Wood

Two new plays by Department of Theatre professors made the spotlight recently. Jan Wood presented a staged reading of the solo play Sacrifices at the Belfry Theatre’s SPARK Festival last month. Sacrifices “examines the choices that an ordinary woman makes to balance career, family and self-fulfillment.” Meanwhile, Jennifer Wise debuted Ray Frank: Girl Rabbi of the Golden West at the 150th anniversary celebrations of Victoria’s Congregation Emanu-El in early April. Girl Rabbi is based on the true story of Miss Ray Frank, who made women’s—and religious—history when she officiated at all religious services for three weeks in 1895 for Congregation Emanu-El, which was at that point still an Orthodox synagogue.

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MacLeod

Department of Writing professor, UVic alumna and 2011 $100,000 Siminovitch Prize winner Joan MacLeod debuted her latest play, The Valley, at the playRites Festival of New Canadian Plays at Alberta Theatre Projects last month. The story of a troubled teenager who has a confrontation with a police officer on Vancouver’s SkyTrain, The Valley was praised by the Globe and Mail as “a subtle work that avoids all the romantic traps that typically ensnare those who write about mental illness.” The Valley will also be staged during the 2013-14 season at Toronto’s prestigious Tarragon Theatre. No local production is planned at this point.

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Belmore

Rebecca Belmore, former Audain Professor for UVic’s Visual Arts department, was recently announced as the winner of the 2013 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts. Belmore, the inaugural recipient of the Audain Professorship in Contemporary Art Practice of the Pacific Northwest back in 2010, has been challenging, confronting and engaging audiences with a variety of works representing the resistance of Indigenous peoples for 25 years now. Her award comes on the heels of news that 2012 Audain Professor Nicholas Galanin won both a $50,000 Rasmusin Fellowship and a separate $25,000 Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship within three months of each other.

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Stichbury with Mathana Santiwat, president of Bangkok University

Bangkok and Victoria may not seem to have a lot in common, but they’re both about to start sharing a spotlight thanks to a new exchange agreement between the theatre departments at UVic and Bangkok University.

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Csaba rehearsing the UVic Orchestra. Photo: UVic Photo Services

If you think a piece of music sounds the same when played by different orchestras around the world, you’re not listening internationally. Which, in a musical nutshell, is exactly what School of Music professor Ajtony Csaba had in mind when he approached UVic’s Learning Without Borders Program (LWB), which supports internationalization of the curriculum.

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Department of Writing student Aysia Law has been named the City of Victoria’s inaugural Youth Poet Laureate—a first not only for Victoria, but also in Canada. Law, who won UVic’s 2011 Diversity Writing Contest, will be performing her work at a number of events throughout 2013 and receives a $1,500 honorarium, plus $1,000 to develop and complete a major project that engages youth through poetry. “She's such a passionate and dedicated writer with a great sense of humour and a natural instinct for language,” say Lee Henderson, one of Law’s writing professors. “She’s the perfect choice as our first public voice for the city's young poets.” Law will perform the first poem in her new position for Victoria City Council at City Hall on Jan.17.

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Nicholas Galanin, the 2012 Audain Professor in Contemporary Arts of the Pacific Northwest with the Department of Visual Arts, has won a $50,000 Rasmuson Fellowship from the United States Artists organization. The Sitka-born Galanin is a multi-disciplinary Tlingit/Aleut artist whose teaching term with UVic ran throughout fall 2012. While his fellowship was in the Crafts and Traditional Arts category, the USA news release admits that Galanin’s work—which tends to defy categorization—“might also be described simply as contemporary art with Native themes.” A visual artist and musician, he creates multimedia pieces that often involve computers, video, photo manipulation or sculpture in a variety of forms. Like previous Audain Professors Rebecca Belmore and Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, Galanin will present an exhibit of new work in the Audain Gallery—in September 2013.

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Name the artists, figure out the clue

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Legacy Gallery director Mary Jo Hughes with a painting by E.J. Hughes

When it comes to showcasing the University Art Collections, the pieces on permanent display across campus are really only the tip of the artistic iceberg. There’s the art that rotates through the various exhibits at both downtown’s Legacy Gallery and the McPherson Library’s Maltwood Prints and Drawings Gallery, for instance, but there is also the work done by the acclaimed artists who hold honourary degrees from the university. And while many of these are household names—Jack Shadbolt, E.J. Hughes, Robert Bateman, Mary Pratt—their work isn’t regularly seen around UVic.

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Gaston. Photo: UVic Photo Services

It’s one thing to have parents who have found fame in the same field you’re studying; but who wants one as the head of their university department? Consider Connor Gaston, whose parents are author Dede Crane and acclaimed novelist and Department of Writing chair Bill Gaston. Big shoes? You bet.

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