Concordia fine arts students team up with the Canadian Centre for Architecture
Lizzie Esses: “Our final performance will be a way for us to go public with our creative engagements with the building’s history and enact our own contemporary haunting of the site.”
A new collaboration between Concordia’s Department of Theatre and the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) is giving students the opportunity to perform in a historic space. Through site-specific theatre, they will be exploring the CCA’s architecture, archives and social histories in an effort to make these elements more tangible and dynamic.
Associate professor of theatre Shauna Janssen, who is leading the initiative, sees this as an opportunity to bridge theatre and architecture in a meaningful way.
“So much of making site-specific art has to do with revealing or problematizing otherwise overlooked histories of place,” she explains. “Theatre and performance are embodied fields of practice that help us understand and contend with the ways architecture and space can become collaborators in the creative process. Creating at the intersections of theatre and architecture can inform, challenge, expand, complement or reframe one another through a broader understanding of performance and space.”
Eleven students from various disciplines — including performance creation, scenography, studio arts, dance and art history — are participating in the project as part of their site-specific theatre course, Site-Specific Performance Practice (PERC 486). They are currently developing individual works that respond to the built and social history of the CCA and its surrounding cultural landscape. The public will encounter their projects by roaming freely among the installations and performances staged throughout the CCA, particularly in the historic Shaughnessy House.
Performance creation student Lizzie Esses describes the experience: “We’re working with themes of haunting, memories of place and palimpsests, which is particularly inspiring because the CCA building has a long history as both a historical site and a research facility,” Esses explains.
“Our final performance will be a way for us to go public with our creative engagements with the building’s history and enact our own contemporary haunting of the site.”
Janssen emphasizes that this collaboration is about more than just performance — it’s about reimagining how people experience space.
“The project invites audiences to move through the CCA in a different way, to encounter performances that challenge traditional theatre settings and instead immerse themselves in the spatial and historical narratives of the site.”
The event, titled Haunted Happenings, takes place on April 12 from 2 to 5 p.m.
Find out more details about this collaboration between Concordia’s Department of Theatre and the Canadian Centre for Architecture.
