Interactive Theatre, Advocacy, and the Pursuit of Freedom

This piece is a conversation among the Ribbon Rouge Foundation’s ArtSpace Theatre Team. We reflect on the experience of creating and performing This Is Canada, an interactive play focusing on personal and systemic challenges faced by refugees and immigrants to Canada. Performers/creators are members of Edmonton’s African, Caribbean, and/or Black communities. We created the play based on responding to experiences shared in theatre workshops by adult learners in an English language program for Canadian newcomers. Group members’ own immigration experiences also inform the work. In this conversation, the creative team considers how the play (creation process, theatrical form, characters, and story) and the performance (our participatory experiences) exemplify challenges and benefits of using theatre and performance as agents of advocacy in the pursuit of freedom. In this conversation, we critically reflect on ways that freedom and social justice intersect.