Thought Residencies

Marcel Stewart is joined by Lisa Karen Cox, Tianna Edwards and Shayna Jones as they share their thoughts on life, cultural erasure, creating art, what blackness can look like in rural and urban spaces, black maternal thinking, micro rituals in the body, alignment, and MORE!  *What you won't get to experience as the listener is the amount of teeth being shown during this conversation. There was a l...

Marcel Stewart is joined by Sébastien Heins to discuss the glorious ephemerality of theatre, his work with Outside the March, the process of developing immersive experiences, his solo play 'No Save Points', the future of performing arts, AI in theatre, Max Tegmark, theatre as an olympic event, our love for Mazin Elsadig, Michael Healey's podcast 'Just One More' and MORE! For a transcript of this e...

Marcel Stewart is joined by SGS and Owais Lightwala to discuss why being an artist matters, the Massey Commission, capitalism and neo-liberalism, artists as activists, innovation vs conservation, and their Manifesto for NOW. They both raise thought-provoking questions like: are money markets really at fault for artists not being able to make art? What does it mean to produce art today and how are...

Marcel Stewart is joined by Dr. Pratim Sengupta to discuss thinking with our bodies, Mind Matter and Media Lab, the colonialism behind the 1980's arcade game 'Lunar Lander', pushing back against symbolic violence, dignity bombs, human beings as pain catastrophizers, anti-racist reimaging of the immigration experience and landing experience, technocentricsm, moving through the world with love, the...

New releases every Tuesday from November 14 to December 5, 2023. Join b current Artistic Director and FOLDA Co-Curator,  Marcel Stewart, as he talks theatre, creation, and community with some of Canada's top theatre artists and thinkers. The 2023 cohort of Thought Residents includes Sébastien Heins (creator/performer of No Save Points); Shayna Jones (Black + Rural Project); Lisa Karen Cox (directo...

Hi, I am Tsholo Khalema,  this is my first thought.   Black Lipstick on a sunday morning Sipping on balck cherry mimosa topped with mint.    She looked beautiful. Her milinated, being sun kissed by my eyes.   You're catching me on a good day, a scab goes blacker as the healing process is maturing, regenerating perhaps. So I feel extra extra black today.   I grabbed my first thought from the ether...

This is DM, and we're at number twelve. I used to work at a nursing home, at the reception desk.  As a result, I was often the first point of contact for families visiting residents.  This one guy would visit his mother about three times a week.  He was nice enough, but never chatty.  One night he comes in, heads my way, leans over my desk with urgency in his eyes, and says, "I can help."  I ask h...

My name is Donna-Michelle St. Bernard and this is my eleventh thought.   I recently got into a thing with a collaborator about whether Han shot first.  Not really about if he did or not, but about whether it matters if he did or not, and whether that is a thing worth saying.  It matters, I assure you.  If you're a nerd, ten times more.  But if you're outside the culture, you might not see why.  An...

My name is Donna-Michelle St. Bernard and this is my tenth thought.   I have these red boots.  I love them.  As soon as I saw them I knew my life would change if I could only have them.  Then I got those boots.  I love them.  And I almost never wear them.  They are those things that are so special, too special, no occasion is ever special enough for me to unsheathe their majesty.  They're not gonn...

#14 NEVER NOT TRYING This is Donna-Michelle St. Bernard with my fourteenth and final thought. I am trying my best.  I have grown so much and changed not at all.  There is a small part of me that is untouched by injustice and cynicism.  A part of me still open to criticism.  There is still a portion not smudged with distortion.  A part undiscouraged by not-yet-but-nearly.  That prays just in case G...

#13 JUST VISITING This is Donna-Michelle St. Bernard.  This is thought number thirteen. I never want to be a tourist A person who observes the external from a distance that they are at pains to retain because the view down the bridge of the nose is quite pleasing.  Everything is quaint. Your time in another person's life is like a dream if you don't look past the seams that are sewn to contain wha...

My name is Donna-Michelle St. Bernard and this is my ninth thought.   You are not stronger thanks to your trauma.  Don't fall for that.  Maybe your strength got you through it, but that was yours.  Maybe you grew through it, but that was you.  You don't need to thank your trauma, you deserved to live without it, to be strong without it, to grow without it.   I'm not trying to diminish your struggl...

My name is Donna-Michelle St. Bernard and this is my eighth thought.  I rarely use the word "pretty" without irony.  It's like "nice."  Essentially positive but so banal as to be back-handed.   Lately I think it's curve-related: The air is so thick with hyperbole that if you're pretty, you're several levels below drop-dead gorgeous – so attractive that you could literally end someone's life, aesth...

My name is Donna-Michelle St. Bernard and this is my seventh thought.   whenever Desmond Cole shares photos of flowers, I smile. I can't read more than a chapter of  "The Skin I'm In",  not in one sitting, without hitting a nerve  and needing a breath  before reading the next.  thinking this substantial text  holds just a fraction of the actions undertaken  to receive the story, and to convey it. ...

My name is Donna-Michelle St. Bernard and this is my sixth thought. I want to be worthy in whatever service I'm able. But worthy's a short swerve away from "of use" Opposite of refuse, perilously close to productive, which is nothing like worthy, as a word, and useless to it as a companion concept. Worth is more like work – no, that's a trap. It's more like value, or values, in my calculus.   I am...

My name is Donna-Michelle St. Bernard and this is my fifth thought. It's for you. You are enough.  No bells, no whistles, just you.  It's enough.  Not because you're better than you used to be not because you're as good as someone else.   Forget that. Just be with yourself, out of context. Don't measure up. Don't measure anything. That's uncomfortable cuz if your value is not tied to your accompli...

When I was a young Catholic schoolgirl, I thought Jeanne d'arc was the most badass. wearing pants, hearing god, sitting up on a horse, riding into battle, on fire, for some reason.  She seemed to be on fire.  At some point it occurred to me that never in history, not once, not ever, has a horse asked to be ridden headfirst into a rain of arrows or a wall of spears.  Anyhow, today what I think is t...

My name is Donna-Michelle St. Bernard and this is my third thought. Today a friend invited me to go for a walk.   That's nice.   Having a friend, them wanting to see you, wanting to see them, saying yes.  I can dig it. She says two o'clock at the entrance to the park and i say yes. I've never been to the park. I don't know where the park is.   instead of looking up where the park is, i look up who...

My name is Donna-Michelle St. Bernard and this is my second thought. Last night I dreamt of my brothers, both runners.   We all were.  That was a thing to do, in my family.  A thing to be excellent at.  Running. One thing I picked up off of them was the trick of training in water.   Conditioning.  Getting into a pool knee or waist or shoulders deep,  running across its width as hard as possible, b...

My name is Donna-Michelle St. Bernard and this is my first thought.   Ever. This is the very first thought that I have ever had. I mean, obviously I've had thoughts before but I was asked to introduce myself in that way –  this is my first thought –  and I'm not a liar  so I threw away everything that I ever knew before and I thought to myself,  "well if it was true before and I knew it before,  t...

First thought. Bruxism  - that's the grinding of teeth to the point where we  grind  and  clench  and we end up  fracturing  our teeth. And we often don't even realize we're doing it. We do it in our sleep. And that's our loved ones who make us aware. And that if we go on to fix it; we have to fix it because of all the grinding and clenching. We need  bridges  and  crowns . And I think of that gri...

My name is Alan Dilworth and this is thought number twelve.    My mind is particularly busy this morning. Front of mind is those who are most vulnerable, those who are experiencing systemic inequalities, and how they are amplified and exacerbated during COVID-19. I am thinking about universal basic income. I am thinking about how to live more with less. I am thinking about sharing resources in new...

My name is Alan Dilworth and this is thought number eleven. Approbation - who receives it? From whom? For what? It is an important human experience to receive approbation. It is very healthy, arguably even necessary, especially at key moments in one's life. In terms of giving, I do think it is common or perhaps easy to give approbation to those one identifies with. Today I am thinking about the gi...

My name is Alan Dilworth and this is thought number ten. I am thinking about the balance between stillness/silence and action. Earlier I was thinking about stillness and silence, more specifically about silence and stillness less as an escape or getaway from life, more a letting go, an opening of the gates for something to move forward- for the release of something. Now the question... what is tha...

My name is Alan Dilworth and this is thought number nine The encounters I have witnessed on the street have become more casual. Children seem to be getting closer together. There is sunshine. Did I wash my hands properly when I came inside? Halifax is bubbling.