Gatherings Partnership

COLLABORATOR

Roberta Barker is Professor of Theatre Studies and Women & Gender Studies at Dalhousie University. Roberta’s research interests centre on the relationship between theatrical performance and the social construction of identity. Her work has explored such topics as the representation of gender and class in early modern tragedy, the lives and repertoires of early modern boy actresses, and the theatrical performance of illness and health. She is the author of two books, Symptoms of the Self: Tuberculosis and the Making of the Modern Stage (U of Iowa Press, 2022) and Early Modern Tragedy, Gender and Performance, 1984-2000: The Destined Livery (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); the co-editor with Kim Solga of New Canadian Realisms: Eight Plays and New Canadian Realisms: Essays (Playwrights Canada Press, 2012); and the editor of numerous early modern plays, including Thomas Middleton’s Women Beware Women for The Routledge Anthology of Early Modern Drama (Routledge, 2020), as well as General Editor of the series New Essays in Canadian Theatre at Playwrights Canada Press. Her credits as a stage director include Così Fan Tutte, Aunt Helen, Luisa Miller, The Rake’s Progress, and Orfeo ed Euridice for Opera Nova Scotia; Henry IV, Part One for Windsor Theatre, Mount Allison University; The Cunning Little Vixen for Dal Opera; and The Dog in the Manger, Drums and Organs, She Herself is a Haunted House, The Mill on the Floss, The Witch of Edmonton, Fuente Ovejuna, and Troilus and Cressida for Dal Theatre. She was the librettist for an opera by composer Tawnie Olson, Sanctuary and Storm, which won the Dominick Argento Prize for Best Chamber Opera from the National Opera Association of America and had its professional premiere in Vancouver in November 2023.

COLLABORATOR

Heather Davis-Fisch is the Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Lethbridge. Her research interests include performance historiography and Indigenous and intercultural performance, particularly in historical paradigms. Davis-Fisch is the author of Loss and Cultural Remains in Performance: The Ghosts of the Franklin Expedition, which was the recipient of the Ann Saddlemyer Award for outstanding monograph from the Canadian Association for Theatre Research.

Her scholarly work has appeared in Theatre Research in Canada, Performing Arts Resources, Cultural Studies/Critical Methodologies and Canadian Theatre Review, as well as several edited collections. Her current SSHRC-funded research project investigates the role of performances in the establishment of settler-colonialism in nineteenth-century Canada and how performance documents and objects can be re-integrated into galleries, archives and museums.

COLLABORATOR

Dr. Christine Mazumdar (she/her) is an artist and SSHRC/Sport Canada Postdoctoral Fellow at the department of Art Education at Concordia University where her research considers the interrelationship between sport and art. A former rhythmic gymnast and nationally certified coach, she is an EDI expert who advocates consent, agency, and bodily autonomy in aesthetic pedagogy.

Christine was the recipient of the 2019 Routledge Prize at the Performance Studies international (PSi) conference for her paper “Like Rubber: Hyperflexibility, Contortion, and the ‘Freak-tastic’ Body,” and was longlisted for the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize for “Ballet for the Apocalypse” and the 2019 CBC Nonfiction Prize for her essay, “Reindeer at the Colloquium.” A writer, musician, and choreographer, Christine holds a PhD from the Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies at the University of Toronto.

COLLABORATOR

Maria Meindl completed her PhD at the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance studies in 2022, where her research was supported by SSHRC and DAAD. Her dissertation, "Reading Elsa Gindler: Tracing the Legacy of a Somatics Pioneer" received the Alumni Dissertation award in 2022. She is working on turning it into a book.

Maria is the author of The Work (A novel from Stonehouse publishing, 2019), and Outside the Box (McGill-Queen’s University Press 2011, winner of the Alison Prentice Award for Women’s History). She has contributed fiction, poetry, essays and comics to numerous journals and has had essays anthologized in The M Word: Conversations about Motherhood, and At the End of Life: True Stories about How We Die. She written two radio series for CBC Ideas: Remembering Polio and Parent Care. In 2005, she founded Draft, a literary reading series now in its 18th season. A proud member of the Gatherings partnership, she co-edited the 2022 edition of the Gatherings chapbook with Stephen Johnson and Jenn Cole, and has contributed articles and interviews to the website.

A Guild Certified Feldenkrais practitioner, Maria has been teaching movement classes since 2002. She also works as a manuscript whisperer on a small number of academic and creative projects. www.mariameindl.com. www.draftreadings.com

GALLERY CURATOR & COLLABORATOR

Jimena Ortúzar is completing a postdoctoral fellowship at York University’s School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design. Her research explores labour and migration through the lens of performance and gender studies and her writing can be found in international journals as well as edited collections on art and activism, contemporary theatre, and Latino/a/x performance.

PROJECT MANAGER & COLLABORATOR

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

COLLABORATOR

Jenny Salisbury is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, where she is working with Tara Goldstein on verbatim theatre project 60 Years of Queer and Trans Activism. Jenny is a theatre director and arts-based researcher who specializes in new play development. Her SSHRC-funded Ph.D. was awarded from the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Toronto, titled, “Community-Engaged Theatre Audiences”. Jenny a director of the Centre for Spectatorship and Audience Research (www.centreforspectatorship.com), and co-artistic director of Gailey Road Productions, “where theatre meets research and research meets theatre" (www.gaileyroad.com).

Current Research: My current research is into activating and performing moments of Queer liberation, activism, and care as found in archives. Under the supervision of Professor Tara Goldstein, we are working on her project The Love Booth and Other Plays a verbatim, documentary play celebrating 50 years of delisting homosexuality from the list of mental illnesses in the American Psychology Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Building on this work, we have been working with undergraduate students and The ArQuives (https://arquives.ca) to write verbatim monologues about Queer activists from the last 60 years. This work connects to my larger research program on community-engaged and documentary theatre and audiences.

ACCESSABILITY CONSULTANT & COLLABORATOR

Dr. Jess Watkin finished her PhD at the University of Toronto's Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance studies. Her research focuses on Disability dramaturgy, care-full approaches to performance creation/production, and Disability related activism. She is a Blind artist-scholar living in Toronto, who loves making tactile art and showing up as the Disabled artist in many creative spaces to ensure care is prioritized for all.