smoll@uwaterloo.ca
(519) 888-4567 x 41985
Location: ML 238
Sorouja Moll has a PhD in Humanities and Interdisciplinary Studies (Concordia) specializing in the fields of Communication, English, and Art History.
She also holds a BA and MA in English from the University of Guelph, School of English and Theatre. As an interdisciplinary scholar, Sorouja's research-creation practice undertakes a multimodal critical discourse analysis of all forms of media including adaptations of Shakespeare in Canada, and an intersectional approach to nineteenth-century archival and narrative-based communication structures and applications, and their present-day manifestations in, among other areas, nation, memory, and identity in performance. Moll’s areas of research include the oral histories of mixed-race identity; Indigenous and non-Indigenous relationship re-building practices and education as meaningful and sustainable; and exploring and creating incubatory spaces in which transgression, enunciation, ambiguity, and emancipation can be explored through performance, theatre, creative writing, and research practices.
Her book manuscript, All the Rage: The Trial of Louis Riel & Nineteenth-Century Canadian Media, is a critical discourse analysis of the circulating press during the trial of the Métis leader and its present-day implications. Her manuscript is in review.
She was also a collaborator on The Mush Hole Project (2016), a site-based performance and artist installation work at Canada’s first residential school which responds to the Truth and Reconciliation Committee's Final Report and its Call to Action. In 2022, Sorouja is a member of the Advisory Committee for the project Dejidwaya’do:weht (We are Thinking of it Again): Mush Hole 2.0 with Janis Monture, Patricia Deadman, and Andy Houston. The project revisits the 2016 project with original and new artists who reflect on the process and outcomes of “reconciliation” in a multimedia site installation at the Woodland Cultural Centre. The project is preparing a publication to document the event.
Sorouja is the Research Dramaturge (2018-2022) for the play 1939 which will be staged at the Stratford Festival in 2022. 1939 is written by playwrights Jani Lauzon and Kaitlyn Riorden and will be directed for Stratford by Jani Lauzon.
As an award-winning author, Sorouja’s writing has been profiled on CBC Radio and published in The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Canadian Theatre Review, as well as academic and literary journals, and books. As a playwright and performance artist, Sorouja's work has been presented across Canada.
Recent Publications (sample listing)
Moll, Sorouja. (2018). “The Spectre of Louis Riel: Opera, Archive, and The Silent Witness.” Canadian Theatre Review. 174: 52-55. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.
Moll, Sorouja. (Forthcoming). “‘I can't leave’: The Iconography of Hysteria and Heroines.” Marvel’s Jessica Jones Project. Calgary, AB: University of Calgary Press.
Moll, Sorouja. (2022). “Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare.” Stanford University Global Encyclopaedia of Shakespeare. Stanford University. Editor Dr. Patricia Parker.
2011 “Judith Thompson’s Body and Soul: Theatre Tactics in the Corporate Strategy.” Canadian
Theatre Review. 148(1): 43-49. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.
Moll, Sorouja. (2016). “Writing Names: UnSilencing the Number of Missing and Murdered Women in Canada.” Canadian Theatre Review. 168: 94-99. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.
Research Creation
2022 (forthcoming). 365 Days: You Will Never Know. Multimedia, single artist installation. Tom Thomson Gallery, Owen Sound, Ontario. May - July 2022.
2021- present “Rückenfigur: 365 Days; or, a durational meditation of performing the solitary in a pandemic.” Performance, transitory and temporal site installations.
2019. Mad Meg: Remember your name in domestic violence. Public art performance and advocacy installation. University of Waterloo.
2017. "Writing Names Project." Never the Less She Persisted: An International Women's Day Event. City of Kitchener City Hall.
2016-present. Bridge: Honouring the Lives of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Counter Memory Art Installation in collaboration with the Waterloo Indigenous Student Centre (WISC). Annual Installation.
2016. Integrated Knowledges Summit: Truth and (Re) Conciliation Project. Principal Investigator. The Summit was designed to generate creative solutions of immediate societal challenges and to develop opportunities for Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists and researchers across disciplines to meet and collaborate. SSHRC Connections Grant.
2016 Mush Hole Project. Site Specific Art and Performance Installation. Principal Co-Investigator with Naomi Johnson (Woodland Cultural Centre), and Andrew Houston (University of Waterloo). A collaborative site-specific art and performance installation at Canada’s first residential school to explore its legacy. 32 artists over 3 days: Sept 16,17, and 18.
2015-2016. The Breadbox: Oral Histories of Mixed Race Identity in Canada. Principal Investigator. Research Project. University of Waterloo/SSHRC Seed Grant.
2007. What Means This Shouting? Produced by the Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project and co-directed by Marion Gruner and Sorouja Moll.
http://www.canadianshakespeares.ca/multimedia/video/what_means_this_shouting.mov
What Means This Shouting? is a short documentary that explores adaptations of Shakespeare's plays by First Nations peoples in Canada. Its focus is Death of a Chief, an adaptation of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Death of a Chief was co-adapted and co-directed by Yvette Nolan and Kennedy (Cathy) MacKinnon for Native Earth Performing Arts (Toronto), the largest First Nations theatre group in the world. One of Nolan and MacKinnon's adaptations involves re-casting most of the male characters in Julius Caesar as female.