Hello, you. It’s that time of year again! Wrapped’s ready. Are you?
Life moves fast. Luckily, we took notes.
A lot of chocolate was consumed too. In fact, the department went through 6kg of chocolates from the bowl in Cam’s office. That puts us in the top 1% of people who should probably get their blood sugar checked. Oh, and the 1,944 litres of filtered water we went through put us in the top 1% of people with active bladders.
We’ve changed. And so have our shows. Let’s look at our 2024 Theatre Evolution.
Dahlia-Raphael Kerr and Alivia Sabatino in The Very Book Indeed; set by Sam Cheng, costumes by Madeleine Polak, lighting by Amy Currie, photo by Javier Sotres
February was our Love-Crunched, Face-Transplanted, Intimacy-Hacked phase. We were really into our production of Tomorrow Love, after which it took 3620 lbs to break the custom riser that was built for it. Talk about cyborgian.
April was our Capitalism-Critiquing, Philanthro-Punchy, Boss-Busting phase. We were very involved in our production of Saint Joan of the Stockyards. This year, over 1500 stage weights, or 33,000 lbs of pig iron, were moved. Talk about unyielding.
November was our Folio-Fixated, Quill-Wielding, Shakespearean phase. We were big on our production of The Very Book Indeed. The stage revolve in this production, also used in Saint Joan of the Stockyards, spun approximately 150 times in 2024. That’s a total of 12,300 feet. Talk about theatrical.
Out of 366 days, we had a show running on 34 of those days. That puts our shows in 9.3% of days out of the year.
We had lots of company with our Critical Thinkers Series. There were 7 speakers, consisting of faculty and students, who quenched our thirst for knowledge across the spring and fall:
- Dr. Shannon Walsh, The Documentary Filmmaker’s Intuition
- Gabrielle Berry, Read/Listening to Sound and Music on Screen
- Chelsea Birks, Art and the Environment in Contemporary Cinema
- Dr. Alessandra Santos, Urban Planning, Filmmaking, and the Politics of Precarity in Jorge Furtado’s Satirical Sewer
- Dr. Brent Strang, From Couch-Lock to Bed-Rot: The Implosion of the Home Media Apparatus
- Angela Morrison, Mariah Carey, Music Video, and Vocal Ornamentation
- Dr. David H. Fleming, A Head Trip-tych
Our Visual Resource Centre has over 450,000 holdings including films, 35mm photographic slides, and art prints. The films with the most play were:
- Stories We Tell
- Run Lola Run
- My Darling Clementine
- His Girl Friday
- Chungking Express
Almost 267 hours were spent on screenings in the Royal Bank Cinema. The longest film shown was Barry Lyndon, at 187 minutes long.
While it’s not a competition. There is a leaderboard. Throughout 13 programs (undergraduate and graduate!), we conducted 106 courses at various locations across the campus. Our faculty were prolific, engaging in writing books, penning journal articles, and creating artistic works. Here are a few highlights:
Journal articles & Essays
- Keren Zaiontz (Assistant Professor, Theatre and Performance Studies) published Participatory Political Violence: The Sensorial Toll of the Truckers’ Convoy in the Canadian Theatre Review
- Will Brown (Assistant Professor, Film) published Nope: Blackness, the Informe, and Cinema in Liquid Blackness, Journal of Aesthetics and Black Studies
Book chapters
- Lisa Coulthard (Professor, Cinema and Media Studies) wrote the chapter “Big and Loud: The Sonic Aesthetics of the Fight Scene in Digital Action Cinema” in Action Cinema Since 2000
- Siyuan Liu (Professor, Theatre Studies) wrote the chapter “Gender and Performing a Spider Spirit in Jingju (Beijing Opera) Pansidong (Cave of the Silken Web)” in The Figure of the Monster in Global Theatre.
Books
- Ernest Mathijs (Professor, Cinema and Media Studies) co-edited The Screen Censorship Companion
- Lindsay Lachance (Assistant Professor, Theatre Studies) co-edited an anthology collection titled Staging Coyote’s Dream Volume 3
Creative projects
Still from Adrianne and the Castle by Shannon Walsh
- Antoine Bourges (Assistant Professor, Film Production) presented his films Concrete Valley, Fail to Appear (2017) along with shorts William in White Shirt (2015), East Hastings Pharmacy (2012) and Woman Waiting (2010) at the Metrograph in NYC
- Shannon Walsh (Assistant Professor, Film Production) premiered her documentary Adrianne and the Castle—and it’s been announced as an eligible film for the 97th Oscars in the Documentary category
- Patrick Rizotti provided stunning set design for the Arts Club Theatre Company’s production of Ring of Fire
- Leora Morris (Assistant Professor, Directing and Acting) directed a brand new adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities at Alliance Theatre in Atlanta
- Stephen Heatley directed Where You Are with Channel Theatre at the Station Arts Centre in Rosthern, Saskatchewan
Awards
Our faculty and staff received well-deserved accolades:
- Mila Zuo (Associate Professor, Cinema and Media Studies) was honoured the Association for Asian American Studies Book Award, for her book, “Vulgar Beauty: Acting Chinese in the Global Sensorium”
- Leora Morris (Assistant Professor, Directing and Acting) won Toronto Theatre Critics Award for Best Director for The Sound Inside.
- Shannon Walsh (Assistant Professor, Film Production) was awarded with a $2.5 million grant from SSHRC, for her project, “TRANSFORM: Engaging with Youth for Social Change”
- Lindsay Lachance (Assistant Professor, Theatre Studies) was appointed Canada Research Chair in Land-based and Relational Dramaturgies.
- Our Local Safety Team won a safety achievement award for their creative approach to safety issues at UBC
Leading the charge this year, we had a dynamic duo: Anthony Shelton steered the ship as interim head from January to August, and Kirsty Johnston picked up the baton in September to take us into the next act.
Lastly, we bid farewell to the incredible THFL students who graduated this spring and fall! We are thrilled to have shared 2024 with you and eagerly anticipate celebrating your future achievements.
Thanks for coming along for the ride. This only scratches the surface of the incredible happenings in our department this year—congratulations on a year well spent! Wishing our faculty, staff, students, and alumni a joyful holiday season!
