. . . A Winter’s Tale: Sport, Aging & Intergenerational Theatre
This outreach activity brings university students and older people together to create a theatre piece about older athletes competing in winter sports. Together these groups engage in parallel experiences of kinesthetic pleasure and creativity — ones that challenge common-sense notions of age and the so-called crises of bodies at both ends of the age spectrum — while they work together to construct a theatre performance based on this topic.
As Canada becomes demographically older, public discourse regularly conceptualizes the bodies of the old as a financial burden on future generations, instructing them to stay active to stave off the healthcare costs of age-related decline (Allain & Marshall, 2017). For the young, the obesity “epidemic” spurs similar calls to action (Government of Ontario, 2019). This theatre piece will challenge the commonsense of these public health edicts by discussing sport as an important site for pleasure, human connection, and friendship.
Building on Kristi Allain’s research examining the experiences of older athletes in Canadian winter sport, this project takes the form of a critical performance ethnography — a form of anthropological research that uses theatre as a tool for developing cultural understanding and addressing injustice. Beginning phase one in September 2023, old(er) community members joined university students in drama workshops, narrating their experiences of winter sport and then collaborating with the students to improvise scenes based on these narrations. By March 2024, the research team created a script based on these workshops.
Phase two will involve rehearsing the completed script and then, in April 2024, performing it. All performances will conclude with public talk-back sessions, where the audience will have the opportunity to dialogue with the project participants (and vice versa).
Phase three, taking place over the spring and summer of 2024, will involve knowledge mobilization, including workshops about the process hosted at different university centres for aging, a public podcast, conference presentations, journal articles, and a book-length manuscript.
References:
Allain, K. A. & Marshall, B. (2017). Foucault retires to the gym: Understanding embodied aging through leisure fitness in the “third age.” Canadian Journal on Aging, 36(3), 402–414.
Government of Ontario. (2019). The Ontario curriculum grades 1–8: Health and physical education. Queen’s Printer for Ontario. https://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/elementary/2019-health-physical-education-grades-1to8.pdf
MEDIA COVERAGE
Leger, I. (2023, December 31). Fredericton production acts as research project around winter sport and aging. CBC News New Brunswick. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/winters-play-aging-sports-st-thomas-university-research-project-1.7070139
A WINTER’S TALE: A PLAY ABOUT HOCKEY, CURLING, AND AGING MEN
Read the play here