Graduate student in cultural anthropology. Improvisational comedy teacher and performer. I use research-creation methods to theorise everyday life through art and movement. My ethnographic research considers the intersections of gender, social justice, inclusion, race, critical improvisation studies, queer theory, and intersectional feminisms.
embodied storytelling and performance
Performer and Improv Teacher
Laughter as liberation.
I perform and teach improv comedy to and with diverse communities of all experience levels. I encourage students to generate art from their lived experiences and bodies in collective motion. Humour and community-building are at the heart of my workshops. Teaching and learning are communal, reciprocal, and liberating activities.
Research-Creator
Art as a method of deep engagement with the social world.
I work across multiple art mediums: improv comedy, culinary arts, pottery, photography, print-making, and the written word. From this artistic position, I approach research as a relational act of co-creation, generating theory with the people I encounter inside and outside of academic spaces.
Storyteller
Sharing stories as an act of radical vulnerability.
I find ways to integrate storytelling, emotion, and vulnerability into my artistic and academic work. I strive to create brave spaces where folks feel comfortable to take creative and intellectual risks, tell their stories, imagine alternatives, and enact their visions.
Black and white photograph: Sarah Lappano/The Anthropologists
Lauren Charman 