Dr Henry Daniel Professor Dance and Performance Studies SFU Contemporary Arts Theatre at UBC Graduate Symposium April 27-28, PERFORMING PLACE: Theatre in the Pacific Northwest

Dr Henry Daniel Professor Dance and Performance Studies SFU Contemporary Arts Conference Theme Questions How does theatre capture the "here and now" in ways that other disciplines cannot? How can theatre reconcile the erasure of indigenous, and/or other minority narratives that have been overlooked or forgotten?

Dr Henry Daniel Professor Dance and Performance Studies SFU Contemporary Arts How does performance connect us to history and places near and far? Does theatre in the Pacific Northwest accurately represent the cosmopolitan demographic of the region?

Dr Henry Daniel Professor Dance and Performance Studies SFU Contemporary Arts Although Project Barca was not designed to address these questions I will argue that it does respond to them in its own unique way. PROJECT BARCA: New Architectures of Memory and Identity

Dr Henry Daniel Professor Dance and Performance Studies SFU Contemporary Arts Deconstructing Identity, Performing Memory How can embodied personal and collective memories be shaped into new architectures of identity and belonging in the form of innovative performance works that speak to wider sections of society?

Dr Henry Daniel Professor Dance and Performance Studies SFU Contemporary Arts Project Barca is interested in the dynamics of interaction between different communities affected by the events surrounding August 3 rd 1492; the day Columbus left Spain on his cross-Atlantic voyage.

Dr Henry Daniel Professor Dance and Performance Studies SFU Contemporary Arts The architecture of “Going west to find east/going east to find west” speaks to this. The first part of the phrase is inverted in the second and the opposition of the parts plays on the idea of going in either direction to find the other.

Dr Henry Daniel Professor Dance and Performance Studies SFU Contemporary Arts Project Barca is interested in the implications of Columbus’ 1492 journey across the Atlantic from the perspectives of the descendants of the people he encountered there, as well as the descendants of those who subsequently made that crossing by choice or through force.

Dr Henry Daniel Professor Dance and Performance Studies SFU Contemporary Arts The word Barca means boat in both Spanish and Portuguese. It signals my intention of building a structure that is capable of accommodating a small crew for an extensive journey. Performance Studies and PaR are vehicles for a journey that connects geographical, historical, and cultural spaces.

Dr Henry Daniel Professor Dance and Performance Studies SFU Contemporary Arts Performance Studies and PaR are vehicles for a journey that connects geographical, historical, and cultural spaces. Barcelona, an ‘Old World’ city at the edge of the Mediterranean connects with Vancouver, a fast growing metropolis that sits on the edge of the Pacific at the limits of the ‘New World’.

Dr Henry Daniel Professor Dance and Performance Studies SFU Contemporary Arts On Friday August 3 rd 1492, six months after the last Moorish stronghold in Granada had fallen, and one day after an edict expired compelling all Jews to leave the country, Columbus with his three ships and crew of ninety men floated down the mouth of the Rio Tinto in southwestern Spain on their way to the Americas.

Dr Henry Daniel Professor Dance and Performance Studies SFU Contemporary Arts Encounters 2 is one of several mixed-mode productions generated within Project Barca. There are others which you can see and read about on my website and blog.

Dr Henry Daniel Professor Dance and Performance Studies SFU Contemporary Arts References Aeterna Regis, Treaty of Alcácovas, Treaty of Tordesillas, Morison, Samuel Eliot Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A life of Christopher Columbus. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.

Dr Henry Daniel Professor Dance and Performance Studies SFU Contemporary Arts Morison, Samuel Eliot The European Discovery of America: the northern voyages, A.D New York: Oxford University Press. Morison, Samuel Eliot The European discovery of America: the southern voyages, Oxford University Press.

Dr Henry Daniel Professor Dance and Performance Studies SFU Contemporary Arts Deleuze, Gilles, & Guattari, Félix What Is Philosophy? New York: Columbia University Press. Williams, E Capitalism and Slavery. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.