Conference marks Canadian Association for Theatre Research’s 50th anniversary

by | May 29, 2026 | Alumni, Events, Faculty, indigenous, Research, Theatre

Keynote speaker Nininsky Lee Aquino

Our Department of Theatre was proud to support the 50th annual Canadian Association for Theatre Research conference, which took place at UVic from May 26-29 and welcomed an exciting mix of theatre artists, scholars and researchers from across Canada plus Phoenix students, faculty & alumni.

Co-chaired by Theatre professor Sasha Kovacs & University of Toronto’s Sarah Robbins, CATR50 brought together over 200 people to investigate questions of inheritance, transition, transformation and change. The conference was highlighted by passionate conversations — kicked off by keynote speaker Nininsky Lee Aquino — and performances by Git Hayetsk dancers, Theatre SKAM’s Aster Brae plus drag performances at The Vicious Poodle. Other highlights included the conference exhibition, panel, roundtable, praxis workshop, seminar and working group contributions.

The Canadian Association for Theatre Research was originally created in 1976 under the name “The Association for Canadian Theatre History.” Since its inception it has been the principal catalyst for expansion of theatre research in Canada, as evidenced by the change in name in 1990. It aims to shape Canada’s theatrical present and future by preserving and interpreting our theatrical past and investigating areas of contemporary theory and performance. Specifically, the Association works to promote research and publication of the results of this research into Canadian theatre and drama, to encourage the collection and analysis of Canadian theatre materials, and to maintain a communications network for the exchange of information and research in progress.

Sasha Kovacs & Sarah Robbins

This event wouldn’t have been possible without the support of the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada Connections grant program, the Gatherings: Archival and Oral Histories Partnership, Canada’s Theatre Museum, Playwright’s Guild of Canada, Playwright’s Canada Press, Professional Association of Canadian Theatres, Talon Books, Belfry Theatre, the Centre for Socially Engaged Theatre plus numerous other departmental and community sponsors.

Special appreciation to Kurt Archer and previous co-chair Kara Flanagan for facilitating community artist engagement in this year’s event, Jenn Boulay for supporting accessibility plus all members of the incredible programming and local arrangements team for contributing to this memorable gathering!

Act 2 continues online June 11-12. See the CATR website for more info to join the digital act of the event.

Students & volunteers participating in Git Hayetsk performance

Music sponsors national choral conference

by | May 13, 2026 | Alumni, Events, Faculty, Research, School of Music

The School of Music is excited to be sponsoring PODIUM 2026, Canada’s national bilingual choral Conference and Festival! Co-chaired by Music professor Adam Con and presented by Choral Canada and the BC Choral Federation, this multi-day celebration runs from May 14-17 at both UVic and downtown Victoria, bringing together 400 delegates from across the country and 3,000 performing singers from dozens of choirs.

“It’s a celebration of the best of the best of what we do in Canada,” says Con in this Times Colonist interview. “We like to think that Victoria has more choirs, disproportionate to the population, than any other city . . . there’s a choir for every taste or flavour. That’s a good thing.”

But our involvement goes beyond organizing and hosting, as we’ve got Music students in the mix too: Sadie Karlsson is Podium’s volunteer coordinator, Dominic and Bree Ann Bartle-Clar are performing with the National Youth Choir of Canada, our Vocal Jazz Ensemble is doing a pop-up concert in the MacLaurin building’s A-wing (12:30pm Sunday, May 17), and we have two music education students assisting with the event’s technology. Also, 2024 Distinguished Alumna Carrie Tennant is directing a performance of the Vancouver Youth Choir, and a number of alumni are performing in the various featured ensembles.

Adam Con

Held every two years since 1982, PODIUM 2026 aims to ignite meaningful dialogue within the global choral community. Through offerings both on-site and online, we will showcase new music, bold ideas and exciting opportunities for collective singing, through participatory workshops and massed singing events. Key themes will look at the role of the choral arts in topics such as social justice, climate change action, health and wellness, diversity and inclusion.

“PODIUM 2026 is more than a national gathering — it is a moment of reflection, connection and renewal for Canada’s collective singing community,” says Con in this Victoria News article. At a time when connection and collective expression matter more than ever, PODIUM 2026 invites us all to raise our voices, not only in harmony, but in hope. In song, we find strength. In community, we find courage. And together, we shape what’s next.

Find out more

Visual Art MFAs exhibit featured at downtown gallery

by | Apr 20, 2026 | Art History & Visual Studies, Events, Faculty, Graduate, indigenous, Visual Arts

Art by Visual Arts MFA Moozhan Ahmadzadegan at the Hourglass (photo: Shay Ball)

Back in February, we announced that Visual Arts is now a partner with the new Hourglass studio developed by Vancouver Island Visual Arts Society, who also run downtown’s ambitious 80-artist Rockslide Studio & Gallery.

Now, we’re hosting an exclusive exhibition of work by 11 current and graduating Visual Arts MFA students at the Hourglass. The MFA exhibit Passage will run April 18  through May 16 and features diverse work across multiple mediums including sound, painting, sculpture, installation and fibre.

Created with support from the City of Victoria’s Storefront Activation Program, Hourglass is an 8,500-square-foot space housed in the former Volvo dealership at Yates and Cook. Repurposed to house 18 art studios plus exhibition space, Visual Arts professors Heather Igloliorte and Joel Ong, plus three graduate students, now have dedicated studios in the Hourglass.

“Having studio and presentation space at the Hourglass studios gives us a place to create and a place to connect,” says Visual Arts chair Megan Dickie. “We’re excited to build stronger ties with the Victoria arts community and to see MFA students working alongside our new faculty.”

Just as directors need a stage and scientists need a lab, professional artists need a dedicated studio to support their work. “Access to studio space is essential to a successful artistic practice, whether you’re an established artist-researcher or an emerging one,” says Dickie. “That’s true for new faculty members like Heather and Joel, and it’s just as true for our MFA cohort.”

Like so many arts spaces in Victoria — including the bustling Rockslide itself — the Hourglass location is destined to be short-lived, as the property is slated for redevelopment into a 21-storey mixed-use tower over the next few years. But until then, it will serve as the city’s latest innovative arts space.

Work by Kylie Fineday on view in Passage  (photo: Shay Ball)

Naming A Crisis uses art to address overdose deaths

by | Apr 14, 2026 | Alumni, Events, Faculty, Graduate, health, Visual Arts

Organizers Stephanie Harrington (left) & Amanda Farrell-Low in front of Laura Dutton’s installation

Tuesday April 14 marked 10 years since BC declared the overdose crisis a public health emergency, and more than 18,000 people have died from toxic drugs: a decade on, nearly five people a day are dying. While that scale of loss is hard to comprehend, the new multimedia arts installation Naming A Crisis has been created to show the magnitude of this crisis . . . one name at a time.
Conceived of by Writing MFA alum Stephanie Harrington, Visual Arts instructor and alumna Laura Dutton and Amanda Farrell-Low (communications officer for UVic’s Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research), Naming A Crisis honours lives lost to toxic drugs. “We wanted to honour these individuals but also convey the scale of loss at the same time, because it’s astronomical,” Farrell-Low said in this Victoria News article.
Presented by the Victoria Arts Council and running through April 26 on the lower floor of downtown’s Bay Centre, one of the most powerful visual highlights of Naming A Crisis is Dutton’s three-channel audio/video installation, which features the names and photos of people lost to drug-related harms — including family members for both Harrington and Farrell-Low. There will also be a series of community events throughout the exhibit, including art, photography, spoken word, participatory works, speaking events, workshops and more.
 
“I want people to walk away with a better understanding of the toll of this crisis and the human cost of it,” Harrington told Victoria News. “I want them to understand that there’s a lot of people doing work to change what’s happening and that there are solutions out there. There just isn’t the political will or courage to implement those solutions.”
 
You can also hear Stephanie and Amanda speak on CBC Radio’s On The Island.
 
See the full events list here.

Annual BFA exhibit showcases student success

by | Apr 13, 2026 | Art History & Visual Studies, Events, Faculty, indigenous, Visual Arts

While the spring semester is ending, graduating art students are busy transforming the Visual Arts building into a gallery for their annual BFA exhibition, this year called Say When — a title chosen by the BFA class themselves.

Sarah Massey, a student on the exhibit’s communications committee, perfectly describes the show: “Say When. We offer you this invitation to experience our exhibition with us — at your own capacity. Art making is a way of claiming time and space in a world that wants to steal both. It’s complexity when we’re being sold simplicity. It’s collaboration when everything around us is designed to isolate. Come in. Stay as long as you want. Decide what it means. Say when.”

Say When opens with a gala reception from 7 – 10pm Thursday, April 16, then the Visual Arts building will be open between 10am-6pm daily through April 24. (If something catches your eye, take a closer look: many art pieces will be available for purchase and taken home once the exhibition closes.) See exhibition details here.

33 unique talents

Liya Tensae, one of the graduating students and chair of communications for the exhibit, emphasizes the range of talented students. “There’s a little bit of everything in this show,” she says about the numerous art styles and mediums used, including — but not limited to — painting, sculpture, installations and digital media, but all contemporary works.

Amelia Beauregard is one of the class’s media artists who turns videos into installation pieces. “She is really phenomenal with video,” Tensae says. “She’ll be using one of the rooms for a fully immersive video, sculptural and sound installation.” Other artists, Tensae explains, have created dual channel or single channel installations, using screens or projections.

The exhibition is also a class — formally titled Art 401: BFA Exhibition & Professional Practices — has a handful of conceptual artists, and among them is Ash Wilson, who works with installations that focus on landscapes. But her focus is not on a pictorial sense, it’s on a more personal level where she explores how we interact with the land—specifically, how we may perceive or disturb a landscape. “All those really cool aspects,” Tensae explains, “there’s a lot of research that goes into her work, and then it’s presented in these installations.”

Another conceptual artist is Marissa Parsons, who is particularly interesting due to her dual program in visual arts and computer science. Parsons combines these programs in her pieces, using math and formulas to make her art. Tensae describes a piece Parsons made where she uses pins and string to create a spider by layering the string: “she made that not just from imagery, but she plotted all the data points, then made it into a physical sculpture.: Using math is essential to Parson’s work, so she works hard to bring the science forward in her artistic practice.

An extra-large show

Beauregard, Wilson, and Parson are only three of the incredible 33 artists who make up this show. “Everyone brings their own unique perspectives, work, hands, soul, body, and mind into everything!” Tensae says. “An interesting thing about a show this large is . . . the way that we all come together. That we’re able to use this entire fabulous building to make a cohesive show.”

With this large, unique group, the 2026 class is hoping to use more of the Visual Arts building than previous classes. Usually, the BFA show uses the first floor of the building, taking up every wall, room, empty space, nook and cranny to fill it with art, but this year, they’re hoping to take advantage of the upstairs space. Tensae explains that the curatorial team has been working hard to ensure that every artist and art piece will stand out and be highlighted on its own.

Having a huge class can seem intimidating, with so much art in a limited space, but Tensae finds it opens possibilities, rather than closing them. “There’s so many more voices, so many more visions, and there’s many more artworks to pull together,” she says. “Another benefit of a big show is more perspectives. When we have more ideas in the room, there’s just a lot more to work from,” she explains.

Liya Tensae being interviewed by CHEK TV

A show for both the artsty and the non-artsy

After a long year of working endless hours in the art studio, the BFA graduating class is thrilled to put on a fabulous show that is worth checking out. “If you consider yourself an art person, if you don’t consider yourself an art person, I think there’ll be something here for you,” says Tensae. “And I think you’ll have a great time nonetheless.”

We were fortunate to have local CHEK TV come do a two-hour sneak-peak live broadcast of the exhibit, which you can watch here — just choose either the 5 or 6pm news broadcast and then scroll through to see five students talking about their work.
 
We’re also excited to be working with UVic’s Alumni Relations to host a special alumni-only reception from 7-9pm Friday, April 17 — for which you can still register here. It’s free to attend and you even get free parking if you register in advance. Please join us in supporting local emerging artists and this year’s graduating Visual Arts students!
 
—Claudia Phillips

The research behind the curtain of In My Day

by | Mar 31, 2026 | Events, health, Research, Theatre

By focusing on BC’s historical HIV/AIDS crisis, the new UVic production In My Day highlighted collaboration between researchers, community and performance-makers

Neon lights, club beats, a generation on the edge of disaster: when UVic’s Phoenix Theatre staged the moving and dynamic verbatim play In My Day in March 2026, it brought an essential chapter of Canadian history to life on the stage.

In My Day was both inspired by and based on the UVic oral-history research project “HIV In My Day”, which was supported by the School of Public Health & Social Policy, funded by the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council and now housed in the UVic Libraries Special Collections & University Archives. Between 2017 and 2020, “HIV In My Day” collected sound and video interviews with long-term HIV survivors and their caregivers about their experiences living through the first 15 years of the HIV/AIDS crisis in Vancouver.

The original “HIV In My Day” archive was established by Nathan Lachowsky, then a professor with UVic’s School of Public Health and Social Policy and now Dean of UNBC’s Faculty of Human & Health Sciences, but the resulting play In My Day was written by Victoria playwright Rick Waines and guest directed by former Belfry Theatre artistic director Roy Surette. Nearly 100 authentic voices drawn from the original archival material were brought to life by a cast of 19 student actors, using themes of joy, care and connection to tell the story of life in the queer community during the early days of the epidemic.

“What does performance do to both archival and oral histories, in terms of activating that material?” asks Department of Theatre professor Sasha Kovacs, whose own SSHRC funding via the Gatherings: Archival and Oral Histories of Performance partnership also supported this production. “And what does it mean for a new generation of students to understand this particular moment in history, to hear these stories from those bodies and these perspectives?”

Set designer Claudia Fraser’s research brought BC’s turbulent AIDS history to life (photo: Dean Kalyan)

Life becomes art through research

A Victoria playwright whose work uses autofiction and verbatim material to discuss his experiences living with HIV and the historical impacts HIV has on communities, Waines is intimately involved with this story. A hemophiliac who was diagnosed with HIV at just 21 in the 1980s, he was both one of the interviews for, and transcriber of, the original oral-history project; now, he uses the tools of narrative theatre to amplify his lived experience and challenge ongoing stigmas.

“This is a piece of memorial art,” he says. “It’s a powerful way of telling the stories of people who are no longer with us — it’s a naming, like, ‘Here we are, here are our stories.’ You’re going to get to know some of the folks through the memories of those of us who survived.”

As a play, In My Day was first workshopped in 2021 in the Belfry Theatre’s SPARK festival, then later performed in 2023 by Vancouver’s ZeeZee Theatre at the Cultch. The Phoenix production offers a significant reworking of the material to fit the student cast — “including a guy named Rick, who’s transcribing these interviews poorly and slowly,” laughs Waines.

Part of Avery Kester’s lobby display

In all iterations of the play to date, Waines has worked with young casts lacking firsthand experience of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, so educating them — as well as audiences — is a priority. “Not just the dates, names and drugs, but the feeling [of having HIV/AIDS] in their bodies,” he says. “Young queer folk don’t always understand or know the genealogy of their history . . . so when a young queer couple in the audience stands up at a talk-back session and says what the show meant to him or her, that’s enough for me.”

“It’s been fantastic having Rick here throughout the whole rehearsal period,” notes Kovacs. “Being able to share first-hand memories of these times has been invaluable — and the student playing the character ‘Rick’ [Elliot Baskin Smith] has been regularly conversing with him, which has been a fun part of the process.”

In fact, the two Ricks — Waines and Baskin Smith — both did a live interview with CBC Radio about their experiences working on this play.

Projection designer Molly Somers captured Vancouver’s queer hotspots (photo: Dean Kalyan)

Theatre with an ongoing impact

Kovacs believes the impact of In My Day goes well beyond the Theatre department and into the broader community: by dramatizing the oral history archive, the play provides an opportunity for students to understand how their work can serve larger goals and priorities — which is one of the goals of any research-informed creation project, like the Climate Disaster Project’s verbatim  survivor play Eyes of the Beast, presented at the Phoenix in 2024. “This is an opportunity to think more about producing this kind of work,” says Kovacs.

For In My Day, the student cast all had access to the original interviews — both written transcripts and videos — which Kovacs describes as “a key part of the process.” She also ensured that the show’s student design team spent time in the Museum of Vancouver’s gay and lesbian archives to properly capture the period. In this work, the students also learned about the historical intersections of performance and health activisms across more locally situated 2SLGBTQIA+ communities.

“This production not only catalyzes all that work but is also a way of encouraging students to engage with raw archival material. I sometimes think we take for granted how progressive the work was in these communities at that time . . . the way they were talking about gender and sexuality was really groundbreaking.”

Costume designer Helga Woolsey recreated the queer looks of the 1980s (photo: Dean Kalyan)

Collaborating on authentic history

Kovacs feels interdisciplinary projects like In My Day offer an ideal opportunity to educate students about the importance of collaboration between researchers and performance-makers. “This is all about engaging community with public health history: how do we engage those conversations into artistic practice?” she asks. “But with this production, I’m also interested in how we care for the health of the performers lifting this powerful, emotional and authentic work — that’s something we need to talk about more in the work we do as theater artists. While we’re telling stories about health, we also need to keep our creative team healthy and safe.”

With that in mind, In My Day honours not only those who were lost but the resilient communities who continue to care for one another and shape our collective future. During the play’s run, Phoenix Theatre also hosted an HIV community day, supported by UVic’s Institute on Aging & Lifelong Health, and presented an engaging visual timeline (by local artist Peggy Frank), art pieces from HIV positive community members and an exhibit in the lobby (created by Applied Theatre MA student Avery Kester, with guidance from Kovacs) which offered further insight into the interviews and archival materials that inspired the play and its production.

A close-up of Peggy Frank’s timeline

“Most plays and shows about HIV/AIDS focus on the American or British experience, so In My Day also gives us an opportunity to reflect on a more localized circumstance,” concludes Kovacs. “What are the stories being told within our local community, being created by local theatre companies? Who’s devoted to fostering the voices of folks who actually live here? This is a big moment for the Phoenix to produce a Canadian story by a Canadian playwright, while also advancing the faculty’s strategic priority to address the intersections of arts and health.”

—John Threlfall, with files from Claudia Phillips