Ethics, Trauma and the Foolish Witness with Playwright Julie Salverson

ICASC co-presented a free reading and conversation with playwright Julie Salverson on April 8th. Julie’s work focuses on ethics, trauma, and the foolish witness in telling risky stories.

Julie Salverson is a playwright, librettist and scholar and has worked in community-engaged theatre since 1981. She is a 2009 finalist in the CBC Literary Competition for Creative Non-Fiction.

Julie read from Shelter (a clown opera about the atomic bomb), Boom (a play about landmines and difficult friendships commissioned by the Red Cross), and The Haunting of Sophie Scholl, (a play about a German student activist executed in 1943). She spoke to the challenges of creating plays about difficult topics.

Her plays and librettos include Thumbelina, Over the Japanese Sea, Boom (written with Patricia Fraser & youth groups in Canada, U.S. and Thailand), Shelter, and The Haunting of Sophie Scholl. She is an Associate Professor at Queen’s University and is currently writing two books, The Secrets of Others: Atomic Memoir and Witnessing a Tragic World: theatre, testimony and the courage to be happy.

This reading was sponsored by the International Center of Art for Social Change (ICASC), SFU Faculty of Contemporary Arts, and SFU Faculty of Education. Funded by Canada Council and Playwrights Guild of Canada.