The research cluster is currently involved in a number of exciting collaborative Research-based Theatre projects.
Alone in the Ring
Healthcare students and clinicians with disabilities face unique challenges. A team of researchers, professionals, students, and community members created Alone in the Ring to understand the barriers and resources in the professional lives of people with disabilities working in Canadian healthcare settings.
Project Details
“The amazing courage of performing and voicing stories of vulnerability.”
“How powerful theatre is!”
“Stories open up worlds.”
Audience reactions to premiere on October 26, 2018
Healthcare students and clinicians with disabilities face unique challenges. A team of researchers, professionals, students, and community members created Alone in the Ring to understand the barriers and resources in the professional lives of people with disabilities working in Canadian healthcare settings. Based on rich stories gathered through a 3-year study, the play offers audiences insight into the lived experience of people with disabilities, while asking audience members to consider how they can contribute to changing attitudes and allyship within the health professions.
In 2020, in response to health restrictions related to COVID-19, the team created an online version of this production, Alone in the Ring: The Vlogs. The team has presented this version over Zoom for more than 300 health care professionals and students.
For more information, please contact inclusive.campus@ubc.ca. For resources to actively support the creation of workplaces that are accessible and inclusive of individuals with disabilities, visit the Inclusive Campus resource page.
Dark Secrets
Dark Secrets is part of a research project being led by the UBC School of Social Work that focuses on student to student abuse in Canada’s Residential School System.
Project Details
The play shares acts of kindness and acts of resistance associated with the collected narratives of Residential School Survivors.
My Home is a Suitcase
My Home is a Suitcase is a Research-based Theatre performance created in collaboration with newcomers to Canada telling their stories of immigration.
Project Details
Theatre artist Rzgar Hama, in partnership with UBC Research-Based Theatre Collaborative and Sky Theatre Group, launched the My Home is a Suitcase project in light of the global refugee crisis. A group of newcomers are working with professional theatre artists (Rzgar Hama, Hila Graf, and Lennora Esi) to turn their autobiographical stories of immigration into a live theatrical performance. The stories will be performed by community members with lived experience of immigration, working alongside theatre artists and members of the UBC Research-Based Theatre Collaborative.
Rock the Boat
Don’t Rock the Boat began as a live theatre workshop focusing on wellbeing issues that arise within the context of graduate student supervisory relationships. In early 2020, we began a new phase of the work that involved a brand new script that brought greater emphasis to issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion and the impacts for wellbeing in graduate supervision.
Project Details
The dramatized scenes were professionally acted, filmed and edited and support the longer term sustainability and accessibility of this work. With the new scenes, we also recognized an opportunity to spark dialogue about the systemic as well as individual actions that could be taken to actively promote and support respectful graduate supervisory relationships. Hence we dropped the “don’t” in Rock the Boat.
Rock the Boat is an open-access multimedia resource designed to provoke dialogue about graduate supervision relationships within universities, and their impact on student and faculty wellbeing. The finished product includes 4 scenes, each running about 7 or 8 minutes, a comprehensive facilitator’s guide and relevant resources to support use of the resource in an online or in person format for student, staff or faculty workshops, orientation sessions or other events focusing on graduate supervision, wellbeing and equity, diversity and inclusion.
You can find a trailer providing an overview of the resource here.
You can access the resource on Pressbooks with this link https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/rocktheboat/
Follow the guidance you will find in the “access” section (under the Contents tab) to obtain a password for the protected portions of the site. This will enable you to view the videos and access the facilitator’s guide.
The citation for the resource is: S.M. Cox, M. Lee, M. Smithdeal, and T. Maragha (2021). Rock the Boat: Using theatre to reimagine graduate supervision. Pressbooks Open Educational Resource. https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/6v5z-ye25
Please feel free to get in touch at rock.the.boat@ubc.ca if you have any feedback, suggestions, or interest in future collaboration!
Treading Water
For the past decade RES’EAU-WaterNET and its partners have been engaging with a number of rural and Indigenous communities across Canada to address water challenges.
Project Details
Treading Water is an innovative play that brings to life some of the rich stories discovered during these community collaborations. The play flows between the intersecting narratives of characters in a community dealing with unsafe drinking water, and explores steps towards health and well-being related to water quality challenges. Water operators and their experiences are central in Treading Water, and the play illustrates their pivotal, yet complex, role in the community. Presented by engineers, water operators, and actors, the play aims to open conversations addressing water quality and health issues facing rural and Indigenous communities in the 21st Century.
Unload
“We all have things we need to unload,” says a military veteran in this 30-minute play portraying a powerful bond between two men who have respectively faced personal loss.
Project Details
When an actor asks his veteran friend to help him prepare to audition for the role of a solider, they embark on a soul-searching journey to address difficult memories. Drawing on his ability to overcome challenges in and out of uniform, the veteran must guide the actor through an unspoken grief that has been haunting him for decades. The heart of the play invites audiences to witness a dramatized version of a group therapy model where individuals unload some of their ‘baggage,’ or trauma, to move forward with their lives. Filled with emotional truth and laughter, this moving and surprising play brings to life research on veterans transitioning home and the lived experience of civilians carrying trauma.
Using RbT with D/deaf and hearing teachers
Simangele Mabena will share a work-in-progress based on the exploration of D/deaf and hearing teachers’ roles and pedagogy in teaching South African Sign Language using RbT, while navigating her role as a researcher. Session Chair: Susan Cox.