A theater lesson like no other

In a rehearsal studio on the seventh floor of Concordia University’s John Molson building, a dozen theater students are preparing to take the stage. They stretch, make vocalizations, recite their monologue in low voices. We feel their feverishness, we also feel their complicity.

These students all have their lives ahead of them and their heads full of dreams, but five of them stand out: Stéphanie, Roselyne, Emmanuel, Philippe and Anne. Their differences? They live either with trisomy 21, or with an autism spectrum disorder, or with an intellectual disability. And they are enrolled, like the others, in this intensive summer course. They will obtain, like the others, three university credits for this participation. For these five neuroatypical artists, this is their very first experience of post-secondary studies.

“To my knowledge, this is the first and only university inclusion project of this scale in Canada”, proudly indicates Menka Nagrani, associate professor of theater at Concordia University and instigator of this pilot project named Inclusive.

The Press was able to attend one of the only two performances that the troupe gave, and which took place last week, at Concordia University, in front of a few dozen spectators.

The result ? Moving. Stéphanie Colle was disturbing in her interpretation of mourning. The booming voice of Emmanuel Prud’homme carried like no other. The current passed within this small group out of the ordinary.

The students only had three weeks to write, edit and rehearse this original creation, which incorporates texts by Eugène Ionesco, original texts, dance and a bit of singing. The lessons were mutual, assures Professor Menka Nagrani. The neuroatypical artists were able to share their professional experience with others (they are all actors with Productions des pieds et des mains, an inclusive dance and theater company created by Menka Nagrani).

The student Claire Joly, who was enrolled in the course, was impressed by the ideas of her new friends. “The project wasn’t students from Concordia who included artists from Les Productions des pieds et des mains. No way. We helped each other through the process,” she says.

The pilot project Inclusive required about a year of upstream preparation. First we had to convince the management. “Everything new generates fears and apprehensions,” recalls Ms.^me Nagrani. Les Productions des pieds et des mains offered funding to pay tuition fees for new students and to hire three support artists. The role of the latter was to accompany the five neuroatypical artists, if only to teach them how to come to university, to navigate there, to prepare.

The inclusive pedagogy deployed by Menka Nagrani in the course is the subject of a study led by Kim Sawchuk, professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University. Other universities will thus be able to draw inspiration from the pilot project to lead to inclusion initiatives.

All diversities

“It’s surprising to see how normal the course is, insofar as everything that one could imagine to be a problem has not really arisen”, observes Alexandre Prince, research assistant. The challenges encountered were mostly about language (the group included unilingual Anglophones and unilingual Francophones), not about disabilities, he says.

The pilot project Inclusive also allowed two students with intellectual disabilities to take a dance class in the winter of 2023. One of them ended up with the best grade in the class.

In the eyes of Menka Nagrani, the time is right to carry out this kind of initiative. Students, she says, want inclusion. “And diversity isn’t just about skin color; it is also the diversity of capabilities. That’s all of it,” she said.

When asked if she recognizes herself in the television landscape, artist Anne Tremblay, who has dyspraxia, dysphasia and a slight intellectual disability, answers unequivocally: “No. “My difference is not put forward, and it’s boring, because we should put all the differences forward,” concludes the smiling young woman.