Barry Freeman

Barry Freeman is an Associate Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Toronto Scarborough and the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies with a cross-appointment to the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at OISE/UofT. He is the author Staging Strangers: Theatre & Global Ethics (2017), co-editor with Kathleen Gallagher of In Defence of Theatre: Practices and Social Interventions (2016) and served from 2011-2022 as Associate Editor of Canadian Theatre Review, during which time he co/edited 8 special issues and co/authored 15 articles on issues of importance to contemporary Canadian theatre and performance. 

Barry’s current research is focused on theatre education and pedagogy. He leads the research project Belongings: On the Virtues and Values of Drama, Theatre and Performance Education in Canada, which is a national qualitative study of post-secondary theatre programs in Canada. He is also Co-Director of Knowledge Synthesis of the SSHRC Partnership Staging Better Futures / Mettre en scène de meilleurs avenirs, a long-term, cross-Canada, bilingual project that responds directly to the many public calls for action against colonialism, racism and sexism in post-secondary theatre training. Barry’s goal is to produce research that will help build open-access, non-competitive resources, programming and supports for theatre educators. 

2019+ 
Belongings: On the Virtues and Values of Drama, Theatre and Performance Education in Canada is a multi-year, qualitative study of the history and state of Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies (DTPS) education in Canada at the post-secondary level. The goal of the project is to learn more about the personal, professional, or pedagogical values that shape DTPS curricula in Canada, how values relate to material conditions, and ongoing pedagogical reform in the field. (Status: Conducted major national mapping of curricula and EDI efforts, analyzing results, supervising team of research assistants, papers presented nationally and internationally and publication in process, funded thus far by internal UTSC grants. Role: Principal Investigator.) 

2023+  
Staging Better Futures/Mettre en scène de meilleurs avenirs (SBF/MSMA) is a national, cross-sectoral, interdisciplinary, multi-lingual (English/American Sign Language/French/Langue des signes québécoise) knowledge co-creation and mobilization project aiming to foster and sustain decolonization, anti-racism, equity, diversity and inclusion (DC/AR/EDI) in teaching and learning conditions in post-secondary theatre education in Canada. (Status: In year two of a seven-year SSHRC Partnership Grant co led by Profs. Jennifer Roberts-Smith (Brock) and Nicole Nolette (Waterloo). Role: Co-Director of Knowledge Synthesis.) 

2017+ 
PLEDGE Project: A Production Listing to Enhance Diversity and Gender Equity aims to provide educators and theatre producers further means to address the lack of gender equity producing plays for the Canadian stage, with a particular focus on plays produced in post- secondary theatre schools. The fully searchable database includes plays written by Canadian women that suggest a cast size of six or more performers. The project also invites schools, departments, professors, visiting directors, and the like to make public pledges to improve the representation of women playwrights and other marginalized communities at their institutions. pledgeproject.ca/ (Status: Ongoing research and advocacy since its founding, has employed and trained 8 student/professional researchers and designers, focus in current year on knowledge mobilization and outreach, funded by ACM/UTSC Equity and Diversity in the Arts initiative. Role: Co-creator and Project Lead.) 

2018  Nathan Cohen Award for Excellence in Critical Writing from the Canadian Theatre Critics Association 

2018  Honourable Mention for the Anne Saddlemyer Award for best book published in English for the year from the Canadian Association for Theatre Research 

2024 Mid-Career Promotions Grant, $11,841 

2024 IDEAS Research Grant 

2024 Research, Creative and Professional Practice Grant, $2,000 

2024 Jackman Humanities Institute Scholars in Residence Program $2,000+student stipends for research intensive 

2023 Joseph R. Smallwood Foundation Research Grant, $5,700 

2022 UTSC Experiential Education Development Grant, $8,750 

2022 UTSC Experiential Education Tier II Grant (co-applicant), $20,000 

2020 SSHRC Connections Grant (co-applicant), $10,980  

2019 UTSC VPR Research Competitiveness Fund, $10,000 

Recent Articles, Book Chapters, Journal Issues 

• 2024 “Hourglasses and hammers: Reflecting on 30 years of interculturalism in Canadian Theatre Review.” Canadian Theatre Review 200. (3,300 words) Anticipated publication Fall 2024.  

• 2021 Canadian Theatre Review 188 on the theme of “Pandemic: A Time Capsule” Co-edited with Natalie Alvarez and Heather Davis-Fisch. Published Fall 2021. 

• 2020 “Prague’s Studio Ypsilon Theatre in the Tradition of the Czech ‘Liberated Theatre’,” in Alternative Theatres in Eastern Europe. Diana Manole and Vessela Warner, eds. University of Iowa Press. (6,700 words)    

• 2018 Canadian Theatre Review 181 on the theme of “Applied Theatre” Co-edited with Yasmine Kandil. Published Winter 2020. 

• 2019 “Education as Arts Talk? Canada’s National Arts Centre and Praxis Theatre’s SpiderWebShow,” (co-authored with Michael Wheeler) in Education and Theatres Beyond the Four Walls. Michael Finneran and Michael Anderson, eds. Springer Publishing. (6,100 words.) 

• 2018 Canadian Theatre Review 180 on the theme of “#TimesUp” Co-edited with CTR Editorial Team. Published Summer 2019. 

• 2017 “In Need of a Good Story: Understanding Come From Away’s Warm Reception,” Canadian Theatre Review 171. (3,000 words).  
  *** Winner of Nathan Cohen Award for Excellence in Critical Writing from the Canadian Theatre Critics Association *** 

• 2017 “Theatre for a Changeable World, or Making Room for a Fire," in In Defence of Theatre: Aesthetic Practices and Social Interventions. Barry Freeman and Kathleen Gallagher, eds. University of Toronto. (6,500 words) 

• 2016 “Joey Walks the Old Lost Land in Artistic Fraud’s The Colony of Unrequited Dreams.” Canadian Theatre Review 166 (3,000 words). 

2024+ Soykan Karayol, Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies,  “Hopeful Research for a Necessary Revolution: Influences of Turkish Political Theatre” 

2024+ Amin Azimi, “Emancipative Interweaving: The Politics of Dramaturgy in Contemporary Iranian Theatre” 

2019+ Grahame Renyk, Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning, OISE, UofT “Come From Away/Come From Here: Theorizing Canadian stage musicals at home and abroad” 

Yixuan Su, born in China, is studying at the College of Education, Zhejiang University with the major in Curriculum and Teaching Methodology as a PhD candidate. She achieved her Master of Arts Degree in University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, and her Bachelor of Literature Degree in Nanjing University. Also, she studied in University of California, Berkeley in 2015 as an exchange student. After graduating from UIUC, she worked in Jiangsu Second Normal College as an academic secretary and a consultant in Chaoming Theatre, which is a campus theatre based in the School of Liberal Arts. After three years of work experience that led her to think about her identity as a teacher and as a theatre worker, she returned to university in 2021 and began her research in educational drama.  With background in literature, theatre and education, Yixuan is not only concerned with the history of Drama- and Theatre-in-Education, the revolution of practices with respect to equity, diversity, and inclusion, but also the value of drama in curriculum today. In China, the new curriculum standards for art education in primary and secondary school have just been circulated, thus she hopes to explore the role and function of drama in China's school curriculum.