Nine years ago, a group of refugees from the Rwandan genocide met in a Montreal theatre space to share painful stories of war and displacement.
It was an emotionally intense experience, as members of an improv troupe called Living Histories Ensemble transformed those testimonials into dramatic form, “playing them back” to participants.
Using an inventive art form called playback theatre, the ensemble worked with the Rwandan community in Montreal to help participants process their victimization during the brutal 1994 Rwandan civil war.
“We're always trying to figure out how to allow people to find the power of agency, of owning their stories.”
The exercise was not meant to simply rip open old wounds, but to give survivors voice and help them move towards brighter days, according to the company’s co-founder and art therapist Lucy Lu, who now runs Thirdspace Playback Theatre in Edmonton with her partner, Paul Gareau of the U of A’s Faculty of Native Studies.
“We didn't want them to get into their regular narrative of, ‘This is what happened to me,’” said Lu, who serves as the group’s artistic director. “We’re not asking them for the trauma stories. It was more reframing the question—what's the legacy you'd like to leave behind?”
“We're always trying to figure out how to allow people to find the power of agency, of owning their stories.”
In typical improvisational fashion, playback sessions begin with warm-up exercises, questions and prompts from audience members, gradually evolving into longer narratives, said Gareau, who as a musician adds music to the process.
“As the group warms up, the forms get longer, to the point where someone wants to tell a story, either related to the theme or to what other people are saying,” he said.
“By then it becomes an hour-and-a-half show in which we are doing full story forms …. It's unscripted, improvised theatre.”
While playback theatre has grown into an international movement, it isn’t always focused on stories of exclusion and inclusion, “growing up different or trying to fit in,” said Gareau.
“Sometimes playback can be very white—this work (exploring intersecting identities) hasn't been done before.
“We are invested in hearing stories of negotiating the margins, and the centre, of our constructed or chosen identities along the spectrum of race, gender, class and sexual orientation.”
Since 2005, Lu and Gareau have worked with a diverse range of marginalized communities, including Indigenous, immigrant/refugee, LGBTQ2+, people of colour, differently abled and of varying ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
Specific groups include Holocaust survivors, Cambodian refugees, the local Filipino community and witnesses to the 2006 shooting at Dawson College in Montreal 10 years later.
The company now has members in Calgary and Hamilton in addition to Edmonton and Montreal.
“What’s important about our work is that we are a BIPOC group,” said Gareau. “We have Black, Indigenous and people of colour, and we focus on those BIPOC experiences. It's about critical race engagement. It's about identity.”
In a recent playback performance, for example, the ensemble asked the audience, “As a racialized individual, what is your experience of COVID? That changes the whole question from generalized to something very specific,” said Lu.
She added that while she and Gareau had hoped to use playback as a way to approach reconciliation, it doesn’t work as well in what she calls “mixed company,” or an audience of both settler and Indigenous origins.
In the wake of recent global protests around racism, and the demands for greater equity, people have some hard thinking to do on their own before joining the wider group, she said.
“Many people just haven't done the work yet. They don't actually acknowledge institutional racism, or they don't acknowledge systemic forms of oppression. In this moment, I think everyone needs to regroup and figure out what this all means.”
For the past two years, Thirdspace has used the Arts-Based Research Studio in the Faculty of Education, run by community theatre specialist Diane Conrad and funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation. But now many of the company’s immediate aspirations have been put on hold as the troupe adapts to the restrictions of COVID-19 and make it work online.
“Playback is a very physical, emotive kind of play—touching and piling on top of each other,” said Gareau. “So now we're just trying to figure out how to make contact with people.”
As soon as conditions allow, Gareau plans to hold an open rehearsal to work with youth from BIPOC communities. He also just received a grant from the U of A’s Intersections of Gender, designed to support the intersection of research creation and community engagement.
“Playback is a place where we can have a conversation more constructive towards unpacking systemic racism and the legacy of settler colonialism,” said Gareau.
Great ideas change the world, but ideas need a push forward. At the University of Alberta, we know that push has never been more important as we do our part to rebuild Alberta and keep doors of opportunity open to all. We're making research discoveries. We’re cultivating entrepreneurs. And we’re giving our students the knowledge and skills they need to turn today's ideas into tomorrow's innovations. Read more stories about U of A innovators .