Dr. Edward (Ted) Little, PhD, MA, BFA.

Professor

Dr. Edward (Ted) Little is a retired educator, essayist, writer, and theatre maker.  He holds a BFA in Theatre (acting and directing) from the University of Victoria, an MA in Canadian Drama from the University of Guelph, and a Ph.D. in community engaged theatre and dramatic theory from the University of Toronto.  Over the course of his career, he directed and served as consultant on numerous large and small-scale theatre projects across Canada. He served as Editor-in-Chief of alt.theatre (2002-2012) and from 2000 to 2017, he was Associate Artistic Director of Teesri Duniya Theatre--an innovative, Montreal-based company dedicated to the creation and production of socially and politically relevant theatre based on the cultural experiences of diverse communities.

At Concordia, served as Chair of the Department of Theatre (2005-2009 & 2014-2017), Member of the Board of Governors representing Fine Arts (2011-2014), and Provost's Fellow charged with enhancement of the first-year student experience (2014-2016). He retired from Concordia and moved to Vancouver Island in 2017. 

Artistic direction

Associate Artistic Director, Teesri Duniya Theatre.
Teesri Duniya Theatre (the name means "third world" in Hindustani) is dedicated to developing and presenting socially and politically relevant theatre based on the cultural experiences of diverse communities. The company engages in mainstage productions, new play development, community engaged projects, and publication of the quarterly journal, alt.theatre: cultural diversity and the stage.

Visit Teesri Duniya Theatre

Innovative Pedagogy

Co-investigator, The Right to the City Project (RTTC).
This project is an exploration in innovative teaching funded by a 2014 Concordia Curriculum Innovation grant.  In Fall, 2014, the project brought together three courses focusing on Pointe St. Charles--a historically working-class neighbourhood with a long history of community mobilization. Meeting weekly in a space owned by Share the Warmth--a citizen-led resource founded on the principles of social economy, education as a right, food justice, and community self-determination--these classes in oral history, urbanization, and theatre set out to discover how learning with the city, and across disciplines, can enrich education while giving back to the community at large.

Current plans are to continue the project next year with the addition of a forth class in art education.

Visit The Right to the City Project

Interdisciplinary research & web-based publication

Co-investigator, Going Public with Oral History, Documentary Media, and Performance.
Going Public is a research project funded by Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Insight Development Program) with co-researchers Elizabeth Miller (Documentary Media and Communication Studies), Ted Little (Socially Engaged and Activist Theatre), and Steve High (Canada Research Chair in Public History). Going Public brings together individuals using interdisciplinary methodologies founded on the core values of collaboration, transparency and shared authority to explore the social, political, and aesthetic dimensions of contemporary international public art practice:

For us, going public means far more than exploring the potential of new technologies and finding new audiences for our research - it means redefining the research process itself. How can university-based researchers and artists collaborate effectively and use technological innovations to reach larger publics or make a deeper impact? How do we include a wider circle in the conversation? How do, and how might, oral history, new media and community-engaged arts contribute to public knowledge and to healthy and sustainable relationships, organizations, institutions, communities, schools,and neighbourhoods? How can we transform our creative and intellectual work into public scholarship? Specifically, we will build on existing and emerging connections to learn about and with innovative and ongoing interdisciplinary projects in Canada and around the world.

Visit Going Public.

Community-University research partnerships

Co-investigator, Member of the Coordinating Committee, and Leader of the Performance working group for Life Stories of Montrealers Displaced by War, Genocide and other Human Rights Violations.
Montreal Life Stories was a five-year, SSHRC funded Community-University Research Alliance (CURA) project. While the funded research phase of the project (2007-2012) has concluded, the project's website maintains a database of close to 500 interviews, digital stories, and links to film, video, and performance projects, and ongoing publication projects.

Visit Montreal Life Stories.

Editor-in-Chief

Editor-in-Chief, alt.theatre: cultural diversity and the stage (2000-2012).
alt.theatre is Canada's only professional theatre journal examining intersections between cultural plurality, politics, and the stage.

The magazine is published quarterly by Teesri Duniya Theatre and was founded in 1998.

Visit alt.theatre

TDEV 498/2

Last taught in 2015. TDEV 498/2: The Neighbourhood Theatre (TNT) is an upper-level course that takes an interdisciplinary, “hands-on,” place-based approach to exploring many of the ethical and practical considerations facing artists and others wishing to work “in residence” with community partners. It’s a course about how theatre artists, oral historians, documentary media artists, and others interested in social innovation, animation, and activism might meet and explore social change within Montreal neighbourhoods. In the Fall 2014 and 2015 terms, the class continued its collaboration with the historic Atwater Library and Computer Centre and join their work in the neighbourhood of Point St.Charles.  The course was open to undergraduate or graduate students from any discipline.

For more information about this work and its legacy, visit The Right to the City Project.

TDEV 498/4

TDEV 498/4: Socially Engaged and Activist Performance involves reading, discussing, and writing about selected plays and performance projects within the context of their intentional engagement with social, cultural, and/or political exigencies. The course is particularly concerned with the “social turn” in contemporary art practice—a phenomenon that in theatre, is largely defined by inter and cross disciplinarity, public participation, and inter-sectoral collaboration.

Project-based readings will examine the theory and practice of movements, approaches, and genres selected from: community arts, documentary and verbatim theatre and oral history performance, street theatre, public demonstrations, performance art, Theatre of the Oppressed, and political theatre.  Additional readings will engage with critical debates about the ethics and efficacy of socially engaged art from a variety of disciplinary perspectives.  

This course is open to undergraduate or graduate students from any discipline.

Recent publications (print and web)

Little, Edward, Liz Miller, and Steven High. Going Public: ParticipatoryApproaches to Performance, Documentary and Oral History. Vancouver: (book proposal accepted for peer review consideration by UBC Press).

Little, Edward. “Whenyou’re up to your ass in alligators … .”  In Defense of Theatre: Aesthetic Practicesand

Social Interventions. Barry Freeman and Kathleen Gallagher, Eds. Toronto: UTP (in press).

 

Little, Edward and Steven High. “Partners in Conversation: A Reflection on the Ethics and Emergent Practice of Oral History Performance.”  History,Memory, Performance. David Dean, Yana Meerzon, Kathryn Prince (eds). New York: Palgrave Macmillan, December 2014.

 

Miller, Elizabeth, Steve Highand Edward Little, Curators. Going Public with Oral History, Documentary Media, and Performance. http://goingpublicproject.org/. Launched Spring 2014.

 

High, Steven (principle author)and Edward Little. “Introduction.” Remembering Mass Violence: OralHistory, New Media, and Performance. Toronto: UTP, 2013. 3-31.

 

High, Steven, Edward Little and Thi Ry Duong (Eds.). Remembering Mass Violence: Oral History, New Media, and Performance.Toronto: UTP, 2013.

Knowles,Richard Paul and Edward Little. "The Spirit of Shivaree and the Community Playin Canada; or, The Unity in Community.” Community-engaged Theatre and Performance. Julie Salverson, ed. Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English Vol 19. Ric Knowles, ed.Toronto: PlaywrightsCanada P. (2011): 20-34.

 

Little,Edward and Rachael VanFossen. “Pedagogies, Politics, and Practices in Workingwith Youth.” Community-engaged Theatre and Performance. Julie Salverson, ed. Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English Vol 19. Ric Knowles, ed. Toronto: Playwrights Canada P. (2010): 102-110.

Editorials

(pdf versions of the following editorials are available on Issuu)

Little,Edward. “Chop Chop.”  alt.theatre: cultural diversity and the stage Vol. 9.4 (June 2012): 8-9.

___.“Avoiding the Missionary Position in the Bibliothèquenational du Québec.” alt.theatre: cultural diversity and thestage Vol. 8.3 (March 2011): 6-9.

___. “With a Vengeance.” alt.theatre: cultural diversity and the stage Vol. 8.2 (December 2010): 6-9.

___.  “What’s so funny?” alt.theatre:cultural diversity and the stage Vol. 8.1 (September 2010): 6-9.

___.  “Canada’s Theatre of War.” alt.theatre: cultural diversity and the stage Vol. 7.4 (June 2010):6-9.

___. “Never Again.” alt.theatre: cultural diversity and the stage Vol. 7.2 (December 2009): 4-10.

___. “Spin.” alt.theatre: cultural diversity and the stage Vol. 7.1 (Sept 2009):4-7.

___.  “Are We There Yet.” alt.theatre:cultural diversity and the stage Vol. 6.4 (June 2009): 4-7.

___.  “The Iconoclastic Imperative.” alt.theatre: cultural diversity and the stage Vol. 6.3 (March 2009): 4-7.