Unscripting Age: Challenging Cultural Ageism Through Theatre & Performance
The Stephen Katz Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Interdisciplinary Aging Studies
Lecture Abstract
Drawing on her background as a theatre artist, researcher, and occupational therapist, Dr. Julia Henderson discusses theatre’s potential to resist, redress, and re-imagine ageist cultural narratives and representations of older adults. Through analysis of professionally produced plays and community engaged co-creative performance projects (such as Raising the Curtain on the Lived Experience of Dementia, #HaveASeniorMoment Social Media Series, and the Intergenerational Arts for Climate Action Study), Dr Henderson shares how notions of temporality, relationality, and embodiment can challenge ageist stereotypes and narrative tropes, and illuminate new understandings of older adults doing, being, becoming, and belonging through performance.
About the Speaker
Julia Henderson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy at the University of British Columbia, an investigator with UBC’s Edwin S. H. Leong Centre for Healthy Aging, and Chair of the North American Network in Aging Studies. She studies contemporary theatre and uses collaborative arts-based methods to work with older adults on projects that redress cultural ageism, challenge dementia stigma, and promote citizenship. Her writing appears in Theatre Research in Canada, Canadian Theatre Review, Age Culture Humanities, Frontiers in Health Services, and Leisure Sciences. She also has recent chapters in Aging Studies and Ecocriticism, The Palgrave Handbook of Literature and Aging, Pandemic Play: Community in Performance, Gaming, and the Arts, and forthcoming in Late Stage.