The Theatre and Performance program in the Department of Drama and Speech Communication presents Unconscious Curriculum: Rape Culture on Campus, written and devised by students in the program and directed by Professor Andy Houston.
How have we become complicit in the normalization of sexual violence? When post-secondary education addresses difficult, personal, and even traumatic subject matter, what kind of learning outcome should we expect? Unconscious Curriculum: Rape Culture on Campus is a performance project that tackles the complicated layers of rape culture in an educational context.
In a multimedia performance, student-performers dig deep to discover how rape culture is perpetuated in their classrooms and on their campus. Part of a yearlong project with the working title “Arresting Rape Culture”, the upcoming public performance is drawn from the research and creative work developed by students and faculty in three fall 2016 courses in performance, writing, and design. Unconscious Curriculum asks the audience to be witnesses, and even participants, in an exploration of mutual complicity in rape culture, including hidden factors and post-secondary educational practices, that normalize gender-based violence.
Acting as characters not so far removed from their actual lives, the performers strive to articulate ways of experiencing and understanding themselves in relation to others, with the overarching goal to arrest - to recognize, to catch, and to stop – rape culture.
There will be an audience talk-back session, led by director Andy Houston, following each performance allowing audience members to engage in conversation about rape culture and our process of creation.
Tickets at the door or call the UWaterloo Box Office, 519 888-4908.