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 2011-22 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 pedagogy and education, particularly in Canada. His main research project since 2019 is Belongings: On the Virtues and Values of Drama, Theatre and Performance Education in Canada, which is a national, empirical survey and analysis of post-secondary liberal arts and professional training in Canada. In 2022, he joined the team of 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.

M.A. and Ph.D University of Toronto

University of Toronto Scarborough (undergraduate)
Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies (graduate)
Curriculum, Teaching and Learning, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (cross-appointment)

Canadian Theatre, Theatre History, Intercultural Performance, Education and Pedagogy

Theatre and Performance in Canada, Education and Pedagogy, Ethics and Interculturalism

Recent Award
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

Recent Articles, Book Capters, Journal Issues

• Staging Strangers: Theatre and Global Ethics. McGill-Queen's University Press. 2017.
• In Defence of Theatre: Aesthetic Practices and Social Interventions, co-edited with Kathleen Gallagher. University of Toronto Press. 2016.

Recent Articles, Book Chapters, Journal Issues

• 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.
• 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).

2019+ Ross Slaughter, Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies “Videocabaret: Performing The History of the Village of the Small Huts”
2017+ Julia Mathias, Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies “Negotiating Ethnic “Otherness” in Neo-Burlesque Striptease” (ABD)
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”

Dr. Jeff Gagnon, Post-Doctoral Fellow

Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies and the Department of Arts, Culture & Media (Co-supervision with T.L.Cowan)

Project: 
No Cloud Without Sky – Spectrum Sovereignties

Biography:
Jeff obtained his PhD at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies. His dissertation: Tactical Dramaturgies: Urban Space, Ambient Informatics, and the Performance of Protest, winner of the Alumni Dissertation Award from the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies, is analysis of protest tactics employed by digitally-enabled resistance groups in North America. Jeff’s work is enthusiastically multidisciplinary, intersecting with performance studies, digital humanities, and critical geography in order to engage with technology within the context of  place-based resistance, decolonial thinking, and economic justice. Jeff’s current research work: No Cloud Without Sky is an investigation into mobilizations for spectrum sovereignty and a reconsideration of the relationship between cyberspace, material territory, and settler-colonialism.

Prior to pursuing graduate studies, Jeff taught high school in Northern Ontario and has since worked as Research and Digital Publishing fellow at The Theatre Times, Online Editor at Theatre Research in Canada (TRiC), and as Education Specialist (French Language Program) at MediaSmarts.ca

Education:
B.A. (U Waterloo), M.A. (U Alberta), Ph.D (U Toronto)

Teaching Interests:
Performance and political resistance, interventions into the digital, responses to settler-colonialism, Labour and performance, Brecht

Research Interests:
Protest, the production of space, settler-colonialism, the materiality of Cyberspace, cryptocurrencies and land

Recent Presentations:
No Cloud Without Sky: Spectrum Sovereignty and Ethereal Refusal. Conference Paper. Association of Internet Researchers. October 2021.

Re-Occupying Cyberspace: The Treaty of Waitangi as a Case for a Decolonized  Internet. Paper. FOOT 2021: Bordered States. University of Toronto.

Virtual Fragilities and Cyberspace Materiality. Paper. FOOT 2020: Bodies in Flux. University of Toronto.

Autogestic Performance. Paper. PSI 2019, University of Calgary. Performance Studies International.

Acts of Reoccupation. Paper. CATR 2019, University of British Columbia. Canadian Association for Theatre Research. 

Mobilized Vulnerability and Mimetic Fragility: Protest and Performative Counter Resistance. Paper. FOOT 2018: Supporting Bodies/Changing Minds. University of Toronto.