Barry Freeman

Multi-site ethnography, hypermedia and the productive hazards of digital methods: a struggle for liveness

This article explores the possibilities and frustrations of using digital methods in a multi-sited ethnographic research project. The project, Urban School Performances: The interplay, through live and digital drama, of local-global knowledge about student engagement, is a study of youth and teachers in drama classrooms in contexts of schooling marked as ‘disadvantaged’ in research sites in Toronto (Canada), Lucknow (India), Taipei (Taiwan) and Boston (USA). The authors first outline the place of digital methods in the research, describing how software such as Adobe Connect and Survey Monkey, as well as a project Wiki and blog, enabled some virtual communication among and within research sites. They go on to suggest that their experience with these methods exposed the significant limitations of the technology, but also that coming up against these limitations posed useful questions about the nature of specific research methods and about the overall priorities of the study. As an example, the article focuses on how digital methods have usefully complicated available conceptions of ‘liveness’, an important dimension both of live performance and of ethnographic fieldwork. Despite their skepticism about the promise of new technologies, the authors conclude that their experience valuably relocated research analysis from post-facto interpretation to an ongoing negotiation with method in the field.

‘It could have been so much better’: the aesthetic and social work of theatre

In this paper, the authors consider early results from their ethnographic research in urban drama classrooms by parsing the aesthetic and social imperatives at play in the classroom. Moved by the observation that teachers and students alike seem to be pursuing elusive aesthetic and social ideals, the authors draw on Judith Butlers notion of ‘melancholia’ to explain the feeling of disappointment that sometimes follows difficult drama work – the sense, as a teacher in one of the research sites put it, that ‘it could have been so much better’. Reflecting on a larger international research project, ‘Urban School Performances: The interplay, through live and digital drama, of local–global knowledge about student engagement’ (USP) project, the authors illustrate and theorise this concept of disappointment using qualitative data from two urban Toronto drama classrooms. On the surface, one of these sites was focused on aesthetics and the other on social development, but the authors dig deeper to consider the subtler values and outcomes that are made available by ethnographic research. This partly leads to a consideration of how students, teachers and researchers alike are each burdened with a responsibility to ‘perform’ and ‘advocate’.

Aesthetic Diversities in Acting Training

How do we understand “diversities” in aesthetic styles to be manifest in current acting training institutions? Barry Freeman (moderator), Alex McLean, Daniel Mroz, Sonia Norris, Ker Wells, and Maiko Bae Yamamoto discuss issues around the development of theatre makers, the growing tendency of graduates to form companies immediately upon leaving training, the elusive questions of physical and intellectual rigour required for the development of original work, and the perceived conflicts between conventional and devised training. Recorded 12 August 2013.

On the Road with The Global Savages: An Interview with Debajehmujig's Joe Osawabine and Ron Berti

Barry Freeman interviews Joe Osawabine, and Ron Berti discusses how Debajehmujig’s new project changes as it travels to new places around the world.

Between Biblical Tradition and Contemporary Audiences: Jewish Theatre Practice in Toronto

Joel Benabu and Barry Freeman in conversation with four Toronto-based Jewish Canadian theatre playwrights and producers: Esther Arbeid (Theatre/Film Programmer at the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre), Hannah Moscovitch (Playwright), Avery Saltzman (Co-Artistic Director of the Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company), and Julie Tepperman (Playwright, Actor, and Co-Artistic Director of Convergence Theatre). Topics discussed include Jewish sub-communities in Toronto, audiences to Jewish plays, the challenge of producing politically or artistically provocative work, and the relationship between Jewish ritual and performance traditions. The article is an edited version of a two-hour conversation held at the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre in Toronto, 23 December 2011.

Humanizing Strangers Near and Far: Ethics and Irony in The Middle Place and A Taste of Empire

naissance’’ (Frederick). The company still plans to develop theatre using the western model—dramaturging Telly James’s new play Where the Sun Don’t Shine in 2011 and producing Tara Beagan’s Dreary and Izzy in 2012—but much of their efforts are spent working with non-theatrical Native arts groups, looking for points of congruity. Even when AAA’s projects do focus on conventional theatrical texts, the tone and content of the work contains contradictions and surprises. In 1996, Drew Hayden Taylor described most Native Canadian playwrights’ stories as ‘‘very, very angry’’ (67); along with depictions of dysfunction, alcoholism, and abuse, Taylor estimated that ‘‘in 75 per cent of the Native plays written and produced, there is a rape’’ (67). Today, Cunningham and Frederick believe that, while Native writers remain justifiably angry about their cultures’ historical treatment and current circumstances, the modes of expressing that anger have changed. ‘‘[Stories of abuse] are definitely an important part of our makeup and history as a people,’’ says Frederick, ‘‘I find a lot of non-Aboriginal audiences are surprised—‘We’re still on about it?’—and yet they acknowledge that it’s not taught in schools. So it’s a voice that has to get out’’ (Frederick). But a new generation of Native storytellers are finding ‘‘new ways of telling stories that are transformative and hopeful,’’ says Nolan, ‘‘we have other things to talk about onstage ... besides having survived ... our role in the larger society, our relationship to a changing environment, [and] our connection to traditional values ’’ (Nolan). ‘‘What do you mean, you’re an Aboriginal theatre company?’’ In the case of Canada’s youngest company, it means telling ambitious stories in collaborative ways that span artistic disciplines. And it means cheerfully embracing the paradoxes that arise from showcasing Canada’s fastest growing and least visible cultures, on both a national scale and right on their very own block.