The Haunting is a collaborative performance-meets-séance that asks what happens when we invite our ghosts into the room with us.
Shira Leuchter applies lipstick during a workshop performance.
The Haunting is a multimodal performance and participatory invitation that draws on “the spectral turn” and legacies of automatic painting to explore how we respond to our ghosts. The performance examines how we tell our ghost stories, the traces they leave on us, and the requests they make of us.
Drawing on the work of scholars like Avery F. Gordon and Christina Sharpe, I’m thinking about ghosts as personal curiosities as well as social phenomena. Reckoning with ghosts is seeking justice; it’s about looking closely at what we’re told to ignore, about paying attention to what’s been invisibilized in our dominant narratives.
Beginning with my own teenaged hauntings and spectral sites, I’m using this performance to consider how antisemitic and ableist narratives have worked on me, and how a cast of ghosts and spiritualists—including Frederick Banting, a “registered psychic” named Bunny, and a house full of ghost dogs—have asked me to look more closely at what I’ve refused to consider.
The performance invites audiences to summon their own ghosts into the room with us, as we experiment with ways to make them visible and to contend with their appeals.
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council, along with the generous support of The Birthing Body Project and Theatre Direct/Balancing Act Canada.
the haunting is in development as part of tarragon theatre’s 2023-24 greenhouse residency program.
written and performed by shira leuchter
outside eye, creative collaborator and audio/visual/tech support by chris hanratty
