Graduate Student Association
Many of our students are active in our Graduate Student's Association (GSA), which represents the graduate programs (MFA, MA, and PhD) in the Department of theatre. The GSA is responsible for organizing a wide range of extracurricular activities for students throughout the year, including pub nights, group outings to performances, and events where students share their ongoing research and artistic work with one another.
Graduate Student Symposium
Each year, our program supports a symposium conceived, organized, and facilitated by Theatre & Performance Studies graduate students. This symposium provides an opportunity for dialogue between both emerging and established scholars from across Canada, as well as opportunity to bridge the artist/scholar divide through the inclusion of multiple types of presentations such as academic papers, roundtables, performances, and installations. Past symposium themes have included Critically Kinaesthetic: Performing Bodies of Political Engagement, Performance in/and the Street, and Activist Performance in/and Canada.
Current MA & PhD Students
| Name | Dissertation/Thesis/MRP Title/ Research interests |
|---|---|
| Batchelor, Brian | Tourism in the Mayan Riviera; performative economies; post-colonialism |
| Bennett, Melanie | “Failing to Succeed: A Dramaturgy of Failure in Performance” |
| Dahlin Nolan, Aidan | Performance and ecology, thing theory, tactical media, and community arts-based activism. |
| Elliott, Pavitra | “The Theatrical Conditions Underlying the Re-Formation of Shakespeare’s Texts in the Restoration Period” |
| Feltham, Kymberley | “Body Politics and Performance in South Africa 20 years after Apartheid”; performance studies, dance studies, post-colonial and decolonial theory, critical whiteness studies, nationhood and identity politics, and ethnographic methodology practices as they intersect with the practices of contemporary dance, physical theatre, and performance art in post-apartheid South Africa |
| Fournier, Lauren | Intersections of performance art and video; critical psychiatry |
| Garcia Lopez, Saul | Casting practices in Mexican telenovellas |
| Hawkes, Terri | Theatrical representations of motherhood; performances of mother-subjects; breastfeeding practices on and off-stage |
| High, Bradley | Acting theory, contemporary Western actor training practices, experimental ethnography, performance philosphy, and the Workcentre of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards |
| King, Moynan | “Women Performing Stillness: Gender, Theatre and Tableau Vivant” |
| Kulinski, Wiktor | “Absurdist Discourses in New Polish Dramaturgy”; Experimental/Imaginative ethnography, 1.5 generation, Polish diaspora, weak theory, cultural poiesis, performance studies |
| Lancia, Alex | Gender and sexuality studies, specifically attitudes towards, and patterns of nudity and nakedness on and off stage in Canada |
| McLeod, Kimberley | “Theatre, Performance and Digital Tools: Modelling New Modes of Political Engagement”; Intermediality, digital activism, political theatre and participatory media in performance |
| Mendonca, Marlene | “Stage-Struck Girls: Challenging Female Identity and Creating Space for the Modern “Girl” in Theatre (1900-1914)” |
| Morgan, Sally | Improvisation, ecosomatics, embodiment, site-specific dance, place, environmental/place-based education, performance/practice as research |
| Nearing, Dawn | Actor training; contemporary Canadian theatre |
| Nelles, LJ | “Revealing Voices: Embodied Practice in Theatre and Health” |
| Nyarady, Zita | “Stories in Flight: Exploring the Process of Transformative Embodied Story Telling in Social Circus” |
| On, Dylan | Digital performance, intermediality, new media, interactive performance |
| Owen, David | “Performance Through an Avatar: Video Games as an Expression of Affect, Narrative Agency, and Ideology” |
| Papierz, Liz | Ethnography and performance, Urban performance, Olympics, Horses and performance |
| Robertson-Palmer, Sean | Hip hop performance and culture; gender studies; ethnography; cultural studies; art as activism |
| Schwartz, Shira | “Between Letter and Spirit: The Ontology of Jewish Performance”; Performing Jewishness and Sexuality |
| Shoeir, Mirette | Theatre as a vehicle for change |
| Tumarkin, Pola | “An Unrecognized Legacy: Michel Saint-Denis and the Canadian Theatre” |
| Wagner, Anton | “The Habitus of Mackenzie King: Canadian Artists, Cultural Capital, and the Struggle for Power” |
| Whittal, Edward | Food and Performance, Cultural Geography, Performance Theory, Ephemerality and Documentation |
| Wier, Claudia | “‘A Confusion of Characters’ in the Gestural Migration of the Commedia dell’Arte”; Regulation of the grotesque gesture embodied by comedic actors within the city of Venice and tracing the cultural/temporal migrations of embodied grotesque, comedic gesture |
| Wilcox, Richard | “Variants of Autobiographical Performance in the Works of Daniel MacIvor” |
Recent PhD Graduates
| Name | Dissertation Title & Supervisor |
|---|---|
| Al-Azraki, Amir A. | “Clash of the Barbarians: The Representation of Political Violence in Contemporary English and Arabic Language Plays About Iraq” Supervisor: Christopher Innes |
| Dixon, Everett | “Lloyd Richards in Rehearsal” Supervisor: Leslie Sanders |
| Griffith, Anna Marie | “Excursions into Otherness: Marketing Exoticism in Yoga, Kickboxing and Capoeira” Supervisor: Laura Levin |
| Keleta-Mae, Naila | “(Re) Positioning Myself: Female and Black in Canada” Supervisor: Leslie Sanders |
| Laviolette, Byron | “From Clowns to Computers Performing Theatrical Interactivity and Pervasive Transmedia Fictions” Supervisor: Don Rubin |
| Lane, William | “Signs of Wanting: Re-thinking Dramatic Motivation Within the Terms of the ‘Return to Freud” Supervisor: Laura Levin |
| O’Hara, Jean | “Up/Staging Two-Spirit Plays: Unsettling Sexuality and Gender” Supervisor: Marlis Schweitzer |
| Ravid, Ofer | “Presentness: Developing Presence Through Physophysical Actor-Training” Supervisor: Laura Levin |
| Rutherford, Annabel L. M. | “The Dramatic Use of Pictorial Structures in Proscenium Arch Plays: 1845-2009″ Supervisor: Christopher Innes |
| Thistle, Lindsay | “Myth and History: Representations of War on the Canadian Stage from 1960-2011” Supervisor: Don Rubin |
| Vosters, Helene | "Good Mourning Canada? Canadian Military Commemoration and its Lost Subjects." |
(MA) Bentham, Aisha's research interests: The intersection of food, wellness and performance. With sub areas in ancestry, location and memory.
(MA) Shpak, Marta's project title: Let The Children Be.
(PhD) Alfaro, Danielle's research interest: Traditional folk dancing performed by the Salvadoran diaspora in Canada and its relationship to activism and identity.
(PhD) Marchinko, Elan's research interest: Histories of colonialism and its redress, feminist, queer, and critical race theory, intercultural performance and dance studies, performance, memory, and trauma, gendered racial violence surrounding representations of indigenous life worlds in Canada.
