Call for 2024 grad student ONC artistic residency

by | Sep 28, 2023 | Art History & Visual Studies, Award, Graduate, Research, School of Music, Theatre, Visual Arts, Writing

2021 ONC AIR Dennis Gupa

Are you a Fine Arts graduate student interested in oceans and looking for a paid artistic residency in 2024? Are you excited by the idea of exploring the potential for the arts or alternative cultural practices to highlight the visions, challenges, philosophical, aesthetic or ethical aspects of oceans and the impacts humans have on it?

If so, then the Fine Arts/Ocean Networks Canada Artist-in-Residence program may be the perfect fit for you!

Who can apply?

Open to current grad students (working in any discipline) who have completed most of their course requirements in any Fine Arts unit (including Art History & Visual Studies, Theatre, Visual Arts, Writing and the School of Music), the Artist-in-Residence program is currently seeking proposals for 2024. The application period closes on December 22, 2023.

UVic’s Faculty of Fine Arts and Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) co-lead and sponsor the Artist-in-Residence program, with additional financial support provided by the Faculty of Science and UVic’s Office of Research Services provide  to the program.

When does it run?

The residency period can start anytime between Feb 1 and August 31, 2024, and last for up to four months. A cost-of-living stipend of CAD$2,000/month will be paid to the selected Artist, with limited additional funds to support production or materials. At the conclusion of the residency, a public event featuring the resulting art will be presented, displayed or performed, and will be promoted by ONC and the Faculty of Fine Arts. This event will work within a specified budget agreed to during the residency, and depending on the type of project to be exhibited. Assistance for marketing and/or ticketing could be made available from other UVic departments.

Who else has done it?

Our 2023 AIR is Neil Griffin (Writing), who fused the creative with the scientific in a series of lyric essays titled Whale Fall, exploring the ecological stages of whale decomposition from its last breath to its incorporation into the deep-sea ecoscape.

Find out more here about our previous AIRs, including Colin Malloy (School of Music), Dennis Gupa (Theatre) and Colton Hash (Visual Arts).

What’s it about?

The ONC AIR program strengthens connections between art and science that broaden and cross-fertilize perspectives and critical discourse on today’s major issues, such as environment, technology, oceans, cultural and biodiversity, and healthy communities.

The Artist-in-Residence will ignite cross-disciplinary exchanges, interacting with Fine Arts faculty members and scientists & staff at ONC, as well as with other individuals using ONC’s ocean observing facilities and data portal. The Artist will learn from and engage with the current research, connecting it to the Artist’s own practice, and to wider societal and cultural aspects, creating work for public presentation at the end of the residency. The Artist will also be invited to contribute as a lead or co-author in scientific conference proceedings and/or journal articles.

Possible themes:

The selected Artist will actively engage with researchers on a variety of ocean science themes that may include:

  1. Natural hazards
  2. Ocean soundscapes
  3. Indigenous perspectives
  4. Arctic observing
  5. Community-engaged ocean monitoring
  6. Advancing deep ocean observing
  7. Hot and cold vent dynamics
  8. Coastal ocean
  9. Ocean data science 

How to apply

Proposal Submission Interested applicants are to email ONC (dwowens@oceannetworks.ca) with the subject line “Ocean Artist-in-Residence Program,” and attach:
  1. the artist’s CV
  2. a concise portfolio of previous relevant artistic work;
  3. a letter of motivation outlining the artist’s project proposal for the residency, and
  4. a 500-word project proposal with a separate project-costs budget
Applications will be reviewed by representatives of Fine Arts and Ocean Networks Canada. Artists may be contacted for an interview or to supply further information before a decision is made.

About the program

The ONC Artist-in-Residence program is established to:
  • explore the potential of the arts or alternative cultural practices in the area of the visions, challenges, philosophical, aesthetic, and ethical aspects of the ocean and the impacts humans have on it;
  • add a complementary artistic and creative perspective to ocean science, the societal ramifications of its exploitation, and its cultural aspects;
  • create opportunities for potential new research questions, experimental approaches and knowledge synthesis resulting from interaction between the arts and science; and
  • help envision and communicate the potential long-term impact of ocean changes on humanity.

Awi’nakola as a way of being

by | Aug 21, 2023 | Alumni, climate, Graduate, indigenous, Visual Arts

Paul Walde, Rande Cook & Kelly Richardson on stage at the Rifflandia Festival in Sept ’22

It would be difficult to imagine two more different audiences than those at Montreal’s COP 15 UN Biodiversity Conference and Victoria’s Rifflandia Music Festival, but both were on the schedule for the Awi’nakola: Tree of Life Foundation in 2022.

Founded by a group of Indigenous knowledge keepers, scientists and artists with a common commitment to create tangible solutions for the current climate crisis—and educate others through the process—Awi’nakola seeks to share cross-disciplinary research practices and develop ways to heal the planet, heal the people and change culture.

Led by Makwala Rande Cook—former UVic Audain Professor, Visual Arts MFA and hereditary chief of the Ma’amtagila First Nation—and Ernest Alfred, hereditary chief of the Tlowit’sis Nation, Awi’nakola (pronounced “A-weet-nah-kyoh-lah”) takes its name from a Kwak’wala word which loosely translates to being one with the land, ocean, air and all living forms. “When elders say this, it’s the embodiment of respect and relationship to all living things,” Cook explains.

But what began with five people in 2019 has now grown into an international group of more than 40, including Visual Arts professors Kelly Richardson, Paul Walde and Lindsay Delaronde.

In July 2022, Awi’nakola members spent a week in Kwakwaka’wakw territories documenting the loss of old-growth ecosystems—some of the last primary forests on the planet—and coming up with ways to communicate the severity of the loss to BC’s coastal rainforests. While there, the scientists conducted research that could one day help regenerate damaged forests, while the artists gathered imagery for future projects.

And in December 22, Cook and David Mungo Knox | Walas Namugwis (shown here) presented to the UN biodiversity summit COP 15. “We need radical change and that needs to come now,” Cook said in this Narwhal article following the summit. “We’re in a place right now where it literally is about the planet and we’re putting a timeline on the existence of humanity. For the health of all of us we need to make some real radical changes.”

The Awi’nakola Project is also working to secure exhibitions in locations where the BC government is known to purchase by-products of old-growth trees. Together, they are working collectively to build a better future for generations to come.

You can read more about their efforts in this story from The Ecologyst.

Exploring the science & mystery of a whale fall

by | May 23, 2023 | climate, Graduate, Research, Writing

Whales may be the largest animals on earth, but what happens after they die still remains something of a mystery: even the name given to their deaths — “whale fall” — evokes a sense of the unknowable. But the latest Fine Arts graduate student to be named Artist-in-Residence with Ocean Networks Canada is seeking to both explore and de-mystify the unique relationship between a descending whale carcass and the countless species that will spend decades feeding on the biomass.

“Imagine you build a new apartment building and various people live there as it ages and eventually falls apart,” notes current Department of Writing MFA candidate Neil Griffin. “That’s what happens with a whale carcass: various scavengers and decomposers move in and out . . . there are even worms that take hundreds of years to burrow single-mindedly through a thick whale vertebrae to get to the marrow inside.”

ONC’s latest artist-in-residence 

As the fourth Artist-in-Residence (AIR) with Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) — a continuing partnership with Faculty of Fine Arts graduate students that has engaged previous AIRs Colin Malloy (School of Music), Dennis Gupa (Theatre) and Colton Hash (Visual Arts) — Griffin will be fusing the creative with the scientific in a series of lyric essays titled Whale Fall, which will explore the ecological stages of whale decomposition from its last breath to its incorporation into the deep-sea ecoscape.

Fortuitously, Griffin’s proposal also lines up with ONC’s own multi-year project, Life After Death: Whale-fall Succession and Bone Decomposition Under Varying Oceanographic Conditions. Led by staff scientist Fabio De Leo and ONC Research affiliate Craig Smith, one part of this project will see a whale carcass deployed in 2025 at 890 metres off Vancouver Island under low-oxygen conditions, where it will be continuously monitored for three years with high resolution video and sensors.

“It’s a fairly new field, but some of the best minds thinking about it are right here,” notes Griffin.

Talking about science

Griffin — a trained biologist who spent a decade with the University of Calgary studying wildlife in the likes of Belize, Honduras and East Africa — sees a direct connection between his previous fieldwork and his current graduate work. His MFA thesis, for example, is The Museum of Ruin, a SSHRC-funded book-length essay exploring the biological and human history of extinction. The Tyee also recently published his essay, The Riddle of the Monkey Puzzle Tree, a fascinating conjunction of history, colonialism and natural science.

“All of my writing comes out of the tenants of wildlife biology: being the observer, trying to synthesize what you see together with what you think afterwards,” he explains. “These two fields of knowledge that we keep so far apart have at their shared core the same interest in raising up the depths and exploring the unknown—be that the psyche for the arts or the natural world for the sciences. When I saw there was a residency looking for that, it seemed right up my alley.”

Indeed, Griffin sees his ONC Whale Fall project as a natural extension of his thesis. “There’s enough connection for it to be relevant: the deep sea is also threatened by our incessant extractive activities, so there’s a lot of overlap in thought and material.”

New project, old interest

Griffin has been fascinated with the idea of whale falls since he first ran across mention of the phenomenon at the Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre during his biological studies.

“I was looking through some journals and found these grainy, almost horror-footage photos of whale falls,” he recalls. “There were pictures of a decomposing whale carcass on the ocean floor and the weird, weird animals that were eating it: hagfish, lampreys . . . these bizarre denizens of the depths that have adapted to this incomprehensibly difficult ecosystem to live in. They’re just waiting for this bounty . . . every time a whale fall comes down to them, this desert-like environment becomes a major hotspot of activity by a massive community of animals.”

While human history is inextricably connected to the oceans, Griffin notes that all we traditionally know of the deep sea is what got “spat up” on the shores. It wasn’t until the late 19th century that we started to literally look deeper into the oceans, an exploration ONC continues to this day.

Knowing the unknown

“I’ve always been interested in our relationship with the unknowable,” he notes. “What’s going on down there? It’s deep and dark and cold and mysterious and frightening . . . but also exciting. It’s such a rich vein of human imagination, and the lyric essay is a useful form for exploring all that. As a hybrid form of essay and poem, it allows me to combine a whole bunch of voices, which will give me a way to include not only science and interviews but also weave in ideas about the history and representation of the deep sea.”

Ultimately, Griffin feels his Whale Fall project is an ideal opportunity for him. “It’s a different skill set to talk about science than it is to do science. How do I make this into something people can latch onto, that makes them both excited and interested?”

He pauses and offers something of a mysterious smile. “I don’t know exactly what that would look like, but I’m excited by the possibilities of finding out.”

Follow Neil Griffin on Twitter: @prairielorax

The Artist-in-Residence program is a partnership between UVic’s Faculty of Fine Arts and Ocean Networks Canada, with additional financial support provided by the Faculty of Science and the University of VIctoria’s Office of Research Services. This continuing program strengthens connections between art and science that broaden and cross-fertilize perspectives and critical discourse on today’s major issues, such as environment, technology, oceans, cultural and biodiversity, and healthy communities. This program is open to all current University of Victoria graduate students who have completed most of their course requirements in the Faculty of Fine Arts with practice in any visual, written, musical or performance media. The next call for artists will be in Fall 2023.

Audain Professor Lindsay Delaronde continues her learning journey

by | Feb 27, 2023 | Alumni, Faculty, Graduate, indigenous, Theatre, Visual Arts

Audain Professor Lindsay Delaronde (photo: Tori Jones)

An early morning walk through the visual arts department usually sees a mix of students, faculty and staff arriving with coffee in hand: something not typically seen is an informal smudging ceremony outside the front door. But that’s just one of the ways Lindsday Katsitsakatste Delaronde is looking to make a difference as the latest Audain Professor in Contemporary Art Practice of the Pacific Northwest.

“I’ve never abandoned who I am as a Mohawk person,” says Delaronde. “I really try to work under the value systems of my own knowledge. This position is a marker of the hard work I’ve been doing for the past 20 years: it grounds my artistic practice in relationship to my scholarship in one central place and has a creative grounding that really aligns with who I am.”

It also clearly aligns with the mandate of Vancouver’s Audain Foundation, who originally established the position in 2010 with a $2-million gift from philanthropist and UVic alumnus Michael Audain. Yet in February 2023, they further committed $160,000 in new funding to the professorship—including a three-year, $60,000 project specifically designed to support the Audain Professor’s efforts around outreach, community engagement and related research activities. They additionally fund the annual $7,500 Audain Travel Award for visual arts students, presented to graduate student Kosar Movahedi in fall 2022.

Staying authentic

A Kanienke’haka woman born and raised on the Kahnawake reservation outside of Montreal, Delaronde is no stranger to transforming public spaces: as the City of Victoria’s inaugural Indigenous Artist in Residence (2017-19), her collaborative land-based/site-specific performance art dramatically engaged viewers from the lawn of the BC Legislature to almost every cultural institution in the city.

Yet despite having multiple degrees—including two from UVic (MFA in Visual Arts, MA in Indigenous Communities Counselling Psychology)—and years of professional practice, Delaronde has never lost sight of her own learning journey: in addition to her current three-year term as Audain Professor, she is also pursuing a PhD in applied theatre practice with the Department of Theatre. This, she feels, gives her unique insight into the educational process.

“I love teaching and learning, both inside and outside the classroom,” she says. “I’m just trying to stay authentic to who I am as a person, as an artist, and bring that into the institution. But I can also look back and see the ways I struggled as an Indigenous student, regardless of which department. There’s a lot of folding of time and history that really helps me navigate this position.”

Broadening the scope

Over the past decade, the Audain Professorship has been held by such distinguished practicing artists as Governor General’s Award-winner Rebecca Belmore, Witness Blanket creator Carey Newman, the internationally acclaimed Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas plus the likes of Rande Cook, Nicholas Galanin and Jackson 2Bears.

“These are all foundational artists within the Canadian landscape of Indigenous contemporary art,” she says. “Each has a big history to draw on in terms of tools and techniques and facilitation, and each brings something of themselves into the space. That’s what’s beautiful about the position: it doesn’t have a narrow scope . . . the Audain Professorship creates a platform for Indigenous artists to be themselves within our institution.”

Yet Delaronde’s personal and professional experiences have also fuelled a desire for change which parallels similar societal demands.

“Making change on an institutional level is always a top-down approach, but my philosophy is around grassroots mobilization of new ideas that really surface from the community—and, in this case, my students are the community,” she explains.

“We’re working with a generation of students who are more aware than we were 15 or 20 years ago. They’re looking for anti-oppressive and anti-racist models, an increased sensitivity around cultural appropriation and a safe atmosphere of inclusivity and diversity that retains and encourages the rigour of learning how to talk about culture in good, productive, generative ways. Sometimes we forget we all come from different cultural lenses, and I’d like to see that grow in the department.”

Delaronde supported by dancers during ACHoRd, one of her Indigenous Artist in Residence projects (Photo: Peruzzo)

Being the change

Delaronde’s long connection with UVic also makes her unique in Audain history. “The University of Victoria has been essential not just in my educational journey but also as a place of deep reflection in my purpose,” she says. “I’ve never stopped caring about people and trying to make positive changes in our communities.”

From First Peoples House to Indigenous Studies and the Indigenous Governance program, she’s seen a lot of positive change since she first came to campus 15 years ago . . . yet feels now is not the time to slow down. “It’s important to value and acknowledge the good work that has happened at the institution, but there’s more work to do and there’s no stopping it now.”

Indeed, it’s hard not to see Delaronde herself as being emblematic of the very changes she’s witnessed.

“We need to see ourselves in leadership roles and I need to be there for my students and work with others towards institutional change,” she concludes. “Sometimes I feel like I just have to survive the institution daily, but at the same time I have such a passion and love for the arts. My practice has changed a lot and my teaching continues to reveal itself in terms of who I am today. It’s all very exciting and very fresh!”

UVic contributes talent, technical & creative power to Victoria’s burgeoning film industry

by | Feb 9, 2023 | Alumni, Graduate, indigenous, Theatre, Writing

Director & Dept of Writing professor Maureen Bradley (right) on the set of her locally lensed feature film,  Two 4 One 

Connect to any streaming service and it’s not hard to find UVic alumni on screen, thanks to busy actors like Erin Karpluk (The L Word), Peter Outerbridge (Orphan Black) and Emily Piggford (Umbrella Academy). Less obvious is the behind-the-scenes talent, like visual-effects artist Michelle Lo (Black Panther) and production coordinator Amanda Verhagen (Jurassic World: Dominion).

Yet while Vancouver’s Hollywood North casts a mighty shadow over Vancouver Island, alumni filmmakers continue to contribute technical and creative power to Victoria’s steady and growing TV and film industry.

Writing the life of an independent director

In many ways, award-winning director Connor Gaston (MFA ’14) is typical of the quiet talent UVic produces. After directing a string of short films, his 2015 debut feature—The Devout—premiered at Korea’s Busan International Film Festival. It then earned him the BC Emerging Filmmaker Award at the Vancouver International Film Festival before it went on to receive Best Picture and six other honours at BC’s own Leo Awards. Gaston, who is also a graduate of Norman Jewison’s Canadian Film Centre, is currently working on his second feature film.

“Getting your first feature made is never easy—but it’s really difficult to make your second,” he admits. “Your first film really has to blow people out of the water to activate the next round of funding, which is usually a big step up, budget-wise.” By way of comparison, The Devout came in at $150,000, while his in-progress feature, Baby Tooth, is budgeted at $1.7 million: still a bargain compared to typical Hollywood productions.

“Even at $1.7 million, it’s almost like having no money again—all your budget goes to paying people very little for what they’re actually doing… and then all your money is gone,” he says. “But most people work on independent films because they want to be there—to learn, to help—so some money for them is better than no money at all.”

While BC’s film and digital-media industry generates $3.2 billion and 71,000 jobs annually, the vast majority of that work remains in Vancouver. The Island received roughly $55 million in direct spending of that amount and about 800 jobs in 2021, with 40 different productions shot across the region.

But a typical day in Gaston’s life mainly involves a lot of writing, not bean counting. “Working on the screenplay, writing grants… it’s very much a slog,” he says. Gaston keeps his cinematic chops in shape with short films—2022 saw him direct both Year of the Tortoise and The Cameraman Chapter II (a sequel to his 2016 short The Cameraman, inspired by the book of the same name by his novelist father, Bill Gaston). But unlike some directors, he doesn’t work on other peoples’ films. “I’m actually quite useless,” he laughs. “I wish I could do something more practical.”

While it’s a medium he clearly loves, Gaston acknowledges being a filmmaker comes with serious challenges. 

“Directing is so strange. If you’re a painter, you can paint every day, but with directing you need money to even practise your art. Writing helps, but you can only envision your screenplay so much.” 

Connor Gaston

Snapshot of a working filmmaker

As a self-described “working filmmaker,” Chen Wang, BFA ’18, is on the move. After a “quick” visit home to China in February 2020 turned into a two-year, COVID-restricted stay, Wang is happy to be back on campus to both complete his MFA in screenwriting and continue his work as cinematographer on the interdisciplinary research documentary Four Stories About Food Sovereignty. The project started in 2018 and includes UVic professors Elizabeth Vibert (History), Maureen Bradley (Writing), Matthew Murphy (Business), Astrid Pérez Piñán (Public Administration) and a team of international partners.

It was specifically thanks to his involvement with Four Stories that he was finally able to leave China in 2022 to film the latest installment, “Aisha’s Story”, in Jordan. “Aisha is a Palestinian woman who lives in the Baqa’a refugee camp,” Wang explains, “and she’s trying to keep her Palestinian culture alive through food: growing, cooking and passing that knowledge along to the next generations.”

Wang also shot the short film about UVic’s Voices In Motion intergenerational choir for adults with memory loss—one of the many pre-pandemic projects that kept him hopping on campus and in the community. As an undergrad, he founded the UVic Film Club, joined the CineVic Society of Independent Filmmakers, started his own commercial production company and created over 20 commercials with CHEK TV’s production team, as well as crewing on both professional and independent-film productions. “Before COVID, I was quite busy: features, shorts, documentaries, music videos… generally, I do camera, cinematography, director of photography, sometimes directing,” he says.

Guochen Wang

In addition to completing his MFA, Wang is also keen to finish the international Four Stories, which has shot in Sooke, Jordan and South Africa, with only Colombia remaining. “We’ve captured such an amazing story, I now want to complete it,” he says. “Not only is it the project that got me back to Canada, but I was so fascinated by what I saw in Jordan: I want people to see this film.”

Despite the proximity of Vancouver’s studios, Wang likes the idea of staying in Victoria. “I could shoot in other cities, but I like it here,” he says. “I like the environment, and there are so many talented people who work very hard.”  

Wang also shot the short film about UVic’s Voices In Motion intergenerational choir for adults with memory loss—one of the many pre-pandemic projects that kept him hopping on campus and in the community. As an undergrad, he founded the UVic Film Club, joined the CineVic Society of Independent Filmmakers, started his own commercial production company and created over 20 commercials with CHEK TV’s production team, as well as crewing on both professional and independent-film productions. “Before COVID, I was quite busy: features, shorts, documentaries, music videos… generally, I do camera, cinematography, director of photography, sometimes directing,” he says.

Mentoring future filmmakers

If you want to get a feel for the homegrown film scene, look no further than the CineVic Society of Independent Filmmakers. Founded in 1991, the artist-run society provides affordable professional-grade equipment, facilities, training and screening opportunities to local filmmakers and media artists; previous members—like South Island Film Commissioner Kathleen Gilbert and longtime Victoria Film Festival director Kathy Kay—make a clear case for CineVic’s importance as a local training ground.

Current executive director David Geiss (MFA ’13) has spent the past six years furthering the cinematic ambitions of CineVic’s 125 members. “I realized it was actually more satisfying to help other people with their work than spend an inordinate amount of time and money to make my own short films, which then may—or may not—be screened at a film festival,” he says, with a chuckle.

Geiss is no stranger to the indie film world: his films and documentaries have been broadcast nationally and seen worldwide, he’s taught screenwriting and served as programmer for the likes of the Short Circuit Pacific Rim Film Festival, National Student Film Festival and Queer City Cinema Film Festival, among others. But it’s only by running CineVic that his past experiences and skills have really been spliced together.

“In many ways, it feels like this was the job I was born to do,” he admits. “I realized I actually like the support work—the planning, the advising—more than making short films. I no longer wake up at three in the morning with ‘Eureka!’ ideas… As an arts administrator, I now just get a good night’s sleep.”

Geiss says CineVic has a diverse membership from students to hobbyists, and from people looking to break into the film industry to those already working—like local photographer and director Arnold Lim, whose award-winning 2020 feature film debut All-In Madonna was penned by screenwriter and UVic alumna Susie Winters, BFA ’16.

David Geiss (Victoria News photo)

Teaching film production on campus

Daniel Hogg, BFA ’04, is another local filmmaker who focuses on both teaching and creating. Currently completing his screenwriting MFA at UVic, he has twice been part of Telefilm Canada’s Talent to Watch program and his credits as producer include the award-winning feature film Two 4 One (the world’s first transgender romantic-comedy, directed by writing professor Maureen Bradley) and both the animated feature Esluna: The Crown of Babylon and the original nine-episode animated web series Esluna: The First Monolith. He was also executive producer on Connor Gaston’s The Devout.

Hogg is an experienced cinematographer and screenwriter as well as producer and has been teaching the Writing department’s film-production classes for years. The class is modelled on a professional film set, and students take on all the individual roles in a production—from director, producer, camera operator to editor, sound work and even catering.

“It’s not a production program per se, it’s a screenwriting program—it’s just supposed to give them a taste of the industry,” Hogg says. “Certainly, we’ve had students move into film and TV where they work as production managers, assistant directors or screenwriters.” (All-In Madonna’s Susie Winters is a good example of students making this leap.)

Hogg is excited for the future of Victoria’s burgeoning film industry.

“It’s growing and will continue to grow, but a lot of the community aren’t necessarily connected and integrated: not everyone knows everybody else,” he says. “A lot of people are doing things independently while others are connected through organizations like CineVic. But either way, we’re living in a time where people are actively trying to find ways to tell their stories.”

Putting Indigenous stories on screen

After spending 30 years producing and directing hundreds of live plays, UVic grad Leslie Bland, MFA ’99, started his own film company—Less Bland Productions—in 2011. “I felt like I was hitting the ceiling of what could be accomplished with live theatre, but film and television offer a bigger, broader canvas,” says the producer of popular documentaries like Gone South: How Canada Invented Hollywood and the all-female comedy series She Kills Me. “There’s a complexity in working with film that I really enjoy.”

Sporting a solid track record of film-fest screenings and experience with broadcasters CBC, Discovery Networks, Super Channel, Knowledge Network and Télé Quebec, Bland has partnered with fellow producer Harold Joe, a member of the Cowichan Tribes, in a joint venture, Orca Cove Media, which focuses exclusively on celebrating First Nations storytelling.

From left: Harold Joe, Leslie Bland, Graham Greene

So far, the producing pair have had hits with hot docs like Dust n’ Bones (examining the preservation and rededication of First Nations remains and artifacts) and Tzouhalem, a cinematic investigation into the story of legendary Cowichan Chief Tzouhalem. “Orca Cove’s mandate is to allow Indigenous creators to tell the stories they want to tell,” says Bland. “A lot of the stories are hyper-local, but they also have broader appeal and a point of authenticity.”

That broad appeal can either come through subject matter—their current documentary, A Cedar Is Life, explores the cedar tree’s pivotal role in the cultural life of coastal First Nations from Alaska to California—or narrative approach. The team has completed filming The Great Salish Heist (starring Dances with Wolves’ Graham Greene and Battlestar Galactica’s Tricia Helfer), set to be the world’s first comedic Indigenous heist film; also in development is Pow Wow Summer, a coming-of-age romance set on the Canadian pow-wow circuit.

Talent on the rise

With alumni talent both on- and off-screen, and the next generation of young filmmakers being mentored to tell their own stories, the future looks bright for Victoria’s film scene. As plans for production facilities continue to evolve with hoped-for studios in both Saanich and Langford, director Connor Gaston’s optimism is reflective of the local industry as a whole.

“In film, there are so many things that need to go right and so many elements you need to put it all together, but I still have fun doing it,” he reflects. “Being on set is still my favourite thing. I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

One to watch: Letay Williams 

New grad Letay Williams (MFA ’ 22) is a screenwriter who is intentional about creating stories that resonate with a global audience but are also infused with the diverse, vibrant culture of her Jamaican heritage. In 2021, her project Traytown won the Audience Choice Award at the Creators of Colour “Big Pitch at TIFF” competition, and she was one of only eight writers chosen to participate in the 2022 Toronto-based BIPOC TV & Film Episodic Writers’ Lab.

In May 2022, she produced a live public reading of her as-yet-unproduced MFA script, Inheritance, a feature-length film set in both Jamaica and Canada. Described as a “heartwarming, LGBT/family drama,” the script was read by a cast of local and out-of-town talent (Kelowna, Toronto) who said they’ve “never read a story like this” and that it’s “the movie intersectional communities are longing to see on screen.”

This story originally ran in the fall 2022 issue of UVic’s Torch alumni magazine

 

Letay Williams

Fighting disinformation with theatre

by | Feb 3, 2023 | Graduate, Theatre

Cast photos by Megan Farrell

When is a witch not a witch? That was the question facing famed British playwright Caryl Churchill back in 1976 when she penned Vinegar Tom, a scathing feminist satire that re-examines the social motives behind the accusation and persecution of those who were branded “witches”. Her solution? Write a play that has no witches . . . but plenty of persecution.

Yet while we would like to think those days are behind us—be they 17th-century history or the protest-oriented ’70s—current Department of Theatre MFA candidate Francis Matheu feels Vinegar Tom is a distressingly contemporary piece of political theatre ideally suited to our tumultuous times.     

Who benefits from inequality?

“There’s a lot of disinformation happening in our society right now, both here in North America and at home in the Philippines, my own country,” says Matheu, who is directing Vinegar Tom as his thesis dissertation. “I’d like to use theatre to combat that. When I was reading the play, I kept asking myself, ‘How can this be so relevant to our society today? Who benefits from inequality?’ As a theatre artist, it became a calling for me—I needed to do something.”

Running February 16-25 at the Phoenix Theatre, Vinegar Tom has lost none of its raw power over the years; indeed, it seems eerily prescient today given the recent spate of right-wing uprisings, the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the US, and an ongoing frenzy of public accusations on social media.

“Churchill depicts not only gender inequality and misogyny in this play, but also how ordinary people and those in power are coerced to fabricate baseless stories against the powerless, the innocent and the marginalized,” he says. “That’s powerful material to move forward with.”

Vinegar Tom director Francis Matheu

International connection

The latest Filipino graduate student to select UVic’s Theatre department for their Master’s degree (alongside the recent likes of Dennis Gupa and Chari Arespacochaga), Matheu has directed 40 shows over the years and, as an actor, has appeared in nearly 50 more. He’s also no stranger to political theatre. Given that the majority of shows in the Philippines lean tend to be popular plays and musicals (“and there’s nothing wrong with that: I’ve done lots of Broadway musicals as an actor,” he chuckles), he decided to start his own company, Twin Bill Theatre . . . with his twin brother.

“Twin Bill was always meant to be different,” he explains. “We focus on material with social relevance.” Rather than song-and-dance, their shows tackled topics like depression (via Andrew Hinderaker’s Suicide, Incorporated), autism (Mark St. Germain’s Dancing Lessons) and cancer (Margaret Edson’s Wit).

“I’ve definitely become more political in the latter part of my theatre career . . . I like to use drama for social change: I call it ‘constructive societal revolution’.”

Yet it was his participation in a local production directed by then-Theatre PhD candidate and friend Dennis Gupa—2018’s Murupuro / The Islands of Constellation—which brought Matheu to Victoria.

“That was my first time in North America and I got attracted to the people here—their respect for each other, for the First Nations—as well as the weather,” he laughs. “When I learned I could do this as a cultural worker and an international student, I decided to take the chance.”

A cautionary tale

Made possible in part by funding from the Philippines National Commission for Culture & the Arts, Vinegar Tom also sees the interdisciplinary participation of School of Music undergraduates Naomi Harris (as music director) and Naomi Sehn (music arranger) who help bring the play’s musical component to life.

Ultimately, says Matheu, Vinegar Tom should be seen more as a cautionary tale than a historical allegory.

“Misogyny, conspiracy theories, the ruling patriarchal powers . . . these are all still as much a part of us today as they were for people in the 17th century,” he says. “But what can we learn from the past? Have we learned from the past? As a global society, I’m not really sure.”

Vinegar Tom runs in-person 8pm Tuesday to Friday + 2pm Saturdays and will be offering streaming performances at 7pm Feb 23 & 24 + 3pm Feb 25. Tickets available in person at the Phoenix Box Office or by phone (250-721-8000).

Prices range from $30 (Fri-Sat) & $26 (Wed-Thurs + Sat matinees) to $21 for UVic Alumni (Sat matinees only, with UVic Alumni ONECard) & $16 Cheap Tuesdays. And $16 student rush tickets are available 30 minutes before every show. Streaming Performances are $26 (Thurs & Sat), $30 (Friday). Please review the current COVID-19 protocols and vaccination requirements for in-person performances.