Somatic Care Performances

Turtle Disco and Tendings

Authors

  • Petra Kuppers University of Michigan
  • Jessica Watkin AccessNow
  • VK Preston Concordia University
  • Nadine Changfoot Trent University
  • Cassandra Hartblay University of Toronto Scarborough
  • Becky Gold Independent disability advocate, educator, and artist-scholar

Abstract

This essay discusses accessibility, community, bodily pain, and writing engagement, as well as meanings of “dramaturgy” in somatic and improvisation contexts. We work together as tender bodymindspirits—never just one, always interwoven—in complex inner and outer worlds. As a group of people working together, we use writing to find paths for witnessing experience. We created performances for and with each other. These are all small practices, often enacted in public, but not through spectacular performance. Instead, our work here draws on specific networks nourished through friendship and community—in the first case, the local circle of a small town in Michigan; in the second, the circle of disability-interested scholars in the Canadian East.

Plain language abstract (adapted by Kelsie Acton with Daniel Foulds)

This is writing about

  • making work together,
  • how it feels to dream together,
  • and how it feels to write about working and dreaming together.

I’m Petra Kuppers, the main writer. I think about my own pain and making art when life is full of pain. I think about dramaturgy in caring for one another and moving together. Dramaturgy is a way of making meaning and making people feel. There are also two groups of artists in this essay. These two groups of artists share stories about making art together. I don’t write about the artists’ stories. I just share them so you can feel and think about making art together. The first set of stories is about a group of disabled people who met in Ypsilanti, Michigan, USA. Many people in this group live with pain. The second set of stories is about artists who work in universities. The artists meet in Toronto, Canada. We use movement, sound, and thinking deeply to make art about

  • our feelings,
  • how our bodies feel,
  • the land we live on,
  • and the way we are with each other.

Author Biographies

Petra Kuppers, University of Michigan

Petra Kuppers (she/her) is a German disability culture activist and a community performance artist. Petra grounds herself in disability culture methods, and she uses somatics, performance, media, and speculative poetry to engage audiences toward more socially just and enjoyable futures. Her latest academic study is the award-winning Eco Soma: Pain and Joy in Speculative Performance Encounters (University of Minnesota Press, 2022; open access). Her Crip/Mad Archive Dances (2024), an experimental documentary, won the Best Artists Film Award of the international Together! Disability Film Festival. She runs weekly Starship Somatics sessions online through Movement Research. Petra teaches at the University of Michigan (USA).

 

Jessica Watkin, AccessNow

Jessica Watkin (she/they) is a Blind artist, scholar, and facilitator living and working in Toronto. She finished her PhD at the University of Toronto's Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies with research focusing on Disability dramaturgy in Canada. Her book Interdependent Magic: Disability Plays in Canada is the first anthology of Disability plays in the country. She is currently a leadership development facilitator at AccessNow.

VK Preston, Concordia University

VK Preston is an associate professor of history and co-director of Concordia University’s Performing Arts Research Cluster at the Milieux Institute, Concordia University. As a Montreal-based multidisciplinary artist and researcher, VK works with contemporary artistic research methodologies and historical archives in long histories of dance through performance, research-creation, and writing methodologies. They have been working with Caroline Gravel since 2021 as a dramaturg and creative collaborator. VK’s work has appeared in TDR / The Drama Review, Theatre Journal, and the Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theatre, among other publications.

Nadine Changfoot, Trent University

Nadine Changfoot is a professor in political studies at Trent University, acting director of the Trent Centre for Aging & Society, and a board member of EC3, the City of Peterborough’s Arts Council (Canada). She is a senior research associate with Re•Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice (University of Guelph). She leads digital storytelling projects partnering with Anishinaabekwe e/Elders and settler Black, racialized, queer, disabled, older adults, and youth to bring new and prideful cultural representations of Anishinaabe Knowledge into the world. She has published widely in arts, community development, community-engaged research, philosophy, political science, and sociology.

Cassandra Hartblay, University of Toronto Scarborough

Cassandra Hartblay is associate professor in the Department of Health & Society at the University of Toronto Scarborough (Canada), teaching disability studies and health humanities, and graduate faculty in the Department of Anthropology.

Becky Gold, Independent disability advocate, educator, and artist-scholar

Becky Gold is a disability advocate, educator, and artist-scholar currently working within accessibility and social services sectors in Toronto (Canada). She holds a PhD in theatre and performance studies from York University, where her SSHRC-funded research explored autobiographical storytelling by neurodivergent artists as a vehicle for self-advocacy, community activism, and (re)imagining disability futures. Becky has been published in Research in Drama Education, Studies in Social Justice, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, and Canadian Theatre Review. Becky’s evolving creative practice is grounded in multidirectional support, interdependence, and interabled collaboration.

In greyscale, we see performer Connor Yuzwenko-Martin's (Deaf) profile from the waist up. His hands are signing through falling grain and his head is bent with closed eyes. The image has stark contrasts of white and black. Slim outlines of Connor’s arms and face catch light that otherwise seems reserved for the falling grain.

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Published

2025-12-19

How to Cite

Kuppers, Petra, Jessica Watkin, VK Preston, Nadine Changfoot, Cassandra Hartblay, and Becky Gold. 2025. “Somatic Care Performances: Turtle Disco and Tendings”. Performance Matters 11 (1–2). Vancouver:115–135. https://performancematters-thejournal.com/index.php/pm/article/view/565.

Issue

Vol. 11 No. 1–2 (2025): Dramaturgies of Accessibility

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2025 Petra Kuppers, Jessica Watkin, VK Preston, Nadine Changfoot, Cassandra Hartblay, Becky Gold

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