by John Threlfall | Nov 7, 2022 | Alumni, Events, School of Music, Theatre, Undergraduate, Visual Arts
UVic’s 5 Days of Action is back! Running Nov 14-18, Five Days of Action: 365 Days of Commitment is UVic’s annual free, week-long event aimed at amplifying the work groups, units and organizations are doing to create a more diverse, inclusive and equitable campus and community throughout the year—both on- and off-campus. Fine Arts is once again organizing a number of events as part of this week of significant interactions.
Each day of the week represents a different call to action: Monday asks us to listen, Tuesday to reflect, Wednesday to dialogue, Thursday to engage, and Friday to take action. There will be many opportunities to reflect on what we can do as individuals and as part of a team to improve the sense of inclusion and belonging in our greater community. We’re all encouraged to take part throughout the week by visiting an events, attending a workshop or seminar, or engaging with the curated list of things to read, watch and do.
Here’s a quick roundup of what Fine Arts has coming up:
KILLJOYS art exhibition: Mon-Fri, Nov 14-18, Audain Gallery, Visual Arts Building
Explore how art can use various mediums to confront forms of systemic violence and oppression in this annual exhibition by Visual Arts students, staff and faculty.
Walk with Me: 10 & 11:30am Mon-Tues Nov 14-15, SUB Pujol Room
Join Fine Arts Indigenous Resurgence Coordinator Karla Point, Theatre PhD alum & sessional Will Weigler plus Lydia Toorenburgh (Anthropology) for this one-hour, in-person experiential and creatively rewarding activity designed to deepen Settler Canadians’ felt-understanding of the lived experiences of Indigenous peoples.
Arts for Action: 12:30-1:30pm Tues, Nov 15, Visual Arts Room A111
Poets will be performing up to three poems while collaborating with visual arts students to live capture the themes and experiences during the performances. With poetry ranging from free-verse and Haiku to rhymed poetry, the themes will address different topics of anti-racism, equity, diversity, inclusion and/or sexualized violence prevention.
Featuring poets & Writing alumni Yvonne Blomer and Arleen Paré, plus Alexa Taylor-McCallum, ALHS and Visual Arts students Tori Jones and Satya Underhill.
Amplifying Voices: 12:30pm Tues, Nov 15, Phillip T. Young Recital Hall, MacLaurin B-wing
The first of two School of Music events being presented, Amplifying Voices sees UVic’s Music Student Association present a lecture-recital featuring underrepresented identities in music. Student performers and composers will present and discuss works that highlight marginalized voices, bringing awareness to EDI-related challenges that musicians and musical institutions are facing.
Equal Measure: 8pm Tues, Nov 15, Phillip T. Young Recital Hall
That same evening sees the recital Equal Measure featuring pianist Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa (BMus ’93) and violinst Sarah Westwick performing a concert of works for violin and piano by historical and contemporary women composers including lsabella Leonarda, Amanda Maier, Florence Price, Elizabeth Raum, and Jessie Montgomery. A short post-concert Q&A and reception will follow. This concert is made possible in part by funding from the University of Victoria Alumni Association.
Rachel Iwaasa (photo:SD Holman)
“It’s Just Black Hair” 12:45-1:45pm Thurs, Nov 17, McIntyre Studio, Phoenix Building • Register here
Join Fine Arts playwright-in-residence Thembelihle Moyo for this artist talk, which will feature a Q&A plus premiere excerpts of her new play, It’s Just Black Hair. She’ll be joined on-stage by Theatre professors Sasha Kovacs & Yasmine Kandil.
Born and raised in Zimbabwe, Moyo’s previous plays include Colour Blue, Let it Out, Who Said I Don’t Want to Dance and I Want To Fly. “Black hair is more than just strands that unite in kinky solidarity, demanding to be seen and heard,” says Moyo.
Spring Awakening: Nov 10-26, Bishop Theatre, Phoenix Building (Tickets $18-$33)
While not directly associated with this overall event, the themes behind the mainstage Phoenix production Spring Awakening definitely match the goals of 5 Days of Action. As high-school teenagers in an 1890s provincial German town struggle to reconcile their budding sexual feelings, the moral code of their society leads them to tragedy. An electrifying fusion of morality, sexuality and rock music, Spring Awakening forever changed the definition of what a Broadway musical could be when it debuted in 2006, breaking boundaries by exploring the journey from adolescence to adulthood with poignancy and passion.
by John Threlfall | Nov 4, 2022 | Alumni, School of Music, Undergraduate
When Calgary-based Logan Wood was looking for a leading post-secondary music and computer science degree program, he quickly realized that there was only real choice for him. “In comparing programs across the country, UVic stood out for me,” he says.
Despite landing squarely in the pandemic years, Wood managed to not only excel academically and creatively in his Bachelor of Science, but also complete four software-development co-op terms with a pair of tech start-ups in his hometown. His interest in music production and recording have already seen him release a mixtape album and three charting EPs—including his latest, 2022’s Pardon My Name—all of which helped him land a full-time position fresh out of classes. (Check out his work @LoganWoodMusic on Instagram, TikTok & Twitter.)
Music made the hiring difference
Now a corporate systems developer with the Calgary branch of energy company PETRONAS Global, Wood feels it was his unique combination of skills and experiences that helped him secure his new position. “I definitely got it because of my co-op experience . . . but my music background certainly helped my application,” he says. “Employers are looking for interesting, well-rounded people—not just a straight-A student whose life is all about grades—so my recording successes showed that I wasn’t one-dimensional.”
While he’s currently leaning into the computer science side of his new degree, Wood clearly isn’t giving up on his hard-earned recording skills. “Coming into the program, I knew I wanted to release music but didn’t really have a plan,” he admits. Thanks to the School of Music’s fully equipped Creative Research Technology (or CReaTe) Lab, Wood was able to learn everything he needed to record, mix and master his tracks, including producing, engineering, plug-in development and all the required hardware. “It was definitely a catalyst in bringing my music to life.”
Recording & networking
One unintentional COVID highlight was the opportunity to work with local label Cordova Bay Records on a unique recording project. “We were able to produce some ambient music for them to consider, which was really great.” (Hear Wood’s “Cloudwalker” track on the UVic Library’s “Library Lullaby” Soundcloud playlist.) “Not only did we get some professional feedback on our tracks, but it opened a window into the world of record labels and gave most of us our first experience doing ambient music, which is more of a low-fi/study-beat. My personal work is more either old-school jazz boom-bap hip hop or trappy upbeat anthem-y party vibes.”
Other degree highlights include courses in music technology and music production, and serving as communications director for the Computer Music Course Union. “I’m really happy with what the CMCU grew into—not only did we increase student involvement but the academic funding we received let us invest close to $10,000 in recording equipment, instruments, microphones and software back into the studio,” Wood says. “Looking back, those were the standouts: fun projects, great experiences, good friends.”
The experience he needed
Ultimately, Wood says he wouldn’t hesitate in recommending the program to future students. “If you’re passionate about computer science and you want to learn about music—or vice-versa—this is the program for you,” he says. “This is where you get the experience and the opportunity to network and build relationships with your peers and professors and the industry: I really don’t think there’s a better program in Canada.”
All photos by Emily Erickson-Flegg
by John Threlfall | Nov 4, 2022 | Events, Faculty, Theatre
When mounting an acclaimed Broadway musical, it’s always good to have somebody in the director’s chair who knows of which they ing. Enter veteran performer Michelle Rios, whose impressive credits on and Off-Broadway include a number of Tony Award-nominated productions—including starring alongside reining musical theatre king Lin Manuel Miranda in a little show called In the Heights.
Now a university instructor, applied theatre facilitator, and director herself, Rios was invited to the Department of Theatre this year as both a sessional and the director of the mainstage production Spring Awakening, the coming-of-age high-school rock musical that swept the Tony, Grammy, and Drama Desk awards back when it debuted in 2006.
The cast of Phoenix Theatre’s Spring Awakening (photo: Dean Kalyan)
Popular but challenging
Yet, despite its impressive rock & roll pedigree, Spring Awakening—which runs November 10-26 at the Phoenix—remains a challenging show that never flinches from tackling youthfully sensitive topics like abuse, abortion, suicide, homophobia, teen pregnancy and the crushing pressure of unrealistic academic expectations.
“There are a number of moments in this show that can be triggering for young actors,” says Rios. “We’ve had several conversations, because some scenes are rather vulnerable. I’m trying to keep this process safe—emotionally and psychologically—because I know that this piece requires a certain level of emotional connection and urgency. Therefore, safety, collaboration, and open communication are key.”
In addition to these emotional pressures are the inevitable singing/dancing/acting anxieties that come with mounting a full musical. Unlike the students Rios usually works with as part of the teaching faculty at the Canadian College of Performing Arts, UVic’s theatre program doesn’t specifically focus on musical theatre . . . despite the fact it was the students themselves who chose to mount Spring Awakening.
Not an easy show
But Rios says she’s more than up for the challenge, seeing it as an ideal fusion of her experiences both on Broadway and working with young artists. “Teaching is something I really love, even though I come from a strong performance background,” she says. “While I was performing in New York, I was also working as a teaching artist with an organization that used drama as a means of conflict resolution and drop-out prevention.”
The first step in her process was finding out why the students chose this production. “At our first rehearsal, we had a great conversation about where they’re at, what they’re feeling, and what they need to say,” she explains. “This was an important conversation. Musical theatre is a multilayered process. This isn’t an easy show to sing, act, and dance multiple times a week. But now that the students are immersed in it, they’re learning a lot about the process and the demands of this kind of production—they have learned so much material in very little time.”
Sharing her experience
While Victoria may well be just about as far from Broadway as you can get in North America—both geographically and culturally—Rios feels she’s in the right place at the right time.
“As an artist and educator, I’ve spent a lot of time on the road — directing a musical with 20 young actors is another exciting journey for me,” she says with a quick laugh. “I’m at a point in my life where I really want to focus on passing the torch by working with young actors and helping them achieve their goals. I also feel lucky to have learned from some great directors and mentors throughout my career, so I try to bring that knowledge into the work. All in all, it’s been a great opportunity and process!”
by John Threlfall | Oct 25, 2022 | Faculty, Research, School of Music
Dr Alexis Luko (photo: Tori Jones)
On a stormy Halloween weekend back in 2019, School of Music director Alexis Luko hosted an international symposium titled “The Gothic, the Abject and the Supernatural: Two Hundred Years of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein”. Fast forward to Halloween 2022 and that conference has now evolved into the new essay collection she has co-edited, Monstrosity, Identity and Music: Mediating Uncanny Creatures from Frankenstein to Videogames (Bloomsbury).
Created together with her original conference co-organizer, co-editor and colleague from Carleton University, Dr. James Wright, Monstrosity, Identity and Music explores notions of monstrosity through different media — including comic books, film, music, videogames, art and theatre — and through different academic fields ranging from film, literary and gender studies to psychoanalysis, identity politics and even videogame analysis.
“We’ve stitched together several disparate discourses across different disciplines — just as Dr. Frankenstein assembled disparate body parts — to present a multi-faceted image of Shelley’s monster and his impact,” Luko explains, pointing to such varied examples as Marvel’s Frankenstein comics and Afro-Futurism to Maestro Fresh Wes’s “Let Your Backbone Slide” and the first cinematic adaptation of Frankenstein in 1910. “Taken together — and animated — these parts give us a powerful illustration of the undying importance of Shelley’s monster and monstrously human vision.”
But the book also looks more generally at monstrosity in music, film, and videogames — including chapters about queer counter-discourses, a re-evaluation of the white women in Jordan Peele’s Get Out, 12-tone compositions in monster movie soundtracks, the representation of Indigeneity in film and the role of female monsters in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt videogame.
Click here to listen to Alexis Luko’s October 22 interview on this topic on CBC Radio’s North By Northwest (jump to the 11:30 mark, interview runs to 23:10).
It all goes back to her parents
A musicologist with an international reputation in film music (as well as renaissance music), Luko says she has always been drawn to scary things.
“When I was 7, my Dad gave me my own beautiful volume of Grimm’s Fairy Tales which I used to read quietly to myself before going to bed — often focused on the scariest ones, and then would spend most of the night hiding under my covers in a state of fright,” she says.
Add in family viewing nights featuring the likes of The Twilight Zone, Alien, The Fly (both versions), Invasion of the Body Snatchers — as well as more accepted cinematic classics like Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, Akira Kurasawa’s Rashomon, David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia and Roland Joffé’s The Mission — and it’s easy to see how a combined passion for film and music developed.
“I built up my love for film, art and music because I was lucky enough to have parents who constantly challenged me to open my eyes and ears — even if it meant getting a bit scared at times,” she says.
The sound of terror
When asked for her expert option on the scariest movie soundtracks, Luko singles out the sounds of psychological horror films like Midsommar, Get Out, Rosemary’s Baby and The Shining as prime examples where atmosphere is built through both music and effects like screams and voice. “Often the viewers’ or protagonists’ fears are exploited through sound itself,” she explains. “It’s sound that helps to amplify the imagination, often lurking offscreen. Sound is the filmmaker’s most powerful tool for horror, because it’s all about asking the audience to scare themselves.”
Despite living in an era when CGI and special effects tend to dominate screens both big and small, Luko feels the worst scares are the ones we create for ourselves—something Frankenstein originator Mary Shelley well knew on that original dark and stormy night on Lake Geneva in 1816.
“There’s nothing scarier than what’s already in your own mind,” she says. “It’s important to remember that Shelley’s original monster didn’t look anything like the cliché of the shambling green grotesque that we so often see: he was much less obviously threatening and much more human—well-spoken, well-read, thoughtful and empathetic. It’s the people he meets, and their reactions to him, it’s our society that ultimately drives him to become truly monstrous.”
Two Music concerts highlight the spooky season
The School of Music is also presenting two timely concerts: “Sorcery, Witchcraft & Fantasy” on October 27 at the Phillip T Young Recital Hall and “Nosferatu Live” on October 30 at Cinecenta.
Organized by professor Merrie Klazek, “Sorcery, Witchcraft & Fantasy” offers an interdisciplinary evening of music, theatre and poetry celebrating the history, reality and misconceptions of witchcraft. Music selections include brass quintet renditions of seasonal favourites like March to the Scaffold, Macbeth, and Nordic Tales, plus readings from the likes of Macbeth and the upcoming Phoenix Theatre production of Vinegar Tom, a contemporary political allegory set during the 17th century witch hunts. We’ll also hear poems by the late witch and celebrated UVic Writing department founder Robin Skelton, as well as a performance of the contemporary “Wiccan Goddess Chant” — a timely occasion to ring in the season of spirits.
Click here to listen to Merrie Klazek’s October 26 interview about this concert on CBC Radio’s On The Island.
Then Music professor Bruce Vogt will offer a live improvised score to a new print of the silent horror classic Nosferatu at UVic’s Cinecenta movie theatre, as well as Buster Keaton’s 1921 short The Haunted House.
by John Threlfall | Oct 18, 2022 | Alumni, Faculty, Writing
When Shane Book began teaching poetry workshops at the University of Victoria in 2017, he had to fill out a form listing the number of times he had moved. After some mental gymnastics, he arrived at an approximate number: 65.
“I think I’m on the spectrum of it’s beneficial and then it’s not beneficial,” says Book, who was born in Peru to a white Canadian father and a Black Trinidadian mother. His father worked for the Canadian International Development Agency, helping communities establish clean drinking water, so Book spent much of his childhood split between Ghana and Ottawa. Book’s mother was a teacher at Ghana International School. As an adult, Book crisscrossed the continent several times over chasing degrees, fellowships and teaching gigs, with stints in New York, Philadelphia, Iowa City, Santa Cruz, San Francisco, Nashville, Bowling Green, Calgary, Vancouver and Victoria, to name a few. He also lived in Brazil, Cuba, Italy, France and Trinidad and Tobago.
“It’s made me a little bit more flexible than the average human being in terms of change,” Book says. “You have to be when you’re a kid and you’re moving around and you’re the new kid in the school—and culturally more fluid because I’m comfortable in a lot of different cultural milieus. It probably would’ve made me a good spy.”
Multiple art forms
As it turns out, the skills required to be a secret agent are transferrable to that of an award-winning poet and filmmaker who graduated from the very department for which he now teaches. Book’s first poetry collection, Ceiling of Sticks, won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize and the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award. His second collection, Congotronic, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize. According to publisher House of Anansi, “Book’s poems splice, sample, collage, and jump-cut language from an array of sources, including slave narratives, Western philosophy, hip-hop lyrics and the diaries of plantation owners.”
In 2013, Book made a short film called Dust, based on one of his poems. His second film, 2017’s Praise and Blame, is billed as “a dark comedy about poets, exiles, burglars, secrets and the intellectual elite,” and stars Costas Mandylor of the Saw movie franchise. Both films screened at more than 50 festivals around the globe and won numerous awards.
Lately, Book—now an associate professor in the Department of Writing—has been delving into the Criterion Channel’s enjoyably gritty catalogue of blaxploitation films from the early 1970s, such as Shaft, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song and Across 110th Street, while completing his third poetry collection, slated for release later this year. All Black Everything is a mashup of voices and styles that’s both performative and musical.
“It has a lot of hip-hop references and these kinds of attitudes that you see in hip-hop, this kind of braggadocio and that kind of stuff that is maybe not as common in poetry. And then it also has more modernist, lyric poems. So, it’s a real mixture.”
—Shane Book
Originally, Book had intended to sample lyrics from rappers throughout the collection until his publisher informed him that securing permission would be costly—to the mic-dropping tune of $26,000. So, Book’s been rewriting 93 of the passages that contained hip-hop lyrics, keeping only three. He won’t say who made the cut except that the trap-infused rhymes of Atlanta rapper Young Thug will make an appearance. “I feel like a lot of poems that I read now are very sanctimonious. People are really like, ‘I’m going to teach you something. This is my wisdom.’ And I just was getting tired of that. I wanted to write something not trying to teach people. There’s meaning hidden in there, but it’s trying to be fun, entertaining.”
Form and freedom
Book’s first exposure to rap and hip-hop came while living in West Africa, when his school friend Kevin, an American kid, introduced him to hip-hop records and breakdancing.
“It blew my mind. I was like, ‘This is what I want to do.’ So we started breakdancing. We claim to have introduced breakdancing to Ghana. I think we probably did.”
Book says rap’s wordplay and “progressive elements” had an immediate and lasting impact on him, from its DIY aesthetic to connecting him to his roots.
“Just making something out of very little, like just a turntable and a microphone,” he says. “There’s also something simpatico [about rap]. It is essentially a Caribbean music. Like it’s morphed into what we know of it today, but I think of the similarities to old-school dancehall, reggae, and then even going to calypso [from] Trinidad—like that political talk, talking about the day, the news, that way of music being super verbal. I think it’s in all of those forms and it probably really influenced me because it’s really valued. And I think verbal dexterity in Black communities is really valued.”
Despite the lyrical nimbleness, sampling, remixing and cross pollination that hip-hop offers, Book is also a fan of traditional poetic structures. In his poem “Santa Cruz,” for instance, he employs a sestina, a form that goes back to the 12th century, and features the intricate repetition of end-words in six stanzas and an envoi (or short final stanza).
“I think that’s the benefit of form—it allows you to have something to work against.”
Back to his undergrad roots
The creative spark that experimentation within tight structures can ignite is also what attracted Book to the early bebop of Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus and later the more avant-garde jazz explorations of Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman. Before setting his compass on poetry, Book had aspirations of becoming a professional jazz saxophonist. “I think I liked jazz because it seemed like individuals would coalesce as a group and then leave, go off and do their solo and then come back, always returning… There’s something about the formal constraints of jazz with moments of freedom.”
Since joining UVic’s writing department, Book has had time to reflect on his own experiences as a student in the 1990s. During his first year as an undergrad, Book lived in a tricked-out 1979 Dodge extended van with raised fibreglass roof, evading UVic security and the ever-vigilant local police and parking enforcement. Now he occupies his former writing instructor and novelist Jack Hodgins’ office and walks the same halls of his early mentors, poets Lorna Crozier and Patrick Lane.
He says returning to the very place that helped form his younger self made him reflect.
“It definitely made me look at my life again in a pretty unvarnished way, like really take stock and face certain things that I thought I had overcome and try to not feel like I’m part of a Groundhog Day scenario. Like what was that last 20 years of struggling? What was that about? But it’s been great.”
Like most poets, Book has spent much of his professional life hustling—for grants, scholarships, fellowships and teaching positions. It’s arguably the least romantic aspect of a poet’s life.
As for the current state of poetry, Book is cautiously optimistic. If book sales might be down, the internet is also helping poetry reach a younger generation. “I was never worried about why anybody would read [poetry] or if they wouldn’t, because if I think about it too much I would probably go into a state of despair,” Book says, laughing. “But I think poetry will always exist as long as people have language… I think poets really revivify and clean up the language and restore the dignity to the language and at their best give people the experience of what it’s like to be a human being.”
—Michael Kissinger
This story originally ran in the spring 2022 issue of UVic’s Torch alumni magazine
