Women’s Theatre and Creativity Centre

Contact: Tessa Mendel

http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/Culture/WTCC/overview.html

The Woman’s Theatre and Creativity Centre in Halifax, inaugurated in 1995, has a mandate to connect women and community, creativity and social transformation. They offer workshops that range from one day sessions to twelve week programs. They have produced performance pieces, mainstage plays, forum theatre, and a televised production.  One of the plays was presented at the 1997 International Festival of Theatre of the Oppressed.

Artistic Director, Tessa Mendel, has taught developmental drama Theatre Programs at Memorial University, Newfoundland and Acadia, Dalhousie and Mount Saint Vincent Universities in Nova Scotia. She was also the founder of a Toronto theatre company which worked with youth to look at issues of public housing.

Their research falls into two areas - one would be the content we 'uncover' the other would be the processes we use. In terms of the content, that depends very much on the communities we are engaging with at any particular time and the issues they are working with. We have done a lot of work with women's organizations around internal and external barriers women face, and we have also worked with senior's groups around the need for assertiveness training, and a Black Women's group on health issues. Gender, race and poverty have been important research areas for us ... In terms of the process my/our main areas of research have been exploring how/why they creative arts work as a tool for transformational change, how to create a model of a learning process that incorporates change and is teachable to others, and how to use the creative arts in a multidisciplinary way to work most usefully together.  We intentionally try to link personal issues with the larger society”. First, at the community level they partner with community organizations to offer workshops in popular theatre, visual arts and writing.

The Centre also organizes arts events and publishes materials and books.  One of the focus areas, within their mission, includes the goal of developing “connections between theatre and other forms of artistic expression”.  An area of research they wish to explore in the future is, “how theory and practice intersect in using the creative arts for social change and education.