The University of Saskatchewan Drama studio theatre will be used as a laboratory to collect data about the staging of elements necessary to create diverse colour palettes for different skin tones.

This comes as a new research project by Carla Orosz , an associate professor of drama at USask, professional theatre designers Rachel Forbes and Sholem Dolgoy and the Gordon Tootoosis Nikaniwin Theatre, the province’s only Indigenous theatre company will look at making the stage a more inclusive place by designing performance staging that is complementary to diverse skin colours.

Orosz was granted $25,000 dollars by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada to pursue the project. The study will look at costumes, makeup, accessories, scenery, projection and lighting. Orosz hopes a number of results come from the project.

“The first and foremost is that we do see more diversity on stage so that theatres and all performing arts feel supported that when they want to put diversity on the stage, they know that everybody involved in it knows how to work with that and how to treat everyone as an equal.”

Orosz hopes this will allow younger artists to realize that diversity can indeed take place on stage. The data gathered through the research project will be recorded digitally with graphic and written elements to create a free and accessible resource for theatre designers.

The project is scheduled to wrap up in December, although Orosz says they’ll likely discover more things as time goes on and the research team will want to continue their findings.