When the papers are over, the party’s still going. Our next featured artist, Sarah Marchand, will be presenting her one-woman piece #Ytheatre in our final event of the conference – a solo performance cabaret on Sunday, February 7th:
Struggling to find stable employment, spending countless hours for unpaid work, stretching one’s mental and social well being for a poorly attended performance–all at what cost? Why do we continue to produce theatre knowing the risks involved?
As an emerging actress, I have often asked myself and other theatre enthusiasts this question and usually receive the same answer: “because we’re crazy and we love it”. Now that I am no longer a student, however, and am actively pursuing a career in theatre, I am dissatisfied with this response. Why are artists pursuing an artform that grows increasingly outdated? Can theatre still have an impact on people in a digitized age? How can we get more audiences to attend live performances? Is it feasible to pursue theatre as a career, or should it remain a hobby that we do outside of our full-time job?
Inspired by the work of Anna Deavere Smith, #Ytheatre seeks to explore some of these prevalent questions in a verbatim theatre piece.
Bio:
Sarah Marchand is an MA graduate from the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies. She hold a BFA in Theatre Performance and Honours English Literature from Concordia University and is the 2013 recipient of the Hnatyshyn Foundation’s Emerging. Artist Grant in English Theatre. As part of her practice-based research, she seeks to explore how the performing arts respond to an increasingly digitized age. Other performance interests include Peking Opera, Elizabethan theatre and contemporary Canadian works.
FOOT 2016 