Working Group with Jenny Salisbury

For the working group, Jenny offered her current case study of performance within the Toronto Jewish Diaspora, considering the 2015 play A Simple Twist of Faith by Evan and Rafe Malach. Including site-specific dramaturgy, contemporary and cultural music, documentary and community ritual, this play offers a complicated field of interpretation that audiences engage with sophistication and nuance.

Reading: Walmsley, B. "Co-creating Art, Meaning, and Value" in Audience Engagement in the Performing Arts. Palgrave Macmillian, 2019, pg. 165 - 198

Jenny Salisbury is a director, dramaturge, and theatre educator, currently completely her Ph.D. at the University of Toronto. She is a co-founder of the Centre for Spectatorship and Audience Research, and continues to champion engaged-scholarship with diverse audiences across Canada. Her SSHRC-funded thesis study “Community-Engaged Theatre Audiences” argues that an analysis of audience reflections strengthens and complicates understandings of performance with social justice ambitions. Her teaching and research interests include contemporary Canadian play creation and devising processes.

Presented at UTSC.