CACOPHONIE:
IMPROVISING (WITH) IDENTITIES
Creative Workshop Series | February to May 2026
Cacophania (Latin): “The quality of having an ill sound; the use of harsh-sounding words or phrases” (“cacophony,” OED)
Series Overview
The world today can feel as though we are surrounded by a cacophonie of ideas, sounds, and experiences—a discordant and dissonant feeling of being in a world misaligned. But cacophonie can also speak to the attention we can give to feeling otherwise, a way of making sense of the world in new ways, through the actions of improvisation that bring into perspective the moral discord of the world(s) around us. This creative workshop series focusses on different approaches to theorizing improvisation and the acts of identity making. Improvisation is often thought of as antagonistic to scripting, to the composed moment; but in each workshop we will collaboratively think through and co-create what it means to attend to the tone, voice, and perspectives of improvisation.
In thinking about improvisation as a site for generative cacophonie, for sitting with the difficulty of a discordant world, participants are invited to reflect on the following questions:
How do we build-off, react to, listen in on, embody, move through, carry in us, and interact with our experiences of identity? How might we improvise with the cacophonie of identities we inhabit? How can we use a principle of cacophonie—at once a discordant and dissonant mixture of sound and the unison of difference and plethora of voice—to imagine the dimensions of improvisation as a social aesthetic, ethical practice, impromptu disruption of expectation, and creative method for change in the now?
What: 1.5~2 hour creative workshop
Where: ImprovLab (MCKN 108), University of Guelph
Details
Please click on the links below to find out more about the co-facilitators and information for each workshop.
Feb. 5 | Just Listening: Experiments with Collective Memory
Mar. 17 | OsteoSITE
Apr. 10 | choreographies of choice (more details coming soon!)
Apr. 24 | The Body as an Archive
May 7 | Bridge to Terabithia: A Somatic Exploration of Childhood Self
Who should come? We invite everyone who is interested in participating to join the creative workshops. We aim to make these events as accessible as possible, and they are open to everyone regardless of age, ability, ethnicity, religion, language, sexual orientation, gender identity, political beliefs, or status. Folks with children are also welcome to bring them along and their participation will not be part of the study.
ImprovLab is a research and performance space in the heart of the Arts Resource Centre at the University of Guelph. This blackbox theatre-type space is designed for presentation, broadcast, archiving, and research. You can learn more about it here: https://theimprovlab.ca/about.
To confirm participation and/or for more information, including about consent forms, please email sharon.engbrecht@uoguelph.ca.
If you decide to join us spontaneously, please do. Doors will be open 30 minutes before each event. There will be coffee, tea, and light snacks provided.
This project has been reviewed by the Research Ethics Board for compliance with federal guidelines for research involving human participants (REB #2469).
S. D. Engbrecht 