Crédit Photo: Emma Tibaldo

DANA MARIE DUGAN + FATMA SARAH ELKASHEF + KATHY CASEY (PWM) — Interdisciplinary Dramaturgy Lab


April 17 to 21, 2023 – 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. (Mon.-Fri.)
Full week rate:
 85$ with Services Québec support
Language of instruction: English
Questions can also be asked in French
Capacity
: 14 people
Open to artists of all disciplines

REGISTER FOR THE FULL WEEK >
(before April 2nd)

Participants must submit a letter of intent and a short biography by April 2, 2023 to info@studio303.ca.
The facilitators will take your background into account in the composition of the workshop.
This workshop is offered in collaboration with Playwrights’ Workshop Montreal.


By registering for a workshop, you agree to cancel your participation if you have symptoms or suspect you may have COVID-19. Please read the Participant Engagement before registering. Thank you!



CONTENT
PWM and Studio 303 invite dramaturgs, theatre artists, dancers, circus artists and interdisciplinary artists to the fourth edition of the Interdisciplinary Dramaturgy Lab. Led by Kathy Casey (dance), Dana Dugan (circus) and Fatma Sarah Elkashef (theatre), the lab is a space for artists to exchange dramaturgical tools, share challenges and experiences, and explore how we are working in these exceptional times.


ACCESSIBILITY
You will find Playwrights’ Workshop Montreal’s actions and reflexions on accessibility here: https://www.playwrights.ca/2022/02/14/accessibility-committee/


BIOGRAPHY
Born in North Carolina, Kathy Casey began her dance career in 1979 with the Chicago Moving Company. Settled in New York in 1980, she danced for many choreographers before joining the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company in 1984. In 1989, she became a member of Susan Marshall & Company, with whom she had collaborated since 1981. From 1985-1989, she also assisted Mr. Lubovitch and Ms. Marshall in creation. Kathy Casey has danced in Europe, Asia, and North America and continues to give numerous workshops across Canada and the United States. Welcomed by Montréal Danse in 1991, she was appointed Artistic Director of the company in March 1996. A major portion of her work now is collaborating with choreographers on the dramaturgy of the works created for the company. In addition to her work with Montréal Danse, she also works as an artistic advisor with independent choreographers in the city.

Dana Dugan is a Montreal based artist-scholar, mother, performer, teacher, and dramaturg. She was a founding member of the Chicago Contemporary Circus Festival (Chicago, 2014-15) and CirqueOFF (Montreal, 2017). Currently, she is a member of Le PARC (Performance Arts Research Cluster) at the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology (Montreal); works as research assistant for the Dramaturgical Ecologies Research Collective (Montreal); Diasporic Dramaturgies Working Group (Montreal); and serves on the editorial board for TURBA: The Journal of Global Practices in Live Arts Curation (Montreal). Dana completed her master’s degree at Concordia University (Montreal, 2018) under fellowship as a practice-based researcher investigating her circus body as a site for cultivating critical dialogues through the concept and practice of (dis)obedience. She continues her embodied research on (dis)obedience as a doctoral candidate in the Humanities Interdisciplinary Program at Concordia University (Montreal), using the body as an interface with Performance Studies and Black Studies toward an ontogenerative disruptive, transformative and affirmative politic.

*** To honor the complexity and tensions inherent in the work and in our different racial positionings in the current socio-political climate, I take inventory and acknowledge my positionality. My body is not neutral and I reject the centrality of Whiteness. To do this, I must first locate my whiteness and acknowledge its inherent centeredness. As Dana, situated in this moment with my own embodied dramaturgy, I move though the world as a white, artist, lover, mother (fuck the rest!) toward queering Whiteness – to uncrown Whiteness and resist its re/production. 

Fatma Sarah Elkashef
Sarah is a theatre maker, primarily a dramaturg, and the Artistic Director of Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal (PWM). Prior to this Sarah worked as a freelance dramaturg in Montreal and has been a part of the evolution of numerous plays and performances. Born and raised in the U.K. to Egyptian and Dutch parents, she has been based in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal) since 2010. Prior to settling in Canada, Sarah became the Senior Reader at Soho Theatre in London, U.K. after having lived and worked in New York City for more than a decade. Curious about  the creation and development process across performance disciplines, Sarah began the Interdisciplinary Writers’ Lab at PWM to explore ways of working not centered around text. At the National Theatre School of Canada she has worked as a dramaturg, teacher, and creator across programs since 2012. In 2016 she was a recipient of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas’ (LMDA) Bly Creative Fellowship Grant for artists who are creating new approaches to dramaturgy. In 2018 she co-created and co-directed a circus show for families, Eat Sweet Feet with Krin Haglund and The Radiant (TOHU). In March 2021 Sarah co-directed (with Sylvia Cloutier) an audio play Lâche pas la patate by Yvette Nolan for Imago Theatre. Sarah’s artistic preoccupations are rooted in her hybrid identity and practice, and she is excited by the possible futures for collaboration and process sharing across performance disciplines.