New play by Writing student explores trans joy & resilience

by | Jul 16, 2025 | Alumni, Theatre, Undergraduate, Writing

It’s always exciting to see student work spring off the campus and into the community. Local playwright and fresh Writing alum Jasper Mallette — who just graduated in June 2025 — is now debuting Expiry Date, a brand new piece of transgender theatre, which runs at downtown’s Intrepid Theatre Club from July 25-26 (7:30pm Fri-Sat plus a 2pm Sat matinee).

This 90-minute, one-act play focuses on two trans-masculine people living in an apocalypse, debating on whether or not hormones are essential to their survival. And if they are, what happens when they run out and/or expire?

“Expiry Date explores themes of trans resilience and how trans people manage to survive even in the most unlikely circumstances,” says Jasper. “It poses questions like, would hormones still be essential to survival if there was no society to enforce gender roles, and in what ways do trans experiences exist beyond the gender binary?”

Set in an alternate 2020s, Expiry Date considers what if something like Covid had essentially killed off (or zombified) the majority of the population? The play is set in the rural BC town of Enderby, Beneath, around and throughout it all, the play considers what community and companionship truly means.

In addition to writing it, Expiry Date is also produced by Jasper’s own Pithy Productions (which won the “Outstanding Production” award at this year’s Victoria One-Act Play Festival for their production Joany), and features a majority trans and UVic alumni team, including Theatre students Nichelle Friesen (set & props) and Margi Stoner (stage manager), Theatre/Writing alumni J Johnson (dramaturg) and Mo Hatch (director).

Listen to a Phoenix Fire podcast interview with Jasper Mallette and J Johnson.

A staged reading of Expiry Date

Showtimes 7:30pm Fri-Sat July 25-26 + 2pm July 26 matinee at the Intrepid Theatre Club, 1609 Blanshard, Tickets are $20-$40 sliding scale.

Content notes: Scenes depicting injection of hormones, discussions of gender identity, sudden loud noises, minor physical altercations. Trigger warnings: discussions of dysphoria, death, pandemics, and borderline suicidal ideation.

From left: Jasper Mallette, M0 Hatch, J Johnson, Margi Stoner & Nichelle Friesen  

One-day art action supports Indigenous sovereignty

by | Jul 15, 2025 | Alumni, climate, Events, Faculty, indigenous, Research, Visual Arts

First it was taking an orchestra onto the surface of a glacier, then it was putting a glittering digital projection into the background of a Metallica video. Now, two University of Victoria art professors are using their unique creative talents to join over 100 people working to present an extraordinary day of art on the land — but they are not seeking an audience.

On July 24, Department of Visual Arts professors Paul Walde and Kelly Richardson will join Ma’amtagila artist Makwala-Rande Cook to present Ax’nakwala (Part 1) at the unpopulated traditional village site of Hiladi on the east coast of Vancouver Island. Translating as “growing endlessly in relation with the living planet,” Ax’nakwala will offer open-air performances and media installations to draw attention to the urgent need to save precious old-growth forest and return unceded lands to Indigenous stewardship.

If a tree sings in the forest 

The day begins with Paul Walde’s Forestorium, a new full-length, site-specific operatic performance addressing the primary forests of Vancouver Island and the challenges they face. Featuring 17 vocalists, 18 instrumentalists and a crew of 20 (including 5 camera operators and 3 audio recorders), Forestorium echoes Walde’s 2013 Requiem For A Glacier in both its creative audacity and environmental concerns.

“Forestorium will help raise awareness of the complexity of these old-growth forest ecosystems, which continue to be clearcut at an alarming rate,” says Walde. “From my work on Requiem I believe that art, because of its non-oppositional and experiential nature, can reach audiences and engage the media in different ways than science and traditional activism.”

After sunset, Kelly Richardson will project her large-scale video installation Origin Stories — famously used in the 2023 Metallica  video 72 Seasons and at galleries worldwide, but never before in BC — which uses a cosmic field of shimmering crystalline forms to visualize our sixth mass-extinction crisis, partially fueled by ongoing resource extraction in Ma’amtagila territory.

“For many years I’ve used art to encourage the public to ask urgent, crucial questions about what it is that we truly value as a species,” says Richardson. “Through this work, I try to speak with everyone, not just those who understand contemporary art or frequent galleries. Art can be a powerful tool to reach the whole of who we are as a species, connecting the head with the heart and inspire much-needed action.”

Makwala-Rande Cook, Land Claim

Former Audain Professor & event co-organizer dances

The day will also feature two performances by artist, hereditary chief and former UVic Audain Professor Makwala-Rande Cook. In the world premiere of Dance of the Fungi Kingdom: A Mycelial Odyssey in Ma’amtagila Territory, Cook will introduce a Kwakwaka’wakw dance for these fungal beings. He and dancers will then perform the Maʻamtagilaʻs origin story, the Dance of the Seagull, while covered with the sparkling imagery of Richardson’s Origin Stories. This cross-cultural collaboration calls for united work to protect all species — including humans — and their homes.

All this will be filmed and recorded for future gallery and theatrical exhibitions, including a possible Fall 2025 presentation in Victoria.

Ax’nakwala is presented by Hase’ — a collective comprised of Cook, Richardson and Walde along with artist and current UVic Audain Professor Lindsay Delaronde and curator Stephanie Smith — in partnership with the Awi’nakola Foundation and at the invitation of Ma’amtagila leaders. Ax’nakwala (Part 1) supports Ma’amtagila efforts to regain sovereignty of their territories under Crown law, stop ecologically harmful practices on their lands, and enact a conservation vision to care for both land and people.

The performances are part of the fifth annual Tree of Life Gathering, facilitated by the Awi’nakola Foundation in partnership with Indigenous Nations. At the invitation of the Ma’amtagila, the 2025 Tree of Life gathering will take place at their traditional village site of Hiladi, and will see Kwakwaka’wakw knowledge keepers, artists, scientists, students, NGO representatives, policy makers and other community members gather to build relationships, share knowledge, and seek paths to larger-scale action.

Climate professor receives $2.5 million grant to document stories globally

by | Jul 14, 2025 | Award, climate, donor, Faculty, indigenous, Theatre, Visual Arts, Writing

Fires rage, floods devastate, storms surge: every day we hear about the impacts of climate change, with ever-increasing casualty counts and infrastructure damage tipping into the billions. But all too often, climate politics and media reporting favour the voices of experts over victims, resulting in a lost opportunity to act on the first-person experiences of climate-change survivors.  

Now, a new initiative led by the University of Victoria will close that critical gap in narrative and knowledge, thanks to a six-year, $2.5-million Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Partnership Grant announced last week. 

From Catastrophe to Community: A People’s History of Climate Change will train 500 post-secondary students and professional journalists to document the experience of 1,000 survivors around the world and share their wisdom. 

“Climate change isn’t a threat tomorrow. It’s a trauma today,” says UVic Department of Writing professor Sean Holman, who is director of From Catastrophe to Community. “And when someone lives through that kind of trauma, they need a different climate story where they feel seen in their experiences and know the harm caused to them will be repaired — both now and in the future.”

Listen to this interview with Sean Holman on CBC Radio’s All Points West about his new $2.5 million grant. and how the power of storytelling can help and heal communities. 

Supporting community recovery

The project will result in the creation of documentaries with APTN Investigates, news features, an anthology and a travelling museum exhibition that will launch at Winnipeg’s Canadian Museum for Human Rights and the Museum of Vancouver. In the process, the From Catastrophe to Community team will develop new trauma-informed, human-rights-based storytelling practices to support the recovery of communities impacted by climate change and other humanitarian crises.  

“This partnership grant is an example of the UVic’s broad leadership in climate action,” says Alexandra D’Arcy, UVic associate vice-president of research. “Across campus, our researchers are working to tackle the global problem of climate change, which is also a profoundly local problem, as extreme weather events impact our loved ones and our ecosystems.”     

Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of weather-related disasters, such as the 2021 Lytton Creek fire that destroyed 90 percent of the buildings in Lytton, Canada. (Photo: Phil McLachlan)

 

 

From Catastrophe to Community was awarded to Holman and a team of researchers, curators, journalists and artists, including co-directors at the Museum of Vancouver, Simon Fraser University, Trent University, the University of Denver Colorado, the University of Stirling, the Université du Québec à Montréal, and York University. On-campus partners include Fine Arts professors David Leach (Writing); Joel Ong, Kelly Richardson and Paul Walde (Visual Arts); Patrick DuWors (Theatre); plus Sarah Marie Wiebe (UVic Public Administration).

“Each part of our society needs to work together to confront the traumatic impacts of our warming world,” says Holman. “And that’s exactly what From Catastrophe to Community is doing: bringing museums, news outlets, theatre companies, post-secondary institutions, research agencies and survivors together to help us to realize a more just and equitable future that honours the human dignity of disaster communities.”

From Catastrophe to Community will document the experiences of climate disaster survivors such as retiree Sônia Ferreira, whose home in Atafona, Brazil, is slowly being destroyed by coastal erosion. (Photo: Aeson Baldevia)

$4 million in partner contributions

Organizations from Brazil, Malawi, Africa, the UK, the US and other countries to be selected by project partners at Covering Climate Now and Journalists for Human Rights are part of From Catastrophe to Community. Collectively, these 27 partners have committed more than $4 million in matching contributions to the project. From Catastrophe to Community builds on the success of the award-winning Climate Disaster Project — a teaching newsroom founded at UVic by Holman in 2021 in their role as the Wayne Crookes Professor of Environmental and Climate Journalism, funded by visionary Vancouver business leader, humanitarian, and philanthropist Wayne Crookes.  

To date, the Climate Disaster Project has trained more than 250 students in trauma-informed journalism techniques and — with the assistance of post-secondary partners in Canada and around the world —  co-created more than 320 verbatim narrative packages of climate survivors worldwide.

Highlights in the past year alone include a series of survivor narratives published in The Guardian during 2024’s COP29 UN Climate Change Summit, the creation of the award-winning verbatim play Eyes of the Beast: Climate Disaster Survivor Stories with Neworld Theatre (which ran inVictoria and Vancouver), and the presentation of survivor narratives at cultural institutions including UCLA’s Sci Art Gallery, the Royal BC Museum and the Kamloops Art Gallery.  

Here’s a full list of partners in From Catastrophe to Community:

  • Aboriginal Peoples Television Network
  • Alberta Council for Environmental Education
  • Art and Global Health Africa
  • British Columbia Centre for Disease Control
  • Canadian Museum for Human Rights
  • climateXchange
  • Covering Climate Now
  • Humber Polytechnic
  • Journalists for Human Rights
  • Kwantlen Polytechnic University
  • MacEwan University
  • Methodist University of São Paulo
  • Mount Royal University
  • Museum of Vancouver
  • Room Up Front
  • Royal BC Museum
  • Simon Fraser University
  • Thompson Rivers University
  • Trent University
  • The Reach Gallery Museum
  • University of British Columbia Press
  • University of Denver Colorado
  • University of Northern British Columbia
  • L’Université du Québec à Montréal
  • University of Stirling
  • University of the Fraser Valley
  • York University

Music student releases debut album

by | Jul 11, 2025 | School of Music, Undergraduate

Mixing his studies with his passions, Music & Computer Science student Maxwell Sorensen wrote, produced & just released the ambitious chamber-rock album Bad Luck Pearl — which he recorded in the School of Music’s own CReaTe Lab studio.

“The recording happened over many late nights at UVic’s recording studio and was supported throughout the entire process by the Computer Music Course Union, a strong community of musicians and recording artists,” says Maxwell.

Of the 18 musicians on the album, 15 are fellow UVic students offering a mix of driving bass lines, grimy saxophone, soaring soprano and ethereal violin — leading Maxwell to describe the alt-rock influenced Bad Luck Pearl as a “decidedly collaborative” effort.

Following up on the local success of his Victoria post-punk band Head with Feet, Maxwell aimed to make something more ambitious and personal with Bad Luck Pearl. Influences include bands like Black Country, New Road, Geese, Vampire Weekend, Jeff Buckley & Radiohead.

Give it a listen on Bandcamp, Spotify & Apple Music . . . or watch for the coming cassette release!

Sean Holman wins BC journalism award

by | Jul 3, 2025 | Alumni, Award, climate, donor, Writing

Congratulations go out to UVic Writing professor & Climate Disaster Project founder Sean Holman on being named the 2025 recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation’s Bill Good Award.

Presented annually by Western Canada’s preeminent journalism foundation, the Bill Good Award goes to a BC individual or organization that makes a significant contribution to journalism in the province, or addresses a community’s needs and benefits via journalism — which describes Holman’s work to a tee.

“I’m honoured and humbled the Jack Webster Foundation has, to my surprise, named me as this year’s Bill Good Award winner,” says Holman, who is both UVic’s Wayne Crookes Professor of Environmental & Climate Journalism and a UVic alumni himself. “I’ve devoted my life to journalism because of the harms it can repair . . . . As the founder of the Climate Disaster Project, I’m working with my colleagues and students to support the recovery of climate-impacted communities around the world by documenting and investigating their stories.”

Recognizing community & cooperation

Described by the Webster Foundation as a “tenacious journalist and journalism educator”, Holman’s win comes on the heals of the Climate Disaster Project’s own 2023 award from the National Newspapers Association and the CDP’s 2024 documentary theatre project Eyes of the Beast winning silver in the “Environmental & Climate Change” category at the Canadian Association of Journalists Awards.

“When the Climate Disaster Project won a National Newspapers Award in 2023, judges applauded the trauma-informed approach to journalism, as well as the structure of the project and its many partnerships,” noted the Webster Foundation in Holman’s award citation. “They said it was a model of cooperation that can be replicated in other newsrooms as they shrink.”

Holman admits that his devotion to journalism “has come at both professional and personal cost. But that cost has been worth it because I know these past 27 years of public service have made a manifest difference in the lives of the sources and survivors who have placed their trust in me.”

A remarkable year

The 24/25 academic year has seen a remarkable amount of high-profile activity for the Climate Disaster Project, including:

  • presenting the world premiere of Eyes of the Beast: Climate Disaster Survivor Stories, a creative collaboration with Vancouver’s Neworld Theatre, debuting at UVic’s Phoenix Theatre in September before being remounted for a  Vancouver run in June 2025
  • collaborating with influential UK media outlet The Guardian to publish a series of internationally focused climate-survivor testimonies timed to COP29, the UN climate change summit
  • creating a partnership with Brazil’s O Globo newspaper
  • appearing at UCLA’s Sci Art Gallery in an installation by Canadian media artist Joel Ong (who joins our Visual Arts department in 2025)
  • releasing a set of survivor testimonies by Thompson Rivers University students, part of an exhibit at Kamloops Art Gallery
  • presenting a two-day workshop as part of the UVic Legacy Gallery exhibit, Fire Season
  • seeing Holman selected as one of just 20 speakers at the international My Climate Story project, hosted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability & the Media and the Princeton High Meadows Environmental Institute
  • applying for a $2.5 million SSHRC Partnership Grant for “From Catastrophe to Community: A People’s History of Climate Change”.

“We are entering a new era of disaster, where our seasons will become increasingly defined by the traumatic events they bring, and we need to learn how journalism can help us survive those traumas together,” says Holman.

The Webster Award was announced on July 2, and will be presented at a gala dinner and evening on  November 3. Along with Holman, journalism industry icon Keith Baldrey was named the 2025 Bruce Hutchison Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, and broadcaster/podcaster Laura Palmer earned the 2025 Shelley Fralic Award.

A scene from 2024’s Eyes of the Beast (photo: Hélène Cyr)