Psychogeographic Excursions: Mapping Calgary’S Contemporary Theatre Scene

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2018-09-21 Psychogeographic Excursions: Mapping Calgary’s Contemporary Theatre Scene

Holm, Katherine

Holm, K. (2018). Psychogeographic Excursions: Mapping Calgary's Contemporary Theatre Scene (Unpublished master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/33076 http://hdl.handle.net/1880/108723 master thesis

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Psychogeographic Excursions: Mapping Calgary’s Contemporary Theatre Scene

Katherine Holm

A THESIS

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE

DEGREE OF MASTER OF FINE ARTS

GRADUATE PROGRAM IN DRAMA

CALGARY, ALBERTA

SEPTEMBER, 2018

Abstract

This thesis focuses on artist responses to urban landscape as they relate to the works of six Calgary-based theatre artists. I employ the theory of psychogeography to investigate artistic responses to urban landscape, emphasizing sensorial and behavioural responses to a particular geographic environment. I also investigate the ways in which the myths and histories associated with the region of Calgary inform the representation of the city in contemporary artistic works.

Using four case studies of theatrical works created about or in response to Calgary’s urban landscape, I explore how notions of landscape are evident within theatrical works in an attempt to bring psychogeography into the field of the performing arts. I conclude that a psychogeographical awareness of landscape allows for new ways of experiencing the urban landscape, contributing to diversified understandings of space and spatiality within a performative context.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisor Bruce Barton for his patience, attentiveness, and encouragement that made this thesis possible. I also extend my appreciation to my committee:

Aritha van Herk, Clem Martini, and April Viczko.

I would also like to thank the Faculty of Graduate Studies, the Graduate Students’

Association, and the School of Creative and Performing Arts for their financial support.

I would also like to extend my thanks to the six artists who agreed to be interviewed for this study: Blake Brooker, Kris Demeanor, Val Duncan, Celene Harder, Sharon Pollock, and

Makambe K Simamba.

Finally, I would like to thank my family, friends, and colleagues for their constant support and unwavering belief in me.

Table of Contents

Abstract.………………………………………………………………………………………….i Acknowledgments...……………………………………………………………………………. ii Table of Contents…..…………………………………………………………………………... iii

Introduction...... …………………………………………………………………………...... 1

Chapter One: Psychogeography.………………………………………………………………13 1.1 Landscape……………………………………………………………………………………13 1.2 Situationist Psychogeography……………………………………………………………...... 15 1.3 Contemporary Strands of Psychogeography…………………………………………………23

Chapter Two: The City of Calgary……………………………………………………………26

Chapter Three: Interviews……………..………………………………………………………33 3.1 Recruitment and Interview Protocol…………………………………………………………34 3.2 Transcription…………………………………………………………………………………35 3.3 The Artists……………………………………………………………………………………35

Chapter Four: Analysis……………………...…………………………………………………37 4.1 Case Study. Making Treaty 7………………...………………………………………………41 4.2 Case Study. Blow Wind, High Water……...…………………………………………………49 4.3 Case Study. The Land, The Animals……..…………..………………………………………51 4.4 Case Study. Jan and Peg’s Vacation……...…………………………………………………60

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………71

Appendix: Sample Interview Questions………………………………………………………74

Works Cited……..………………………………………………………………………………76

iii

Introduction

This thesis situates Calgary as the subject of psychogeographical interrogation, focusing on Calgary’s urban landscape as it has been seen through the eyes of six Calgary-based theatre artists. The overarching hypothesis of this study is the following: where you are affects what you create, and the city of Calgary possesses an unique identity that has been reflected in artistic works created by artists who live and work there. This is based upon my observations that artistic works are shaped by the city and all its innumerable forces, and are imbued with and affected by a particular urban landscape. Further, this inquiry has been guided by my own unwavering belief that the artistic works created in Calgary would undoubtedly change if they were to be removed from their usual environment and placed in a new context. Creative processes of artists are impacted by the stimuli that is the character of a city, which has the potential to offer unique situations and sparks of creative inspiration for artists. Creative decisions that are made in the process of developing a new theatrical work are often subjected to geographical and spatial influences contained the surrounding environment. For example, a set designer may find their inspiration in the physical landscape of a particular locale, or a playwright may find themselves moved to write plays based on their own emotional attachment to the place they live.

This study has been motivated by the work of the Situationist International (SI), an avant- garde group of artists, theorists, revolutionaries, social radicals, and intellectuals (led by Guy

Debord) who theorized about urban spaces, conducting urban experiments in Paris, France in the late 1950s and 1960s, in an attempt to critique capitalist, bourgeois society values. Informed by the Situationists’ specific breed of psychogeography (which focused on mapping emotions), I employ various concepts of psychogeographic thought derived from the Situationist International

(SI) in this study. These concepts are viewed alongside more contemporary psychogeographic

theories and cultural materialist perspectives in order to draw attention to urban encounters that result in the production of artistic works. Envisioning an aesthetic relationship between Calgary artists and urban landscape, this study aims to bring psychogeography into the field of the performing arts. Tracing the term “psychogeography” to Guy Debord’s initial usage of it in his seminal article “Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography,” I shall undertake a dramatic analysis of selected theatrical works created in Calgary by local artists. Psychogeography has since been reconstituted and utilized in cultural studies as a form of literary localism, whereby the characteristics of a specific locality are utilized to facilitate an inquiry into the city that is depicted in written literature. Due to the fact that psychogeography has been widely adopted by scholars, novelists, and journalists, it is often disconnected from the activities and original intent of the Situationist International. The scope of this thesis resorts to these earlier perspectives (as notably articulated by Guy Debord) in order to more fully understand artistic responses to a specific urban landscape, guided by the relative emphasis the Situationists placed upon the emotions and behaviours of individuals when analyzing an urban environment. In this study, I employ both a practical and theoretical understanding of psychogeography in order to study artistic responses to the experiences of a specific geographical place: Calgary. This will be accomplished by looking at this historic usage of the term alongside more contemporary discourse in order to creatively combine spatial practices with performance, and to potentially uncover sedimented knowledge, expanding one’s own awareness of place and space.

Psychogeography is a significant theory that allows for the study of urban landscapes.

The relative elasticity of psychogeography as a theoretical framework has allowed for it to be adopted into a variety of academic disciplines. As a theoretical framework, psychogeography has become a resurgent discourse being adapted in literary studies, cultural studies, geography, urban

planning, and performance art, amongst others. It has not, however, been widely applied to the study of theatre performances. Psychogeography encompasses the meeting point of geography, psychology, cartography, and art, demonstrating the interdisciplinary nature of this field of inquiry. Psychogeography has become a popular term within academic discourse, referring to a panoply of writings that primarily meditate on the experiences of urban life, and the behavioural and sensorial aspects related to navigating a particular urban landscape. The many ways in which psychogeography has been employed in various academic fields and disciplines is too numerous to explore within the scope and focus of this particular thesis project. My investigations into these selected examples within the field of psychogeography has provided a theoretical platform to support my data with a set of methodologies and related conceptual considerations to facilitate an inquiry into the emotional geographies of urban spaces. This entails studying the unconscious and implicit processes that are stirred, in this case, when an individual experiences the urban environment. I employ an auto-ethnographic methodological approach, which also combines the theoretical concept known as psychogeography, situated within fields of study such as cultural geography and performance studies. This is in addition to the qualitative data I have compiled through conducting a series of interviews with Calgary-based practicing theatre artists. This has allowed for the inclusion of differing perspectives that facilitate further inquiry into the perceptual aspects of the urban landscape and the often-abstract thoughts an urban environment encourages.

How does one evoke in words this ineffable emotion derived from sensory engagement with an urban landscape? Further, what are the ways in which an individual’s responses to a particular landscape are subjected to the forces of memory? Psychogeography has been used in this study as a framing device and theoretical guide in order to draw attention to the aesthetic

implications of visceral acts of engagement with landscape. This allows for a greater focus on experiences in urban environments that is based upon sensory and emotional responses, leading to a more place-conscious understanding of how landscape is experienced and the accompanying emotions and behaviours associated with navigating a city. Here, I am concerned with the emotions and feelings evoked by a particular place, the assemblage of structures and landforms, attributed meaning by the people who have lived experience of them in order to develop a larger framework that contextualizes and makes apparent the capacity for multiple perspectives and intersecting predilections to exist within a particular landscape to emerge. Henri Lefebvre was a

French Marxist philosopher and intellectual whose early writings on space influenced Guy

Debord and the Situationist International. In his later influential work of urban theory The

Production of Space, which was originally published in 1974, Lefebvre states:

We are thus confronted by an indefinite multitude of spaces, each one piled upon, or

perhaps contained within, the next: geographical, economic, demographic, sociological,

ecological, political, commercial, national, continental, global (8).

Psychogeography, when used as a theoretical framework, allows for the potential access to the

“multitude of spaces” that Lefebvre refers to. I offer a brief overview of the literature that has popularized psychogeography in academia and literature, providing an applicable range of critical discourse that encompasses artistic, geographical, cartographic, and sensorial realms. It is for these reasons that psychogeography emerges as an ideal framework with which to study the emotional and behavioral responses associated urban landscapes, and how these responses are channeled into artistic works by local artists. Beyond its utility as a theoretical framework, psychogeography has been employed as link that, hopefully, lends a sufficient degree coherence to the thesis. Psychogeography, alongside other theories of space and place, is applied to the

affective realm of live performance in order to illuminate the affective power of landscape and how it influences the artistic processes of select Calgary-based theatre artists. My interest lies in both the geographical and cultural features of the landscape, and the synergistic relationship between landscape and artistic creation, specifically in the realm of theatre. More specifically, these forces include implicit processes that are related to the spatial identity of the site of the performance, which is similarly imbued with power structures and social hierarchies, competing myths and histories. Indeed, the city itself is a site where myth, histories, and memory intersect.

According to Richard Schechner, "theater places are maps of the cultures where they exist"

(161). Much like the theatre places Schechner alludes to, urban spaces are also impacted by the cultures where they exist. Situating theatrical performances within a theoretical framework (such as psychogeography) that considers emotional, implicit responses to landscape allows for the incorporation of cultural, mythical and historical strands of influence.

Space is a defining feature of arts communities: space to make and create, space to perform and display, space to co-exist and collaborate. In a more poetic sense, there is also the wide-open space of the Alberta prairies and its expansive blue sky. From a cultural materialist perspective, the places in which artists live and work materialize in the artistic works they create.

Cultural materialism is “an approach to texts that emphasizes not their superiority over history and context, but the way that they are linked both with the material conditions of the historical past and, crucially, the political and institutional preoccupations of the present” (Marlow 3). This perspective enables us to view theatrical productions, and other artistic works, as texts that are informed and influenced by political, historical, socio-cultural, economic, and environmental forces. The urban environment is where personal and emotional responses intersect with the materialist, historical, and political aspects of space. An approach that incorporates both

materiality and textuality will better allow for the study of the physical aspects of landscape in addition to the intangible, emotional affects associated with creating and viewing an artistic work, and the inherently ephemeral nature of live performance itself. In her 2005 book Utopia in

Performance, theatre scholar Jill Dolan states the following:

Part of the challenge of writing about performance as a public practice, one that circulates

extensively and has some social impact, is to make it live well beyond itself, to hold it

visually in memory, to evoke it with words, and to share it widely, so that its effects and

potential might be known...How can we capture, in our discourse, not just the outlines of

a performance’s structure and form, its content and the contours of its narrative, but the

ineffable emotion it provokes in its moment of presence. (9)

This thesis extends the existing scholarly body on landscape studies and spatial theories by incorporating the perspectives of a variety of Calgary-based theatre artists who have not been subjected to extensive scholarly study. While many studies of space and place encompass both urban and rural landscapes, this study focuses on the urban landscape. I adopt a theoretical orientation emerging from the field of cultural geography, reframing existing critical discourse in order to study the affective qualities resulting from human experience of an urban landscape. In part, my research enquiry into the Calgary theatre community is a study of how artists negotiate their community and the landscape around them. Landscape is a contentious term that has been used differently across multiple academic disciplines. Landscape is a multi-faceted term that refers to both urban and rural spaces. For the purposes of the study, the term landscape applies to the topographical markers of a specific urban geographic area ensconced within the physical limitations of the city. In this study, emotional and behavioural responses are placed alongside more distinguishable notions of space and place. In Space and Place: The Perspective of

Experience, human geographer Yi-Fu Tuan offers the following description of the terms “space” and “place”:

What begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and

endow it with value. Architects talk about the spatial qualities of place; they can equally

well speak of the locational (place) qualities of space. The ideas of “space” and “place”

require each other for definition. From the security and stability of place we are aware of

the openness, freedom, and threat of space, and vice versa. Furthermore, if we think of

space as that which allows movement, then place is pause; each pause in movement

makes it possible for location to be transformed into place. (6)

This study is intended to study performance in relation to place. This study also entails looking at aspects of spatial negotiation, considering how space is manipulated and configured when preparing for a theatrical performance, and how these decisions influence the creative decisions that are made along the way. Its purpose is to analyze artistic responses to notions of landscape, to further emphasize a phenomenological experience of urban spaces by yielding a contribution to the study of landscape that encompasses unconscious and implicit processes. The project that follows is one part historical documentation, one part performance analysis, and one part auto-ethnographic study. As Calgary performance and performers are understudied in academia, background research was extensive and gathered from online databases, theatre archives, newspaper clippings and reviews, and interviews (both pre-existing and those conducted by myself) building upon an already-extensive body of work existing within the public domain. The majority of the research that appears in this document is drawn from a series of semi-structured interviews, approximately one hour in length, that I conducted with the six

Calgary-based theatre artists: Sharon Pollock, Blake Brooker, Kris Demeanor, Val Duncan,

Celene Harder, and Makambe K Simaba. Interview subjects were hand-selected based on the following criteria: age, length of time spent living in Calgary, and contributions to Calgary’s theatre scene. All interviews were recorded and transcribed, and suitable quotations from these interviews have been chosen for inclusion in this document. These interviews have offered a set of six unique outlooks on the city of Calgary and its theatre scene, resulting in differing perspectives and degrees of local connection. I have chosen to profile artists with embodied and lived experiences in the city of Calgary in order to engage with the city’s history and attempt to articulate what gives it its unique identity. Conducting interviews with these artists seemed to be the most suitable approach to analyzing the inner workings of their artistic practices in order to glean notable insights into their creative process, why they create theatre, and how their work contributes to the city of Calgary’s distinct character. Circumstantial, personal, biographical elements contained within these interviews expose each participant’s unique relationship to the city. A set of interview questions was developed early in the research process. While conducting the interviews, these questions where tailored to suit each artist profiled, according to their expertise and area of specializations. Questions ranged from those regarding the creative process of each individual artist, to questions about specific theatrical productions or performances (see

Appendix). This allowed for the interviewees to determine their own rules of engagement. In every case, these questions were designed to probe further reflection on how artists relate to their urban surroundings.

The use of maps as a metaphor has been incredibly helpful in orienting the many ideas related to space and place. I undertake a metaphorical mapping of the city, influenced by the idea that every person has their own unique map of the city that is marked with the places they frequent within the city. This entails looking at distinct topographical features of the city, as well

as at the cultural landscape, which involves the larger issues connected to an artistic community.

It also calls for the utilization of aesthetic and critical approaches to look at metaphorical and other intangible aspects highlighting a sensory exploration of the complex landscape of a city.

While conducting interviews, I encouraged these artists to reflect upon how landscape figures in their respective artistic practices, and how each artist potentially incorporates aspects gleaned from Calgary’s landscape in the artistic works they create. On occasion, this document contains references and discussions to theatrical productions in which the artists interviewed were directors, playwrights, or performers. Some works profiled in this study explicitly reference

Calgary in terms of thematic content. Other works, those site-specific in orientation, engage with the physical, geographical features of the city, using it to inspire and create performative works that occur on the landscape. However, this study does not include an in-depth empirical study of any specific play. Rather, it considers specific artistic endeavours that transparently engage with the Calgary landscape, and offers them as case studies. Some of the works emphasize the local geography of Calgary, informed by elements such as the physical, topographical markers on the landscape, such as mountains, hills, and bodies of water, as well as more abstract ideas, such as regional myths, founding stories, and local histories.

There have also been considerations of the individual histories of the artists profiled in this study, where appropriate. This is especially significant for the established artists who have spent a number of years living and working in Calgary, and have seen the local arts scene develop and change. Situating this study within this specific context, a brief overview of the

Calgary theatre scene is provided. All of this is included with a hope that it cultivates a greater awareness of emotional territories related to experiencing a specific landscape, contributing to a more holistic relationship between artists and the places in which they create. The findings of

this inquiry have been divided into chapters organized by thematic elements that arose during the interview process. This study is not designed to be representative of the Calgary performing arts scene as a whole. Suggestions that arise are not meant to be definitive. Indeed, this study only encompasses a small segment of the Calgary theatre community. It does not attempt to define the experience of all Calgary artists. Rather, it is an offering that captures a particular segment of the greater Calgary theatre scene. As the artists interviewed range in age, this segment spans from the late 60s up until 2017 (when these interviews were conducted). This study aims to capture the diverse experiences of six Calgary theatre artists who speak to the character of the city, and whose work is inscribed on this city’s landscape. The experience of the city is a flickering wave, currents, vortexes, intersections, flowing and fluid, intensifying with acts of everyday resistance against infrastructure and city planning. Pyschogeography is an ideal theoretical framework through which to analyze artistic works as it is a “poetic rather than an analytical response to the environment” (Sadler 160). The artists profiled are psychogeographers in their own right, experiencing the sights, sounds, and shapes of the city, transposing these into artistic creations.

While psychogeography has been widely studied across academic disciplines, there is a relative lack of discourse around its potential application to the study of drama and live performance. As such, this study also aims to advance the study of psychogeography in relationship to the performing arts, and to suggest ways in which geographical thinking can be expanded into a humanistic approach that also incorporates the performing arts, contributing to a deeper understanding of urban landscapes.

A common vocabulary employed by theatre practitioners is used in this study. I have made every effort to define any discipline-specific jargon that arises. This thesis project encompasses regional, cultural, and social history, but also personal history as it is, in part, an

auto-ethnographic study. Scholarly research has been combined with my own experiential knowledge. I am a first-generation Albertan and a born-and raised-Calgarian. I spent my formative years here and, as a result, have a deepened understanding of the local context and heightened awareness of local history. As American historian Wallace Stegner cogently states in his 1977 novel on the Canadian frontier, Wolf Willow, “expose a child to a particular environment at his susceptible time and he will perceive in the shapes of that environment until he dies” (21). I am also a theatre artist, actively practicing in Calgary. This thesis is written from my own point of view, about a community I am a part of, and about artists who are my colleagues and friends. My first encounters with the artists included in this study, as well as the theories and concepts, were introduced to me from my perspective as a theatre practitioner. As a result, this work does not escape the bias of being written by a Calgarian who works in the local theatre scene she is studying. That being said, my position as a Calgarian and practicing theatre artist in this city has given me a wealth of insider knowledge based on my own personal experiences, and has given me access to individuals and information that an outsider would likely not be granted. I have attempted to counter-balance my own personal biases by offering a plethora of perspectives, interviewing a diverse population of artists for inclusion in this study, and consulting multiple secondary sources and writings on the region of Calgary. This thesis project has been a process of discovery that has brought me closer to the city I call home, and enabled me to explore my own relationship with this city, analyzing it in all its complexities. It has also emerged from the impulse to document lesser known aspects of Calgary’s history, to acknowledge the bold and brave artists who make it a dynamic place to live, and to celebrate the possibility of establishing a connection with the city that embraces emotional and sensorial responses to landscape. While this inquiry calls for historical reflection and the study of present

connections, this inquiry is also about the future: where we are going and what is on the horizon for Calgary’s theatre scene? Early on in the writing process, it became apparent that there was an inherent need to develop a framework that was responsive to and accountable for the segment of the theatre community it serves. This framework was accomplished by incorporating the perspectives of the local theatre artists who were interviewed. Little academic study of the contemporary theatre arts scene in Calgary has taken place so far. Therefore, this study contributes to building a body of scholarly knowledge on contemporary theatre practitioners in

Calgary, while advancing notions of landscape and urban characteristics, laying the groundwork for further comprehensive qualitative studies of psychogeography in relation to the performing arts. What follows in these pages is a small microcosm of the greater Calgary theatre community, a community that I have found to be warm and welcoming, highly creative, and above all, resilient. This is a study of a city, and the place of six local theatre artists in it.

Chapter One: Psychogeography

1.1 Landscape

“Landscape” is a loaded term. In its broadest sense, the term landscape refers to the natural landforms of a region. The term “cultural landscape” was popularized in Carl Ortwin

Sauer’s seminal essay “The Morphology of Landscape” (originally published in 1925), which looked at the relationship between nature and culture. This essay is significant as it distinguished cultural from natural landscapes, while accounting for human activity. Cultural geographers offer a definition of landscape that goes beyond topographical features of natural environments to include cultural practices and expressions:

The natural landscape is being subject to transformation at the hands of man, the last and

for us [geographers] the most important morphological factor. By his culture he makes

use of the natural forms, in many cases alters them, in some destroys them… The cultural

landscape is fashioned from a natural landscape by a cultural group. Culture is the agent,

the natural area is the medium, the cultural landscape the result [….] The natural

landscape is of course of fundamental importance, for it supplies the materials out of

which the cultural landscape is formed. The shaping force, however, lies in culture itself.

(Sauer 34)

In his 1984 pioneering work in landscape studies, Discovering the Vernacular

Landscape, John Brinckerhoff Jackson defines landscape as “a composition of man-made or man-modified spaces to serve as infrastructure or background for our collective existence” (8).

John Wylie offers a similar definition, stating that “landscapes have been defined by geographers as the product of interactions between sets of natural conditions and sets of cultural practices”

(9). Theorist and art historian W.J.T. Mitchell offers a third definition, suggesting that landscape

may also be understood as a medium of cultural expression: “landscape is a material means like language or paint, embedded in a tradition of cultural signification and communication, a body of symbolic forms capable of being invoked and reshaped to express meaning and values” (14).

W.J.T. Mitchell suggests that landscape may also be viewed as a cultural construct: “landscape as a medium, a vast network of cultural codes” (13). Any given urban landscape can hold a myriad of meanings and present numerous methods for determining how we make sense of a place. Human and social perspectives determine how landscapes are regarded. John Brinckerhoff

Jackson states that “no group sets out to create a landscape…What it sets out to do is create a community, and the landscape as its visible manifestation is simply the by-product of people working and living, sometimes coming together, sometimes staying apart, but always recognising their interdependence” (12). The identity of an urban landscape, in part, is derived from the interconnectivity between experiential knowledge and memory. According to Robert

Macfarlane, “when we look at a landscape, we do not see what is there, but largely what we think is there… We read landscapes, in other words, we interpret their forms in the light of our own experience and memory, and that of our shared cultural memory‟ (18). Erika Fischer-Lichte and Jo Riley echo Macfarlane’s analysis, applying it in a decidedly theatrical context, indicating that “the dream world on stage is not to be taken and understood as a representation of an objectively given reality somewhere else, but instead, is constituted as a subjective creation of the spectator’s imagination” (69). The role of the spectator in constructing cultural memory and myth-making is significant to acknowledge. The compositional nature of a landscape indicates that it is a rich and diverse site that can be engaged with in embodied and artistic ways that differ from spectator to spectator. Artistic responses to landscapes present imaginative ways of configuring a geographical location that is subject to forces of memory and imagination, but also

shared myths and histories therefore reflective of a collective recognizant, placing a significant emphasis on the cultural features of a landscape, and the ways in which cultural practices are embedded within it. This also includes ways of responding emotionally and sensorially to the physical landscape surrounding us, making salient points of connection to myth and cultural memory. Therefore, it is possible to view urban landscapes as cultural memoirs; sites which are imbued with memory and myths, “a concrete, three-dimensional shared reality” (Jackson 5) experienced by its inhabitants. The ways in which individuals interact with the space of the city, a shared environment that contains the accumulation of emotional responses and lived experiences, is shaped by social structures and is furthered influenced by the shared mythos that can potentially evoke a collective response. The artistic value of an urban landscape must be considered alongside the cultural landscape, and the wider political and social issues connected to the community that inhabits these spaces.

1.2 Situationist Psychogeography

Psychogeography is a bricolage theory that stubbornly refuses reduction to one single idea or concept. I have found the messiness of this theory to be attractive, as it allows for it to be applied to multiple contexts. It is enigmatic and elusive, forgoing clean definitions in pursuit of something else. Psychogeography is a distinctly urban phenomenon, though broader ideas pertaining to space and place also encompass rural landscapes. There is general lack of consensus in scholarship. Pushing beyond these challenges of interpretation, I am motivated by a need to develop a framework that is receptive to this messiness in order to employ it to sufficiently analyze theatrical works. The context in which I place the theoretical framework of this project aims to be a rethinking of psychogeographical thought, a sensual redressing and subsequent recovery of lost energies of the Situationists and Parisian avant-gardists, in addition

to drawing from Dadaism, Surrealism and other radical, political arts movements.

Psychogeography, as a theoretical framework, allows one to process and capture emotional responses to landscape, navigating the complex and often contradictory signification attributed to one single place. A shift to the affective realm forgoes an analysis rooted in regionalism in favour of a framework that emphasizes the embodied and enactive aspects of an urban space. I argue that these emotional and sensory responses have the potential to uncover aspects that have been excluded from dominant cultural discourses. The utility of psychogeography for this study is that it lends itself to a close examination of the various meanings of the term ‘landscape’, and how it applies to urban experiences. Therefore, I situate this study within a context that focuses on the contributions of Guy Debord and the contributions the Situationist International to the field of psychogeography, drawing also from a wide range of related academic and artistic disciplines, and theoretical orientations required to complete a thorough and in-depth study of the artistic contributions of the artists profiled.

As a field of study, psychogeography was originally framed in the 1950s by William G.

Niederland, a German-American psychoanalyst (Stein 1989), just prior to Guy Debord’s now famous conceptualization of psychogeography as “the study of the physical effects of the geographical environment on individuals' emotions and behavior” (1955.). A marginal theory in the field of geography, psychogeography has origins in the historical avant-garde movements of the late 1950s and 1960s. Psychogeography is associated with two avant-garde groups: The

Lettrist International (LI) and the Situationist International (SI), two international collectives of avant-garde artists and intellectuals. The Lettrist International (also known as the Internationale

Lettriste) was a group of artists and theorists based in Paris who were inspired by Romanian poet, visual artist, and critic Isidore Isou’s avant-garde movement known as Lettrism (Hecken

and Grzenia 23). Founded by Guy Debord in 1952, the Lettrist International also included

Michele Bernstein, a French novelist and critic who was also a member of the Situationist

International. In 1957 the Lettrist International joined with the London Psychogeographic

Association and the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus to form the Situationist

International, whose main initiative was to provide a critique of everyday life and of mainstream arts and culture through an un-regulated, politicized exploration of the city (Situationist

International Online). Psychogeography further evolved alongside the existing dogma of the

Situationist International and similar avant-garde movements existing in Europe in the 20th century. The Situationist International was active until the organization’s eventual dissolution in

1972, following the events of the May 1968 uprisings in France (Eagles 179).

In simplest terms, psychogeography is the intersection between human psychology and geography. It describes a psychological connection that individuals have to a physical landscape or urban environment. It is a negotiation of space that encourages reflecting upon one’s own emotions and behaviours in order to more fully understand one’s orientation to one’s environmental surroundings. It is also the exploration of emotional terrain. Psychogeography is a phenomenon that focuses on the experiences of individuals within the city urban environment, and the resulting influence that this environment has on individuals. Situationist psychogeography re-evaluates the urban landscape by imagining a potential future city that overcomes the aforementioned capitalist consumption, a phenomenon which Guy Debord later referred to as “society of the spectacle” in his 1967 work of philosophy and Marxist critical theory of the same name. The Situationist’s particular breed of psychogeography envisaged urban spaces as sites intended to facilitate radical political change by advocating for left-wing politics and art that would, hypothetically, result in a new urban utopia. For the Situationists,

space is politically and socially structured, thereby altering one’s own perception of the city. The

Situationists’ contributions have by large emphasized the importance of alternative wanderings through the city streets that call for the reconfiguration of urban spaces, questioning the very fabric of the city and viewing it as an inherently political entity (“Report on the Construction of

Situations”, 1957). In this politicized landscape, an individual is unable to navigate the city neutrally. Christopher Keep, in his article “Situationism, Aestheticism, and the Psychogeography of the City”, describes the practice of dérive, developed and put into practice by Guy Debord and the Situationist International, in an attempt to reject city planning:

The city thus ceases to be the neutral backdrop against which social activity takes place,

and becomes instead a vast reserve of psychic intensities, both the means by which the

subject is constituted in space and is able to contest the terms of its constitution (375).

As an inherently politically-motivated strategy of navigation, psychogeography engages with the subconscious imagination through a radical experiencing of the urban landscape in order to contrive new ways of seeing a city. It offers a set of techniques for urban exploration, often with a political aim that goes against the ebb and flow of the city’s planned urban design, challenging the commodification of urban spaces. For Debord, the foremost application of psychogeography is to “protest against the blandification of the organic urban landscape by transitional corporations” (1995, 23). Parallel to Debord’s psychogeographic writings are the writings of American urban theorist Kevin A. Lynch. His 1960 book The Image of the City is based on the notion of imageability, which is a term that refers to “that quality in a physical object which gives it a high probability of evoking a strong image in any observer” (Lynch 9). In

The Image of the City, Lynch looks at how individuals make mental maps of the cities through the information perceived in the city’s landscape, focusing on human experiences within an

urban environment. Lynch calls for a refinement on existing urban planning. Debord’s “Guide

Psychogeographique de Paris” and “The Naked City” create a collage-form map of Paris with red arrows to indicate the flow of traffic. With the creation of these maps, Debord offered a critique of city planning and of urban planning methods that lead to urban sprawl and suburbanization. French political theorist and poet Ivan Chtcheglov’s “Formulary for a New

Urbanism” (which was published under the name Gilles Ivain and appeared in International

Situationniste #1 in October 1953) also argued in favor of the creation of better cities that could lead to thriving urban landscapes. The central mandate of the Situationist International is articulated by the group:

Our central idea is the construction of situations, that is to say, the concrete construction

of momentary ambiances of life and their transformation into a superior passional quality.

We must develop a systematic intervention based on the complex factors of two

components in perpetual interaction: the material environment of life and the behaviours

which it gives rise to and which radically transform it. (1958)

Situations can be created through spatial practices, such as the dérive. The dérive, as formulated by the SI, is a psychogeographical exploration of an urban environment that focuses on the application of psychogeography to a navigational exercise. It is a mapless walk and exploratory wandering through the city with no planned destination. Instead, there is the aim to be affected by the material, visible features of a landscape while being instinctually led by one’s own desires in ways that potentially run counter to the spatial organization of the built environment. In her 1964 book of conceptual art titled Grapefruit, performance artist Yoko Ono offers an artistic exercise (reminiscent of the Situationist’s concept of the dérive) that functions as a mapless walk for individuals to enact:

Draw an imaginary map.

Put a goal mark on the map where you

want to go.

Go walking on an actual street according

to your map.

If there is no street where it should be

according to the map, make one by putting

the obstacles aside.

When you reach the goal, ask the name of

the city and give flowers to the first

person you meet.

The map must be followed exactly, or the

event has to be dropped altogether.

Ask your friends to write maps.

Give your friends maps.

The dérive is an emotional wandering with the intention of mapping the spatial territories of the unconscious mind, providing a stark juxtaposition to the banality of urban life through methods of behavioural disorientiation. Guy Debord states the following in his 1956 article,

“Theory of the Dérive”:

In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their relations, their work

and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let

themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there.

Chance is a less important factor in this activity than one might think: from a dérive point

of view cities have psychogeographical contours, with constant currents, fixed points and

vortexes that strongly discourage entry into or exit from certain zones. But the dérive

includes both this letting-go and its necessary contradiction: the domination of

psychogeographical variations by the knowledge and calculation of their possibilities.

(1956)

A dérive is a revolution of everyday life. It is a social and cultural critique of the ways in which urban spaces are defined and psychologically experienced by citizens. At the centre of the dérive is desire: desire to walk, desire to explore, desire to challenge the parochial, desire to subvert, desire to obtain freedom from the safety of signposts, desire to keep walking beyond the necessity of getting from point A to B, in order to explore the aesthetic pleasure of the city and see it from a different angle. The dérive became the principal strategy for the Situationists, assisting them in further developing the field of study they called psychogeography. “On the street the dérive was an attempt to recover the unencompassable urban Sublime by becoming lost and disoriented, with the chance of finding unknown places” (Baker 330). It is about experiencing the unfamiliar in the familiar surroundings experienced on an individual’s day-today excursions. The dérive encourages participants to see where they may end up, revealing the extraordinary in the everyday. Through a series of personal negotiations, we are called to parse and probe how we situate ourselves in our surrounding environments. The dérive functions as a spatial-temporal investigation. In other words, the dérive is a term that refers to the spatial experience of moving through the world, and recognizing and acknowledging the emotional forces that guide this process. The dérive finds its home alongside other walking practices that seek to rediscover and redefine urban environments. This practice often results in the creation of desire paths. Desire paths are alternate routes shaped by individuals as they navigate through the

landscape, circumventing planned pathways to seek routes that are perhaps shorter, safer, more scenic, or a combination of all three (Roberts and Farley 23). A city’s planning informs and influences the activities of citizens by pre-determining how they navigate through an urban space. A desire path, seen through the lens of Situationist psychogeography, is a small act of resistance against the status quo. Cities are social and dynamic sites of collective exchange and personal navigation. Desire paths allowing for urban exploration guided by personal convictions as opposed to the rigidly defined contours of the city grid, resulting in action that critiques the power structures which impact how urban spaces are experienced and represented. According to

Debord:

The sudden change of ambiance in a street within the space of a few meters; the evident

division of a city into zones of distinct psychic atmospheres; the path of least resistance

that is automatically followed in aimless strolls (and which has no relation to the physical

contour of the terrain); the appealing or repelling character of certain places — these

phenomena all seem to be neglected. In any case, they are never envisaged as depending

on causes that can be uncovered by careful analysis and turned to account. People are

quite aware that some neighborhoods are gloomy and others pleasant. But they generally

simply assume that elegant streets cause a feeling of satisfaction and that poor streets are

depressing, and let it go at that. (1955)

Walking is practical psychogeography. Walking is also a performative way of physically responding to an urban environment, entailing an embodied and enactive experience of place.

This also entails looking at spatiotemporal experiences of urban spaces, coloured by individual memories that leave powerful, yet unseen, impressions on the city’s landscape. Situationism was a radical art movement that is holistically impractical but undoubtedly influential. In order to

understand the aim and objectives of the Situationists, the elements of fun and playfulness must be pushed to the forefront of resulting discussions as these elements were evident in the writings on psychogeography produced by the Situationists. Debord alludes to the importance of provocation and the element of fun when he writes that psychogeography enables one “to turn the whole of life into an exciting game” (Debord, “Introduction”). The Situationists advocated for “aesthical performance in urban spaces taking up the playful constructive behaviour as a tool to criticize middle-class bourgeoisie society” (Escobar 140). The dérive encourages individuals to take into account their spatiality, a greater understanding of the ways in which city planning informs and influences experiences of urban spaces.

1.3 Contemporary Strands of Psychogeography

Psychogeography has since been adopted by various disciplines, allowing it to become “a whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies” for exploring urban spaces or, “just about anything that takes pedestrians off their predictable paths and jolts them into a new awareness of the urban landscape (Hart 2004).” Psychogeography is a broad term that covers political movements and walking practices alike. The Situationists originally envisioned psychogeography with a revolutionary intent, aiming to transform the world. It could be utilized as a tool for social change and reform. The utopian vision of Debord and the Situationists has been subject to recent criticism, notably Merlin Coverley’s dismissive writing on the credibility of Situationist psychogeography and its ability to produce research: “while the theoretical and instructive elements of psychogeography are manifest, the actual results of all these experiments are strangely absent” (Coverley 99). Psychogeography has also been explored through poetic approaches that are grounded in literary studies and center around an engagement with the occult in the fictional realm with a distinctive phantasmagoric quality that is contextually removed from

the revolutionary intent of the Parisian breed of psychogeography of the 50s and 60s.

Psychogeography has since been invoked, borrowed, and adapted by British writers in populist writing on artistic spatial practices and contemporary urban walking theories. This contemporary, London-centric approach to psychogeography includes writers such as Iain

Sinclair, Will Self, J.G. Ballard, Patrick Keiller, Ralph Rumney (the founder of the London

Psychogeographical Association), Robert MacFarlane, Rebecca Solnit, and others. In particular,

British writers Iain Sinclair and Will Self’s popular experiential works focus on walks and psychogeographical excursions that function as urban interventions. Walking practices entail

“experimentation and constructive new behaviours with a conscious and political analysis of urban environments” (Escobar 140), thereby connecting these new practices with the political intent of Situationist psychogeography. As Merlin Coverley suggests, “psychogeography is the behavioural impact of place” (127). For many of these aforementioned writers, walking presents alternative methods of exploring an urban space. By looking at British psychogeography’s contemporary walking practices alongside Situationist psychogeography, one can see that psychogeography has maintained some of its initial political motivation, intended to discover alternative ways of experiencing a place and to advocate for experimental spaces for radical transformation.

Imagine a map of your city. How are the figurative dots connected? Privileging the emotional connections that individuals can form with a place, psychogeography provides an ideal lens through which to view artistic works. Throughout, the physical, geographical landscape is combined with emotional responses, in addition to implicit processes. In some cases, this necessitates emphasizing the political, economic, mythical, and social facets of the urban landscape in order to extend and bridge important gaps in alternate ways of knowing urban

spaces that shape the city. Affect, as conceived in the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, "is a prepersonal intensity corresponding to the passage from one experiential state of the body to another and implying an augmentation or diminution in that body's capacity to act" (qtd.

Massumi xvii). The concept of affect has been further theorized by notable thinkers such as

Henri Bergeson, Gilles Deleuze and and Felix Guattari. There were many notable ‘turns’ in academia in the 1990s, which included the “affective turn.”

The affective turn: this paradigm shift represents the desire to carve out some conceptual

space for aspects of human motivation and behavior that are not tethered to

consciousness, cognitive processes, and rationality, to validate physical and social

dynamics that are inchoate and unpredictable, and to explore impulses and responses that

social conventions shape but do not circumscribe. (Hurley and Warner 99-100)

A turn to the affective realm forgoes an analysis rooted in regionalist discourses that are deterministic in scope when identifying the characteristics of a particular landscape in favour of a framework that highlights the sensory and perceptual qualities of theatrical performance, and the wide range of personal and collective affective responses to a landscape that may result. This allows for a framework that is flexible in nature and can lead to incorporation of social and spatial theories into interdisciplinary fields in the humanities and the arts, emerging as a constellation of concepts which attempt to address the production of emotional geographies in urban spaces.

Chapter Two: The City of Calgary

“People go west when all bets are off: a reputation in ruins, a love gone wrong. When they need

to save their sorry souls, folks head for the frontier” (Hines 15).

Calgary was founded in 1875 at the confluence of the Bow and Elbow Rivers. The original fort was situated between Fort MacLeod and Fort Edmonton. Calgary was incorporated as a town in 1884, and as a city in 1894. It was named ‘Calgary’ after the ancestral home of

Colonel James F. Macleod, a figure who helped to invent the city that we know today. Further, the city’s name is derived from Old Norse words meaning “cold” and “garden”, two words any

Calgarian can attest to in a city known for its brutal winters and beautiful parkland. Nowadays,

Calgary is also colloquially known as ‘Cowtown’, a moniker that harkens to the city’s early ranching history as a young Frontier town, the pre-Calgary Stampede rodeo days, when Calgary was marketed to early settlers as “The Last Best West.” The city, when seen through this lens, suggests a mythic identity. The foundational story of Calgary, alongside the myth of the

Canadian West, provides insight into how the city has evolved over its relatively short history, laying the proverbial bedrock of the urban landscape. But it doesn’t tell the full story, speaking only to the potency of myth and its sometimes sinister capacity to permanently define a city.

Calgary’s Cowtown moniker still lingers, and the city’s decidedly cosmopolitan aura co-exists with this agrarian characterization. The world-famous Calgary Stampede is a throwback to the city’s early ranching days, an annual carnival and unmistakably commercial affair that encourages Western wear and hosts a free pancake breakfast every day of the week. The city’s mythos is built upon these foundational stories that celebrate the characteristics that contribute to

Calgary’s rodeo identity. Calgary is a city of contradictions, seemingly equal parts a right-wing conservative oil town and cultural capital. Is Calgary’s cowboy culture a genuine throwback to

the time of the city’s inception? Or is Western pride an illusion, a mere stereotype that we cling to ten glorious days out of each year? Visions of a fantasy city are unwittingly projected onto what is actually there, burying the city deep in its own mythos. Calgary is a new city that is home to an even newer community of theatre artists. Despite its relative lack of age and venerability, this is a complex landscape whose surface bears all the scars of our inherited, colonial past. This calls for an interpretation of the city that looks more closely at the relationship between the landscape’s past and its relationship with its past and present inhabitants. Looking at affective responses to the urban landscape provides a powerful means of seeing the city alongside its regional, historical, and/or mythical dimensions. A region is an entity that depends on place, as regions are often defined by common physical features. In his article “Invention, Memory, and

Place,” literary theorist Edward W. Said offered the observation that “national identity always involves narratives of the nation's past, its founding fathers and documents, seminal events, and so on. But these narratives are never undisputed or merely a matter of the neutral recital of facts”

(177). Individual, emotional responses to the features of a particular geographical landscape are undoubtedly caught up in these narratives, and are also subject to collective memories that defines a place to as one thing and not another. This is much akin to how Calgary is frequently viewed from the aforementioned “Wild West” perspective, bound by its symbolic status as a cowboy town. The conflation of mythic identity and nationhood with geographical features overwrites sensory engagement with the material landscape, repeating pre-established notions that prevent us from fully registering the affective qualities of landscape. By engaging with the emotional layers of the city, the cultural identity of Calgary is revealed to be an engrossing combination of fact and fiction. While regional discourses offer clichéd understandings, looking

at these emotional layers draws attention to the affective qualities and sensorial experiences of landscape, for further explication.

This thesis aims to uncover these affective qualities and sensorial experiences, as they are related to physical (material) features of the urban landscape. This is a storied landscape, and there are many stories to be told, and theatre is an art form which privileges storytelling. Who are we as a city? What embodies the Calgary zeitgeist, elusive but ever present as it is? And how can theatre help us to understand it? Lewis Mumford, in his 1937 essay “What Is a City”, defines a city as a “geographical plexus, an economic organisation, an institutional process, a theater of social action and an aesthetic symbol of collective unity” (94). Artists play a crucial role in determining how the city is seen. A landscape shapes its artists who, in turn, shape it. Calgary is a place that is transformed by the artists who occupy it. It is an urban sensibility that underlies and influences so much of what artists do in this city, allowing for a full range of interpretations and, at the same time, a unique set of limitations that are based on stories and myths about this landscape. Artists, as agents of their cities, have the capacity to define urban spaces and, by extension, influence how the city is viewed by and spoken about by members of that city. Artists may capture the city’s more incomprehensible qualities, shaping them until they coalesce into a bigger picture. Theatrical performances can be viewed as their own sources of history, providing alternate ways of viewing the city, demarcated by personal experience. Artists who create pieces influenced by the local landscape contribute to a performative mapping of spaces passed through.

These perspectives lend themselves to a greater understanding of Calgary’s local history and mythos, and the regional context of its surrounding geographical area, unearthing and embracing the little-known stories of Calgary’s past, presenting diverse scenarios that potentially run counter to stereotypical Western iconography that is so often replicated in dominant culture. The

perspectives of artists provide us with impetus to move beyond the narrow confines of the regionalist model that re-establishes stereotypes, thereby preventing us from fully viewing the affective aspects of landscape, by looking instead at the synergistic relationship between the physical, material, and affective qualities of landscape. Judith Wasserman suggests that “place and memory are embedded in our cultural landscape… Continuing to remember the multitude of stories, either through designed spaces or preserving sacred ancestral lands, can assist in maintaining cultural continuity into the twenty-first century” (190).

Artists refuse to follow well-travelled paths. Instead, they forgo the ordained routes in search of something that stretches the boundaries of a conventional map, beyond the vicissitudes of the city. Local history is often contentious and contradictory. Artists probe and question the city’s foundational myths in order to exceed them, a bold attempt to move beyond traditional conventions relied upon, such as regional myths and master narratives that forgo diversified perspectives. They alter the look and feel of their city by creating works that are destabilizing in spirit and that aim to challenge and provoke. Often, these artistic works mirror the larger political and economic climate of the city. These artistic works piece together perception and memory, personal narratives and the city’s history, in addition to the other various aspects which contribute to the creation of embodied and enactive meaning. This process results in a myriad of artistic responses, allowing for the identity of the city to take on a multiplicity of meanings.

While they are subjected to and shaped by complex forces, these responses pose a potential to encourage and catalyze a fundamental shift in the way in which this place is viewed, harnessing theatre’s potential as a radical force that causes disruption and defamiliarization. Any image of the city is intricately fabricated, consisting of dichotomous images that come and go before ultimately melding into one another until it is difficult to separate the myths we tell about a place

from what actually happened. Theatre allows for historic events or figures to be distorted and re- imagined within a performative context. In this process of re-imagining, artists act as conduits between the official history of a place and what they observe, offering an alternative rendering with a distinctly phenomenological approach that foregrounds the personal experiences of an individual within a specific landscape. When looking at history through performance, the established boundaries between space and time collapse and we are invited to imagine the city as it was. Used in this way, theatre makes the city’s past visible. Theatre penetrates the layers of collective cultural memory through the assemblage of histories and experiences that are interspersed with personal elements. In The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural

Memory in the Americas, Diana Taylor argues that performances can be viewed as a “vital acts of transfer” that transmit “social knowledge, memory, and a sense of identity through reiterated

[behavior]” (2-3). Narratives and discourses are embedded within this visceral assemblage of histories and shared experiences, stored in the collective cultural memory. Ivan Chtcheglov echoes this statement, indicating that:

All cities are geological; you cannot take three steps without encountering ghosts bearing

all the prestige of their legends. We move within a closed landscape whose landmarks

constantly draw us toward the past. Certain shifting angles, certain receding perspectives,

allow us to glimpse original conceptions of space, but this vision remains fragmentary. It

must be sought in the magical locales of fairy tales and surrealist writings: castles,

endless walls, little forgotten bars, mammoth caverns, casino mirrors. (1953)

What results is a collection of echoing conversations, memories, and impressions where the past and present intersect. Performance becomes a powerful site in which this embodied, collective knowledge can be conveyed. Taking a closer look at the psychogeographical contours

related to the size of the city and the accompanying local arts scene, it is revealed that Calgary is indelibly marked by the theatrical performances that occur here, allowing for discourse on the perceptual relationship between a citizen and a city that escapes the confines of history books, allowing for the city to shed its trappings and romantic inklings of this “Great Lone Land,” escaping the realm of literature and bringing forward more contemporary perspectives. With a population of 1.266 million in 2015, Calgary is still growing. The past five decades have brought a plethora of theatre artists. Calgary is a site of vast and diverse theatrical activity, reflecting the city’s multicultural make-up. As of January 2018, Calgary is home to forty professional and semi-professional theatre companies (Theatre Alberta), and numerous community theatre groups and independent theatre collectives. There are several significant observable economic trends in

Calgary’s theatre community that influence the work that is created here, such as decreases in corporate sponsorship, frozen government funding, and lack of support from other key support agencies such as local and provincial funding bodies. Artists in this city must contend with these economic factors, along with various cultural aspects and a strong political divide that, depending on the election year, can result in a lack of support for the arts at a municipal level.

This document offers observations and insight into the creative processes of six Calgary- based professional theatre practitioners whose work is attentive to the surrounding landscape, a community of artists who are shaping and shaped by their experiences of this city. How does the city make an artist who they are, and what impact does it have on the work they create? Further, this document looks at the ways in which geography affects the artistic works created here, both in terms of form and content, by asking how these artist help to envision a new city mythos. In the realm of performance, usual urban incidents are captured with significant emphasis, encouraging us to go deep and explore the murky soul of the city and to look at what lies beneath

and beyond what is visible on the city’s surface. They offer a range of experiences and perspectives that extend beyond these larger-than-life mythologies that inform the city’s identity.

From frontier town to Cowtown, where are we now? For the six artists profiled in this thesis study, Calgary is home, whether temporarily or permanently. Artistic works embody an experience of landscape not featured widely in history books, moving beyond regional boundaries and contentious politics to emphasize emotional connects to the land. The city is used as a lens through which to identify significant aspects related to the general ecology of the

Calgary theatre community, and its resulting effects on its artists, including the potential intersection that develops between physical and emotional domains, or material and immaterial ways of viewing landscape.

Chapter Three: Interviews

This chapter will offer an in-depth analysis of the qualitative interview data in order to demonstrate how the creative processes of these artists draw upon subjective experiences of landscape and the urban spaces they inhabit. The methodological approach to this study consisted of five interviews with six Calgary-based theatre artists (two of these artists were interviewed as a pair). Chapter I looked at psychogeography, and forms the criteria with which the interviews were analysed. The responses recorded here are from six Calgary-based theatre artists, who are at various stages in their artistic careers and for whom notions of landscape features prominently in their artistic works. All of the artists profiled are metropolitan-based and live and work in an urban setting. The interviewed artists were asked foundational questions pertaining to notions of landscape and its relevance to their creative processes, in order to map out their experiences of Calgary’s urban landscape and its relationship to their work. The analysis aimed to identify if and when common narratives amongst the Calgary-based artists profiled emerge. It also aimed to interrogate embodied forms of knowledge situated within an urban environment. In each separate interview, each artist was encouraged to think about their specific personal experiences in the city. This resulted in a collection of diverse perspectives on landscape, in addition to revealing each artist’s emotional connection to the landscape of

Calgary. NVivo, a qualitative data analysis software, was used transcribe and code the interviews. While coding each interview, I look for points of similarity and difference between the interviewees’ responses, organizing these responses first by question and thereafter according to topic or sub-topic.

3.1 Recruitment and Interview Protocol

Artists of differing ages and levels of experience were purposefully chosen for inclusion in this study, and the selection process was favorably weighted towards artists who have spent the majority of their careers working in Calgary, or who have produced artistic works that directly engage with notions of landscape or the identity of the city of Calgary. All artists profiled live and work in the urban centre. However, this selection pool is not representative of the larger Calgary arts community. Instead, it provides the individual responses of six artists currently working in theatre in Calgary, who have been selected for their creation of works that directly reference the city of Calgary. The selection of artists was also impacted by their ability to participate in an interview in the months of October, November, and December 2017. This study has been approved by the Conjoint Faculties Research Ethics Board (CFREB). All participants were provided with a list of interview questions and were electronically (or, in some cases, in person) given consent forms to sign prior to the interview taking place. All interview participants could withdraw their consent at any point.

The length of the interviews varied from forty-five to ninety minutes. The participants were given opportunities to ask questions or express concerns about the project and the interview questions prior to the interview. I utilized semi-structured one-on-one interviews, with the exception of the joint interview that took place. The interviews were conducted using a sample list of questions that were selected on the basis of their potential relevance to the artist being interviewed. This structure best fit the aims and goals of this study as it allowed for interviewees to speak more about specific projects they had worked on. Additional background research pertaining to each interviewee’s career and artistic work was conducted pre- and post-interview in order to provide the necessary levels of depth and rigour.

3.2 Transcription

The interviews were audio-recorded and transcriptions were typed, edited, and reviewed by the interviewer to ensure accuracy, readability, and clarity. The transcriptions were then forwarded to each interviewee, who was given the option to edit the transcription or contribute additional information for inclusion in the transcription if they so desired. Transcriptions were approved by each interviewee prior to analysis and publication of this document. Interviews were tabulated by question, coded according to topic using NVivo software, compared, and read against the theoretical framework of psychogeography.

3.3 The Artists

Born in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Sharon Pollock moved to Calgary in 1966.

Recognized as a playwright, actor, and director, Pollock is acclaimed for bringing Canadian stories to the stage and has contributed to building Calgary’s professional theatre scene. In 1967, she joined MAC 14 Theatre, a community theatre group and founding company of Theatre

Calgary (Calgary’s first professional theatre). Her plays are frequently produced throughout

Canada, and internationally.

Makambe K Simamba is a Zambian-born actor and playwright. She is a new Calgarian, having first moved to the region to study Theatre at the University of Lethbridge before moving to Calgary, where she has been based ever since. She has been a member of Alberta Theatre

Projects’ Playwrights Unit for the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 seasons. Her one-woman show A

Chitenge Story, was produced by Calgary’s Handsome Alice Theatre and played to sold-out audiences in March 2018. Her most recent play, Our Fathers, Sons, Lovers and Little Brothers, will premiere at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in Toronto in 2019.

Val Duncan and Celene Harder are Calgary-based theatre artists who frequently collaborate as the vaudeville-inspired comedy duo Valour & Tea, formed in Calgary in 2011.

Duncan and Harder have also worked together extensively with the Calgary-based experimental theatre company Theatre Encounter, known for its visceral alternative productions of classic plays. Valour & Tea’s latest collaboration, Jan and Peg’s Ritual Sacrifice, will be shown at

Vancouver Fringe Fest in 2018.

Kris Demeanor is a singer-songwriter and actor. Born and raised in Calgary, he is a fixture of both the local music and theatre scenes, releasing original music and performing with companies such as One Yellow Rabbit Performance Theatre. In 2012 he was named the inaugural Poet Laureate of Calgary, a position he held for two years.

Blake Brooker is a co-founding member of Calgary’s One Yellow Rabbit Performance

Theatre and an award-winning playwright and director. Born in Vancouver, Brooker has lived in

Calgary for fifty-nine years. In 2015, he was appointed Member of the Order of Canada. He is the current Artistic Director of One Yellow Rabbit.

Chapter Four: Analysis

This analysis is situated at the intersection of regional and cultural studies and the study of the performing arts. It aims to view the urban spaces we move through on a daily basis as sites of artistic activity. By interrogating the ways in which the artists profiled in this study experience urban spaces, one can understand how these experiences lend themselves to interpretation through theatrical performance. When these performances are viewed as a whole, one can access a multitude of interpretations of the identity of the city of Calgary. Analyzing theatrical productions about or informed by these artists’ interpretations of the city’s urban landscape calls for a closer look at the common threads that bind the artists interviewed who are on otherwise autonomous paths of creative exploration. This entails capturing the emotional responses to landscape of a range of Calgary-based artists, while also contemplating the visceral effects of the city’s topographical features on individuals’ psyches. These responses are subjective and personal, due to the personal nature of affective encounters. This section will also look at issues of community, relationships between artists, and the ecosystem of the Calgary theatre scene.

Primarily, it looks at the ways in which artistic responses to landscape are captured in the theatrical works of six Calgary-based theatre artists, analyzed through the lens psychogeography.

This also entails looking at how notions of landscape apply to the practices of these artists throughout their creative processes, and how the psychogeographic experience of Calgary is portrayed and conveyed in theatrical means. This also entails looking at the ways in which the landscape is signified through the elements of theatre performance, including props, costume, and set and sound design. By considering the emotions and behaviours connected with the experience of landscape, this study draws attention to the community that exists within the physical geography of the region, and the social, cultural, political, economic, and other factors

which influence how we read an urban space. Viewing Calgary as an urban space that has a relationship to the artistic works created there, it may be said that artistic works act as signifiers of the culture of the city. As poet and cultural critic Jeff Derksen suggests, “aesthetic practices can grasp the contradictions and overlapping temporalities of urbanization” (103). While creating within the defined structures of the city’s urban planning, artists may unlock the secret potential of overlooked spaces within the city.

The discovery of an oilfield at Leduc No. 1 in 1947 brought an influx of new Albertans, the oil patch becoming a site of economically-driven migration, forever shaping Alberta’s modern history. Alberta’s hydrocarbon wealth propelled the city of Calgary into becoming a thriving urban centre. The petrological nature of the oil and gas reserves have historically deemed Alberta a viable place to settle, contributing to Alberta’s provincial wealth to this day.

While the arts scene may seem distant from bitumen depositories in Alberta’s oil sands, the interconnectedness of art and oil cannot be neglected. In a city like Calgary, we can’t have one without the other. In a city that garners most of its wealth from the oil and gas industry, art and oil are deeply connected, often seeping into one another as the city is forced to endure the endless cycle of boom and bust. The arts are not immune to this cycle, inevitably are impacted by global financial crisis, plummeting stocks, spikes in the price of oil, and market imbalances.

The expanding boundaries of the city, increasing population, and oil booms and busts all encouraged people to purchase vehicles and move into the suburbs, decreasing inner-city activity as a result. A fluctuating urban environment often means a fluctuating arts scene. The effects of this shift can effect attendance at arts events, as well as funding and corporate sponsorship from the oil and gas sector. In our interview, Makambe K Simamba expressed the connection between the economy and the local arts scene:

If the economy dips and those guys [corporate sponsors] don’t have money, it does

trickle down to the arts [organizations] who they’re sponsoring […] There’s a big

connection between art and oil here. (Simamba, Personal Interview)

As Simamba indicates, in times of economic downturn or scarcity, resources are unlikely to go towards the continued support of arts organizations and programs are cut as a result, demonstrating that indeed capitalism is valued over culture. The tenuous and complicated relationship between art and funding coupled with the reliance of local theatre companies and independent artists on corporate sponsorship and the energy industry make it difficult to shed the city’s oil town reputation. One only has to look to the downtown landscape, populated with numerous skyscrapers that host some of the largest oil and gas companies in Canada. When interviewed for this study, Kris Demeanor also alluded to significant issues in Calgary pertaining to what he perceives as a lack of recognition for the cultural capital and economic potential attached to the local arts scene:

Considering what these theatre companies are contributing to the psyche of the

community, to the reputation of the city, I think they’re not anywhere close to being

rewarded financially for what they’re contributing to this culture. That I think is one of

the tragedies of the Calgary mentality, is that it’s [the arts] just simply not valued by

enough people. (Demeanor, Personal Interview)

Opportunities in the oil and gas industry have historically attracted new Calgarians, and the local arts scene has flourished alongside the economic development of the city. However, discussions of regionality are unquestionably connected to issues pertaining to funding inequities occurring across the country. Viewing regions as political entities with differing levels of power, one may observe numerous inequities in granting organizations and funding bodies that allocate funds

differently across the provincial regions. Artistically speaking, regional differences in the works created here are often inarticulable, but present. Funding bodies also, to some extent, inform and influence the content that makes it onto the stage. Sharon Pollock further explained this connection in our interview: “It’s hard to talk about theatre without getting into the political funding mechanisms that created ‘Canadian’ theatre, because in the late 60’s, early 70s two federal employment programs included Canadian theatre for targeted funding” (Pollock,

Personal Interview). She continued:

In the late 60’s, early 70’s, there was an explosion of Canadian work across the country

that was regionalist in my opinion. Up until then you could almost say there were no

Canadian plays, but with funding, and often with Canadian content mandated, a lot of

people were examining who we were, where we were, and where we’d been. (Pollock,

Personal Interview)

With the Canadian-content mandate put into practice and theatre communities across the nation encouraging the development of new Canadian plays, there was a plethora of works based on historical events, or depicting notable Canadian celebrities and political leaders. Pollock’s comments also reflect the interconnectedness of art, politics, and economics. In the face of cyclic economic downturn, funding cuts and significant dips in arts sponsorship, some artists in Calgary choose to move to larger city centres throughout Canada. That being said, Calgary is host to a community of artists who are boldly determined to stay and make their art here, despite the looming threat of scarcity. All of these factors may contribute to a sense of belonging for the artist, connecting them to the local arts scene and the larger community in which it exists.

Scarcity and lack of funding, while threatening to a local arts scene, also work to provide a sense of community between the artists who choose to stay. This may lead to a strong sense of

continuity and connection to the city’s past, perhaps most apparent in the relationships between senior members of the Calgary theatre community (including Blake Brooker and Sharon Pollock) who have seen the city’s arts scene evolve in real-time. Feelings of community and belonging lead to interconnectedness between artists, and exciting collisions between artistic disciplines.

Despite a relative lack of funding, especially when compared to other large cities within Canada,

Calgary has provided many opportunities for artists to carve out their own space for creation within the existing local arts scene, supporting the enigmatic and eccentric alike. This is most apparent in looking at the communal dynamics between artists living and working in Calgary.

Val Duncan suggests that part of the Calgary arts scene’s identity is correlated to the attributes of the artists working here and the size of Calgary in comparison to larger urban centres:

We’re mavericks here... I’ve always felt like there’s kind of this sensation that nobody in

the world is looking at Calgary. Nobody really expects anything. We’re not Toronto,

we’re not London, we’re not Seattle. Nobody’s expecting anything really tremendous to

come out of Calgary. And since no one is looking at us we can do whatever we want.

(Duncan, Personal Interview)

In her comments, Duncan reveals the uniquely personal relationship between the city and the self, demonstrating the significance of incorporating the experiences of artists when writing about landscape in tandem with the city.

4.1 Case Study. Making Treaty 7

In 2012, Calgary was declared the Cultural Capital of Canada in a yearly designation appointed by the Canada Cultural Investment Fund (Government of Alberta). The program has since been cancelled by the federal government’s Department of Canadian Heritage as part of budget cuts, making Calgary and the Niagara Region the last cities to be designated as Cultural

Capitals (Department of Canadian Heritage 1). As Cultural Capital, Calgary received funding to support activities that celebrated the artistic achievements of the city, contributing to building a strong cultural legacy for the Calgary community. The initiative focused on the integration of the arts and cultural resources into community planning. Michael Green, the late co-Artistic Director and a founding member of One Yellow Rabbit Performance Theatre, was appointed Creative

Producer of Calgary 2012, and shortly thereafter began to work on Making Treaty 7, a legacy project for Calgary 2012 (One Yellow Rabbit). Making Treaty 7 is an interdisciplinary theatrical production exploring the circumstances surrounding the historic signing of Treaty Seven at

Blackfoot Crossing in 1877. Treaty Seven was a peace treaty signed between two Indigenous nations and the British Crown: the tribes of the Blackfoot Confederacy, (Siksika, Piikani, Peigan) and Kainaiwa (Blood), Tsuu T’ina (Sarcee), the Stoney (Bearspaw, Chiniki and

Wesley/Goodstoney) and Queen Victoria by her Commissioners the honourable David Laird,

Lieutenant Governor and Indian Superintendent of the North West Territories, and James

Macleod, Commissioner of the North West Mounted Police (“Study Guide” 3). The treaty promised Indigenous peoples reserve lands, annual payments, ammunition, clothing, and education in residential schools, while ceding Indigenous land rights to the government of

Canada in order to build the Canadian Pacific Railway, Canada’s first trans-continental railway

(Dempsey 2). The theatrical production based upon these events, Making Treaty 7, aims to depict the true meaning and intent of the dynamics of the Treaty to a contemporary audience, as well as the historical legacy of an event that has informed and influenced the development of this region.

Prior to the production’s premiere, a residency took place in March and April 2013 at the Banff

Centre for Arts and Creativity. This residency allowed for meetings between elders from Treaty

7 Nations and artists, both First Nations and non-Aboriginal, who gathered for three weeks to

collaborate on what would become an early iteration of Making Treaty 7 theatrical production.

Following the lead of the Canadian Federal Government’s Truth and Reconciliation

Commission, the performance aims to encourage cross-cultural connection between First Nations and non-Aboriginal communities, delicately balancing humour and levity while engaging in challenging conversations surrounding Canada’s colonial legacy. Several workshop productions of the work-in-progress followed on February 23 and 24, 2013 at Fort Calgary, a National

Historic Site representative of colonial policy and the act of settlement on the traditional lands of the Treaty 7 peoples, and at the Canmore Opera House at Heritage Park in April 2014. Making

Treaty 7 received its world premiere in September 2014 at Heritage Park Historical Village, taking place in a Chautauqua tent. Inside the tent, there were rows of folding chairs placed on the lawn with a raised platform for a stage. This intimate performance setting was very different from the subsequent performance of Making Treaty 7 that took place in September 2015 at the

Bella Concert Hall, a medium-sized venue that seats 773 located at Calgary’s Mount Royal

University. Making Treaty 7 was the inaugural performance to take place at the Bella Concert

Hall. There have been subsequent iterations of Making Treaty 7, varying in length. In 2017, the most recent version of the production (at the time of writing this thesis) embarked on a national tour across Canada. Under the co-direction of Michelle Thrush and Blake Brooker, performances took place in Winnipeg at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre and in Ottawa as part of the

National Arts Centre’s Canada Scene Festival. The reach of the project extends beyond the original theatrical production and has resulted in the formation of a cultural society with educational and community outreach initiatives. The Making Treaty 7 Cultural Society (MT7) was formed in March 2013. MT7 is a non-profit organization with a mandate that is “an evolving nexus of activities that includes themes of cultural literacy, education, historical commemoration,

tourism, and a revitalized appreciation for First Nations identity and perspective” (Making

Treaty 7). The theatrical production, as it continues in new iterations, intends to function as an ongoing conversation with new performers and perspectives, shifting and evolving as new people come into it. The production is intimately connected with questions pertaining to landscape, including the following: how is a landscape interpreted when there is a general lack of archival materials and several degrees of ambiguity and uncertainty surrounding the existing

Treaty document? Co-director Blake Brooker describes the circumstances that led to the creation of the first theatrical production, the research process, and his role within it.

I was invited to a residency at Banff Centre with some elders, with a historian, with a

couple other of the principal artists, and my job was to listen and see what it was. The

first thing to do was to study the treaty and then, after studying the Treaty, sitting and

talking to all the [Indigenous] people there to find out what was important to them, what

was meaningful to people. After being there for a while they invited me up to be a

director, and I hadn’t wanted to do that because the last thing I wanted to do was to be a

colonizer being the director. Anyways, I guess they felt I could do it so they invited me. I

was the director. [I] put together the concept of the show as a mash-up through the lens of

treaty, so everything was about the Treaty—about what happened before the Treaty, what

happened during the Treaty, what was the aftermath of the Treaty—but these elements or

themes that derived from the experience of people in Treaty 7 territory, which is from

Red Deer River down to the Alberta border, and from the first range—just inside the first

range of the mountains—to the Saskatchewan border. That’s Treaty 7. The activities were

going out to the reserves, talking to the elders, going out on the land, being in the

landscape of Treaty 7 to hear the stories of the people who have lived here for a long

time, and their myths and their oral history, their concerns. (Brooker, Personal Interview)

By creating a theatrical production that takes as its plot the historical signing of Treaty 7, the creators encourage audiences to carefully consider what took place at this important historical moment, while reifying an Indigenous point of view. In the case of this project, these untold experiences were communicated by the Indigenous artists who worked on this project, and were incorporated into an artistic work which can subsequently be referred to as a cultural artifact that engages with the city’s real and imagined past, as it has been interpreted through myths. As a cultural artifact, this single production may be viewed as comprising one part of a much larger network of related cultural artifacts from which the city’s identity is construed. The city's identity is, in part, a mythology created by the people who live here, and mythology becomes an intrinsic part of the city’s culture. The mythos of the city of Calgary presents a diverse collection of materials to draw from and engage with in artistic ways. We feel the subtle effects of historically significant events that move in step with the landscape that surrounds us.

Engaging with the city’s foundational myths provides opportunities for Calgary artists to convey their experiences in their city, and to better understand the history and evolution of their city. The

Making Treaty 7 project provides a salient example of how a city's founding mythology can be combined with Indigenous perspectives, and incorporated into an embodied performance that depicts the perspectives that have been overlooked or to counter recorded memory in attempt to confront what has been excluded and forgotten in the documented history of the Calgary region.

Creating with an urban audience in mind, consisting of both Indigenous and settler perspectives, the work challenges and defamiliarizes narratives. Art can be used as a tool with which to combat colonialist narratives and ignorance about the Indigenous cultures of the region. Further

to this point, Making Treaty 7 provides an example of an embodied performance that has the capacity to empower voices that have been marginalized within dominant culture, and the voices colonialism has attempted to erase. For example, director Blake Brooker admits he knew

“nothing” about Treaty 7 prior to working on the production. When asked why, he remarked:

Because they don’t teach it in school. It’s not part of the curriculum and I don’t know

why it’s not. I think it is now, to a certain degree, but it wasn’t part of the curriculum

when I grew up. And I think part of it is it’s a shameful document, it’s a shameful history,

it’s a shameful… everything to do about the treaty—not everything, but mostly—to do

about the treaty, the settlers don’t look good. The government doesn’t look good. It looks

bad. It’s a swindle. (Brooker, Personal Interview)

When viewed in a theatrical context, the story of the signing of Treaty 7 takes on new resonances, drawing attention to the region’s history. The theatrical production Making Treaty 7 questions the authority of history, as it has been written, by encouraging further consideration of what isn’t known beyond the established facts, drawing attention to the inherent instability of what could be deemed historical “truths,” and it sets a powerful example of how artistic works can inform our collective understanding of history through reclamation. Making Treaty 7 sheds light on the darker aspects of the region’s history, while also honouring the caretakers of this land, celebrating connection between humanity and the natural landscape. Brooker reflects upon how his work on Making Treaty 7 irrevocably impacted how he now views the urban landscape of Calgary:

I can’t look at the landscape in the same way. I can’t drive around and think ‘oh, what a

nice place.’ It is nice visually but if you understand what’s happened to it. You know, I

used to think this was an innocent place… but it’s not innocent […] This isn’t a fucking

blank canvas. It wasn’t Terra Nula, as they say, nothing earth. There were people here,

there were things here. (ibid)

He continues, emphasizing the importance of learning the true history of the land:

How do you become a citizen in this country, in our territory, in our landscape? How do

you become a citizen who can feel good about yourself? Well I would say you can’t until

and unless you do certain things. You have to learn, you have to find out about stuff, and

then you have to act in a different way. You have to change your perspective, you can’t

be ignorant about it. (ibid)

Brooker suggests that all citizens must learn the real history of the places they inhabit, undertaking a path of education and enlightenment in order for one to “become a citizen who can feel good about yourself”. In the case of the example of Making Treaty 7, it can be said that art provides a solution by functioning as a tool that citizens can use to combat colonialist narratives and ignorance about the Indigenous cultures and the people who originally inhabited the region.

Performer Kris Demeanor started working on Making Treaty 7 during the project’s residency at the Banff Centre for the Performing Arts in 2012. Since then, Demeanor has been involved in the project in an ongoing relationship that has led to him appearing in multiple iterations of the theatrical production. Demeanor echoes Brooker’s sentiment when asked how the project challenged how he viewed the landscape of the region:

I’m very realistic and accepting of the fact that Calgary is what it is, but I was also quite

transformed I think with my relationship with the Making Treaty 7 project that I often

look around the city and I see it like a paper pop-up picture book sort of things, it’s

almost a fantasy. (Demeanor, Personal Interview)

There is undoubtedly a synergistic relationship between landscape and art. However, any meaningful encounter with landscape that results in an affective response can be challenging to articulate. What an individual personally experiences when in an urban environment can be difficult to convey. Most of the artists interviewed were probed to interpret and describe the often esoteric features of landscape. Acknowledging the difficulty of putting these experiences into words that more than seldom occurs, Sharon Pollock remarks:

For me landscape is very much of the natural world. And the landscape of the West,

mountains, prairies, foothills, the light, the sky, the sounds, the resonance of the natural

environment speak to me. That’s why I live here. The landscape is a constant reminder of

things larger than myself. I might call it spiritual in a kind of a way; there’s a power there

—a natural power. The Calgary flood was a powerful reminder of ‘who do you think you

are anyway?’ Nature telling you something, and I think that impacts what I write and how

I write it but I can’t tell you how or why. I’m not particularly interested in writing plays

about romantic relationships. I’m interested in writing plays about power relationships

and structures. Landscape reminds me that there are larger issues and considerations than

my direct experience reveals. And I guess I transfer or personalize something from the

landscape into a structure, characters, plot, drama, for performance. It’s difficult to talk

about why or how you do what you do.... I choose to live in a certain place but I can’t

define or explain what it is about that place and its landscape that feeds my imagination

or speaks to me. If it were possible to define or explain it would be small. It’s too large to

put into words. (Pollock, Personal Interview)

4.2 Case Study. Blow Wind, High Water

The intangible emotions and feelings that are associated with a particular geographic site, and how these emotions and feelings are communicated through theatre, thereby make the intangible more tangible to the audiences who consume these artistic works. There are many plays that debut in Calgary that are about the experience of the city, or landscape of the prairie region. One of these plays is Pollock’s 2017 work, Blow Wind, High Water. Pollock’s play is an exemplary example of an artistic work that takes place in the city of Calgary and depicts its landscape. It is a theatrical production that is intricately linked to the urban landscape in which it is created by virtue of being set in that environment. Blow Wind, High Water premiered in

September 2017 at the Max Bell Theatre, located in the Arts Commons, in Calgary. It launched

Theatre Calgary’s 50th anniversary season, and starred Julie Orton and Stephen Hair, under direction by Simon Mallett. The play carries the following description: “A raging flood threatens three generations of Calgarians as they struggle to come together to keep from going under. With a surging river and an aged patriarch trapped in time, the family attempts to create a legacy worth inheriting by future generations. A profound, playful, and magical new Canadian play” (Theatre

Calgary, 2017). Blow Wind, High Water was commissioned as part of Theatre Calgary’s 50th anniversary season. It was developed through FUSE: The Enbridge New Play Development

Program at Theatre Calgary. Pollock reflects upon the play’s origins and development period:

The initial idea... it came about because it was commissioned. Dennis [Garnhum] and

Shari [Wattling] said they wanted a play because it was TC’s 50th birthday. They wanted

it set in Calgary and Dennis was very big on it being about the flood. I wasn’t interested

in the Calgary flood as such, but the idea of a flood did interest me. Flood as a mythic

event, a spiritual event, a transitional event, what a flood might symbolize and what

happens in terms of a flood’s ability to destroy and to create. And then all the multiple

uses of the word “flood” -- verb, noun, adjective… I thought ‘okay, I can work with this.’

The challenge was to write something that fulfilled their needs, at the same time met my

own. And because there’s so many things about Alberta I truly do love—human aspects,

characteristics that are strong, the history of the place—it all had great significance for

me. I could sense a universality and hopefully an opportunity to make a kind of larger

play than one about the Calgary flood. I was interested in an old man, the embodiment of

the Alberta Spirit, and the transitional world he inhabited as he neared death or change.

It’s a kind of fairy tale with Gwynt [played Julie Orton], a character who inhabits that in-

between world with him. (Pollock, Personal Interview)

Calgary is no stranger to catastrophic flooding. The last major flood in Calgary occurred in June

2013, and was described by the provincial government as the worst in the province’s history, and one of the costliest natural disasters (Wood, 2013). Blow Wind, High Water is a salient example of an artistic response to landscape, as a creation that reflects actual events and conveys them in a fictionalized depiction in the context of a theatrical production centered on a family drama. In her play, Pollock captures a poetic response to the actual historical events that transpired in

Calgary in the spring of 2013, while accessing larger stories of a more metaphoric or mythic proportion. Myths pertaining to the Calgary region are communicated on stage through the play’s central character, Gampy (played by veteran Calgarian actor Stephen Hair), a 111-year-old who has, presumably, seen the city of Calgary through its development over the course of his life. The plot of the play hits close to home for the local audience, providing a strong sense of place. Some of the themes in this play include family and generational differences, environmentalism and the oil industry, colonial exploitation of the land, and indigenous relations, amongst other topics

which are of particular relevance to audiences in the region. While these topics effectively relate to a local audience, the play also holds the capacity to transcend the local due to the universalism of these topics.

4.3 Case Study. The Land, The Animals

There are many other significant theatre works that reflect regional or local topical issues, drawing subject matter from the real-life stories of the place that still linger in the public consciousness. For example, One Yellow Rabbit Performance Theatre’s controversial and now infamous original theatre play Ilsa, Queen of The Nazi Love Camp (first performed at the

Edmonton Fringe Festival in 1987) took its inspiration from the 1984 case of James Keegstra, an

Eckville, Alberta public school teacher and mayor who was convicted of hate speech for his denial of the Holocaust and hatred toward the Jewish community. The play was subsequently performed eleven times across Canada and internationally by the One Yellow Rabbit ensemble, the last One Yellow Rabbit led production occurring in 1995 at the Perth International Festival.

In Ilsa, the play’s writers Blake Brooker, Clem Martini, and Kirk Miles re-imagined historical events in their fictionalized rendering of Keegstra’s trial, drawing attention to the slippage between fact and facticity when dealing with historic events. Evocations of the urban experience of Calgary are embedded in One Yellow Rabbit’s theatre creations. Another One Yellow Rabbit play which takes Calgary as its source of inspiration is The Land, The Animals, a sixty-minute play that debuted in One Yellow Rabbit’s 1991 season. The play was written and directed by

Blake Brooker and performed at the Secret Theatre in Calgary’s Centre for the Performing Arts with the following cast: Denise Clarke as Doris, Michael Green as Campbell, and Andy Curtis as

Ted. The play also appeared in the 1995-1996 season of Victoria-based Theatre SKAM, directed by Amiel Gladstone, but has not been professionally staged since. In 1993, the play’s text was

published in a collection of plays written by Blake Brooker. In the preface to this collection,

Brooker acknowledges the impossibility of capturing all the elements of a fully-realized live production, stating the following:

The plays in this book are skeletons, not whole, living, breathing, entities… They are

maps which contain the information required for a voyage that is only complete when

conceived, imagined, executed, and presented. (Brooker 12)

As such, the play’s text does not accurately reflect what occurred in performance. Physical aspects, such as Denise Clarke’s choreography and staging, and sensory aspects (sound design and composition by Richard McDowell, lighting by Blake Brooker, set design by Martin

Guderna, visual design by Sandi Somers) are left out of the published play text. The published text is meant to function as a textual map, its major limitation being that it does not allow the reader to fully grasp the affective and performative aspects inherent to the production. Images of the set design by visual artist and painter Martin Guderna are included in the collection of works by Brooker that this play was published in. The original set of The Land, The Animals featured cave glyphs of abstract shapes and animals, snow covered mountains along the bottom of the upstage wall. Described by Brooker as “an elegant comedy from Canada’s vanishing wetlands”

(74), The Land, The Animals is a satirical look at the larger ecological crisis we find ourselves in.

The play is divided into twenty-three short scenes.

The Land, The Animals opens with slide projections on the upstage wall and an aural soundscape which comprises of “the sound of a runner jogging alongside the river until he wades into the water and lays in the cold, shallow, swiftly flowing current” (73). A suicide has taken place, and a team of “scientists from the future” (73) named Campbell, Ted, and Doris (played by Michael Green, Andy Curtis, and Denise Clarke respectively) must discover the answers to

six questions: “how, why, where, when, what, who” (103). Doris mentions “the arrival of officials at the scene of an unexpected death near a river…” (75). The man who drowned is revealed to be a co-worker of the team of scientists named Cy Evans, a geologist who committed suicide by drowning in their city’s river. Playwright Blake Brooker describes the initial inspiration behind this play, a real-life event he was, in part, a witness to:

I can give you a good example of an artistic response to a landscape. One time, when I

lived with Denise [Clarke] in 1990, a man came to the door […] he said he saw this guy

laying in the river right by the shore. And it was in early June, so the river was running

high and cold. And I knew you couldn’t be in the river for very long without dying […]

After about 10 or 15 minutes they [emergency rescue] found the guy, they pulled him

out, and it was a guy in a jogging suit […] I became obsessed with that moment, and I

started to think about the city and the river and the boundaries of the city, and this place

where this guy had died, and I started to think about the water. And I photographed that

spot every day for a year […] and then I wrote a play about it called The Land, The

Animals. (Brooker Personal Interview)

It was thought by the emergency rescue crew to have been a suicide. The man who drowned was never mentioned in the local newspapers or on the television, presumably because the local media did not deem the story to be newsworthy enough, and his identity remains a mystery to this day. In the following passage, taken from the play, Brooker incorporates details from the real-life event he observed, creating an artistic representation that is realized in The Land, The

Animals:

Ted: A man on his back, floating in a cold river on a beautiful, late, spring morning.

A floating jogger—he had jogging clothes on—simply taking the waters, as though the

frigid Bow River was a spa to soothe a nervous man—to calm the frayed nerves of a

stressed geologist. Submersion for consolation and relief (Brooker, 101)

An idea Blake Brooker expressed interest in, at the time of writing this play, was exploring the physical boundaries of Calgary’s city limits:

My plan was to circumnavigate, to walk around the edge of the city. I was going to walk

the boundary all the way around the city, and I started doing it, I did it for a couple days

and I realized it was too long. And I was thinking about the play anyways, so then I did a

play about the river, the land, the animals that live in Calgary, stories about the animals

that live in Calgary, and stories about this town. So there’s a direct kind of play that’s

about the land of this place (Brooker, Personal Interview)

The scientists in the play, Campbell, Ted, and Doris, function as the authors and narrators of the play. The trio are both observers and participants in the landscape they are studying, posing a direct conflict to their search for objective truth. Brooker paints a picture of the world in which established bodies of knowledge are treated as suspect and therefore warrant further analysis and critique, demonstrating that science is perhaps not as objective as one believes it to be. The dramatic conflict of this play comes from this tension between objectivity and subjectivity. As

Campbell states in the play: “we were confused by our needs. On the one hand, our desire to satisfy a remote and mysterious system… and on the other hand our wish to prosper as human animals” (77-78). The conflict between scientific objectivity and human subjectivity is the play’s main source of tension:

Doris: We are passionate human beings snared in a web of personal and social

circumstances

Ted: We are cool, passionless, absolutely objective explorers of external reality (111)

The characters of this play express their difficulties in resolving subjectivity and objectivity. The psychological aspects of humanity are compromised in the relentless pursuit of scientific discovery in a world that craves empirical truths:

Campbell: A geographer is mapping an unknown mass of land. While he wades across a

stagnant pond, an animal spirals up his genital and pierces the geographer’s heart. The

border can never be located. The animal is named: Mapmaker’s Spirochete.

Ted: A technician spends eight hours a day staring into specially designed equipment.

She loses her sense of smell and ability to smile.

Doris: It is a rainy day. A grey-white ceiling of light hovers over the scent of curiosity

and trampled grass. The tree trunks stand in disharmony. In a bright green clearing, a man

with a butterfly net collapses, sobbing. (78)

The subject matter of the play focuses on “the things that matter most in this bright cool city: the land, the animals” (77). The play also explores the disappearance of a species, with the inkling that humans could be next. Humans are animals too, part of the same fragile ecosystem that twenty-four other species are disappearing from (94-95). At the center of this irreverent team of scientists’ comic investigations are very real environmental issues. The play is “an eco- examination from the point of view of all animals who live in the city” (75), one that explores the animate spirit of the landscape, human estrangement from the natural world, and its impending ecological degradation. The trio are a team of scientists blindly guided by the scientific method, often to the detriment of human concerns. As Doris states, “a group of people who spend all day visualizing what is under the ground sometimes miss what is happening around them” (98). In The Land, The Animals, every character experiences their own personal

breed of profound disconnection in urban spaces that are becoming increasingly uninhabitable.

Their fears and anxieties stem from this disconnection with the land and animals they co-exist with, questioning the human relationship with landscape, the place where urban and natural ecosystems collide.

Campbell: If nature is so swell, why are animals always trying to relocate under the porch

or up between the rafters in the garage? And what do scientists wear under those lab coats

anyways? An eco-examination from the point of view of all animals who live in the city.

Comedy that’s certified dark green. (75)

The team of scientists speculate on what led to Cy’s suicide. Cy’s love of nature is diametrically opposed with his employment in the fossil fuels industry, as it poses a pressing threat to the natural world he admires. From the birds he counts on his way to work to the animals who are forced to escape their natural homes, all draw parallels to Cy who, for untold reasons, has found that his city has become uninhabitable for man and animal alike. Scene eight of The Land, The

Animals is aptly titled “The Boundaries of a City.” According to Doris, “the boundaries of a city reflect much: facts and translations; hope, dislocation, brutality, indifference, trickery and greed.

The history of any city begins with an ending. No inviting location has been untouched by animal or man” (85). Here, the physical and mythical dimensions of a city are pondered through exploration of urban space, both human and animal. The play’s concerns extend far beyond the spatial limits of the city's urban centre, offering additional sources of inspiration in a complex negotiation of landscape, both natural and urban. The play looks at how scientific reporting is informed and influenced by external pressures, such as economic pressures, cognitive and publication biases, corporate interests, self-deception, hypothesis myopia, and exaggerated news

reporting, amongst the other factors that hold the potential to influence public perception and sway objectivity. It is a meditation on science and its role in a culture that is all too happy to ignore the warning signs of environmental degradation. The river in the play is revealed to be the

Bow River, in the “bright cool city” of Calgary. By virtue of being so deeply rooted in the city of Calgary, the play invites questions about Calgary’s petrological legacy and the oil industry’s role in contributing to the exploitation of the land and irresponsible development, the burning of fossil fuels leading to environmental destruction, tailing ponds, carbon dioxide emissions, global warming, pipelines, de-forestation, and the increasing hole in the ozone layer. Campbell’s monologue near the end of the play contains a poetic description of the physical geographical location of the site of the real-life suicide:

Campbell: The approach to the site is characterized by little. You can use a modest path

of crushed red rock from one direction, a beaten earth path from another, or the approach

by water.

One could descend from a canoe if the current were judged correctly, minding one’s legs

in the cold green water.

The river bottom near the edge is covered in a slippery jumble of rocks, so you may need

to use your paddle as a kind of walking stick.

The beach is of fist-sized rocks, rounded and covered in tawny mud.

In the sun they appear very white.

Small flies hover over these rocks, having just been eggs or about to lay them, we’re not

sure.

The rocky beach itself is narrow, perhaps the length of a canoe, and the bank is a two-

foot cross-section of the land in that area.

Tufts of grass on top of a couple inches of black topsoil, then clay, then rock.

Scattered clumps of dogwood are sprinkled back from the river, and here and there a few

cracked cottonwoods huddle together, turning their faces from the wind to the sun. (109-

110)

Placed within the context of the specific incident from which this play takes its inspiration, the play ultimately focuses on the land and the animals of the city of Calgary. The play exposes the darker undercurrents of the city, a perpetually unfolding global ecological crisis, and the unfathomable nature of being past the point of no return, drawing attention to the fact that toxins are infiltrating our atmosphere and that the denial of this fact is a dangerous thing. Brooker’s play takes a satirical look at anxieties and fears stemming from environmental concerns and the ill-natured escapist thinking that permeates our modern culture. We are connected by the futility of our predicament; this play suggests a call to action that embraces the land, and the animals.

One Yellow Rabbit Performance Theatre (OYR) is a performance-based theatre company founded by the late Michael Green and Blake Brooker in Calgary in 1982. For the OYR ensemble, Calgary was an ideal place for theatrical exploration, nurturing their creative voice.

Over the past thirty-six years the company has “shape-shifted into a cultural treasure that transcends the narrow geographical boundaries of city and nation” (One Yellow Rabbit, “Our

Story”). The ensemble explored their relationship to Calgary through theatrical means in their

2016 play Calgary, I Love You, But You’re Killing Me, a contemporary musical exploring the psyche of the city of Calgary which was part of the 30th annual High Performance Rodeo.

Directed by Blake Brooker and composed by David Rhymer, the production featured Denise

Clarke, Andy Curtis, Karen Hines, and Jamie Tognazzini, with musicians Kris Demeanor,

Jonathan Lewis, and David Rhymer. The show program describes the play in the following way:

The City is a nest and a distraction. Safe and dangerous, comforting and alien, it exhausts

and energizes in equal measure. Does a city that spends much of its energy visualizing

what is occurring below the surface of the earth have a quality notion of what’s going on

above it? Who are we as a city? If an animal, what kind? If a gender, what variety? Are

we a griffin or a gopher? A sphinx or a spaniel? A warrior-queen or a tipsy teen? Does

the city have a soul and if so how do we describe it? Just who the hell are we now? One

Yellow Rabbit dowses, parses, and probes these questions for the 2016 High Performance

Rodeo. Calgary, I Love You, but You’re Killing Me is about music, comedy and the

mysterious relationship we all have with home.

From the above description, salient connections between Calgary, I Love You, but You’re Killing

Me and The Land, The Animals can be drawn, as they both share concerns related to the fossil fuels industry and its relationship to environment and the city. In the spirit of One Yellow

Rabbit’s principles of ensemble creation, members of the cast contributed music, lyrics, and text.

Altogether, these contributions come together to develop a collective text consisting of ruminations that comment on the spirit of the city, forming One Yellow Rabbit’s own idiosyncratic and irreverent take on the Calgary experience. Performer Kris Demeanor reflects upon the play’s inspiration and how it connects to notions of landscape:

I think he [director Blake Brooker] wanted to do something that was both whimsical and

insightful that expressed that same dichotomy I was expressing to you earlier. How is it

that you can love the mountains, and the prairies, and the parks, and the people, and the

art, but also be entirely disgusted by so many other aspects of the kind of savagery

connected with our fixation with money, and sports, and vehicles, and destruction of

green spaces and of water ways? In some ways… depending on the day… the city can

seem like a blight. It can seem like a pox on the landscape. And some days, it can seem

light, and bright, and gorgeous, like you want to take a postcard and send it to someone

far away. It’s odd. (Demeanor, Personal Interview)

As described by Demeanor, Brooker’s main interest was in discovering what lies beneath and beyond what is visible on the city’s surface, illuminating what has been subdued, and shedding light onto the aspects incorporated into the city mythos:

David [Rhymer] and I made up musical things but we thought about elements of

psychogeography in the creation as an organizing principle for making our production…

the origin of the city, where a city’s going, what’s underneath a city, what’s above a city,

in terms of psychology. The mythos of a city, in other words the genesis of it, but the

mythos of it, once it’s going what are the factors that contribute to it and its meaning to

the human being, to the individual? (Brooker, Personal Interview)

The above is an example of a specific way in which behavioural and emotion-based knowledge about the relationship between individuals and their urban surroundings are produced within a creative process.

4.4 Case Study. Jan and Peg’s Vacation

In addition to being about the identity of city, a play can take place directly in the environment that inspired it. In 2017, Val Duncan and Celene Harder (working collectively as

Valour & Tea) created a new site-specific work titled Jan and Peg’s Vacation for Theatre

Junction Grand’s 10 Minute Plays for Jane’s Walk. Site-specific theatrical performances are performances that occur outside of conventional or designated theatre spaces, on sites intended for a purpose other than the performance of theatre. They are intrinsically connected to the sites in which they are performed, created in response to the material aspects of the physical

performance location in an interaction between performer and site. Mike Pearson and Michael

Shanks offer some useful criteria for determining what constitutes site-specific performance in their co-authored book Theatre/Archaeology:

Site-specific performances are conceived for, mounted within and conditioned by the

particulars of found spaces, existing social situations or locations, both used and disused […]

They rely, for their conception and their interpretation, upon the complex coexistence,

superimposition and interpenetration of a number of narratives and architectures, historical

and contemporary, of two basic orders: that which is of the site, its fixtures and fittings, and

that which is brought to the site, the performance and its scenography: of that which pre-exits

[sic] the work and that which is of the work: of the past and of the present (p. 23).

The mission of the Jane’s Walk organization is to “activate the ideas of Jane Jacobs by supporting a community-based approach to city building through citizen-led walking tours that make space for people to observe, reflect, share, question and collectively reimagine the places in which they live, work and play” (Jane’s Walk). These are walks designed to “encourage people to share stories about their neighbourhoods, discover unseen aspects of their communities, and use walking as a way to connect with their neighbours” (Jane’s Walk). Jane

Jacobs was an influential urban thinker and community activist. A Jane’s Walk is a walking tour of the city and psychogeographic experiment that employs a community-based approach in order to explore an urban environment. Jane’s Walk originated in Toronto; Calgary was the second city in Canada to host Jane’s Walk in 2008 (Sanders, 36). Jane's Walks are meant to engage pedestrians by offering insights into local history through guided walks through the city, led by local residents. An intended outcome of a Jane's Walk is to experience the city differently, fostering awareness and shedding light onto the city's unknown or forgotten history. Theatre

Junction Grand’s 10 Minute Plays for Jane’s Walk event occurred over one weekend in May

2017; new theatrical works were performed by individuals and collectives who were tasked with creating an original 10-minue play inspired by a neighbourhood in Calgary. The initiative served to engage Calgary neighborhoods through the arts, presenting creative solutions that serve to break up urban monotony and disrupt navigational patterns and individual routines. It is in this way that a Jane’s Walk can be seen as a contemporary Situationist dérive, as it encourages a playful exploration of one’s city that bypasses commonly travelled paths, presenting an aesthetic strategy for seeing a particular geographic locale in a new light. For the 10 Minute Plays for

Jane’s Walk event, each participating group was asked to create a new 10-minute play for a specific neighborhood in Calgary, pre-selected by the presenting organization and randomly assigned to the groups. Valour & Tea received Mayland Heights, a residential neighbourhood in

Calgary’s north-east quadrant. This led to the creation of Jan and Peg’s Vacation, a 10-minute play about “two anthropomorphized magpies who go on a holiday from Minnesota to Mayland

Heights” which is “a tourist destination for magpies” (Duncan). Neither Val Duncan, who moved to Calgary as a young child, nor Celene Harder, originally from Prince George in British

Columbia, were particularly familiar with the neighborhood prior to participating in the creation of a their 10-minute play:

Mayland Heights […] was a neighborhood that neither of us had spent very much time in

before. So we went out and we wandered around Mayland Heights and saw what we could

see. I’ve always felt like our process in terms of how we generate work is always just starting

with the two of us talking to each other as characters who we think are funny. And then

eventually something happens (Duncan).

Much of Duncan and Harder’s inspiration for Jan and Peg’s Vacation was gleaned from meetings with community members and informal walks through the community:

We met with the leader of the Mayland Heights Community Association. And he had this

book, this giant history of Mayland Heights that was basically just like a photo album.

Everybody who lived in that neighborhood sent all of their old family photos to this man,

and he’d put them into this giant book […] It put me to mind of the old family slideshows

from way back in the day. And that was sort of how we moved forward. We had these

two characters that we’d been dying to do something with but could never really find the

right place for, and this idea of a family slideshow and we smashed those together along

with things we’d seen in Mayland Heights, which was tons of wildlife, birds, and

squirrels, and also tons and tons of lawn ornamentation (Duncan).

By illuminating the unique history of the community of Mayland Heights, Jan and Peg’s

Vacation suggests a new cartography in which the community’s innate characteristics are incorporated into a live theatrical performance. This performance was unique in that it was experienced by walking, a pyschogeographical exercise, integrating theatre into everyday life.

This had the effect of animating the neighbourhood of Mayland Heights with live performance, and simultaneously calling into question the relationship between performer and public. In his

2004 book Reading the Material Theatre, theatre scholar Ric Knowles lists a number of theatrical and cultural conditions which impact theatrical productions including “conditions of reception such as the spatial geographies of theatrical location, neighborhood, auditorium, and audience amenities, and the public discourses of the producing theatres, including publicity materials, programs and posters, previews, reviews, and the discourses of celebrity” (p. 11).

These characteristics were at play for Valour & Tea in both the creation process and during

performance, evident in both the theatrical and dramatic space of their play, and the residential site in which the performance took place. These aspects demonstrate the complexity of site- specific theatrical events, alongside the many cultural signifiers which can shape the way in which theatrical works are devised, performed, and consumed by audiences. Valour & Tea created their play with the community of Mayland Heights in mind as their intended audience.

Harder reflects on this experience:

I think the thing about Jane’s Walk is obviously there are people that are really invested in

that community [Mayland Heights] and invested in the idea of Jane’s Walk. I remember we

actually ended up walking around with them [Mayland Heights residents] for a little bit

afterwards and they were very complimentary and had a lot of questions and it was a really

nice to kind of like have this love letter to the community and see how it was received by the

people of it (Harder).

Duncan and Harder embarked on a spatial investigation that brought them straight to the heart of

Mayland Heights, discovering their city in a way that can circumvent city planning by resisting the structures that determine how an urban space is experienced. Site-specific performance is defined by space. It can function as a disruption of public space that calls into question the ways in which these are experienced by individuals. As theatre creators working in this context,

Duncan and Harder faced many challenges along the way, most being related to the unexpected nature of working in a site-specific context. Their artistic decisions were determined by the contextual historical research they undertook on the neighborhood of Mayland Heights, but also the technical limitations imposed on the various elements of production due to working outdoors

(including limited capacity for sound and lighting design and lack of a designated stage).

However, these challenges did not come without opportunities. As a result of participating in the

10 Minute Plays for Jane’s Walk program, Duncan and Harder became better oriented within their city, in particular spaces they were unfamiliar with previously:

It [site-specific theatre] changes people’s perceptions of the space. I know I’m a lot more

conscious of Mayland Heights and I think of all the areas that we’ve performed in. Just

because it does take that attention to detail to, I think, really develop something that

speaks to the community or the area (Harder).

Situating site-specific work within the context of the greater urban landscape, it has an innate ability to animate parts of a city that are not emphasized otherwise or lack cultural activity. It is an active engagement with a city that encourages and instigates greater connectedness. Site- specific works encourage spectators to think about how they navigate their communities, encouraging alternative perspectives that cognitively re-shape the emotional territory attached to a specific place, revisiting the notion that every artist has their own unique “map” of the city.

Foregrounding spatiality, it becomes a site of meaning-making; a place to affirm or challenge the stories already existing about the site. Site-specific performance is grounded in “maintaining a balance between intention and aesthetic impulse, ensuring that the work develops in collaboration with the site as opposed to imposing [intention] upon it” (Hunter, 2005, p. 375).

The Calgary theatre scene has been shaped by the city’s ever-changing and evolving cultural landscape. The newest Calgarian I interviewed is Makambe K Simamba, who spoke about how the myths and histories of Alberta are beginning to become topics of interest in her work as a playwright. Simamba shared a story about discovering the history of Amber Valley,

Alberta, one of several communities in Alberta that was settled by black immigrants:

I was just really fascinated to come across the history of the Amber Valley community,

which was kind of near Athabasca but at its height had 3000 people. It was an all-black

community. I was like, ‘what? What? There’s black people in Alberta in like 1900.

What?’ [laughing]. For that one, an understanding of history and space is really

important. And because I just didn’t have a large awareness and I didn’t know if it’s that

the information just wasn’t there. At first I wasn’t sure, because I didn’t go to school in

Alberta other than university where I specifically chose where I studied, so I didn’t know

if this was information that my peers who were born and raised here had, and then I

realized it wasn’t. (Simamba, Personal Interview)

On her website, Simamba lists things that are important to her playwriting practice, stating that one of her objectives is “to maintain an awareness of the discourse in my artistic community, and my community at large” (Simamba). Her cultural heritage plays an important role in shaping how she views herself as a playwright, along with the interconnectedness of personal experience to broader notions of landscape, and the other, often under-represented, voices that make up the local arts scene:

I crave conversations about immigration, new Canadian identities, the gap between

immigrant parents and their first-generation Canadian kids. That is so many people’s

story but that’s not everybody’s story that makes theatre, and that’s not what we see

reflected around us (Simamba, Personal Interview).

Simamba, as a playwright, is a storyteller, and her statement suggests the need to look more closely at the act of telling stories. What stories do we tell on our stages and, more importantly, who is telling them? Sharon Pollock also echoes this sentiment:

In the past, the perspective was a Caucasian regionalist perspective. Now the work has

more of a global perspective, or a perspective tied to personal identity, or identification

with the formerly unrepresented or under-represented in our theatres, or a formula-istic

perspective that springs from the commercial entertainment industry. Maybe with your

thesis you’d say if it’s an Alberta playwright, they must be writing with a regionalist

perspective, you know, being inspired by landscape; however you choose to define

landscape. I think the theatre-maker’s class, race, gender, political, social, educational,

work environment and personal history have more to do with the creator’s perspective

than landscape unless you define ‘landscape’ as encompassing those things. (Pollock,

Personal Interview)

In her comments made above Pollock addresses the numerous factors that characterize artistic works, suggesting that intersectional systems, namely race, gender, and class, have a potentially greater influence on the works created than notions of landscape. Biographical elements and personal histories of artists are often incorporated into artistic works. In October 2017 Makambe

K Simamba premiered an original creation titled “The Apartment” at Fluid Festival, an annual festival in Calgary celebrating contemporary art, dance and physical performance. The piece looked at “the vulnerabilities and rituals of a single 20-something black woman whose only refuge from the world is the four walls of her studio apartment” (TJ Labs). In the piece, questions surrounding safety and racial identity within an urban space were explored through movement. In our interview Simamba spoke about this work, calling attention to her hyper- awareness of being racialized as she navigates the city: “I sometimes wish that I could just disappear, walk down the street. There’s a difference when I’m in Zambia and I’m walking downtown and everybody looks like me and I just disappear into a sea of cultural likeness. And I miss that sometimes” (Personal Interview, Simamba). Simamba’s comments about her work call to mind the walking practices of the Situationists that allowed them to rediscover urban environments through urban exploration. However, as a woman of colour, Simamba indicates

that she is not granted the same ease of navigation through the city streets. This example demonstrates a strong interconnectivity between notions of landscape and issues of race, gender, and class, and emphasizes the importance of looking at the backgrounds and personal histories of theatre makers, as Pollock indicated.

As the first Poet Laureate of Calgary, Kris Demeanor told many stories about his personal experiences in the city of Calgary. According to Calgary Arts Development:

The Calgary Poet Laureate is intended to be an ambassador of the arts to the citizens of

Calgary. The Calgary Poet Laureate produces literary work that is reflective of Calgary’s

landscape, cityscape and/or civic identity and that may raise awareness of local issues.

(Calgary Arts Development, Web)

The role of the Poet Laureate is to tell the stories of the Calgary community through public presentations of poetry, acting as the city’s artistic and cultural ambassador, and creating work that reflects the identity of the city. Beyond his role as Calgary’s Poet Laureate, Demeanor has been telling stories about Calgary in his work as a singer-songwriter, as an actor in productions such as Making Treaty 7 and Calgary, I Love You, But You’re Killing Me, and in his latest book,

How To Be An Asshole of Calgary:

I think many of those stories that I followed I actually couldn’t have done anywhere else.

They were actually very specific to this place, which is the irony. In some ways, I don’t

feel attached to this place—attached to this city per say—but I am very much attached to

the region, and the people and the environment, and that’s where a lot of the material for

a lot of the projects I have looked at these past few years has sprung up from. So that’s

why I keep coming back. (Demeanor, Personal Interview)

Demeanor expresses both attachment to and estrangement from the city of Calgary, acknowledging that considerations of landscape are innate within his work as an artist. His artistic works view the city in both a positive and negative light. Acknowledging this dichotomy puts forth a perspective that is at variance with discourses that solely celebrate the city as it’s arts scene further grows and develops, echoing the perspective put forward by Blake Brooker and the

One Yellow Rabbit ensemble. When asked how he has seen the Calgary theatre scene change over the past four decades, Blake Brooker said the following:

It’s just gotten bigger and there’s more groups. A lot of people back in the day, the

dominant theatre companies, were doing extant work, script-based theatre. Now, a lot of

people are creating their own stuff, and co-creating, and doing site-specific, you know all

the variety of performance types that are around now in Calgary. And there’s lots of

young groups, small groups that have been added to the ecology. (Brooker, Personal

Interview)

Kris Demeanor offers his perspective, and hopes, for the future of Calgary’s arts scene:

I’d like to think we’re in a healthy space that way and there’s no shortage of imagination,

and intention, and capability here […] I think the scene is robust and I have seen that

evolution happen in real time. And that’s another reason why I keep coming back here

[Calgary]. I do have trust in that community, that’s it’s going to keep finding ways to

make things. (Demeanour, Personal Interview)

A city’s arts scene is strengthened by the artists who are determined to stay and create. For the six theatre artists profiled in this thesis study, Calgary is home, whether temporary or permanent.

In our interview, Makambe Simamba expressed a desire to leave Calgary in the coming years to explore other artistic scenes across Canada and globally. However, she also stated that “there’s

so much about Calgary I have yet to discover […] I’m excited to do so and I hope that other artists are too. I hope it’s not just a stepping stone for everybody” (Simamba, Personal

Interview).

Conclusion

This study has looked at the contributions of six Calgary-based theatre artists to their local theatre scene through close examination of these artists’ relationship with the city they choose to live in and the urban landscape that surrounds them. By considering the works of these artists within the theoretical framework of psychogeography, I have drawn attention to the rich tapestry of experiential aspects of urban landscapes that exist and are often overlooked in studies of urban spaces. Elucidating the aesthetic constructs of a particular landscape, I have argued that the work of these artists carves out space for alternative perspectives and narratives. Differing experiences of place evoke a multiplicity of meaning, a perceptual shift that envisions the city as multi-dimensional: “When you stop to reflect upon how you’re reflecting, or reflect upon how you’re imagining your world, then it’s not rocket science to know that each place will have its own peculiar intersections of human psychology and place, and the people who come there”

(Brooker, Personal Interview). A heightened psychogeographical awareness allows for new ways of experiencing the urban landscape, interfusing regional histories and mythic conceptualizations of a place with emotional responses thereby creating a diversified mapping of the psychological topography of the city of Calgary, contributing to diversified understandings of space and spatiality. This study has also aimed to analyze the artistic development of Calgary’s theatre scene and the accompanying historical development of the city, and the ways in which urban spaces lay the foundation for creative processes. It has focused on embodied and sensorial ways of approaching geography, through an analysis and interpretation of the cultural meaning embedded in a specific urban landscape. Finally, it has revealed new intersections and emerging hybrid fields of research and inquiry that look at theatre and live performance through sensory, social, and spatial perspectives.

The city is nebulous by nature, its identity fluid, shifting, and constantly changing. It is always in flux, up for debate. The identification of the city's identity is culturally, socially, and politically contextual. It is the product of the formulation of all these aspects. Calgary is a city of possibility and its artists, bold and inventive, are further proof. Art enriches our understanding of place. It transforms urban spaces, often leading to new meanings and discoveries that revivify the regional perspectives associated with the city. Artistic works have the capacity to expose the fallibilities of the myths commonly told—the point being is that sweeping myths do not tell the whole story. Instead, they capture only a mere fraction of the total range of sensorial experiences of a geographical place. In this thesis, I have argued for greater attentiveness to sensorial experiences of urban spaces, emotional navigations of the complex structures of the city resulting in embodied knowledge derived from the study of live performance and artistic creative processes. A psychogeographical orientation encourages individuals to move beyond what the map has already deemed charted territory, and an embodied and artistic approach to landscape can enhance our ability to develop more fully integrated understandings of the affective and evocative qualities of urban spaces resulting in a body of creative urban research This calls for the delicate art of looking between the lines, and at what has fallen between the cracks, the knowledge deposited in an urban space, discovered in intermittent traces that inform how this space is viewed, in order to navigate the mosaic of intersecting thoughts, memories, impressions, and perspectives about Calgary.

There is future research potential to conduct studies which contrast the experiences of artists in one urban location with artists in different cities globally, rethinking the ways in which urban spaces are engaged and the resulting aesthetic implications of this engagement. There is also potential to study different artistic disciplines in relation to this topic, viewing the theory of

psychogeography along more performative lines than has been previously explored. I hope this study can provide greater insight into what art can lend a city, and all things indicative of a vibrant, thriving local arts scene. I hope it will spark curiosity about the Calgary theatre scene, including the historical context that surrounds its development. I also hope it encourages better documentation of the arts scene of Calgary, an important process that has a tendency to be overlooked, charting the growth and cultural development of a city that is still quite new by many standards. I offer this guided by my personal whole-hearted belief that if anyone is to define the soul of this city, it is Calgary’s artists who are most apt at accomplishing this insurmountable task.

Artistic works about a city may provide an oppositional form of representation that runs counter to regional discourses. It may encourage those viewing a city to bring into consideration alternative narratives and stories that further discussions pertaining to the identity of the city, and of the influence that urbanity has on the community. From the walking-based experiments of the

Situationists in 1950s Paris, to contemporary theatre in Calgary, psychogeography is a powerful means through which to explore the intersection between art and life that views the city as a space that may be defined and appropriated in ways that run counter to dominant discourses.

Like the Situationists who criticized the capitalist domination of space, Henri Lefebvre insists that “any revolutionary ‘project’ today, whether utopian or realistic, must, if it is to avoid hopeless banality, make the reappropriation of the body, in association with the reappropriation of space, into a non-negotiable part of its agenda” (166-67). The work of all the artists profiled in this document suggest new ways of seeing and understanding a city, revealing the transformative potential of art.

Appendix: Sample Interview Questions

1. Are you a native Calgarian?

2. How long have you lived in Calgary?

3. What is your educational background?

4. Do you live in the city’s urban centre?

5. Which part(s) of the city do you frequently visit? How do you get there?

6. Do the histories and myths of the Calgary region inform your artistic practice? What does this history mean to you?

7. How do you define landscape?

8. In what ways does landscape figure in your artistic practice?

9. Have you ever lived anywhere else for an extended period of time? a. If so, where and for how long? b. Did those landscapes influence your artistic practice? If so, how?

10. Do you create with primarily local (and urban) audiences in mind?

11. Where in Calgary do you like to go when you need creative inspiration?

12. Do you address ecological issues in your artistic practice?

13. In your opinion, what are the distinguishing characteristics of the Calgary arts scene?

14. Do you aspire to make a contribution to the artistic landscape of Calgary?

Project specific questions:

15. How did you get involved with this project?

16. Did working on this project challenge your pre-existing conceptions and understandings of landscape?

17. Did your work on this project engage with the history and myths of this region?

18. What did you hope to achieve with this project?

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