Published April 12, 2008
by dbazely
The last two performances of York Sociology Prof. Kathy Bischoping's new play, The Demise of Ordinary Objects, are today and tomorrow at HUB14 Studio Theatre at Bathurst and Queen. The company performing the play is draft89. While this definitely counts as an avant-garde theatre experience for me (I don't get out much), it is a thought-provoking and inspiring play that is well worth checking out as an example of how interdisciplinarity can be energized and dramatized.
The play looks at how our society deals with life cycles, and in particular the end of the life span of all kinds of things - from disposable coffee cups to to people. Kathy is a good friend and colleague, and I was thrilled to learn that her sabbatical includes having her first play produced. The collective that she is working with includes graduates of York's theatre programme. While her sociological research and teaching includes Holocaust studies, and survey methods, and she has won the University Teaching Award, she also shares a huge interest with me in sustainability. In particular, that having to do with reducing one's ecological footprint, by inventive recycling and growing and canning one's own vegetables. Her play reflects these varied interests and experiences, and there are many comments about life cycles that are directly related to issues of sustainability. In sustainability, full life cycle assessment or cradle-to-grave analysis looks at the total amount of energy and resources that it takes to produce some object or product. It embodies the concepts inherent in full-cost economic accounting (and here, I have done the unthinkable for a professor and linked to a Wikipedia webpage - so I hope that all of the students who lost marks for referencing these pages in their research essays do not come back to haunt me!).
Dawn Bazely
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