Research 2006
Putting Theatre Under the Microscope
Claire Borody
Assistant Professor, Theatre and Film
Claire Borody stands in front of a tour group near a staircase in Ralph Connor House, an historic Winnipeg home now used as a museum, gathering place, and home to the University Women’s Club of Winnipeg. She offers commentary on the architecture and history of the building as she leads her guests from one room to the next, ushering them along with a charming laugh and officious attitude.
But behind her on the stair, a body lies broken and bleeding on the bottom step. Before the night is through, there will be a murder, a sacrifice, and a mutilation. Borody sees nothing and hears nothing, but her guests become more and more nervous and unsettled as time passes ... at least, that’s the plan.
Borody, an Assistant Professor in the Theatre and Film Department at The University of Winnipeg, is running an experiment—a theatre piece set up to test hypotheses and form conclusions. “Theatre can be tested just like science,” she explains. “You have an idea, you think it might go in a certain direction, but you don’t know until you try it.”
In this case, actors presented scenes from a Michael Tremblay play in a variety of different rooms, with a “tour guide” moving the audience from one set to the next. “I wanted there to be almost no separation between audience and actors,” says Borody, who deliberately created crowded conditions to test the audience’s reaction to the macabre performances. For Borody, it’s all about learning “the extent to which theatre can be reinvented.”
Assisting her in this mission is her drama troupe Avera Theatre, which she set up as a laboratory for practical research. Theoretical studies remain important to Borody, but as an academic with a visual arts and dance background, she says the opportunity to combine the practical with the philosophical keeps her energized and inspired. For her students, this means the opportunity to develop a strong background in the physical aspects of theatre—from voice, to posture, to physical expression—in addition to expanding their classroom knowledge. 
“There is so much you can do just with the body,” says Borody. “For one performance a group of young people had to age, but they didn’t do it with makeup,” she explains. “It was the suggestion that the character was older, just in the way they moved and the way they held themselves.” And as the students apply the principals they are learning, Borody says you can see their enthusiasm grow.
To learn more about her research on Theatre, contact University of Winnipeg faculty member Claire Borody at c.borody@uwinnipeg.ca