2024-25 UTM-JHI Annual Seminar: Theatre and the Environment (1)

When and Where

Friday, September 20, 2024 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm
Collaborative Digital Research Space (CDRS)
MN 3230
1535 Outer Circle Rd Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6

Speakers

Chantal Bilodeau

Description

This public event will feature a lecture & workshop with Canadian playwright (and climate activist) Chantal Bilodeau who is currently working on an ‘Arctic Cycle’ of eight plays which are each set on one of the eight countries which border on the Arctic. Sila (set in Canada) and Forward (set in Finland) have been both been staged and published (in 2015 and 2017 respectively). Bilodeau will be invited to give a Distinguished Lecture, which will be accompanied by short performances/scene studies prepared by undergraduate acting students (who have been working quite extensively on Bilodeau in the previous seminar context).

Lunch will be available from 12:30 p.m. onwards

About the Series

The recent pandemic has made it abundantly clear that scientific insights must be communicated clearly and effectively so that the public understands and ‘buys in’ by changing its behavioural practices collectively. Persuasive social theatre and suggestive performance techniques are crucial parts of scientific communication strategies — the sciences need the theatre! This need for ‘self-theatricalization’ will only grow in the future, as most key sciences in the 21st century will be ‘embodied sciences.’

On the other hand, there is (and continues to be) a rich and important history of playwrights putting science and scientists on stage, thereby creating interfaces and highly visible public discourses at the intersection of society, religion, politics, knowledge creation, and ethics.

In this series, we’ll examine some of the manifold modes in which sciences and theatre-and-performance art continue to interact. We’ll explore key areas of contact between science/technology and theatre/performance; which sciences and scientists currently attract theatrical interest; where and how scientific knowledge begins and ends — and who needs to know it; and how theatre and performance can best contribute to such re-conceptualized ‘scientific knowledge.’  

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Sponsors

Jackman Humanities Institute

Map

1535 Outer Circle Rd Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6

Audiences