Gailey Road: October Update

October has been a busy month for Gailey Road Productions and its artistic team.

The Harriet House Trilogy
I've been working on the first draft of the second play of my Harriet's House trilogy by participating in the six-week cyberwriting challenge offered through the Women's Caucus at the Playwrights Guild of Canada. Each week participants receive five writing activities that are intended to spark writing for a new play or help them continue to develop a play they are working on. We are now at the end of the fourth week of the six-week cyberwriting challenge and have two weeks to go.

Performative Writing Workshop
Three members of the Gailey Road artistic team, Jocelyn Wickett, Monica Nunes and I, participated in one-day workshop on performative writing facilitated by Professor Ron Pelias from the University of Southern Illinois in Carbondale. Ron designed the workshop so they each of the participants would have an experience of writing a personal narrative, an autoethnography piece and a performative writing piece on the same topic. It was a wonderful way to learn about the differences about these three types of writing. Four graduate students in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at the Ontario Institute of Education, University of Toronto, all of whom are interested in performed ethnography and performative writing joined the workshop as well.

The Annual International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champagne
Readers who are interested in taking a workshop in performative writing can find Ron Pelias at the annual International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry held at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne each May. For the past several years Ron has facilitated a half day workshop on performative writing at the conference.

The conference attracts a number of academics who identify with the "alternative ethnography movement" in the field of qualitative research. These researchers write, publish and stage personal narratives, autoethnographies, performed ethnographies (also known as performance ethnographies and ethnodramas) and other kinds of performance pieces. For more information see: http://www.regonline.com/Register/Checkin.aspx?EventID=891300.

Staging Harriet's House: Producing Performed Ethnography
Finally, i received the excellent news that my proposal for writing a book on producing performed ethnography has been accepted by Series Editor Shirley Steinberg at Peter Lang. Staging Harriet's House: Producing Performed Ethnography will tell the story of staging my performed ethnography Harriet's House at Hart House Theatre last July as part of the 2010 Toronto Pride Festival. I'll be working on the book this coming winter.

All the best,
Tara