Toward a Dramaturgy of Feminist Spatial Curiosity: Urban Performance Creation in Montreal

Toward a Dramaturgy of Feminist Spatial Curiosity: Urban Performance Creation in Montreal Joanna Kathleen Donehower A Thesis In the Humanities Program For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Humanities – Fine Arts) at Concordia University February 2021 © Joanna Kathleen Donehower, 2021 CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES This is to certify that the thesis prepared By: Joanna Kathleen Donehower Entitled: Toward a Dramaturgy of Feminist Spatial Curiosity: Urban Performance Creation in Montreal and submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor Of Philosophy (Humanities (Fine Arts)) complies with the regulations of the University and meets the accepted standards with respect to originality and quality. Signed by the final examining committee: Chair Dr. Shauna Janssen External Examiner Dr. Dorita Hannah External to Program Dr. Cynthia Hammond Examiner Dr. Andre Furlani Examiner Dr. Mark Sussman Thesis Supervisor Dr. Kathleen Vaughan Approved by Dr. David Morris, Graduate Program Director February 12, 2021 Dr. Annie Gérin, Dean Faculty of Fine Arts iii ABSTRACT Toward a Dramaturgy of Feminist Spatial Curiosity: Urban Performance Creation in Montreal Joanna K. Donehower, Ph.D. Concordia University, 2021 My doctoral research in urban performance engages both creative and academic research modalities to explore the performative interactions between performance and its city of situation, putting into practice a spectrum of historical and contemporary techniques for engaging critically and creatively with urban places. Curiocité is an urban theatre and performance dramaturgy oriented toward apprehending and representing—through curious modalities, narratives, and media—the histories, ambiguities, and differential material and social effects of ongoing capitalist processes on urban neighbourhoods. Abattoir de l’est, the first performance event issuing from Curiocité, is a parable situated in Montreal’s deindustrializing and gentrifying east-end district of Hochelaga-Maisonneuve. In the context(s) of this performance research, curiosity delineates an attitude of desire toward the local and the proximate, describing a complex, careful, and eccentric set of experiential and archival techniques (walking, collecting, and assemblage) for apprehending ever-changing urban places, and drawing from a repertoire of curiosity-related aesthetic forms and techniques, among them the curiosity cabinet, popular motion picture media, object theatre, and epic theatrical techniques of defamiliarization toward “as is” narratives and “common sense” discourses of place. A narrative exegesis to my performance research in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, Toward a Dramaturgy of Feminist Spatial Curiosity: Urban Performance Creation in Montreal responds to and through the following questions: How can curiosity toward place inform urban performance research? What methods and media support a curious approach to performance creation? Tracing the processes of composition for Abattoir de l’est, from scripting through to the siting of the performance event in the urban field, the exegesis asks after the artist’s own siting in these ongoing capitalist processes, demonstrating curiosity as an epistemic stance and set of methods for urban performance creation that would hold onto the ambivalence of the city, while seeking also to embody curiosity in the text through reflective and reflexive returns to the archives and places of performance research. The exegesis includes the full script of Abattoir de l’est, with performances documented through multiple photographs. iv Territorial Acknowledgement Tiohtià:ke—the Kanien’kéha name for the place I refer to in this text as “Montreal”—is unceded Indigenous territory. A short form of Teionihtiohtiá:kon, meaning “where the group divided/parted ways,” Tiohtià:ke has long been a site of encounter and exchange among many First Nations peoples. Through the foundational and ongoing stewardship of the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy—and the local communities of Kahnawà:ke and Kanehsatá:ke— the island continues as a gathering place for a diverse urban Indigenous community and other peoples.1 With appreciation for their custodianship of Tiohtià:ke, and in acknowledgment of their special relations with this urban place, I recognize the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation, in whose traditional territory I now gather with others to walk, to learn, to listen, to understand, to repair, to love, and, of course, to play in the making and the sharing of performances. 1 I draw this account of Indigenous Peoples, communities, and First Nations’ presence in and stewardship of Tiohtià:ke (Montreal) from the Indigenous Directions Leadership Group at Concordia, and its excursus to the “Territorial Acknowledgement at Concordia University, Tiohtià:ke/Montréal” (2017) as prepared by Wahéhshon Shiann Whitebean, and edited by Dr. Karl Hele with input from Charles O’Connor. To read the entire territorial acknowledgement and learn more about why it was written this way, please visit www.concordia.ca/indigenous/ resources/territorial-acknowledgement.html. v Acknowledgments What follows will likely read like scrolling credits at the end of a movie, because there are so many people that have been involved in the labours (and love) of Curiocité, Abattoir de l’est, and this reflective exegesis. When I began my doctoral research way back in 2010, I could not have envisioned it as a nearly eleven-year process in which I would make so many fast and forever friends. It would be remiss not to begin by thanking the audiences who attended our performances in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, the participants in Curiocité’s many walking events and research activities, and all those in the neighbourhood and beyond who provided support—in all its forms—for the creation and continuance of my performance research and doctoral studies. I especially want to thank Réjean Charbonneau and William Gaudry from the Atelier d’histoire Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, and Nathalie Lanthier and all of the educators and caregivers at Garderie Cafalaga. I am ever grateful to Curiocité’s collaborators (or rather, co-conspirators): Mélanie Binette, Alain Bonder, Nicolas Germain-Marchand, Rae Maitland, Julie Tamiko Manning, and Julian Menezes. Their friendship, generosity, knowledge, feedback, and care throughout the making of Abattoir de l’est—and continuing on into the writing of the exegesis—made a challenging and durational process at the same time one of joy, discovery, and enchantment for me. Alain Bonder deserves special mention, not only for his visual contributions, but for the love, emotional and physical support (theatre-making involves a lot of heavy lifting), and encouragement he has given me over the past ten years, as my partner in life, in artmaking, and, most recently, in thesis writing. I am especially grateful to him for taking on so much of the childcare for our toddler in the final months of writing, and for always trying to answer my unanswerable questions. I thank my kiddo Gaël for reminding me that one must take a pause in writing now and then to attend to curious beings and things, like “les ami.es,” Toot (our beloved feline companion), garbage trucks, dogs who play hockey, bluebirds, and cookies. I must also thank Joëlle Bond and Mireille Mayrand-Fiset for fearlessly taking on the trickiest of translation processes, and Jacques Gallant and Jeff Hanson for their generosity and respective engineering and cabinetry expertise. I recall with fondness—and a longing to repeat the encounter in this socially distanced moment—my interviews with artists Gilles Bissonnet, Catherine Lalonde Massecar, and Nicolas Rivard, who kindheartedly and carefully thought through so many questions with me. Merci tellement. And thank you to Naomi Iizuka for taking my late-night phone call to talk about her dazzling play At the Vanishing Point. Kathleen Vaughan, my friend and supervisor at Concordia, must also be included as a co- conspirator throughout my doctoral research, as she helped to guide me through not only the institutional requirements of the degree, but through a critical and creative process that, in light of my wandering curiosity and proclivity for endless revision, was to the very end unwieldy, vi unpredictable, and ever-changing. I must also, of course, thank her for digging me out from under the weight of my habitual moods on numerous occasions; for not merely tolerating but trusting my durational process more than I did; for providing me with both careful feedback and critical support on every draft; for riding her bike out to our east-end performances all the way from Pointe-St-Charles; and, for taking so many of the beautiful photographs which now form the visual archive of Curiocité’s performances of Abattoir de l’est. My committee members at Concordia, Andre Furlani and Mark Sussman, have been generous and encouraging interlocutors for my performance research, helping me to extend and revise my thinking and writing in ever more curious and compelling ways. As members of my examining committee, Cynthia Hammond and Dorita Hannah provided valuable feedback, allowing me to consider in more depth future iterations of Curiocité. And I must also mention a few other folks I met through Concordia who have provided ongoing support, friendship, and inspiration, including the late Sharon Fitch, Marcie Frank, Bina Freiwald, Shauna Janssen, Darragh Languay, Allison Reiko Loader, Erin Manning, MJ Thompson, and members of my ever-curious and courageous

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