Fourth-year theatre students stepped outside the box, and outside the stage, to perform a series of short plays entitled, The Ashley Plays. With the help of third-year students acting as the support network such as site managers and ushers, the monodramas were performed at different sites throughout the Centre for Film and Theatre by these dramaturgs, the name for the people within a theatre that deals with research and development of plays.
“It’s an important part of training for playwrights to understand how their work is interpreted by an actor. It’s also vital to learn how work, when performed, impacts an audience,” says Judith Rudakoff, the instructor of the Playwriting and New Play Dramaturgies courses, and coordinator of this event.
Audience members were asked to arrive early in order to be split up into groups called pods. Each pod was then guided by a “pod wrangler,” or leader, who is a student from the THEA 3290 course, throughout a predetermined route. The pods would stop at different sites throughout the Centre for Film and Theatre to view the different monodramas.
Students of the THEA 4290 course enacted a different narrative about one central character named Ashley. The non-gender-specific character doesn’t necessarily get named or appear, but the central figure is the guiding force and unifying theme behind all these plays.
“The format of site-specific, collaboratively delineated profile of a central character gives playwrights the experience of creating within parameters, of finding individual inspiration from shared given circumstances,” says Rudakoff.
The event was free to attend, but donations were accepted to raise funds for the organization Walking With Our Sisters. This year’s theme for the theatre department’s productions and events was selected as “indigeneity.”
“We wanted to offer support to the extraordinarily moving commemorative exhibition they are touring, honouring missing indigenous women,” says Rudakoff. Walking With Our Sisters is a collaborative art piece made up of over 1,763 pairs of moccasin tops to represent the growing number of missing and murdered indigenous women and children in Canada. The organization is currently touring across the country, with an expected stop in Toronto in the fall of 2016.
Victoria Goldberg, Arts Editor
Featured image collage courtesy of Sabah Haque and Hayley Pace
