Andrew Houston, U of Waterloo
Theatre as Heterotopia: The Colony of Creation in Site-Specific Performance

When Michel Foucault envisaged “heterotopia” he was thinking of a colony. Contrary to the usual connotations of the term, he conceived of this colony as a place of possibility and promise; in opposition to the singular vision of a utopia, heterotopia offers a place and time wherein “the real sites that can be found within a culture are simultaneously represented, contested and inverted.” As a scholar, educator, and practitioner of site-specific performance I want to examine how the strategies of creating such performances are akin to Foucault’s heterotopia. Using examples of performances created across Canada and Britain, I will demonstrate how specific animations of place have generated “contested and inverted” ideas of identity in relation to certain orthodoxies found in the communities where these performances have occurred. In this respect site-specific performances are seen to be heterotopias, or colonies of creation in which contested ideas of identity may co-exist in a place of promise and possibility.