Theatre beyond culture wars: why we need to get over ourselves

Abstract

ABSTRACT A meditation on drama practice from an artist in Canada. My university students are preoccupied with damage and trauma. There are paralyzing obstacles to working across differences that were useful for a time but no longer serve a robust solidarity. The stories we collect, tell and re-tell ourselves to prepare for a ‘never again’ are stifled if the collisions between the evident and the imagined – and between suffering and joy – are reduced to their limits and not probed for their possibilities. I ponder this via an applied theatre project with my students and injured workers from across Ontario.