The wait is over. It’s time to look back at the year with our annual THFL Wrapped. A year like 2025 is hard to define—but let’s try anyway.
What isn’t hard to define is what fuelled us. A shared belief in the power of theatre and film. Relentless creativity. An army of office dogs. And approximately 10 pounds of gummy candy consumed in the Costume Shop alone.
Let’s press play.
Original films, by the numbers
This year, film production students created 17 original films—each one brought to life through the generosity and dedication of volunteers (at least 15 per film). That’s roughly 540 volunteer hours per film, or 9,180 hours total, and that’s just while the cameras were rolling.
On stage (and on wheels)
The cast of Mr. Burns, a post-electric play; set by Stella Chen, costumes by Lauren Rankin, lighting by Maddie Steppler, photo by Javier Sotres
Speaking of rolling: the set of Mr. Burns, a post-electric play featured 56 wheels. That’s what we call rocking the boat.
Alongside Mr. Burns, three more productions graced our stages this year. The Arsonists (February) featured a very fancy dinner made from paper. The Last of the Pelican Daughters (March) required 100 litres of pink paint. And this fall, we made new friends while welcoming Touchstone Theatre’s Women of the Fur Trade.
We played with high-tech and low-tech: 1,080,000 milliamp hours of rechargeable battery power kept eight wireless mics running in Mr. Burns, while 2,400 pieces of scrap paper were transformed into 15 papier-mâché masks.
VRC favourites
Over in the Visual Resources Centre, Star Wars: A New Hope was the most requested film of the year, while Killers of the Flower Moon claimed the title of longest film added at 207 minutes.
Alfred Hitchcock was the most-requested director, with Rear Window screened most frequently in class…(pause for suspense).
Critical Thinkers
This year featured a record number of Critical Thinkers talks, with 10 events across the spring and fall. Speakers included Danielle Wong, Keren Zaiontz, Harrison Wade, Laura U. Marks, Dina Iordanova, Michaael Goddard, Rizvana Bradley, Clément Lagouarde, Su-Anne Yeo, and Wayne Wapeemukwa.
Our faculty were prolific, engaging in writing books, penning journal articles, and creating artistic works. Here are a few highlights:
Awards
- Shannon Walsh was elected to the Royal Society of Canada, recognizing emerging national leadership in scholarship and creative work.
- SSHRC funding was awarded to Alessandra Santos and Keren Zaiontz, Lisa Coulthard, and Mila Zuo.
- Mila Zuo also received a Killam Research Fellowship for Mongoloids, a research-creation film project currently in development.
- Christine Evans received the Dean of Arts Educational Leadership and Innovation Award for 2025-26.
- William Brown received a Grant for Catalyzing Research Clusters (GCRC) for his project Cinema Thinks The World.
- Lindsay Lachance (alongside Monique Mojica) were awarded the Patrick O’Neill Award for Best New Play Anthology by The Canadian Association of Theatre Research for Staging Coyote’s Dream Volume 3.
And while we already knew we had excellent staff, it’s always nice to have the certificates (or, in Cam’s case, the medal) to prove it: Department Administrator Cam Cronin received a President’s Service Award for Excellence, and Academic Administrator Mia Booth received the Dean of Arts Award for Staff Excellence.
Research
- William Brown (and David H. Fleming) published Infinite Ontologies of the Chthulustream: Posthumanism and Racial Capital in Contemporary Streaming Media.
- Kirsty Johnston authored the chapter “Disability Theatre” in The Routledge Companion to Twentieth Century British Theatre and Performance.
- Shannon Walsh contributed a chapter to the book Broken Record: Gendered Abuse in Academia.
- Lisa Coulthard (alongside Lindsay Steenberg) authored Architectures of violence: the fight scenes of Hollywood’s luxury hotels which was published in the New Review of Film and Television Studies.
- Hallie Marshall edited and contributed to Re-embodying and Rethinking Greek and Roman Drama in Modern Times.
- Patrick Parra Pennefather contributed the chapter “Disrupting Scholarly Writing Creatively Using Large Language Models” to the book Human-Computer Creativity.
- Patrick Rizzotti published Agreeing to be changed: Iterative theatremaking as decentralized pedagogy in English in the McGill Journal of Education.
- Mila Zuo’s article Can the West Speak? (Picturing the Quilting Point in Cambodian and Palestinian Films) was published in Film-Philosophy.
- Mila Zuo and William Brown co-authored Introduction: Critical Race Theory and Film-Philosophy, also published in Film-Philosophy.
Creative Projects
- Patrick Rizzotti designed sets for the Arts Club Theatre’s Burning Mom (which was also remounted at the Belfry Theatre) and The Moustrap, Touchstone Theatre’s Behind the Moon (for which he received a Jessie Awards nomination), and presented “From Concept to Creation: The Impact of Digital Communication on Theatre Design Processes” at World Stage Design 2025 (Scenofest) in Sharjah, UAE.
- Stephen Heatley directed two outside productions: Wrenched: The Renovation Musical by Glynis Whiting and Richard Link at the Vancouver Fringe Festival and Red by John Logan for Just B Productions.
- Leora Morris directed Anosh Irani’s Behind the Moon at The Belfry Theatre.
- Jacqueline Firkins designed costumes for Murder on the Links (Portland Stage Company) and Berlin (Court Theatre, Chicago—recipient of the Chicago Best Production Award) and published her novel The Goode Girls of Maple Lane.
- Tom Scholte premiered his one-man show, Day Player Machine, at One Yellow Rabbit’s High Performance Rodeo.
Tom Scholte in Day Player Machine
- Lindsay Lachance curated Imago Theatre’s Nested Circles Newcomer Artist program.
- Shannon Walsh took part in the MacDowell Fellow Residency from May to July, advancing work on the feature hybrid film London Calling (working title) and her debut fiction novel, Wormhole. Shannon’s 2024 film, Adrianne & the Castle is now available to watch on AppleTV, Amazon Prime, and Relay.
That’s your THFL 2025, wrapped. Thanks for being part of the moments, the work, and the community that made this year what it was. Wishing our faculty, staff, students, and alumni a joyful holiday season.
