From September 6th, 2023 to June 19th, 2024
— Wednesdays from 5:30 p.m – 6:30 p.m
Online
Free
Language: French and english
Open to all
An activity organized by the artist Thea Patterson.
To register > hpatters@ualberta.ca
Summary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report (pdf): Executive_Summary_English
Sommaire du rapport de la Commission vérité et réconciliation (pdf) : IR4-7-2015-francais
In the wake of the horrific revelations of unmarked grave sites, and with more still likely to emerge, we feel that it is necessary to read the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada together. We have also heard the call from many Indigenous groups, including Native Earth Performing Arts, for white/non-Indigenous/settler Canadians to read the TRC.
Reading together aloud proposes a frame for collective embodied engagement with the TRC as we gather together and commit to reading it out loud as a shared practice. We intend to meet for an hour each week, during which time we’ll take turns reading aloud from the report for 40 min and then discuss or quietly reflect on what we’ve read for the rest of the hour.
This continue and gathers upon a cross-Canada initiative organized by performing arts professors from York, McGill, Western, UX (formerly Ryerson) and University of Alberta
By committing to reading the TRC (Executive Summary) we seek to deepen our understanding of how the residential school system perpetuated the genocide of Indigenous peoples across Canada. In this, we draw inspiration from projects such as the TRC Reading Challenge and Theatre Passe Muraille’s reading of the TRC in the summer 2021. By joining together as a community of artists, educators, and researchers we hope that the shared experience of reading aloud and reflecting on the knowledge offered in the report will give us a strong base of understanding towards respectfully working together in the future.
Thea Patterson is a Montreal based dance dramaturg, choreographer, and performer. Her performance practice revolves around an acute set of questions regarding the body, objects, perception, vitality, and time. From 2007 to 2015 she was dramaturg, and co-artistic director with Peter Trosztmer on seven acclaimed works, including Eesti: Myths and Machines (2011) and #Boxtape (2014). She has also provided dramaturgy for many independent choreographers including Katie Ward, Lois Brown, Sasha Kleinplatz, Pam Tzeng, Karen Fennel, Nathan Yaffe and Andrew Turner. She completed a Master’s degree at DAS Choreography in Amsterdam (2016) which explored emergent choreographic forms, and other methods for altering aspects of spectatorship. Thea has several ongoing collaborations as a dramaturg, collaborator, choreographer and performer in Montreal, Portugal, Edmonton, and Newfoundland. Her most recent work Silvering (2020) was presented at Mile Zero Dance in Edmonton. She is a SSHRC funded PhD student in Performance Studies at the University of Alberta and from 2019-2021 was Co-editor-in-chief of Intonations, an online Graduate journal.