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GRiT 3: Kathleen Gallagher | 'Young Artists and Their Soundwaves: Theatre-making and ethnographic research for more hopeful futures'

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Venue: Online

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What does it mean to use theatre methodologically? How do theatre classrooms activate young artists’ ‘voices’? How can a theatre classroom be a laboratory for hope? Cornel West considers the idea of hope very Aristotelian, “a matter of embodying and enacting certain kinds of virtues. It’s not just a matter of having a certain kind of discourse. It’s a mode of being in the world.” In this presentation, I will share the work of a multi-sited, five-year, ethnography undertaken in Toronto (Canada), Lucknow (India), Athens (Greece), Tainan (Taiwan), and Coventry (England) that centred young people and their theatre-making practices in order to probe questions about ‘hope’ and ‘care’ in their lives, amid intersecting and overlapping global crises. Hope in a Collapsing World: Youth, Theatre, and Listening as a Political Alternative (UTP 2022) brings to light this research, and the Verbatim play created from it by award-winning playwright Andrew Kushnir. In this short presentation, I would like to share some of the research findings and the script that came from our arts-led inquiry.

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Speakers
  • Kathleen Gallagher -

    A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Distinguished Professor and current Director of the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Toronto, Dr. Kathleen Gallagher studies theatre as a powerful medium for expression by young people of their experiences and understandings. She has published numerous books and articles on the intersection of youth, theatre, and the social world. Her most recent co-edited collection, Global Youth Citizenry and Radical Hope: Enacting Community-Engaged Research through Performative Methodologies (2020) and her 2022 monograph, Hope in a Collapsing World: Youth, Theatre and Listening as a Political Alternative are based on her recently completed global, collaborative ethnographic study. Gallagher’s current SSHRC-funded project is a five-year, multi-sited ethnography, Global Youth (Digital) Citizen-Artists and their Publics: Performing for Socio-Ecological Justice (2019-2025) in which she is looking at youth theatre practices and youth activism on climate justice. Please visit dramaresearch.ca for more information.