Time: 12:15 - 1:15pm Venue: City Centre Seminar Room, FB 2.07
Professor Geraldine Pratt, Professor of Geography, Faculty of Arts, University of British Columbia
Chair: Professor Jane Wills
AbstractDecades of social science research and critique of Canada’s Live-in Caregiver Program by theorists across a range of disciplines has done little to improve conditions within the program or disrupt Canadians’ complacency with and dependency on this foreign worker program; assessments of activists is that conditions have only worsened in the last 15 years. It is within this context that I began working with theatre professionals to transform research transcripts into theatrical monologues and to create a testimonial play. I report on this process to consider the possibilities of theatrical performance to create new publics and new spaces of politics. I draw on Jacques Rancière’s thoughts about the potential of theatre to redistribute the sensible and Ian Baucom’s ideas about the ways that alternative epistemological registers facilitate cosmopolitanism interestedness, as distinct from liberal cosmopolitanism.3.00 to 5.00 pm - Workshop in the Staff Common Room to follow-on from Geraldine’s seminar presentation.A space for theatre practitioners, social researchers and community activists to come together, share knowledges and experiences about recent projects in London and abroad, and discuss practical and methodological issues on the relationship between qualitative research and performative re-enactments. The workshop is being organised by Mara Ferreri (m.ferreri@qmul.ac.uk)