 2012). I am currently in my final year of a PhD program at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies. I’ve been in graduate school at U of T, first as an MA student and then moving onto my PhD, since I graduated from York. My interest in pursuing a career in academia developed during my time at York. In my last two years as an undergrad, I worked as a research assistant for Professor Marlis Schweitzer and got my first taste of archival research methods. It was actually in Marlis’ office that I picked what would become my research focus. I was talking to Marlis about the overwhelming task of picking a research focus for a possible dissertation and pointed out, quite casually, that I often talked about drag performance, and she encouraged me to consider this as a scholarly focus for my graduate work. Today my doctoral thesis examines drag, LGBTQ+ historiography, and performance as cultural memory. I also look at the overlap between drag performance and trans identities in recent history. I’ve written articles on drag and queer performance for the journal, Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture and Playwrights Canada Press’ Q2Q: Queer Theatre and Performance in Canada. I’ve also presented my work at conferences including the Canadian Association for Theatre Research (CATR), Performance Studies International (PSi), and the Popular Culture Association (PCA). Right now I’m working on an edited volume of essays on the Cultural Impact of RuPaul’s Drag Race with Intellect Books. I’ve also taught classes at both U of T’s Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies and the Mark S. Bonham Centre in theatre history and the history of sexuality. I’m particularly proud of a course I designed and taught in the winter of 2017 called “Staging Gender: The History of Cross-Dressing in Theatre and Performance” which examined the history of gender performance in theatre from ancient Greece to modern-day drag.
2. What was your favourite moment during your time in the Theatre Department, and why?
In a second-year devised theatre class taught by Laura Levin, I collaborated with four other students on a short documentary play on different forms of addiction. It was a really fantastic group of people with really diverse and complementary skills. I’m very literary and intellectually based, so I latched on to the research and text-based aspects of working with documentary and verbatim theatre, but I was with some really talented friends who understood physical theatre, design, and collective creation in a way that created something really unique and rich. I really learned the value of collaborating with different kinds of artists and thinkers to balance out my own artistic skills. This project stayed with me, and I’ve since returned to documentary theatre both as a playwright and as an academic. I consider documentary theatre to be my quiet, secondary research interest and recently gave a lecture on verbatim theatre in a research methodology course at U of T.
3. What comment, quotation, statement, or action that a professor—or classmate—offered had the greatest impact on you?
Flexible and Hilarious. This was one of Judith Rudakoff’s central mantras. Basically, the idea that in the theatre, despite our best efforts to plan for every eventuality, things often go wrong and that the best way to deal with unforeseen mishaps is to maintain an attitude of flexibility and humour. Being organized should include the ability to roll with the punches and embrace surprises. Being well prepared does not mean being rigid. Accepting tiny disasters with a chuckle increases our ability to handle them exponentially.
4. Is there a way you incorporate a particular aspect of your theatre training in your current work?
The skills I use as a University Course Instructor, and TA are largely based on skills I learned as a dramaturgy student in Judith Rudakoff’s Playwriting and Dramaturgy classes at York. Working with writers to help develop their writing, offering suggestions and options while avoid perspective advice, encouraging a delicate balance between intuition and critical thinking in writing, maintaining an awareness of the boundaries between their work and my own, the relationship between research and original writing, these are some of the most important and complex aspects of working with undergraduate students and they were all touchstones of my training as a dramaturg at York.
This article is part of our series 50 Years of Disruption, in celebration of the Department of Theatre’s 50th Anniversary. In it, we’ll ask each participant four questions about themselves and their time at York.
1. Who are you?
Geoffrey Hyland (MFA Directing 1994)
I was born and bred (and still live in) Cape Town, South Africa. I am currently the Head of Theatre and Associate Professor at the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies where I have taught since 1990, (except for the 2 and ½ year study break I took to complete my MFA at York U.) I have directed and taught in Canada, England, the USA and New Zealand. My work has also been seen in Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Spain and Peru. I have been nominated for several South African awards for acting and directing, receiving, amongst others, the Fleur du Cap Award for Young Directors and also the Standard Bank Young Artist Award. I have directed well over 120 theatre productions in my career, including dance, opera and cabaret. Some highlights include Madame de Sade, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Women Beware Women, Judith: A Parting from the Body, Judas, Masque: An African Opera; Opera 4:30, Kissed by Brel, Salome, The Maids, Blood Wedding, Fucking Men, Between, Our Country’s Good, Slowly, Wounds to the Face, as well as Othello (2x), Hamlet (3x), King Lear, Macbeth (2x), Romeo and Juliet (2x), As You Like It (2x), All’s Well That Ends Well (2x) and Twelfth Night (2x).
2. What was your favourite moment during your time in the Theatre Department, and why?
It’s 26 years later and I’m not sure how I single out a particular favourite moment in that 2-year period. I had left my country to pursue a transformative experience—everything was new to me. I was in my early 30’s and willing to jump into the tempting unknown.
Snippets of memory still come to me at the least expected times… it might be a taste, a sound, a sight, a feeling. There is an abundance of ‘significant’ memories, some big ones and some small ones. They layer one upon another to create a watershed life experience. I sometimes recall myself tearfully hitting the Atkinson Studio wall in an emotional outpouring; sometimes it’s just the taste of a vanilla coffee in a freezing snowstorm before another intense rehearsal; sometimes it’s the sound of raucous, uncontrolled laughter; and sometimes it’s the deep quiet of a shared profound moment around a single candle.
3. What comment, quotation, statement, or action that a professor—or classmate—offered had the greatest impact on you?
I believe I was blessed to hit a golden age at York and was tutored by a ‘just-right-for-me’ gathering of mentors, each very different and yet each offering part of a rich tapestry of interrelated experiences. David Rotenberg; David Smukler; Judith Rudakoff; Paula Thomson; Ines Buchli; Tom Diamond were the mainstays of my programme as I remember, although there were several others who also contributed to my journey. Put that together with a diverse, yet close, group of classmates and you have the conditions for a ‘perfect storm’. And here I mean ‘storm’ in a good way… my comfort zones were blown around, ripped apart and put together in a never-ending alchemy of face-myself transformative experiences. And I was willing to throw myself into the melee because I instinctively trusted that I would be supported, held and guided.
I cannot be drawn into stating a particularly impactful ‘lightbulb’ moment; there were so many. Suffice it to say that my two years at York provided a crucible of encounters which significantly shaped who I am as an artist-teacher-person today.
4. Is there a way you incorporate a particular aspect of your theatre training in your current work?
Having dedicated my life to both theatre and teaching, I draw on my York experiences every time I walk into a class or a rehearsal room.
Perhaps the whole thing can be summed up in this quote by Benjamin Disraeli:
“The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches, but to reveal to him his own.”
Josh Johnston in Howard Barker’s Wounds to the Face (Theatre @ York, 2012) Directed by Geoffrey Hyland.
This article is part of our series 50 Years of Disruption, in celebration of the Department of Theatre’s 50th Anniversary. In it, we’ll ask each participant four questions about themselves and their time at York.
1. Who are you?
Michael Devine
Michael Devine (BA Glendon College 1979, MFA Performance 1988):
I’m a theatre director who has worked outside Canada since 1996, working, so far, in nine languages that I don’t speak. I’ve directed in more than 20 countries at national theatres, alternative theatres and as a guest artist at international theatre festivals. Now I primarily create original works that are often site-specific, in shockingly short periods of time, using the actor training and performance creation methodology I developed in 2004, BoxWhatBox. BWB has travelled to more than 25 countries on five continents. BWB is based around the idea that there are languages other than words that can be used to create bridges between cultures. I had reasonable success in Canadian theatre, running a couple of theatre companies, working as a playwright, dramaturg and essayist, but I hated the conventions of our theatre while liking the people. So I left. That’s the most important thing I want to pass on to young theatre artists: there’s another way.
2. What was your favourite moment during your time in the Theatre Department, and why?
Dr. Anatol Schlosser guided us through a unit on non-European theatre and I performed a scene from Beijing Opera. As an actor who had trained classically in the UK and under the spell of the naturalistic American approach in New York, this was revelatory to me. I realized that there were more effective ways of showing the interior of our crazy-ass lives, and even more importantly, that there is a transcendent quality to theatre which should take us out of our own culture, our habits of thinking, our expectations of theatre as entertainment. I’ve worked to produce that moment of transcendence ever since.
3. What comment, quotation, statement, or action that a professor—or classmate—offered had the greatest impact on you?
Dr. Schlosser told me once, “get your license.” He meant get a PhD; he was telling me that I had the intellect to go further. I’d always felt unsatisfied with the level of anti-intellectualism in our theatre, but I identified, and still identify, as a practitioner. It took a few more years in the industry, but then I did go and get my PhD. Now I get to work at and think about theatre 18 hours a day (I should sleep more). I spend 6 months a year on the road, experiencing distinctive cultures. I get to develop projects in far-flung places where sometimes they can only give me accommodation and food, but where the project is aesthetically valuable. I can say “yes” to those projects instead of standing around waiting for a Canada Council grant. What kind of blessing could beat that?
4. Is there a way you incorporate a particular aspect of your theatre training in your current work?
In the MFA we had a group that covered the entire country and beyond, ranging from age 23 to 47, hippies and reactionaries, fast-twitch muscle fibre people and more methodical types, talented and…less so. We were together with our classes in the same single space every day from 9 to 9 minimum, and we managed to grow and work as a unit without killing each other. I took that physical and social lesson with me into my career and applied it in different cultures, where the barriers extend far beyond language and where, in many cases, I’m working and living with the actors 7 days a week. I founded the Centre for Alternative Theatre training (CATT), the international actor training intensive I hold each year overseas, with that experience in mind—CATT welcomes people from every background and level of experience, because I passionately believe people make the most progress, as artists and human beings, when they are exposed to others who are distinct from them in various ways. I can thank the MFA at York for that.
I am Steve Ross, and I’ve been a professional lighting designer for 42 years. During that time I have designed lighting for well over 300 productions for theatre, opera, and corporate events. I became interested in theatre and lighting at the early age of fourteen when I started to teach myself lighting throughout my high school years. My undergraduate work was at Southern Illinois University were I received a BA in theatre. I then spent a year of “hanging” around The Loretto-Hilton Repertory Theater in Saint Louis to learn the “professional ropes”. It was there that I met the top Lighting Designer Gilbert Hemsley who was one year into teaching at the University of Wisconsin in Madison where I had applied to study. By coincidence he was lighting a show at the rep that season; and after a successful interview in the theatre lobby cloak room (!) I became his first full time lighting teaching assistant and went on to become his first student to receive an MFA in lighting design.
Since Gilbert was periodically away the from campus lighting shows, I ended up teaching many of the lighting design classes. This allowed me to gain valuable teaching experience that I would use much later in my career. After graduating I went on to light for companies throughout the US and Canada. Some of the highlights have been working as the American lighting supervisor for the Bolshoi Opera when they came to the Metropolitan Opera House and Kennedy Centre in the mid 70’s, assisting and lighting on Broadway, lighting over 45 production for the Canadian Opera Company and designing the lighting for Ross Petty’s holiday Pantomimes in Toronto for seventeen years.
I taught a couple of lighting classes at York in the early 80’s, and continued working professionally; and in 2011, started to teach again when the chair of the theatre dept. brought me in to teach the 3rd year lighting design. I’ve been teaching a version of that class and co-advising the main stage student lighting designers since. I look at my teaching now as giving back my experiences to the students.
Tell us about a creative project that you have been immersed in recently.
A few years ago I lit VIVA VERDI – A CELEBRATION OF GIUSEPPE VERDI!
This was an evening of highlights from various Verdi operas. The venue was an Ice Hockey rink in Zurich Switzerland. It was directed by Lotfi Mansouri, former General Director of the Canadian Opera Co.
Viva Verdi Lighting designed by Steve Ross, Projections:Alejandro Figueroa, Producer: Mobile Production GmbHViva Verdi Lighting designed by Steve Ross, Projections:Alejandro Figueroa, Producer: Mobile Production GmbHViva Verdi Lighting designed by Steve Ross, Projections:Alejandro Figueroa, Producer: Mobile Production GmbH
What production or artist or scholar has had the most impact on you over the course of your career?
Gilbert (who unfortunately passed away much too early) had the most influence on me in my approach to lighting design and general ways of working in the theatre. He was a mentor and teacher to many of us who knew, studied or worked with him at Wisconsin or in the field. One example was Fred Foster, an undergraduate, when I was a TA. Fred went on be the founder of ETC lighting.
(The following passage is taken from the ETC web site on the company history.)
“The birth of a company ~ Christmas eve, 1975 an 18 year old college student (Fred Foster) pitched the idea of a state-of-the-art lighting console to his college professor. (Gilbert)“We’re going to make a lighting console and sell it to the Met!”
With this statement of determination, ETC was born.
To this day the company headquarters are in Middleton Wisconsin, the city Gilbert used to live in right next to Madison.
It was in fact Gilbert who was instrumental in first getting me to Canada and the Canadian Opera Company. On two separate occasions, I met Lotfi Mansouri, who was at the time General Director for the COC, when he was directing productions at the Met that Gilbert was lighting. When Lotfi was looking for a lighting designer to light the COC 1978 season he remembered me from those shows and brought to the Opera Company. I moved to Toronto from New York in 1982.
Is there an image or a quotation that inspires you?
On many occasions Gil would say: “Life is a succession of 6” tolerances.”
He meant that in many instances, compromises can be found, and not to get hung up on small details that are preventing things moving forward. I have found this very helpful many times throughout my lighting career.
This article is part of our series 50 Years of Disruption, in celebration of the Department of Theatre’s 50th Anniversary. In it, we’ll ask each participant four questions about themselves and their time at York.
Sean Baek
1. Who are you?
Hello!
My name is Sean Baek (BA Honours, Theatre Studies, 1997). I am a Toronto-based PoC (“Person of Colour”) actor, although I am not a big fan of identifying myself as a “category” like “PoC” or “visible minority.” I usually say simply that I’m an actor. I have now worked for over 20 years in Theatre, Film, TV, and Voice in most places across Canada, some parts of the U.S. and internationally.
I wanted to be an actor when I was a kid (maybe age 6 or 7?). But my parents’ wishes – yes, cliché – were vastly different. I strived to be a good child, with a few bumps here and there, so I did my best to “find my way” in something other than becoming an actor.
In my final OAC (Grade 13) year of high school, I had multiple aptitude tests and many meetings with my guidance counselor in order to decide what to do with directions in which I wanted to go and possibly for my Post-Secondary education. I was training in martial arts heavily at the time and I was entertaining the idea of becoming a police officer (OPP or RCMP) to help the community at large. But then I gave up on the idea of becoming a police officer because both of my older siblings were continuing in post-secondary education. After much contemplation, I finally decided to go to a university, and applied for the BBA (Bachelor of Business Administration) program at York University – now The Schulich School of Business – with a guarantee of an Entry Scholarship. But, at the time, I was doing Waiting for Godot in my high school drama class, and at the last minute I changed the major from Business Studies to Theatre, and I auditioned for York University’s Theatre Program and got accepted.
My earlier stages of pursuit in acting began with what I consider (for myself) as a “failure,” a deep disappointment, lots and lots of self-doubt, and struggles. After completing my first “introductory” year in the Theatre Program at York University, I auditioned for the 2nd Year Acting Stream/Ensemble, and I did not get accepted. Much sadness, some level of anxiety, and long contemplation of whether to stay at the same institution or to go elsewhere (another Theatre school) followed. After much soul-searching, I made a decision to stay at York University, to study Theatre in the Theatre Studies stream, to learn as much as I can academically, to earn my degree, and then see what it’d be like for me in the real world. I had many great professors, amazing educators, and learned a lot in Theatre Studies. In retrospect, I think it was exactly what I needed – a broader perspective, if you will, into what I was getting myself into. Not getting accepted or allowed into the 2nd year of my studies in the Acting Stream taught me something so very valuable – experiencing, facing, and dealing with rejections. I started to develop that “thick skin” people so often speak of.
I started out as an actor in Theatre immediately upon graduation by putting myself “out there.” I paid close attention to what was going on in the arts world, specifically in the theatre world in Toronto. I greatly admired – still do – “independent” artists and their work.
My first ever foray into the professional theatre world started with my audition for the Mirvish-produced musical, RENT. The fact that they had “Open Calls” helped a lot. I did not have a representation (an agent) then. I submitted my headshot and resume myself. It was just me, my guitar, and the choice of songs I had in the initial stages of auditions. Then I received a Call-Back audition. Then another. I was even given songs from the musical itself to prepare for yet another Call-Back audition. My final, final Call-Back audition (I forget what number) was in front of a panel of close to about 20 people, such as the Mirvish Productions people, Casting Directors, NY Director, NY Music Director, Toronto Music Director, etc. I was the only Asian person in the waiting room full of good-looking Black male performers. I mention that because, in New York (on Broadway), the role I was being considered for – Benny – was cast with an African-American performer (Taye Diggs). I had heard that Toronto was following the similar, if not the same, casting scheme.
I did my very best throughout that process, but I didn’t end up getting the part. I was quite heart-broken, honestly speaking. But, with the help of the casting director who was working on that musical, I was referred to an agency and was able to get on their roster. So, something good came out of it. Plus, I was even more prepared for what is to come in my career – I was continuing to develop that thick skin required for this line of work when there are, still to this day, a lot of “things not working out” due to whatever reason(s). During the years following that initial “try-out” time period, I continued to work in and with numerous small to mid-sized theatre companies, as well as big festival theatres like the Stratford Festival (on which I will touch more for Question 3), and other theatre festivals (Toronto Fringe, New Ideas, etc.), TV shows, various national TV commercials, voice work for CBC’s radio dramas.
I am currently on a Science-Fiction TV show called KILLJOYS on Space Channel (Canada) and SYFY (U.S.). I play a recurring character named Fancy Lee (Seasons 1 through 5). KILLJOYS, Space Channel’s most-watched series in its history, has recently aired the finale of Season 4, and we have recently finished production for the 5th and final season. Season 5 is due to air in 2019. I have also made an appearance as a recurring character (opposite and alongside the Oscar-nominated actor, David Strathairn), in another Sci-Fi series, The Expanse.
I continue to split my time between Theatre, Film, TV, and Voice as much as I can. Most recently in Theatre, though unfortunate, I’ve had to turn down an offer for the world-premiere production of Picture This (Soulpepper) due to a scheduling conflict. Previous to that, I worked on The Last Wife (Belfry Theatre/GCTC Co-Production) in 2016. I have recently worked in Voice for an upcoming video game (of which I can’t really speak at the present time). I have a couple of other TV shows on which I have recently worked, due to air some time in 2019.
Sean Baek as Fancy Lee in KILLJOYS.
2. What was your favourite moment during your time in the Theatre Department, and why?
Rather than “moments,” I would say that I had two favourite years during my time in the Theatre Department:
(1) The First Year. We, the First-Year students, had to “serve” on different crew teams for the senior years’ productions. My first experience was being on the Carpentry Crew for a 4th-Year Acting students’ production of Lion in the Streets by Judith Thompson. I always had a deep appreciation and love for building things (when I was a kid, I had TONS of model planes, helicopters, ships, etc.). So, when I got to be a part of the team that built the set for that production – and I got to see it – it was so rewarding. And then in the Second Term, I got to be on the Wardrobe Crew, where I learned how to sew, among other things (which is a skill-set that my wife very much appreciates);
(2) The other was my Fourth and Final Year. I got to learn some valuable research skills, I learned a lot about many different traditions of Theatre around the world, I read many plays. My favourite course in my Final Year was Canadian Theatre (taught by Dr. Judith Rukdaoff). It was a great learning experience about what it meant (and still does) to be “Canadian” and what it meant to be Canadians in Theatre, telling our stories. What I learned energized me, at times frustrated me, but mostly inspired me. Still, to this day, I strongly believe that you must be an active learner; you can’t expect someone to “hand” you something – knowledge and/or experience – and that is what the course taught me.
3. What comment, quotation, statement, or action that a professor—or classmate—offered had the greatest impact on you?
Dr. Judith Rudakoff once said, in her Canadian Theatre course (I may be slightly paraphrasing, but):
“The landscapes change humans, and humans can and do change the landscapes.”
I took that word, “landscape,” and the whole phrase/sentiment, to mean both in a literal sense and in a metaphorical sense.
When I was starting out as an actor, I was yearning to find someone as a role model. And back then, there weren’t as many “People of Colour” artists, namely Asian-Canadian artists, working or producing work as now in 2018. There were some, but not as prolifically as now, although we still have a long way to go. I think it’s important to stay hungry as an actor/artist. Compared to the so-called “mainstream” artists, back then, there were far less representation of PoC artists, and there were a lot of barriers to be demolished.
So, for the past 20+ years, I have worked very hard to “change the landscape” by participating, by enduring, by questioning, by appreciating (the opportunities as well as set-backs), by simply doing, by learning more while simply doing. And in my own way I have made great efforts to contribute, advance, and/or ensure the representation of Asian artists; to have a voice. One of my biggest dreams come true was when, in 2005 (my second time of applying), I was one of the first few actors of Asian-descent to be chosen to be a member of the Birmingham Conservatory for Classical Theatre in Performance at the Stratford Festival of Canada. The Conservatory experience was one of the best in my career. Subsequently, following the intense training, I got to spend three seasons working with some of the finest Canadian actors, directors, designers, coaches/teachers. And as recent as 2017, I was asked to come back to those Stratford stage(s) with an offer to perform as Captain Smollett in their world-premiere book-to-stage adapted production of Treasure Island, only to turn it down due to scheduling conflict with my other acting work after much headache of trying to make it work. That “landscape” started to change. And, still to this day, I am very grateful for Dr. Rudakoff’s insight and intellect when she expressed that.
4. Is there a way you incorporate a particular aspect of your theatre training in your current work?
Research, research, research. I truly believe that knowledge is power (but I emphasize not being arrogant). And you could never be too knowledgeable. I cannot emphasize enough how much knowledge can inform you as an artist. And I firmly believe that I can always learn, and I love learning – about anything – particularly history, nowadays. As they say: It is important to know where we have been, in order to understand where we are now, so that we can figure out where we can go and are headed. Or something like that.
This article is part of our series 50 Years of Disruption, in celebration of the Department of Theatre’s 50th Anniversary. In it, we’ll ask each participant four questions about themselves and their time at York.
1. Who are you?
Diane Roberts
My name is Diane Roberts (MFA Playmaking 1998, BA Theatre 1988) former co-Artistic Director of Nightwood Theatre(1992-94), former Artistic Director of Urban Ink Productions(2007-14) and current founder of The Arrivals Legacy Project and Co-Founder & Artistic Director with Omari Newton of Boldskool Productions, a hip hop theatre company.
I define myself as an interdisciplinary Theatre artist—or perhaps a transdisciplinary theatre artist. I wonder if that’s a contradiction: naming a discipline but calling it interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary? It feels like an accurate contradiction—one I’m comfortable embodying.
Over the years, through practice and teaching, I’ve developed my voice as a cultural leader—one who would cultivate and promote a vision for theatre that encourages indigenous ways of knowing. This ‘knowing’privileges what we learn from our relationship to land(s)—ancestral and current homeland. The process draws on indigenous ways of knowing as a stepping stone to authentic creative expression. This vision is bolstered by the creation of innovative projects inspiring trans-disciplinary and trans-cultural collaboration.
I am the founder of the Arrivals Legacy Project and have been the lead workshop facilitator for the past 15 years. There are two expressions that best describe my artistic vision:cultural intersections and artistic collisions.The roots of storytelling and cross-disciplinary art forms (mixing of ritual song, dance, storytelling, live art and theatre) drive my arts practiceand this is best demonstratedin my ability to seek out for development and production, projects that push traditional boundaries and explode cultural barriers. My intuitive style of facilitation draws on specifically crafted creative engagement tools that inspire participants from all walks of life and cultural backgrounds to unearth their authentic creative impulses. My working methodology draws out and establishes a common vocabulary amongst diverse ‘Afri-sporic’, Indigenous and intercultural artists, our ways of working and our sense of ourselves as artists in a global society. I have, over the years, developed a signature aesthetic in my directorial work— using a rooted creation process that builds on extensive ensemble work and seamless character development. My process strives to elicit naturalized character rhythms and gestures and connects them to character motivation, intentions and actions.
I have witnessed how an expanding knowledge of cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary theatre practice has shaped my life and work. Working primarily in the development of new works, I embrace the knowledge that each new work embodies the artists’ individual, cultural and environmental perspective. As an artist/woman of colour I am well aware of some of the external and internalized barriers that inhibit freedom of expression and have strived to create consciously decolonized environments that nurture authentic and embodied modes of expression.”
The Arrivals Legacy Project, developed as a character-building exercise during an artisticresidency at Concordia University, has grown into a unique tool for developing multi-media and theatrical works that expose questions of shifting identity during transmigration. I realize now that I have only tapped into a fraction of this works potential as a means of a) reinforcing national identity b) encouraging intergenerational exchange and c) exploring trans-national links in both domestic and international arenas.
My focused attention to the African aesthetic in theatre springs from my continuing exploration of intersecting cultural practices among artists from Canada, the U.S., West and Central Africa, The Caribbean and more recently Central America.
I am currently pursuing an Interdisciplinary PhD at Concordia University to consolidate over 30 years (gulp!) of practice and research.
2. What was your favourite moment during your time in the Theatre Department, and why?
My favourite moment was directing NtozakeShange’sfor colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf(Simon & Schuster, 1975) as my undergrad thesis project for directing class. Because of the demographics at York (namely, no black acting students nor acting students of colour in the program, circa 1988) I cast 5 white women in the roles. The play is a choreopoem and that form hadn’t yet been established in western theatre. It was written in an ‘eye dialect’, written as the characters spoke to indicate authentic regional speech. I treated the play as I would have a Shakespearean text. We had to take the time to decipher Shange’s unique language structure, which was also written using unconventional punctuation and syntax to bring out the inherent rhythms. Through hyperbole Shange references in (sometimes) obtuse ways; black and latinx jazz and blues musicians, visual artists and creative and political movements in black America. I found myself as an African Caribbean Canadian woman challenged in interesting ways. I was meant to be a leadingexpert as director of the project AND as the only black woman in the room.However, I had to find the language, the rhythms and decipher the contextual references in the same way my actors had to. I had to work from embodied instinct to try to find the truth below the surface—to avoid having my white actors try to play black women. It was an exercise in patience and humility. The result was a stunning rendition of the play that brought audience members to tears.
3. What comment, quotation, statement, or action that a professor—or classmate—offered had the greatest impact on you?
I have to start with something that I hope you choose to publish because I feel it’s important. It was not inspirational and, though it left its lasting damage, I have to say it helped to shape my current practice passions and interests. In my undergrad program, I, the only black student in the class, was told by my white acting professor that I should go into stage management because there were very few roles for black actors in Canada. This fueled my determination to change the status quo. As a salve for this unpleasant experience, I remember meeting with Professor Jeff Henry (co-founder of Black Theatre Workshop in Montreal and Founder of Theatre Fountainhead in Toronto).During that difficult time, he was my proof that there was a future for black artists in Canada. Hecompletely debunked what the professor told me and reminded me that I didn’t have to accept that as truth. He also told me that I didn’t have to laugh at racist jokes in the classroom just to be polite. It was so important for me to have someone like Jeff Henry (a black professor of his stature and experience) in the department. He was the reason I came to study in the theatre department at York and the reason I stayed.
On the positive side, in my graduate program I felt my authentic voice as an Afri-Caribbean artist under the generous and open tutelage of Professor Judith Rudakoff. From the moment on the train in Denmark (during the 1996 meeting of Eugenio Barba’s International School of Theatre Anthropology)when Dr. Rudakoff invited me to come to York to do my Masterstraining in playmaking to the defense of my thesis in 1998, I felt an unwavering support and the permission I needed to step into the unknown.
4. Is there a way you incorporate a particular aspect of your theatre training in your current work?
I most definitely incorporate many aspects of my theatre training into my work. I draw on many of the visions and techniques I uncovered in my studies at York as a director dramaturge and cultural animator. I continue to work with and collaborate with Professor David Smukler who helped me to ground my newly found voice. I recently reached out to my directing professors Ines Buchli and David Rotenberg when I was teaching my first directing course last year. They were both tremendously generous about sharing their curriculum materials and time with me. I feel blessed to say that I have lasting relationships with many of my professor/mentors and have enjoyed the opportunities to exchange with them as colleagues.
This article is part of our series 50 Years of Disruption, in celebration of the Department of Theatre’s 50th Anniversary. In it, we’ll ask each participant four questions about themselves and their time at York.
1. Who are you?
Sue Edworthy
Sue Edworthy (BFA Spec. Hons 1995) I’ve worked in the non-profit performing arts for nearly twenty years and am a self-described city enthusiast. I’ve had stints in theatre, dance and opera organizations in and around Toronto such as Luminato, Opera Atelier, and Theatre Passe Muraille. I am a 2010 Harold Award recipient and recipient of the CharPR Prize for best publicity 2012 and 2013, and the 2015 recipient of the Leonard McHardy and John Harvey Award for Arts Leadership. I am a former Board member for The Toronto Fringe (7 years!) and The Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts, and a current Board member for the Canadian Dance Assembly and Expect Theatre. I’ve also worked on the 2010, 2014 and now 2018 editions of Artsvote.
I’m currently a part time instructor at Ryerson Theatre School and Humber College, and I run Sue Edworthy Arts Planning, a freelance marketing/PR, producing and strategic planning company for the Toronto independent arts community. I’m also a member of Arts Consultants Canada.
For more info or to contact me, visit www.sueedworthy.ca, or you can find me (Sue Edworthy Arts Planning) on Facebook or follow me on Twittter @sueedworthy.
2. What was your favourite moment during your time in the Theatre Department, and why?
Greek and Medieval stagings, hands down. They stopped doing them after our year – they were a real eye-opener to the 163 first year theatre folks on putting together every element of a show. “you want to be an actor? Nope – you’re stage managing this.” Costumes designed and made with – borrowed – sheets, lunch orders in iambic pentameter to practice. We survived Greek Weekt-shirts. It was so much fun and so much stress and we were all in it together supporting each other and our class. A definite bonding moment, for better or for worse!
And just so everyone knows – there is no placefor a couch onstage in a Greek tragedy. Are we clear?
3. What comment, quotation, statement, or action that a professor—or classmate—offered had the greatest impact on you?
“You know what the problem is? You don’t want to be a director, you want to be a producer. You are a producer. You think like one. We have a good directing program, so stay in it—but keep producing.” – Professor Joseph G. Green.
Joe was the first person to recognize these traits in me; prior to him saying this they were “director” traits, or “stage manager” traits. He saw the whole picture and in his gruff yet somehow endearing way, made me realize where I really wanted to be.
4. Is there a way you incorporate a particular aspect of your theatre training in your current work?
This article is part of our series 50 Years of Disruption, in celebration of the Department of Theatre’s 50th Anniversary. In it, we’ll ask each participant four questions about themselves and their time at York.
1. Who are you?
nisha ahuja (2001-2005 BA Specialized Honours Creative Ensemble/Devised Theatre, minor International Development)
At the root, I’m a spiritual being having a human experience, on the path of being more consistent in not forgetting that true nature while moving through the day to day. In this human experience, however, some identities I roll through the world with are Queer and Gender-Queerish 2nd Generation Immigrant South Asian Woman who is dedicated to dissolving the boundaries between art, traditional medicines, ceremony and spirituality, and social equity with the deep knowing that both art and healing practices are revolutionary and fundamental to our collective liberation.
I worked for about half my life, including several pre-YorkU years, as a theatre artist/creator and actor in Canada, with spurts in the USA, the Netherlands, and India, and now as a Registered Naturotherapy Practitioner offering Ayurvedic Medicine, Energy Healing, Holistic Yoga, and Creative Coaching/Dramaturgy as Co-Founder and Co-director of Soma Integrative Wellness with my brilliant partner and wife MeLisa Moore (www.somaintegrativewellness.com).
Over the years as an artist I’ve had some plays and articles published, loved the creation process of the body being the site of storytelling and unlocking the stories from our very tissue and bones, performed in small weirdo indie warehouse venues to being an actor with the NAC’s Resident Acting Company, facilitated and directed projects in urban and rural India with children with different abilities/disabilities and also former working children and child labourers (the latter thanks to Judith Rudakoff’s Common Plants Project) to co-directing with colleagues like Trey Anthony at the likes of Factory Theatre, choreographed and translated on a couple of projects, had creation/playwright residencies with the likes of Cahoots, Buddies and Canadian Stage, to small town artist hubs in India and Puerto Rico, spoke on a bunch of panels, been a guest artist and lecturer at half a dozen universities/colleges, and somehow my work was annually studied for the past six years in a South Asian Feminist Literature course at York University as well. I feel really complete with my work as an artist, and now while I happily continue occasional work as a voice over artist + vocalist, creativity coach and dramaturge, I focus my energy on supporting people with holistic integrative wellness practices.
I engage with both artistic and health-wellness practices as a dedication to reducing suffering in the world in a form of story, whether utilizing theatre to be a mirror to provoke thought amongst audiences to contemplate the suffering we inflict on each other and the condition of our world, or as integrative wellness practitioner understanding the impact of our social inequities on the health of individuals and our communities, and holding people’s stories they share in sessions with me and reflecting back tools that can guide more healing in the next chapters in their lives and in our collectively created world.
2. What was your favourite moment during your time in the Theatre Department, and why?
My time at York had many interesting, challenging, and favourite moments. One fav was creating and performing a short solo-piece at the playGround Festival in 2003 or 2004 called World of Bananas. While I loved Creative Ensemble/Devised Theatre training in a collective process, the development and performance of this piece gave space to dive into politicized content of race, gender, colonization, internalized colonization and internalized racism, international development and global economy, while artistically exploring a hybrid of bouffon-performance art in its grand grotesque-ness, using White-Face (turning Black/Brown-Face on its head) as a central image in the piece.
In the theatre department I was frustrated with the lack of plays, studies, and training in non-Euro-Western traditions, I was frustrated with the racism (subtle and overt) that I experienced in the department from peers, professors, and administrators as one of the handful of people of colour in both undergrad and masters programs, I was frustrated with the lack of socially relevant art that the department was teaching and creatively exploring, and I was frustrated that a department administrator told me I should switch departments if I wanted to engage with “such politicized” study and content. This piece was my opportunity to artistically explore so much that interested me creatively, aesthetically, and politically, and articulate my unique creative voice in the fabric of theatre makers emerging from York.
The piece then went on to be accepted to Hysteria Festival at Buddies in Bad Times, and led to the invitation to the Women’s Creators Unit at Buddies soon after I graduated. Several years later in 2011 when I was commissioned by the Canadian Council for International Cooperation to create a touring piece about global gender inequity, World Of Bananas got a total revamp (as I had been wanting to make it more accessible and nuanced) and became Un-Settling (Canadian Theatre Review, January 2016). The Un-Settling version also happens to be the first piece my wife saw me perform in while touring it to Detroit, and she says that’s when she knew we needed to connect and likely work together. So with all the important creative, professional, and personal moments, that came from World of Bananas I can’t help but have an extra special spot for the opportunity the submission committee provided in motivating me to first create and perform it at playGround so many years ago.
Un-Settling. (Photo by Kevin Jones)
3. What comment, quotation, statement, or action that a professor—or classmate—offered had the greatest impact on you?
Mark Wilson who led up the Creative Ensemble/Devised Theatre program at the time had lots of gems of insight to offer and was a great mentor and guide. One gem that became central to how I created new work was the following that I believe was a paraphrase of Artuad that I’m now paraphrasing here as I remember it, “Open their Mouths with laughter and shove the truth down their throats.” It really did become my motto in many a creation process.
Another moment (or semester really) was in a seminar class: Corinne Rusch Drutz when she began with (again I’m paraphrasing) “You’re going to hate me after this semester, because once you know [all the social inequities infused in art] you can’t unknow.” I never could look at the “semiotics” of another advertisement, movie, or piece of theatre again and combined with the Creative Ensemble/Devised Theatre training continued on to create and direct with a fine tuning of how to expose the dynamics of race, class, and gender that often was overlooked. Corinne was wrong in that, instead of hating this brilliant woman, she had my respect and gratitude for being one of the few professors in the department at the time willing and able to engage deeply in critical discussions of race, class, and gender despite backlash from the department’s Euro/Western-Centric and Male-Dominated culture.
4. Is there a way you incorporate a particular aspect of your theatre training in your current work?
As this series of articles is dedicated to “disruptors” of York Theatre, it seems more than fitting that my honest answer to this question will disrupt the notion of what western theatre training is rooted in (after all my practice is dedicated to dissolving these relatively new colonial boundaries between art, spirituality and ceremony, and social equity.) The aspects of my current work that connect to theatre training, are rooted in the spirit and traditional medicine systems that I practice and offer, which western theatre training “borrowed” (as in culturally appropriated without credit) through the 19th century. (This kind of erasure is not exclusive to theatre by any means, and definitely not just to South Asian/Eastern traditions as it especially happens mostly to Black and Indigenous cultures.) Now I continue to share with others the deeper purpose of these practices that were diluted for the use in studio far beyond the notion performing or a western idea of theatre and performance, and one that allows others to harness an internal power in our journeys of human growth and evolution.
nisha ahuja in Cycle of a Sari (Photo by Leah Snyder)
This article is part of our series 50 Years of Disruption, in celebration of the Department of Theatre’s 50th Anniversary. In it, we’ll ask each participant four questions about themselves and their time at York.
1. Who are you?
Andrew Gaboury
My name is Andrew Gaboury (BA Honours—Theatre Studies, Ensemble/Playwriting, 2008). I identify as an artist, educator and artistic director based in Port Credit. I am an independent artist embracing devised theatre, durational performance, physical improvisation and clown. I am one of 4 co-Artistic Directors of hub14 art & performance works, a studio and artist residency in Toronto. I am the Director of a field of crowns, a performance-based company with an interest in collaboration and community arts.
I also teach school workshops, outreach workshops and community courses in drama, dance and writing with the Living Arts Centre in Mississauga.
Most recently, I have become one of 10 students in North America’s first Therapeutic Clowning Certificate program at George Brown College. Ideally after this I will be able to operate as a professional therapeutic clown within pediatric wards and alongside elders at short- and long-term care facilities across Ontario.
Some recent credits: Awkward Stories for Adults (Hamilton 7, Hamilton Fringe Festival); Checkmate (Frog in Hand, Living Arts Centre); Rutherford Takes Flight (Day of Delight 2018, Clay and Paper Theatre); Tell Me What it’s Called (RISER Project, Theatre Centre); Four Lands: Mississauga (Jumblies Theatre, AGM); Home (MWF, Frog in Hand Productions).
Andrew Gaboury at Clay and Paper’s Day of Delight
2. What was your favourite moment during your time in the Theatre Department, and why?
The last class of Creative Ensemble in second year. There was a moment when Mark Wilson, our teacher (we called him Dad), brought us together with a ritual and a group cheer that just validated all of our experiences from that demanding class. I think that might have been a key piece in establishing a family that I still see to this day. Some of the best relationships of my life came out of that group.
I still use that ritual today, at the end of a process that feels like it has captured that same spirit.
Andrew Gaboury, in studio with the cast of Tell Me What it’s Called
3. What comment, quotation, statement, or action that a professor—or classmate—offered had the greatest impact on you?
Michael Greyeyes always talked about listening but in the context of the body. To constantly be aware, in an improvisation, of the group dynamics. To listen to the world around you with not one sense but your entire essence. I think this idea of full-body listening has made me a more sensitive human being. I apply it all the time, as a teacher, in a collective, on a panel (and imagine I’ll be using it nonstop on the hospital wards). It’s such a great reminder that different situations demand different interactions. Michael spoke about how not everybody can be the lead singer – that sometimes you need to be the bass player, keeping the song together. I loved that.
4. Is there a way you incorporate a particular aspect of your theatre training in your current work?
All of it. All the time. I still hear my playwriting teacher Judith’s voice in my head when I write and reassuring me when I feel like I’m not doing enough. I hear McKinnon, Fothergill, Laura and Marlis everytime I see a new performance. I hear Mark when all of a sudden I am a leader and Michael in my body when I need to stop and listen.
This article is part of our series 50 Years of Disruption, in celebration of the Department of Theatre’s 50th Anniversary. In it, we’ll ask each participant four questions about themselves and their time at York.
1. Who are you?
Richard Lee
My name is Richard Lee (BFA Acting 2000).
I am an Actor, Fight Director, Sound Designer, Educator and Theatre Maker. When I graduated York in 2000, I always imagined and dreamed that I’d work in a multi-media universe, switching seamlessly from theatre to film and television. What I learned was probably further from that truth, but also so much more meaningful than I could have ever thought possible.
Don’t get me wrong, being an actor is possibly one of the most rewarding and fulfilling things that I have ever done in my life. It satisfies my soul in ways that I cannot even being to explain, and the complexity in how to become not just a good actor, but a great one is a challenge that I deeply relish. But I have never been one to sit around and wait for things, and unfortunately that is what the life of an actor can be: a place where I wait for things, projects, work to manifest so that I can ply my craft.
Over the years I have found this to be immensely unsatisfying. Perhaps that is part of the reason why I became a Fight Director (to shape stories and tell stories through violence), why I choose to practice being a Sound Designer (to be a part of relating stories through the medium of sound), and why I eventually went on to try and make theatre of my own (because I had my own story to tell). It is probably why, even now, I feel the need to create stories, and be the conduit of creating my own stories for audiences to enjoy.
The one thing I would say that has been central to my career is failing. I hate it. I hate it so much. I know that not everything I do is amazing. I know that there are performances that I have not been proud of. But that is part of the growth. That is part of my journey and I feel that even after all of my perceived failures in my life and my career, I still find myself coming back to performance. I want to learn more. I want to be better. I want nothing more than to be up there, on a stage performing.
2. What was your favourite moment during your time in the Theatre Department, and why?
I loved many things about my time at York. I considered it a time when I could just be there and absorb new skills, new ways of working, and trying my hardest to succeed. What I realize, looking back, was that it also offered me the opportunity to try things and fail miserably. It allowed me the opportunity to consider what acting meant to me, and to develop my own sense of what made me a good performer. Singers often talk about training your ear to hear yourself so that when you sing you can maintain your key or pitch. Well, what I loved best was having those “Ah-ha!” moments during my time at York, where I began to realize the things that helped to hone my inner “acting” ear. Which gave me a better gauge on the quality and accuracy of my performances.
3. What comment, quotation, statement, or action that a professor—or classmate—offered had the greatest impact on you?
Being Present. – Learning from David Rotenberg, what it meant to be “present” in a scene. I don’t think I really understood what that meant, nor how much of myself and my artistry comes from being present and allowing myself to “Be”. It’s something I still struggle with to this day. And something that I am always trying to find ways to work on.
4. Is there a way you incorporate a particular aspect of your theatre training in your current work?
I would say that York laid the foundation of how I could allow myself to be a life long learner. There is not one aspect of what I learned at York that guides me today. But the breadth of skills that I did learned helped me to be an open and versatile performer. The diversity in the type of training that I received at York, really gave me an appreciation and respect for all the different types, approaches and styles of performance that exist out there. And I think that the variety and range really allows me to approach every project with no judgement in what might happen. I feel that I am always learning and that I am always willing to push myself out of my own comfort zones to discover new things.
1. Who are you?
nisha ahuja (2001-2005 BA Specialized Honours Creative Ensemble/Devised Theatre, minor International Development)
