Editorial: Places, Spaces, and Practices of Performance

Over thirty years ago, Michel de Certeau distinguished between places and spaces in his influential work The Practice of Everyday Life. Explaining that place refers to "the order (of whatever kind) in accord with which elements are distributed in relationships of coexistence," de Certeau tells us that place is "an instantaneous configuration of positions," providing "an indication of stability" (117). We might consider a theatre, the building itself and the specific physical areas within it, as a place: at a given moment in time, we can—with a level of precision and certainty—characterize the size of a stage, the position of wardrobe shops in relation to dressing rooms, the location of a theatre within a given city.

A space, de Certeau continues, "takes into consideration vectors of direction, velocities, and time variables." It is "composed of intersections of mobile elements" (117). A theatre can also be understood as a space: we can and frequently do consider the relationships and interactions—for example, between actors and audience, set and body, lighting and sound—that occur in the place. Spaces are, according to de Certeau, practised places (117), locations in which human practices take place.

In Reading the Material Theatre, Ric Knowles argues that "space and place impinge directly on both production and reception," particularly in relation to "the ways in which space itself exerts its influence, silently inscribing or disrupting specific (and ideologically coded) ways of working, for practitioners, and of seeing and understanding, for audiences" (62–63). The impacts of place and space extend beyond the physical bounds of a theatre building itself; Knowles remarks that "[t]he geography of performance is both produced by and produces the cultural landscape and the social organization of the space in which it 'takes place,' and to shift physical and/or social space is to shift meaning" (63). Each of the pieces in this issue's "Views and Reviews" section explores the complex relationships between place, space, practice, and meaning, particularly how these relationships emerge in and are challenged by performances that transform unconventional places into theatrical spaces.

Gail Murray begins by reviewing two books on applied theatre: Theatre and Learning, edited by Art Babayants and Heather Fitzsimmons Frey, and Theatre, Teens, Sex Ed: Are We There Yet?, by Jan Selman and Jane Heather (winner of the Patrick O'Neill Book Award from the Canadian Association for Theatre Research, 2016). The performances outlined by Selman and Heather and by the contributors to Theatre and Learning provide an overview of how applied-theatre practices challenge the conventional relationships between creator and actor, audience, and meaning, often (although not always) through performance practices that involve unconventional uses of performance space.

The next two pieces address practices for transforming ordinary places into performance spaces and their implications. Donnie Laflamme and Lisa Zanyk describe their experience performing canonical plays in an Ottawa-area pub. Chamber Theatre Hintonburg takes the well-known place of the community tavern, as a space to drink, watch hockey, eat, and meet friends, and temporarily reimagines and reconfigures it as a theatre. Not only through the physical addition of a stage riser and audience seating but also through the interactions between actors and audience and the addition of classical performance text, the place is transformed and new relationships—between people, and between people and performance—are generated. Rob Kempson then raises important questions about the storefront theatre movement, particularly with regard to how these new performance spaces impact creation practices, economic relations, and the means of theatrical production. These questions are pressing, Kempson argues, because storefront theatres and indie production models have a significant impact on the overall cultural ecology and long-term sustainability of the theatre scenes in major Canadian cities.

In "Inclusive Theatre Space: Bursting through the Boundaries of Spatial Restrictions, One Project at a Time," Jessica Watkin uses the example of lemonTree creations' 2016 production Body Politic to examine inclusive theatre practices. Contending that a holistic approach to inclusivity means recognizing that "barriers deterring audience members from attending inclusive performances actually begin outside of the theatre and may begin to develop long before a performance takes...