Heavier than Air

'Heavier than Air' is a theatre play written by Dan Harris and Stacy Holman Jones based on transcripts of interviews with queer teachers. On stage, Heavier than Air has been used in university classrooms and has received public performances including: a workshop performance at the International Drama in Education Research Institute Conference in Singapore (2015) and full productions at Feast Festival (Adelaide Australia, 2015), the Scottish Storytelling Centre (Edinburgh, 2017), The Morris Library Rotunda in Urbana, Illinois (2017), The Festival of Creative Learning (Edinburgh, 2019), and the 3rd European Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (Edinburgh, 2019).

'Heavier than Air' helps to educate non-LGBTQIA+ audiences, along with education administrators, students, and staff about the experiences of social inclusion and mental health needs of LGBTQIA+ people, providing LGBTQIA+ teachers with an opportunity to see their sometimes welcoming, sometimes violently exclusionary experiences at their workplace depicted on stage, and now on film.

This film version was produced by Edgar Rodríguez-Dorans with the support of Monash University, the Centre for Creative-Relational Inquiry, the Institute of Academic Development (University of Edinburgh) through the IAD Action Fund, and was premiered on 2020 as part of the Staff Pride Research Seminar Series (University of Edinburgh).