Dr. Theresa May: Ecodramaturgy, Climate Theatre & Engaging Decolonization in Classrooms & on Stage

An overview of the ecodramaturgy as a critical framework for theatre-making and historiography. Beginning with a re-interrogation of a historical arc of canonical works and culminating in a discussion of plays that engage and activate climate justice. Ecodramaturgy leads necessarily to an artist-activist stance from which engaged decolonization must proceed. The final portion of the talk would move from how key contemporary indigenous and settler dramatists are approaching their work, to my own work as a settler theatre artist devising work in collaboration with regional Native communities of Oregon and California. Speaker: Theresa May is a Professor in Theatre Arts at the University of Oregon where she received the Thomas F. Herman Distinguished Teaching Award in 2021. She teaches Native theatre, Latinx dramatic literature, ecotheatre, as well as devising and performance courses. Her publications include two books: Earth Matters on Stage: Ecology, Environment and American Theater (Routledge 2020) and Salmon Is Everything: Community-based Theatre in the Klamath Watershed (OSU Press 2019); an edited volume, Readings in Performance and Ecology (edited with Wendy Arons) (Palgrave 2014); as well as articles and chapters that bridge performance studies and environmental humanities. She is co-founder of the EMOS Ecodrama Playwrights Festival and is currently working on a new play in collaboration with Native communities of Oregon. Respondents: Dr. Makere Stewart-Harawira is a professor in the Education Policy Studies department, here at U of A and the former convener of the “Intersections of Sustainability Collaborative Research Network for Water Governance, Climate Change and the Futures of Communities.” · Dr. Yelena Gluzman is an assistant professor cross-posted between the Art & Design department and Science, Technology and Society program in Media and Technology Studies at the U of A. She is an experimental theatre director and filmmaker, and works across disciplines of cognitive science, interaction studies, critical disability studies, and feminist STS. Dr. Jean O'Hara is an assistant professor in the Drama dept at U of A. She is a director, divisor, dramaturge, and clown. Their research is centred on Two-Spirit/LGBTQ+ theatre and performance and social justice theatre and they edited Two-Spirit Acts: Indigenous Queer Performances, published in 2013 – the first collection of its kind in Canada. as a Co-director, devisor, and later director for Salmon is Everything play, California, Yurok, Karuk and Hupa Reservations, 2004-2007. She has published about this work in the publication of Salmon is Everything – her chapter is called "The Journey Home." Presented by the University of Alberta's Department of Drama with support from the Kule Institute for Advanced Study on Feb. 3, 2022. Hosted by Dr. Selena Couture, associate professor Drama, U of A, Kule Scholar (2020-2023) and co-director of the Hemispheric Encounters Ecologies Research cluster.