Photo by Hover Collective / UBC Brand & Marketing
by Jiejun Wu
UBC Theatre and Film would like to congratulate our faculty members who have been appointed to the 2021-23 Green College Leading Scholars cohort. This program invites new UBC faculty members to connect with other scholars, culminating in a series of interdisciplinary community events showcasing their projects and research interests.
Igor Drljaca
Assistant Professor, Film Production
What current research are you hoping to bring to the multidisciplinary mandate of the program?
My project, Park Europa, is a docufiction film that explores Bosnia-Herzegovina’s imagined entry into the European Union. In the work, I am interested in examining the connections between the utopian imaginary and the contested spaces of post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina. This exploration requires a multidisciplinary approach, drawing on political science, history and anthropology in addition to film and performance.
What are you hoping to gain from the program, and how will this benefit your current practice/research area?
Engaging with new perspectives outside my main discipline often introduces new possibilities that can help generate new approaches and ways of looking at an idea. I am looking forward to meeting new people from other disciplines and hearing about their work, as well as their perspectives on how best to create work that can have an impact in today’s uncertain sociopolitical and environmental climate.
“This project not only engages with questions of Bosnia’s political present, but enacts an imaginary future inspired by the way the region's history has been written and rewritten.”
Igor Drljaca is an Assistant Professor in the Film Production program. His work explores themes of memory, diaspora, trauma, ideology and dystopias. His films have been screened at hundreds of festivals, including Berlinale, Locarno, Toronto, Telluride, and Rotterdam. His recent works include the feature documentary The Stone Speakers (2018) and the short film The Archivists (2020). Igor’s critically acclaimed feature, The White Fortress, had its world premiere at the 71st Berlinale in 2021 and was selected as Bosnia-Herzegovina’s candidate for Best International Feature Film at the 2022 Academy Awards.
Olivia Michiko Gagnon
Assistant Professor, Theatre Studies
What current research are you hoping to bring to the multidisciplinary mandate of the program?
I’ll be working on a new project, which looks at the relationship between performance (studies), pedagogy and social justice in the context of both the university and the arts. I’m asking how performance and performance studies might intervene in the racist, colonial and heteropatriarchal logics that structure much of our theoretical and methodological inheritance in academia and beyond, as well as what some of the challenges of and limits to this work might be. I’m hoping that this project will culminate in a more experimental publication combining critical essays, close readings of performance works and interviews with colleagues and collaborators.
What are you hoping to get out of the program, and how will this benefit your current practice/research area?
I’m really looking forward to being part of such a collaborative and interdisciplinary community, and seeing what we can build together.
“My work is most alive when I’m dialoguing with folks from different fields.”
Olivia Michiko Gagnon is an Assistant Professor in the Theatre Studies program. Her research examines the intersections of performance studies, critical race theory, feminist and queer theory, and critical Indigenous studies, with additional focuses in archives, experimental form and performative writing. She is currently working on a book manuscript that explores closeness through art and performance as a minoritarian method of doing history beyond archival stricture.
Leora Morris
Assistant Professor, Acting and Directing
What current research are you hoping to bring to the multidisciplinary mandate of the program?
One of my current areas of practice, Performance for Early Years (PEY), draws on research in theatre, visual art, neuroscience, cognition, social psychology and child development to create performances tailored for children under five. It began in the UK in the late 1970s and started flourishing internationally in the last decade. However, there is relatively little origination of this work in Canada. While I have created one work for under-fives which premiered in Atlanta, Georgia, I am eager to develop performances in a Canadian (and specifically Coast Salish) context.
What are you hoping to get out of the program, and how will this benefit your current practice/research area?
Before coming to UBC I was practising professionally, and I felt that theatre artists (myself included!) were having conversations primarily with other theatre artists. I’m hoping to build new relationships with people in different areas of research than my own, discover new intersections of my teaching and research, and uncover new potential applications for my work.
Performance for Early Years has swelled internationally in response to the UN Convention on the Rights of a Child, and I see this work as being radically political, built on the idea that every child has the right to access culture designed for them. It can become an inclusive site for world-building for our youngest citizens across class, ethnicity, country of origin and gender.
This work also surfaces questions that I think will benefit from being discussed in a cross-discipline example. For example, how might this work for non-ambulatory, non-verbal audiences provide a model or framework for creating radically inclusive spaces for individuals that are neurodiverse, have dementia or are differently-abled? What kind of communion and imaginative experiences among our youngest citizens can play a part in our country’s journey towards reconciliation?
“Being plugged into an academic institution that can lubricate these cross-discipline exchanges feels very nourishing to me.”
Leora Morris is an Assistant Professor in the Directing and Acting programs. She specializes in directing, acting and new play development. She is a graduate of the MFA Directing program at Yale and served as co-artistic director for Yale Cabaret’s 48th season. She was also Resident Artist in Education at Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, where she supported the programming, development and production of new works for young audiences. Her research focuses on the role of the director in creating new works of performance, rooted in a view of theatre as a social practice.
Congratulations again to Igor Drljaca, Olivia Michiko Gagnon and Leora Morris on being named to the 2021-23 Green College Leading Scholars Cohort! UBC Theatre and Film is honoured to have such innovative and groundbreaking scholars in our community. We are proud to support their work as they foster the next generation of artists and inspire advances in the industry.
