Dear Dawson College: A Statement from Teesri Duniya Theatre Company
Originally posted September 12, 2020
The Staff and Board of Directors at Teesri Duniya Theatre stands with those who have come forward with their experiences of abuse during their time at the Dawson College Professional Theatre program. We recognize the strength that is required to speak out, and thank them for their courage. We stand with students and alumni who have felt it was their responsibility to come forward in order to prevent incidents like this from happening again.
The team also expresses our disappointment at the administrative inaction at Dawson College. As a theatre company, we understand how theatre can be a vulnerable space, especially for Indigenous, Black and other visible minorities in theatre.
As gatekeepers of theatre, we ask educational and theatrical institutions to actively foster positive and safe environments where young artists are allowed to grow and enact their own agency.
We call upon institutions, individuals and members of our community to critically evaluate how we as a society, consciously or unconsciously, perpetuate a culture of abuse, and to actively dismantle said culture. Not only in policy and curriculum, but as well in acute microaggressions and harmful behaviour, we must name the conditions in which this culture permeates in.
The team at Teesri Duniya remains committed to fostering safe and inclusive spaces. We will continue to be reflective of this culture and hold ourselves accountable to this commitment, in an active and ongoing manner. This means looking self-reflexively to not only evaluate the structures but the conditions that sustain this kind of harm.
We are currently in dialogue with survivors in our community, and welcome any individuals grappling with any form of abuse or harassment to reach out, should they wish to speak about their experiences.
Attached is a list of relevant resources, and individuals are invited to contact projects@teesriduniyatheatre.com should they need assistance locating a more specific resource.
To any survivors of violence or harassment in any form, we hear you, we see you, and we as a community must commit to doing better. In naming the silences perpetuated in this culture of violence, we invite our institutional peers to join us and support survivors, within Montreal English theatre and beyond.
In resistance,
Teesri Duniya Theatre
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The Quebec Drama Federation (QDF) invites our community of professional and independent theatre companies, artists, and all those who stand with survivors and are invested in change to do the following:
Share this post on your Facebook page or Instagram!
Send the e-mail below to Dawson College (e-mail addresses are included in the template) and personalize it. You can copy and paste directly from the post, or via the Google drive link here: shorturl.at/abmxI
This is the letter that was sent on September 11th, 2020 on behalf of The Quebec Drama Federation in support of the brave survivors. We hear you, we see you and we believe you.
#weareqctheatre and we stand with survivors.
#weareqctheatre and we are invested in change.
