Jill Carter

As a researcher and theatre-worker, Jill Carter (Anishinaabe/Ashkenazi) works in Tkaron:to with many Indigenous artists to support the development of new works and to disseminate artistic objectives, process, and outcomes through community-driven research projects. Her scholarly research, creative projects, and activism are built upon ongoing relationships with Indigenous Elders, scholars, youth, artists and activists positioning her as witness to, participant in, and disseminator of oral histories that speak to the application of Indigenous aesthetic principles and traditional knowledge systems to contemporary performance.    
 
The research questions she pursues revolve around the mechanics of story creation, the processes of delivery and the manufacture of affect. More recently, she has concentrated upon Indigenous pedagogical models for the rehearsal studio and the lecture hall; the application of Indigenous [insurgent] research methods within performance studies; the politics of land acknowledgements; and land-based dramaturgies/activations/interventions.

She is a member of the Indigenous Research Network at the University of Toronto and a member of the University of Toronto’s Research Ethics Board (SSHE Panel C).

Apart from her teaching, theatre work and academic writing, Jill is a member of the Indigenous Dramaturgy Lab; works as a researcher and tour guide with First Story Toronto (http://ncct.on.ca/first-story-toronto-app-bus-tour/); facilitates Land Acknowledgement and Land-Based Creation workshops for theatre makers in this city;  co-facilitates Treaty and Art-Making workshops with Kanien'kehá:ka multi-disciplinary artist Ange Loft; serves on the editorial board of Theatre Survey; and works with the Directors’ Lab North as Artistic Associate.

In 2020, Jill was awarded an Early Career Teaching Award from the University of Toronto and was nominated for an Ontario Arts Council Indigenous Arts Award. In 2021, she received her Certificate in Effective University Instruction from the Association of College and University Educators and the American Council on Education (ACUE).

Selected Recent and Forthcoming Publications:

“We are Here: Charting a Personal Cosmography through Waterways, Bloodlines, and Constellations.” The Routledge Companion to Applied Performance. Volume One, Mainland Europe, North and Latin America, Southern Africa, and Australia and New Zealand. Eds. Ananda Breed and Tim Prentki. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2021.149-157.

“A Moment of Reckoning, an Activation of Refusal, A Project of Reworlding.” Canadian Theatre Review. (186): Spring, 2021. 13-17.

“Indigenous Perspectives on Ethics and Theatre.” Ruby Peter (Quw'utsun' Tribes, Canada) Kim Senklip Harvey (theatre practitioner, Canada), Thomas Jones (University of Victoria, Canada), and Jill Carter (University of Toronto, Canada) with Kirsten Sadeghi-Yekta (University of Victoria, Canada). Applied Theatre: Ethics. Eds. Kirsten Sadeghi-Yekta et. al. Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. 18-42.

“Addressing Neptune, Welcoming Redress.” Canadian Performance Documents and Debates: A Sourcebook. Eds. Allana Lindgren, Anthony Vickery, and Glen Nichols. University of Alberta Press, 2022. 1-7.

“Encounters at the Edge of the Woods: Relational Repair from within Irreconcilable Space.” Theatre, Dance and Performance Training (Special Issue: Performance Training and Wellbeing). 2022. 13:2, 170-179. https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rtdp20/13/2/ 

Burelle, Julie and Jill Carter. “Courage, Capacity, Earth-Diving: Riting Safe(r) Spaces Down in the “Muck” or Sauter à pieds joints dans la vase: approches courageuses pour l’aménagement d’espaces de création (plus) sécuritaires.” Percées - Explorations en arts vivants (Special Issue: Indigenous theatre and performance: rules of engagement) Forthcoming spring 2023.

Books/Journals Edited

Co-editor (with Julie Burelle): Percées - Explorations en arts vivants (Special Issue: Indigenous theatre and performance: rules of engagement) Forthcoming fall 2023.

Co-Author / Editor Retreating to Re-Treat: A Performative Encounter at the ‘Edge of the Woods.’ (Co-author with the Collective Encounter and Editor). Playwrights Canada Press. (Forthcoming fall 2023). 

Books (Published)

Co-Author: A Treaty Guide for Torontonians (Ange Loft, Victoria Freeman, Martha Stiegman, and Jill Carter). Jumblies Theatre & Arts and Toronto Biennial of Art. (2022).

Author: Between the Layers: Spiderwoman Theater Moves a Mola of Survivance. University of Toronto Press. (Forthcoming fall 2024)

Current Projects

1. Critical Digital Humanities Institute (U of T): Emerging Projects Fund. Co-Investigator. Developing a New First Story Toronto Website to Explore Anti-Colonial and Anti-Extractive Methods in Sharing Indigenous Knowledges Online. Professors Jon Johnson and Jill Carter of First Story, Tkaron:to will be exploring the potential of digital initiatives and media to augment, extend and support the work of building and sustaining ethical relationality with Indigenous peoples, lands, and knowledges through storytelling pedagogies, which  refuse voyeuristic, extractive engagements with digitized Indigenous Knowledges. To this end, we will build a website that will become the foundation of First Story’s online presence, bringing together its current and past digital initiatives and social media, while also providing a place to launch and host future digital storytelling initiatives through which to explore the promotion of ethical, anti-colonial, and respectful engagements with Indigenous Knowledges, lands, and peoples. The CDHI Emerging Projects Grant allows the research-creation team to explore content management frameworks and practices through which to curate the digital publication of Indigenous place-based knowledge—a public-facing offering that precludes extraction and that effectively leads its users through a process of ethical witnessing (Johnson and Recollet; Carter). 

2. Henry Luce Foundation. Relations on the Land: A Hub for Community-Engaged Research & Teaching with Indigenous Partners. (Co-investigator). Professor Pamela Klassen (Dept. of Religious Studies) leads a team of Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers, students and community members within a multi-disciplinary community-engaged research hub, which is committed to achieving reciprocal and sustainable research and/or teaching projects that benefit Indigenous partners and their communities.

3. Dramaturg: A Wretched Mourning by Professor Roy Moodley (currently in development)

4. Dramaturg: How to Remember by Daniel McIvor (currently in development).

5. In 2018, Jill joined the research team of Gatherings--Archival and Oral Histories of Canadian Performance. This began as a three-year research initiative led by Professor Stephen Johnson. The project is now entering its fifth year and has received additional support from SSHRC. As a co-investigator within this project, Jill hopes to increase Indigenous presence in the repository of oral histories and to aid in the establishment of a research model (based in Indigenous research methods) for performance scholars and/or oral historians who work with Indigenous artists and their communities. 

6. Since 2020, Jill has been collaborating with Professor Antje Budde (PI) and Antje’s DDL2 Team on Storying the 94, a series of site-specific performance-interventions devised and performed by members of Native Performance Culture and the Rhythm of (Re) Conciliation: Remembering Ourselves in Deep Time. The first of these interventions, for which Jill served as co-devisor, director, and dramaturg was supported by Hart House and the Centre for Indigenous Studies. It was first livestreamed in October 2021. https://youtu.be/VxEpi0noKLU. 

Earlier work together includes a series of short films for a larger multi-media online web performance entitled “Rattling the Curve - Paradoxical ECODATA performances of A/I and facial recognitions of humans and trees” and with Minding Niimi/ Imagination/Imaging: Digital Theatre in the Round presented by Be-coming Tree in 2021. 

Niimi I (s/he dances): https://vimeo.com/504562493

Niimi II: https://vimeo.com/504596805 

Niimi virtual: https://vimeo.com/542865874

7. In 2019, Jill  directed and co-authored Encounters at the ‘Edge of the Woods,’ which opened Hart House Theatre’s centenary season (September 2019). Rooted in the land on which we live and work (Tkaronto) and in the storyweaving methodologies of Sto:Lo scholar/author Lee Maracle and Guna- Rappahannock writer/director/performer Muriel Miguel (Spiderwoman Theater) this production locates performers and witnesses within the fraught history of Indigenous-settler encounters on Indigenous homelands, situating all as Treaty people (with inherited responsibilities to the lands upon which we live and work and to the original peoples who continue to steward these biotas that sustain us all). https://harthouse.ca/theatre/show/encounters-at-the-edge-of-the-woods. The play accompanied by reflections of the creation team is slated for publication by Playwrights Canada Press in October 2023.