Langara's diversity drama College backed diversity project stalled after funding trouble

By RAY CHOPPING

ALangara-funded research project aimed at increasing diversity in its theatre programs has stalled after insufficient funding.

The project will provide Langara’s contemporary art curriculum with plays, scenes and monologues, which will more directly reflect the cultural mix of the students who bring the works alive on stage.

Artistic director of Studio 58

Kathryn Shaw, who is spearheading the project, said there has been a severe lack of diversity in Canada’s theatrical teaching curriculums for a long time.

The project was started by Shaw in the summer of 2018 after receiving a Research and Scholarly Activity Fund award from Langara.

According to Shaw, the goal of the project is “to diversify and decolonize the Studio 58 curriculum.”

Kelly Sveinson, the chair of Langara’s Applied Research Centre said that awards allow Langara faculty members to pursue projects outside their main curriculum, which help deepen the college’s teachings.

Shaw used the grant money to hire two research assistants and compile a database of more than 600 plays from around the world.

“We need to stretch beyond the canon of old white men’s plays,” Shaw said. “We need to find voices from all ethnicities, women and LGBTQ and better reflect them to our own diverse student body.”

But with the award money exhausted to pay for the research assistants, the project has effectively stalled.

“I simply don’t have the time to do it,” Shaw said.

In this case, the tool used is a survey on health topics such as physical activity, sexual behaviour and substance use.

The survey is in a pilot phase and is currently only active at Langara, UBC and the University of Toronto. However, according to an email from CCWS project manager Nikki Reiter, 17 additional post-secondary institutions will join the project between January and March of 2020, following the current pilot phase.

Reiter said participating schools will be able to use the system to view their own statistics, as well as others. “Institutions will be able to compare themselves nationally to an aggregated dataset and see how they fare in core areas of student wellbeing,” Reiter said. “We hope that the CCWS will be the new standard for information gathering for student mental and physical health and wellbeing on campuses across Canada.”

Plays found in the new database are proving popular with students.

“It’s a really important thing that Kathryn is doing,” Silken Lawson, a third term student from Studio 58 said.

Studio 58’s current production Anon(ymous), a contemporary re-imagining of The Odyssey, directed by Carmen Aguirre, is just one of the plays found through Shaw’s database project.

Anon(ymous) narrates a story of a young refugee boy who travels to the U.S. looking for his mother who has disappeared.

“It’s so relevant, it tells many stories of people silenced in our world today,” Lawson said.