Mixing myth & reality on the Phoenix stage
One mother’s determination. One child’s future. One extraordinary world. What can you expect from a mythic tale where sheep’s wool becomes rain clouds? Though it may sound whimsical, A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain is a bold and haunting fable that confronts the systems shaping our lives today. Running February 12–21, Phoenix Theatre presents Sami Ibrahim’s contemporary play as directed by current graduate student Sophia Treanor.
Coming from New York City, Treanor will bring a sense of magical realism to A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain. Given the current events in the US regarding immigration, this mainstage production intertwines that reality with myth to create a haunting tale, that also serves as Treanor’s MFA thesis project. The author of the play, British Palestinian playwright Sami Ibrahim, often writes about ordinary people finding their place in a complex society, and wrote this play after being inspired by his father’s journey to citizenship. The play follows Elif, an undocumented immigrant, who begins her journey to citizenship after becoming a mother. Ibrahim writes a powerful story that follows this determined mother who hopes to reshape her child’s future.
A politically important story
When Treanor first read Burst of Rain in 2023 (following its world premiere at 2022’s at Edinburgh Festival Fringe), she considered it beautiful and playful. “I found it really captivating and, politically, a very important story to bring forward,” she says in relation to the US issue of their ongoing Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. Treanor will be placing the audience on three sides of the action in UVic’s Chief Dan George Theatre to intentionally draw people into Elif’s world and experience, rather than observe, from a distance.
Treanor describes the play as “a searing look into what the experience of an undocumented person is like,” and is hoping to give the audience the opportunity to live inside these troubles with it being considered news. “ICE is horrifying theatrics of terror,” she says. “We’re at this point where there’s so much devastation, it’s hard to wrap our minds around it.” On stage, Elif’s journey will use imagery and storytelling to deepen the emotional impact and invite the audience to connect with the character in a deeply personal way. With this production, Treanor says she feels “excited to be working on something that I hope helps give people an opportunity to live inside this trouble.”
“The playwright is quite brilliant,” she continues. “He somehow takes us through this really devastating story with quite a playful sense of imagination. There’s a lot of playfulness and that’s sort of a hallmark of magical realism.” For Treanor, she says Burst of Rain helps locate the humanity of the person moving through this experience. “Being inside of a situation, day in and day out, having to make something of your own experience of your life, is quite a heroic act on its own.” She says this narrative of feeling shattered is challenged in this play, which “helps us sit inside of this woman’s life.”
Never-ending creative freedom
A director, performer, educator and biodynamic craniosacral therapist, Treanor has performed in a number of US-based private and public spaces, theaters and galleries including the Living Theater, the Gene Frankel Theater, the Stella Adler Center for the Arts and many others, as well as serving on the faculty of the Stella Adler Studio of Acting and the Harold Clurman Center for New Works in Movement and Dance Theater.
This will be Treanor’s first time directing a play for both UVic’s Phoenix Theatre and on a stage like this. With a bigger budget than her previous experiences, she’s looking forward to what direction the production will go in. “It’s like I got to experience my imagination expanding,” she says when it comes to her creativity. “We don’t need to cut much because of the limits of my abilities or imagination, and that’s been really fun.”
Ibrahim wrote the play to fit three actors, but Treanor wanted to get as many students involved in the production as possible, so she broadened the cast to include 12 student actors. “My favourite thing about the performing arts is something becoming much bigger than any one person, and I’m really experiencing that in this process.” Even the sound and lighting teams for this production are student designers [including Emma Brown (sets), Jolie Cree (costumes), Sasha Pisiak (lighting) and Gordon Geddes (sound)] and the director is enjoying working with this level of production value.
“I’ve never gotten to play with this kind of a design element before,” she says about toying with the storytelling element of the narrative. “I’m not hiding the theatrics — because it’s not realism — and that’s been really fun to give more space for the designers to play too.”
Director & MFA candidate Sophia Treanor
Chasing a dream
Originally from California but having spent the last 17 years in New York City, while Treanor calls the Big Apple “one of [her] soul’s home,” she admits to feeling “dried out” from the environment there. One night, she dreamt about a coastline that felt “like a distant call.” She says it was “the most beautiful narrative dream I’ve ever had in my life,” which spurred her desire to take action. When she saw photos of Vancouver Island, she knew this was where her dream was set.
When first visiting the Island, she says it felt like she was on a retreat, as she was able to reconnect with the planet. “Natural forces of the earth have always been a subject in my work and a big part of the way I relate to the creative process,” she says. Those feelings combined with having tutelage, a revisiting scholarship, and being free from time and money limitations solidified that Vancouver Island — and UVic’s Theatre program — was the place for her.
Looking ahead, she’s hoping to bridge the gap between her family locale and her creative life. Whether it’s applying for jobs, teaching or working on a project, she “would love to stay” on the Island when she’s completed her thesis on this project.
“My favorite thing about the performing arts is how something becomes much bigger than any one person, and I’m really experiencing that in this process,” she says.
—Claudia Phillips, with files from John Threlfall
A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain runs February 12-21, 2026, at UVic’s Phoenix Theatre. Tickets available via the box office at 250-721-8000
