Heather Majaury is the Coordinator of Festival of Neighbourhoods at the Social Development Centre and Artistic Director of Kaleidoscope Collective, a proud member of The SDCWRs CIvic Hub. She is also a mother who experienced Homelessness with her daughter when she was 5 weeks old. Precarious housing was unfortunately a norm at various times through her parenting years.
Heather is an applied theatre creator, and workshop facilitator who is currently creating a community-based research laboratory using an evolving methodology called Two Minute Plays. The first cohort of the Laboratory have been working diligently to transform stories of lived experiences of housing precarity and homelessness into live presentations that can show as much as tell audiences what it’s really like to survive in these circumstances while shedding light on system gaps and challenges to inspire change. These plays are different because they help and support those who participate to deeply engage with the issues, themes, and topics that are covered in the dramatizations. Our wrap around workshops that accompany each presentation unpack the knowledge produced to encourage further actions, transformation and change by those attending. The Story of Dommy is one of these plays currently being developed. And Heather is the primary dramaturg offering her skills as a playwright director and theatre of the oppresssed joker in collaboration with the story holder Charlene Lee. The play based on Charlene’s lived experience is about child apprehension as the result of system engagement while experiencing homelessness. This play allows us to begin to unpack root causes to tragic outcomes for mothers who lose their children to the system who desire to parent.