The CDTPS is excited to announce that registration is now open for our 31st annual Festival of Original Theatre (FOOT) Conference happening over three days from February 9 to 11. This year’s theme of We Live Together explores the broad responsibility we have to each other, to the sciences, to supporting movements toward social justice, to realizing indigenous protocols, to engaging with economics, and to fighting for ecosystems. The conference calls on performance to create spaces in which we can imagine ways to live a future together.
The agenda is filled with presentations, performances, roundtables, panel discussions and workshops. There are multiple unique sessions that you can attend including a story telling circle, a co-creative performative documentary, an interactive dance performance and a game. You can choose to be an active participant or you can sit back and soak it all in.
Many scholars and aspiring scholars from institutions as far west as the University of Victoria to several universities in Québec to the University of Kansas will be taking part in FOOT 2023.
This year’s keynote lecture will be delivered by Dr. Sarah Bay-Cheng, dean of the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design and professor of Theatre & Performance Studies at York University. Her presentation titled, “We Other Digitarians: The History of Intermediality & the Changing Face of ‘We” will ask who is the ‘we’ of today, and more importantly, who gets to say so?
This year’s keynote performance titled Benevolence is written and directed by Kevin Matthew Wong who is the co-founder and artistic director of Broadleaf Creative and senior producer and artistic associate at Why Not Theatre. This performance examines and celebrates the history of the Hakka diaspora in Canada, who represent some of the first Chinese in this country.
Be sure to register and receive the meeting details and full agenda, which will be available very soon. It is free to register and attend this conference.
The start and end times for the conference are as follows:
- Thursday, February 9 – 12pm to 7pm
- Friday, February 10 – 10:30am to 9pm
- Saturday, February 11 – 10am to 9pm
For more information and to keep updated on the latest details about the conference, visit uoft.me/FOOT2023.