Our vision is to build relationships and partnerships with diverse community groups––such as Indigenous communities, immigrant/refugee communities, different ethno-linguistic communities, LGBTQ+ communities, people of diverse abilities, People of Colour groups, social justice groups, and inter-faith communities. Third Space Playback Theatre Edmonton aims to connect to various diverse communities in Edmonton to create a joyful, critically engaging, and safe space for sharing stories and creating community relationships.
Embedded Files
Photo: Aloys Fleischmann
About Us
About Us
We are a group of diverse individuals committed to exploring the themes of intersecting identities through Playback Theatre in order to promote dialogue, community change, and social justice. Playback Theatre is a form of improvisational theatre that invites audience members to share stories from their lives, which actors reflect back using improvisation including movement, words, metaphor and music. Playback theatre makes space for sharing personal stories in order to honour and make known collective experiences.
We are engaged in hearing stories of negotiating and navigating the margins and the centre, as well as our constructed or chosen identities along the spectrum of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation. We formed as a group of diverse people representing different ethnocultural communities, language groups, and Indigenous communities. We are a group of creative arts therapists, artists, academics, and activists who are passionate about critically engaged participatory theatre. We are committed to creating spaces of dialogue from a diversity of Indigenous voices and different settler communities.
Playback Theatre Wellness Session with the Metis Nation of Alberta (Feb 2022)
Photo credit: Jordan Hon
Post-Marginal Edmonton 2.0: Imagining Inclusive Performance Arts (May 2024)
Photo Credit: Marc J. Chalifoux Photography
From May 21 to 24, 2024, the Edmonton chapter of Postmarginal brought together a vibrant and diverse group of theatre artists, cultural workers, and academics for four days of collaborative exploration. Third Space Playback Theatre Edmonton provided an opportunity for artists to reflect about the process and generate ideas for future engagements.
Current Projects
Current Projects
Relationality Lab: Engaging Critical Indigenous Theory and Good Relations through Playback Theatre
Timeline: Sept. 2025-2027
Principal Investigator: Dr. Paul Gareau
Funded by: Faculty of Native Studies and Critical Approaches to Indigenous Relationality
Project Details:
The goals of the project are to strengthen Indigenous networks within the Faculty of Native Studies (FNS) and the broader community. We will engage in approximately 11 monthly Relationality Labs during the academic year to engage with faculty, students, staff and explore indigenous relationality through playback. Theatre-based practices informed by Indigenous relationality will support community dialogue and experiences around questions of settler colonialism, race and identity, Indigenous sovereignty, settler responsibilities, and co-constitutive relations. We hope to create a space for cultural safety, playfulness and laughter to explore shared experiences and bridging with the experiences of Indigenous peoples and people of colour in the academic setting.
Increasing equity in access to cancer care for racialized populations
Timeline: Sept 2025- 2028
Principal Investigator: Dr. Anna Santos
Funded by: Canadian Cancer Society
Project Details:
This is a project with Dr. Ana Santos working on Health Equity with communities and their experience with Cancer Care and Palliative Care. In the first year of their project, we have been asked to work with community engagements with these cultural communities through playback.
Latinex community
South Asian Community
African/Black/Caribbean community
The overall aim of the project is to help understand the health equity barriers these particular communities face when accessing cancer care and palliative care. The goal is to co-design a community-based patient and family caregiver navigation program and pilot a navigation program that would meet the cultural needs of these communities. We will be engaging in 4 performances in 2025-2026 to work with the community and health partners, and to work with each individual cultural groups. The following years we will be engaged in envisioning co-designing the navigation project and dissemination
Due to the nature of working with these diverse cultural and linguistic communities, we will be engaging with community partners and theatre practitioners that are already connected to these cultural communities and speak these languages (Spanish, Hindi, Punjabi etc.). We are excited to build relations with different cultural communities to share the power of playback with cultural communties to hold space for grief, joy and learning through the complexity of the cancer journey.
Other community projects:
Boyle Street Community Centre
Past Projects
Media
Media
In response to racialized attacks, Muslim women practice the art of healing through theatre
The Globe and Mail article by Rukhsar Ali (June 12, 2022).
"After watching her playback performance, some of the words and movements she had experienced through her screen stayed with her long after the metaphorical curtain had dropped. Yassin says she felt like she could now take a step toward finding ways to navigate society in a safer manner after receiving private messages from other participants who related to her story."
Multi-university project uses digital literacy to fight discrimination
University Affairs article by Sparrow McGowan (Apr 14, 2022). Researchers in Quebec and Alberta are undertaking a range of initiatives to help marginalized communities over the next 3 years
Concordia-led initiative empowers Indigenous and racialized communities
Concordia News article by Amy Sharaf (Jan 20, 2022). Members of Project SOMEONE are working with partners in Quebec and Alberta to build resilience against discrimination
Photos: Jordon Hon
Celebrating and Honouring Chinese and Indigenous Heritage (May 2022)
Photo credit: Jordan Hon
Photos: Aloys Fleischmann
Finding Common Ground” (2017) Arts-Based Research Studio, Edmonton, Alberta
Photo Credit: Aloys Fleischmann
Contact us at thirdspaceplayback@gmail.com
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