Gatherings Partnership

PROJECT MANAGER & CONTRIBUTOR

Sarah Robbins is an artist/educator from Toronto, Ontario. She completed her doctoral degree at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies in 2022. She studies the relationship between gender and performance in theatrical institutional culture, and the pedagogy of actor training.

Before taking over the role of Gatherings Project Manager in June 2022, Sarah was the project’s Web Designer during her graduate studies from 2016-2022.

The study, “The State of Acting Training in Canada” that Sarah co-authored in 2019 was foundational for the Got Your Back Acting Educator’s Conference in May of 2019. More recently, she co-organized the inaugural Association of Acting Coaches and Educators (AACE) Conference in May 2023. The first of its kind in Canada, this new association offers community and training opportunities to those who teach acting privately and within institutions.

Sarah has taught theatre history, performance theory, and acting training courses for the University of Toronto, Mount Allison University, the University of Windsor, and the University of Waterloo.

Her work has been published in alt.theatre Magazine, HowlRound Theatre Commons, Intermission Magazine and Canadian Theatre Review.

saraherobbins.com

WEB DESIGNER & CONTRIBUTOR

Robert Motum is a theatre artist and PhD candidate in performance studies at the University of Toronto. His site-specific work has been supported by Outside the March, Convergence Theatre, the Stratford Festival, and others.

Holding an MA in Performance from Aberystwyth University (Wales), Robert has published on his practice in TRiC, CTR, and in forthcoming edited collections from Palgrave Macmillan and Routledge. His SSHRC-funded PhD research at the University of Toronto's Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies examines site-specificity and notions of nationhood. Robert currently teaches at Sheridan College.

CONTRIBUTOR

Lisa Aikman is a Ph.D graduate from the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies where her dissertation, Dramaturging Encounters: Working Methods and Dramaturgical Structures in Contemporary Canadian Documentary Theatre, examined documentary theatre as a genre that models ways of interacting with would-be strangers. Her current research interests include rehearsal studies, documentary theatre and theatre of the real, theatre of intercultural encounter, audience participation and reception, and theatre for social change/social justice. Within the context of Gatherings, Lisa is interested in how we might archive and study the working methods of independent and/or marginalized theatre-makers to create a fuller picture of how theatre and performance are created outside of mainstream, well-funded venues. She is currently Project Director of Gatherings, Managing Editor of Theatre Research in Canada, and serves as a coordinator and trainer for the Teaching Assistants’ Training Program, housed at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Teaching Support and Innovation.

CONTRIBUTOR

Cameron Crookston received his PhD from the Centre of Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies, in collaboration with the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto in 2019. He has taught classes on the history of sexuality, queer community engagement and the history of drag at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on drag, LGBTQ2+ history, and queer cultural memory. His work appears in Queer Studies in Media and Popular Culture and New Essays on Canadian Theatre and coming soon in GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies and The Journal of Homosexuality.

CONTRIBUTOR

David is a designer, manager, and theatre researcher working in Toronto. He has been part of some three hundred productions in Toronto and across Canada, and his designs have been nominated for three Dora awards. He completed his doctoral degree at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies where he developed a new method of reading theatre facilities based on the interactions between theatre company, building, and the city around them.

CONTRIBUTOR

Tania Gigliotti is project manager for the Young People are the Future (YPTF) initiative (youth engagement in living history museums), spearheaded by Heather Fitzsimmons Frey. She presents at conferences (including AAAE, Horizons, and CATR), and has co-authored one article and one book chapter on based on YPTF research. Tania is Communications Manager at YouthWrite Society Canada. She has been working in children’s books since 2005 when she began work at Greenwoods’ Small World, an independent bookstore in Edmonton, AB. She started her journey into children’s comics at Happy Harbor Comics in 2014 and, while there, founded both Drawn to Write comic book camps for young creators ages 9+, which continue now at YouthWrite. She received her diploma in Arts & Cultural Management at MacEwan University in 2020 and is now entering the degree program.

Fitzsimmons Frey, H. and T. Gigliotti. (2021). "Let's Do the Time Warp Again:" Youth Interpreters at Fort Edmonton Park Performing Possibilities Across Time. Theatre Research in Canada/Recherches Théâtrales au Canada, 42(2). 243-263.

Fitzsimmons Frey, H. and T. Gigliotti (2022). Time Travelling Girls: How girl volunteers at Fort Edmonton Park create activism, A Girl Can Do: Recognizing and Representing Girlhood. ed. Tiffany R. Isselhardt. Vernon Press. 213-232.

CONTRIBUTOR

Laurel Green (she/her) is an adventurous dramaturg, interdisciplinary collaborator, and creative producer of new work; from the world premiere of over a dozen new plays to performance events, video games, participatory gardening installations, and secret backyard shows. She is a research associate for the SSHRC-funded project Performance in the Pacific Northwest: Pilot Project, developing new methodologies for performance historiography with Dr. Sasha Kovacs at the University of Victoria. Her primary research recovered early Canadian feminist playwright Louise Carter-Broun for Dr. Kym Bird’s anthology Blowing Up the Skirt of History: Recovered and Reanimated Plays by Early Canadian Women Dramatists, 1876-1920 (MCUP, 2020). She was an artistic advisor for the inaugural Dramaturgies of Participation Summit at Queens University, with an article forthcoming in Canadian Theatre Review. Laurel holds a Masters degree in Drama from the University of Toronto. She currently lives on the unceded traditional territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən-speaking peoples, colonially known as Victoria, BC.

CONTRIBUTOR

Jenna Kerekes is an emerging arts manager in Edmonton. She graduated with a diploma in Arts and Cultural Management at MacEwan University in 2021 and plans to go back for her degree in fall 2022. Jenna has also done several community theatre shows at Stageworks Academy of the Performing Arts Leduc participating as an actor, stagehand, and lighting technician. Select credits include Mary Poppins, Mama Mia, and Legally Blonde. She has spent the majority of 2021 and 2022 working as a Production Assistant and Health Captain at the Citadel Theatre. Jenna worked with Heather Fitzsimmons Frey on performance-based historiography research and she has written an exhibit piece for Gatherings.

CONTRIBUTOR

Laura A. Lucci is an educator and independent researcher based in Western New York. She joined the Gatherings Partnership in January 2020 as a research assistant on the projects led by Sasha Kovacs and Martin Julien. Laura completed her PhD at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies in 2017. Her thesis, Pirandello’s Dramaturgy of Time, examined the intersections of Luigi Pirandello’s drama with contemporary theories of time and temporality. Laura is currently working on a monograph based on her thesis and developing a project on confraternity staging practices and scenic technology in sixteenth century Florence. For more information, visit https://lauraalucci.wordpress.com/.

CONTRIBUTOR

Marjan Moosavi is the Lecturer at Roshan Institute for Persian Studies, University of Maryland. She holds a Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance Studies from the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies. Outside of academia, she wears multiple hats: she is a dramaturg, dramatic translator, and a diversity practitioner. She has served as a faculty member and designed curricula for the Universities in Iran, Canada, and the US and is the author of several scholarly publications. She is the curator of the Middle Eastern Theatre Photo Exhibition and the Principal Investigator of the First Digital Guide to Theater of the Middle East. Recent collaborations include those with Gatherings (University of Toronto), IPCCR (International Program for Creative Collaboration & Research, University of Maryland), and Nowadays Theatre (Toronto).

CONTRIBUTOR

Lena Onalik (Inuk) is the Heritage Program Coordinator with the Nunatsiavut Government’s Department of Language, Culture & Tourism (Archaeology Division) in Nain, Nunatsiavut, NL. She is responsible for developing and implementing relevant heritage programming, as well as a community-based and field relating to different heritage issues. Originally from Makkovik, Nunatsiavut, she earned her BA in Archaeology at Memorial University in 2006. Since then, she has worked to promote her culture in a variety of roles, serving as the Nunatsiavut Government's first Archaeologist, worked as a Culturalist with Adventure Canada and participating in the annual Trails Tales and Tunes Festival in Gros Morne National Park. Lena has a keen interest in the preservation and protection of traditional Inuit practices such as Inuit throat singing, drum dancing, and traditional clothing making.

CONTRIBUTOR

Michael Reinhart is a theatre/performance creator, performance scholar and theatre instructor. His work (both creative and academic) is based in exploring interdisciplinary art-making and collective-driven devised theatre creation. Much of this exploration, research and creative output has occurred through his work with [elephants] collective and Boundary Conditions/Performance Assembly, both of which he is a founding member. Michael teaches at TMU, the Randolph College for the Performing Arts, Brock University and the University of Toronto. He holds a PhD in Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies.

CONTRIBUTOR

Chanel Sheridan is currently completing her Bachelor of Arts at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Majoring in Drama while minoring in Gender Studies, she hopes to one day create theatre that moves people while exploring her interests in directing, stage managing, and set design. Working under Dr. Kelsey Jacobson as a research assistant, Chanel has explored how audiences archive performances and now wonders about her own archiving process as an audience member and theatre creator. Perhaps hoarding show tickets and programs is a useful skill after all.