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Nicolas Shannon Savard

Nicolas Shannon Savard (they/them) is multidisciplinary performance artist, educator, scholar, and applied theatre practitioner.

Nicolas Shannon Savard (they/them) is a queer-trans multidisciplinary artist-scholar, educator, and the host of Gender Euphoria, the Podcast, a series produced for HowlRound Theatre Commons.

They earned their PhD in Theatre from The Ohio State University (2021), studying applied theatre and queer and feminist theory, history, and performance practice. As an educator and director, Nicolas Shannon aims to cultivate spaces and pedagogies that prioritize equity, accessibility, and accountability and that draw upon the lived experience and cultural wealth each participant brings into the room. Their pedagogical practice-as-research employs digital humanities methodologies to design accessible, adaptable, collaborative learning experiences for theatre history, writing, and seminar classrooms; the rehearsal studio; and beyond. Their writing and other media on solo and collaborative devised performance, disability aesthetics, and LGBTQ-inclusive pedagogies have been published in the Journal of Consent Based Performance, Theatre Topics, and Texas Theatre Journal.

You can learn more about Nicolas Shannon’s recent projects and read their teaching blog, “Pedagogy in Process” on their website: drnssavard.com

 

 

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The Queer-Trans Performance Family Tree is more of a Galaxy
Podcast

The Queer-Trans Performance Family Tree is more of a Galaxy

With Guest H. May

13 September 2023

Dr. H. May joins host Nicolas Shannon Savard, who introduces the Queer-Trans Performance Family Tree Project, an interactive, open-access digital exhibit visually connecting trans artists across the United States to the collectives and communities who have sustained our work. This episode explores the role of mentorship in both the research for the project and in their own work as gender nonconforming theatremakers.

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Queer Archival Praxis Roundtable
Podcast

Queer Archival Praxis Roundtable

With Guests David Silvernail, Janet Werther, Victoria Lafave, Jordan Ealey, and Kelli Crump

6 September 2023

What role does white supremacy play in the creation of the queer theatre canon? What power and what responsibility do we—as queer theatremakers, historians, and educators—have to challenge canons and archives that define “queer” almost exclusively as white and cisgender? Artist-scholars Janet Werther, Victoria LaFave, Jordan Ealey, David Silvernail, and Kelli Crump join host Nicolas Shannon Savard to tackle these questions and to queer the archive.

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Making Space for Queer Futurity in Texas
Podcast

Making Space for Queer Futurity in Texas

16 August 2023

Austin’s pop princess, p1nkstar, shares the story of her evolution from performance artist creating a pop star persona for Instagram to real life pop star to community leader creating spaces for fellow trans artists to showcase their work in Texas. This episode also features guest co-host Melissa Lin Sturges, coordinator of the annual Doric Wilson Panel for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) LGBTQ+ Focus Group.

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Making Space for Self-Authorship through Audio Description
Podcast

Making Space for Self-Authorship through Audio Description

With Guests H. May and Liz Thomson

26 July 2023

Host Nicolas Shannon Savard, Dr. H. May, and Dr. Liz Thomson discuss the creative and collaborative possibilities that emerge when audio description (AD) is made an integral part of the artistic process, as opposed to solely an accommodation for individual audience members. They critique traditional models of AD that demand objectivity and propose alternative approaches that embrace self-determination, specificity of lived experience, and universal design.

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Making Space: Consent, Collaboration, and Queer Access Intimacy
Podcast

Making Space: Consent, Collaboration, and Queer Access Intimacy

With Guests J.C. Pankratz and Emmett Podgorski

12 July 2023

J.C. Pankratz returns to the podcast to reflect on the first full production of their play Seahorse, directed by Nicolas Shannon Savard, starring Emmett Podgorski. Nicolas, J.C., and Emmett discuss how the collaborative process, from auditions through closing night, was informed by queer community building, access intimacy, and consent-based practice. They offer behind-the-scenes perspectives and concrete examples of how tools and ideas discussed in previous episodes played out in practice.

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Queer-Trans Intimacy: One Foot in the Academy and the Other in the Nightclub
Podcast

Queer-Trans Intimacy: One Foot in the Academy and the Other in the Nightclub

With Guests Raja Benz and Joy Brooke Fairfield

5 July 2023

Nicolas Shannon asks Joy Brooke Fairfield and Raja Benz how their intimacy work is informed by queer theory and critical theory. Their conversation bounces between queer of color theory, decolonial theory, disability theory, and the dim glow of the night club; between past, present, and future; between the ideas they’re sure of and the ones they’re working out in real time. Bonus! It comes with dozens of recommended readings.

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Queer Intimacies in Too-Near Dystopian Futures
Podcast

Queer Intimacies in Too-Near Dystopian Futures

With Guest Leanna Keyes

28 June 2023

Host Nicolas Shannon Savard and playwright Leanna Keyes discuss her play Doctor Voynich and Her Children. What does it mean to stage trans stories about queer motherhood, abortion, intimacy, choice, and power in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and the ongoing legislative attacks on reproductive rights and the trans community?

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Queer-Trans Intimacy Work: Cracking Gender Open
Podcast

Queer-Trans Intimacy Work: Cracking Gender Open

With Guests Dr. Joy Brooke Fairfield and Raja Benz

21 June 2023

In the first part of a two-part conversation on queer-trans intimacy direction and choreography, Nicolas talks with Theatrical Intimacy Education faculty members Dr. Joy Brooke Fairfield and Raja Benz about their courses Working with Trans & Non-Binary Artists and Staging Intimacy Beyond the Binary. They discuss crafting courses that are less Trans-101 and more cracking gender open, resisting patriarchal and colonialist scripts, and bringing queer culture into the rehearsal room.

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Queer Intimacies, Trans Futures, Grief, and Radical Hope in Seahorse
Podcast

Queer Intimacies, Trans Futures, Grief, and Radical Hope in Seahorse

With Guest J.C. Pankratz

14 June 2023

Host Nicolas Shannon Savard interviews playwright J.C. Pankratz about their play Seahorse, a poetic, stream-of-consciousness one-person show about a trans man’s attempts at artificial insemination following his husband’s unexpected death. The conversation will dive into the play’s approach to the “messiness” of imagining futures you can’t yet see and its use of magical realism to invite audiences to sit inside that mess as witnesses and confidants.

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Making Space for Thriving Queer Communities Through Applied Theatre
Podcast

Making Space for Thriving Queer Communities Through Applied Theatre

With Guest Dr. Jesse O’Rear

7 June 2023

Host Nicolas Shannon Savard talks with Dr. Jesse O’Rear about applied theatre with LGBTQ students on college campuses. Jesse describes some alternatives to traditional models of bystander intervention and diversity trainings to create embodied learning opportunities for LGBTQ students to step into positions of leadership and for audience-participants to practice “kinesthetic allyship.”

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Gender Euphoria, Episode 9: On Being a 'Trans Trailblazer'
Podcast

Gender Euphoria, Episode 9: On Being a 'Trans Trailblazer'

With Scott Turner Schofield

30 March 2022

Gender Euphoria, the podcast, host Nicolas Shannon Savard sits down with actor, writer, consultant, educator Scott Turner Schofield. They trouble the TV/film industry's framing of Schofield as a singular "trans trailblazer," since as he notes, trans actors were, indeed, carving out spaces to make and support one another’s art long before we were invited into Hollywood or mainstream theatre spaces. The conversation dives into the shifts that Scott has noticed in audience response to his work over the course of the last twenty years and how those are in direct conversation with national politics.

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Gender Euphoria, Episode 8: QTPOC Comedy: Connecting, Communing, Creating Compassion
Podcast

Gender Euphoria, Episode 8: QTPOC Comedy: Connecting, Communing, Creating Compassion

With D’Lo

28 March 2022

Gender Euphoria, the Podcast host Nicolas Shannon Savard sits down with actor, writer, and comedian D’Lo to talk about his career and how he uses comedy and storytelling as tools for connection, education, and compassion.

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Gender Euphoria, Episode 7: Trans Theatre and the Autobiographical Assumption
Podcast

Gender Euphoria, Episode 7: Trans Theatre and the Autobiographical Assumption

With Dr. Jesse D. O'Rear

23 March 2022

Gender Euphoria, the podcast, host Nicolas Shannon Savard sits down with artist-scholar, Dr. Jesse O’Rear. This episode features a conversation with Dr. O’Rear about his research on and experience working with autobiographical trans narratives in performance and a phenomenon he calls the “autobiographical assumption” which audiences often read onto trans artists.

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Gender Euphoria, Episode 6: Putting on the Trans Educator Top Hat
Podcast

Gender Euphoria, Episode 6: Putting on the Trans Educator Top Hat

With Rebecca Kling

21 March 2022

Gender Euphoria, the Podcast, host Nicolas Shannon Savard sits down with storyteller, educator, and advocate for transgender rights, Rebecca Kling. Their conversation addresses Rebecca’s work as a solo performer-turned-activist, the importance of consent in deciding to take on the trans educator role, and her radical and hilarious approach to the post-show talkback: the Strip Q and A.

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Gender Euphoria, Episode 5: Queer of Color Devised Performance, Disidentification, and Spirituality
Podcast

Gender Euphoria, Episode 5: Queer of Color Devised Performance, Disidentification, and Spirituality

With siri gurudev

9 March 2022

Gender Euphoria, the podcast, host Nicolas Shannon Savard sits down with siri gurudev to talk about their devising practice which blends queer of color theory and performance techniques, popular music, and spirituality and to chat about their dissertation research on ritual, trauma, and healing in QTPOC performance.

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Gender Euphoria, Episode 4: Training Cisgender Producers and Directors: It’s More than Remembering Pronouns
Podcast

Gender Euphoria, Episode 4: Training Cisgender Producers and Directors: It’s More than Remembering Pronouns

With Maybe Burke

3 March 2022

Gender Euphoria, the podcast, host Nicolas Shannon Savard sits down with actor, writer, and human rights advocate Maybe Burke to talk about her role at the Transgender Training Institute and their signature course, “Supporting Transgender Actors & Creatives.”

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Gender Euphoria, Episode 3: Building Black Queer Worlds Onstage and Behind the Scenes
Podcast

Gender Euphoria, Episode 3: Building Black Queer Worlds Onstage and Behind the Scenes

With Azure D. Osborne-Lee

28 February 2022

Gender Euphoria, the Podcast, host Nicolas Shannon Savard sits down with playwright Azure D. Osborne-Lee to talk about their play, Crooked Parts; building Black queer worlds onstage; and the mentorship, community-building, and production practices that go into bringing those worlds to life.

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Gender Euphoria, Episode 2: The Case for QTPOC Slice-of-Life Drama
Podcast

Gender Euphoria, Episode 2: The Case for QTPOC Slice-of-Life Drama

With Dillon Yruegas

23 February 2022

Gender Euphoria, the podcast, host Nicolas Shannon Savard sits down with playwright and performer, Dillon Yruegas to talk about two productions of his play The Brunch Crowd. They talk about what a slice-of-life, kitchen sink play full of trans of color characters looks like and what kind of intervention that makes in the theatrical landscape. They dive into the importance of trans joy and queer friendship and its absence on stage. Finally, Dillon reflects on how expansive approaches to casting trans and non-binary characters and how identity-based casting might open up dialogue and create space for a much wider range of faces and experiences to be seen on stage.

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Gender Euphoria, Episode 1 Part 2: Transgender Legibility: Have We Really Reached the Transgender Tipping Point?
Podcast

Gender Euphoria, Episode 1 Part 2: Transgender Legibility: Have We Really Reached the Transgender Tipping Point?

With Joshua Bastian Cole

16 February 2022

Nicolas Shannon Savard and Joshua Bastian Cole continue their conversation about transgender representation. They critique Time magazine’s 2014 declaration of the “transgender tipping point” of cultural visibility and explore the ways in which Hollywood’s handling of trans narratives bleeds over into the theatre, politics, and daily life for trans and gender nonconforming people.

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Gender Euphoria, Episode 1 Part 1: Transgender Legibility beyond the Tropes
Podcast

Gender Euphoria, Episode 1 Part 1: Transgender Legibility beyond the Tropes

With Joshua Bastian Cole

9 February 2022

In episode 1 (part 1) of Gender Euphoria, the podcast, host Nicolas Shannon Savard sits down with Joshua Bastian Cole to talk about popular tropes in transgender representation, gender legibility on stage, and the implications of each for trans and nonbinary theatremakers.

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Introduction to Gender Euphoria
Podcast

Introduction to Gender Euphoria

2 February 2022

Welcome to Gender Euphoria, the podcast! In this episode, host and producer Nicolas Savard explains the origin story of this new podcast and what (and who) we should expect to hear from this season.

Gender Euphoria
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Series

Gender Euphoria

Hosted by Nicolas Savard, the Gender Euphoria podcast aims to amplify the voices of trans and gender nonconforming theater artists in the United States and creates an opportunity for trans artists to be in conversation with one another about their experiences working in a field that has