Colloquium #1: Rehearsing for Flourishing Futures in Post-normal Times

A roundtable discussion as part of the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies’ 2022-2023 Colloquia Series.

We live in ‘post-normal times,’ characterized by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the unprovoked war in Ukraine, the increasing urgency of the climate emergency, and the rise of white supremacist violence (Sardar, 2010). In response to such crises, this roundtable looks closely at rehearsal rooms and drama classrooms as possible laboratories for embodying a relational ontology characterized by collective wellbeing and human-nonhuman flourishing.
 
The session will begin with a theoretical presentation from postdoctoral fellow Christine Balt, who will examine literatures from social economics, epistemologies of the South, applied theatre and drama education, and ask: how might the 'affects' of collaborative creative work, such as collective joy and laughter, bring forth more flourishing arts of living? How can drama classrooms and rehearsal rooms, as ‘wellbeing assemblages’ (Coffey, 2022), offer up alternatives to the failing orthodoxies of the current moment? Presentations will include contributions from Kathleen Gallagher, Barry Freeman and their graduate student research teams, whose empirical work engages with these questions in a variety of drama classroom and rehearsal room settings both locally and across the globe.