Hello you. It’s wrapped time! Let’s do this. (Yes…we may have borrowed this idea from a certain ahem music platform…shh…)
2023 was a treat for all of us here in the Theatre and Film Department. No, literally, we went through 8 lbs of chocolate treats from the bowl in Cam’s office.
Time is a construct, but we kept track anyway. 15 original films were created by film production students during 2023.
We also produced 4 theatre productions across the year. Beckett 23, The Wolves, The Birds, and our most recent 23/24 season opener, Concord Floral. Out of 365 days, we had a show running on 43 of those. That’s about a month and a half!
Photo by Javier Sotres.
To bring those productions to life on the stage and the screen, the costume shop spent approximately 2025 minutes in wardrobe fittings; that equates to about a day and a half. They also used approximately 41,100 metres of thread and cut 40 metres of fabric into feathers (inevitable when you have two bird-related productions within a year).
While we’re counting, our production shop used approximately 2000 3-inch screws. We believe in reduce, reuse, and recycle, so we managed to repurpose the same 30 2x4s in various ways throughout our season. Of all our film equipment, the most requested item was an Arri one K light (1000W).
Our Visual Resource Centre expanded its library by 74 new titles. The top 5 most requested films of the year were Happy Together, Rashomon, Rear Window, Stories We Tell, and Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Throughout 13 programs (undergraduate and graduate!), we conducted 50 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
- Siyuan Liu (Professor, Theatres Studies) published an article in Theatre Journal, together with a companion piece in Theatre Journal Online about Ping Opera in 1930s Shanghai.
- Moving through crisis in Mariana Valencia’s Solo B by Olivia Michiko Gagnon (Assistant Professor, Theatre Studies) was published in Text and Performance Quarterly
- (Im)politeness mismatches in the multi-dialogic pragmatics of telecinematic satire by Tom Scholte (Professor, Acting and Directing) was published in the journal Language and Dialogue
- Keren Zaiontz (Assistant Professor, Theatre and Performance Studies) published Spectacles of Stigma in a World Beyond Shame: Public Scenarios from the First 100 Days of the War in Ukraine in The Drama Review
- Ernest Mathijs (Professor, Cinema & Media Studies) co-edited a special issue on seriality of the Journal for Literary & Intermedial Crossings
Book chapters
- Siyuan Liu (Professor, Theatre Studies) has written the chapter “The ‘Deep Realism’ of Style: From Michel Saint-Denis to Huang Zuolin” for Realisms in East Asian Performance edited by Jessica Nakamura and Katherine Saltzman-Li
- Hallie Marshall (Assistant Professor, Theatre Studies) speaks on ancient Greek drama in her chapter “Oresteia on Stage,” found in A Companion to Aeschylus edited by Peter Burian, Jacques Bromberg
Books
- William Brown (Assistant Professor, Cinema and Media Studies) analyses Buster Keaton’s classic The Navigator through posthumanism and critical race theory in Navigating from the White Anthropocene to the Black Chthulucene
- Tom Scholte (Professor, Acting & Directing) edited and contributed chapters to The Interdisciplinary Handbook of Perceptual Control Theory Volume 2: Living in the Loop, which provides a radical rewrite to how we approach science and culture
- The Documentary Filmmaker’s Intuition: Creating Ethical and Impactful Non-fiction Films by Shannon Walsh (Associate Professor, Film Production) provides an introduction to the art and craft of social change documentary
- Marlowe Banks, Redesigned by Jacquleine Firkins (Associate Professor, Design and Production) combines Jacqueline’s loves of romantic fiction and costume design
Creative projects
Still from Concrete Valley by Antoine Bourges
Our faculty shone in external productions: Jacqueline Firkins (Associate Professor, Design and Production) designed the costumes for the Arts Club’s Sense & Sensibility, while Patrick Rizzotti (Associate Professor of Design and Production) spearheaded the set design for the Arts Club’s Million Dollar Quartet. Leora Morris (Assistant Professor, Acting and Directing) directed a spectacular production of Adam Rapp’s The Sound Inside at Coal Mine Theatre in Toronto.
We also celebrated faculty achievements on the big screen! Antoine Bourges’ (Assistant Professor, Film Production) film Concrete Valley, screened across theatres in Canada and Igor Drljaca’s short film The Archivists received a Vimeo staff pick.
Awards
Our faculty, staff, and students received well-deserved accolades:
- Shannon Walsh (Associate Professor, Film Production) was honoured with the Governor General’s Award for Visual Arts
- Production Manager Borja Brown received the 2023 Dean’s Award for Staff Excellence
- Lisa Coulthard received the Dean of Arts Faculty Research Award
- Leora Morris was a recipient of a Public Humanities Fellowship for her research on theatre for babies
- Patrick Pennefather won the 2023 CUCCIO Collaboration Award, which recognizes outstanding contributions made by Canadian universities and their IT departments in fostering collaboration and driving innovation
- PhD students Stephen Oppong and Gabrielle Berry received funding through the Public Scholars Initiative to support their research
Lastly, we bid farewell to 80 incredible THFL students who graduated this year! We’re thrilled to have shared 2023 with you and eagerly anticipate celebrating your future achievements.
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!
