Audiences in the Archive

Audiences in the Archive with Michael Wallace and Dr. Kelsey Jacobson

The working group session was an in-depth conversation of finding audiences in the records, remnants and memories of past performances.

Michael Wallace is the Executive Director of Theatre Museum Canada, which is a small museum preserving and celebrating our country's performing arts heritage. Wallace is a graduate of the University of King's College (Theatre Studies & Production) and worked in professional theatre as a stage manager before returning to school and earning an MBA at York University’s Schulich School of Business, with specializations in nonprofit and arts management. He has volunteered with the CMA for many years, as well as with the Ontario Museums Association/s conferences and the Toronto Museums Network. Learn more about Canada's Theatre Museum.

Dr. Kelsey Jacobson is an Assistant Professor in the Dan School of Drama and Music at Queen’s University where she teaches theatre history, theory, literature, and directing. She is also a co-founder and director of the Centre for Spectatorship and Theatre Research. Kelsey is an experienced theatre director, deviser, and designer. The core of Dr. Jacobson’s research is the examination of what it means to be an audience member in the 21st-century. She asks, how do audience members engage with artistic experiences, both in-person and online? Her studies have considered the role audiences play in creating a sense of felt realness in theatre of the real; the function and ethics of audience labour in immersive and participatory theatre; and how to research historical audiences through archives and theatre records.

Theatre Museum Canada is a Partner Organization of Gatherings: Archival and Oral Histories of Performance. Michael Wallace, Kelsey Jacobson and moderator Jenny Salisbury are involved in this initiative. For more information, see https://gatheringspartnership.com.

Presented over Zoom.