Master’s research: Using theatre to help rewrite stories of traumatic mental health hospital stays

Eden Middleton, recipient of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) 2025 Canada Graduate Scholarships-Master’s (CGS-M) award, shares more about their research and vision for the future.

Can you tell me a little bit about yourself?

My name is Eden Middleton (they/she) and I am a Settler Canadian from Treaty 7, Moh’kins’tsis. I come from a farming family, grew up camping in the Rockies, and studied English and Drama at the University of Calgary.  This sparked a love for critical theory and the arts-based research that I’m translating into my Master in Social Work program here at the University of Manitoba. I’m also a practicing theatre artist, working as a playwright, dramaturg, producer and theatre-maker.

What is your research about and how does it incorporate your experience as a theatre artist?

My thesis explores agency and coercion in psychiatric hospitalizations related to suicidality through arts-based research, specifically looking at how people story and re-story their experience through theatre and what that emotional and embodied medium can teach us.  In navigating both myself and loved ones through our mental health system, I was deeply impacted by how that system can be both a deeply traumatizing and harmful place while simultaneously feeling like a lifeline and necessary resource during an incredibly vulnerable time. I unpacked some of my own feelings about this through the writing and producing of my fringe show Date Night and through that process I began to wonder about how playwriting might serve as a medium to unlock new ways of knowing about something that can be really difficult to talk about. In other words, this research gets curious about how we reclaim narratives about a space and time where control of how that story went was often taken away.

Do you have any advice for MSW students who are just starting their program?

Research and graduate school are both challenging and often deeply personal work. For me, it’s been really important to anchor in my loved ones, community, and the places where I find joy outside of school and social work practice. We talk a lot about ‘self care’ and that’s important too, but really I think what matters even more is how we invest in and care for each other. Other people will remind you why you’re doing the work when you’re tired, buoy you when the work feels heavy, and celebrate you when you achieve those milestones you’ve worked so hard for. As someone who moved here for this program, I’ve been lucky to find a network of support from my supervisor Dr. Christine Mayor, other professors, my cohort, and my community back home – but not surprised (community is arguably part of what social workers do best.) They’ve made this program manageable, and I am endlessly grateful to them– and I’d advise anyone to rely on your community and let your community rely on you.

What is your vision for the future and what do you hope your research accomplishes?

Long term, my dream for the future is to intertwine my social work practice with my theatre practice and make theatre that is co-created with, called for by, and transformative for communities. Whether I get there through further PhD research, arts-based grants, or practice in community is still something I’m discerning. I also know that even at this stage in my research there are more questions than I can answer here about suicidality and autonomy – and that I remain deeply passionate about and committed to anti-carceral approaches to mental health care.  I hope that this study makes some small contribution towards that goal.

Eden is still recruiting for research participants. Interested participants can find the posting at Creative Community Change Research at @cccresearch or by email at middlet6@myumanitoba.ca to find out more. 

Those curious about Eden’s artistic practice can follow their Sunflower Collective Theatre @sunflowercollectivetheatre.