Fine and performing arts
Allan Stichbury is a set, lighting and costume designer who has worked for theatres across Canada including both the Stratford and Shaw Festivals. Shown here working with master's student, Amanda Gougeon.Theatre of the real
UVic professor and theatre designer Allan Stichbury (left) believes his role as a scholar extends far beyond the classroom—such as Blyth, Ontario. As a graduate supervisor, Stichbury opens doors for UVic’s theatre graduate students so they can gain design experience in the local, regional and national theatre. Under his mentorship, master’s student Amanda Gougeon (right) designed costumes for the Blyth Festival’s production of Mail Order Bride. Learn about theatre at UVic.
Creativity lives here
The fine and performing arts make our world more clear to us, and more real. This is why people around the world turn to and rely on the arts for illumination and for emotionally rich answers to the most compelling questions confronting each of us, individually and as a society.
The pursuit of excellence in the fine arts—especially at a research-intensive university—is based on the belief that communicating through art, symbolism and performance requires intellectual rigour of the performer, the writer, the creator and even of the critic. It demands the ability to understand and the willingness to risk the most creative leap of all—from artist to audience.
To learn more about Fine and Performing Arts at UVic:
Musical expression
"I do write challenging music," says Dániel Biró, a UVic professor of composition and music theory. Biró's electroacoustic music incorporates sounds from the environment, computer-controlled “ghost” instruments and elements of Jewish, Christian and Islamic chants to extend and re-interpret musical tradition.
Biró composes commissioned pieces that are played around the world. His ongoing work, Mishpatim (Laws), is a musical and textual commentary on an ancient Hebrew Bible text, making a resonant analogy to contemporary issues.
Curator of the contemporary
UVic’s Carolyn Butler-Palmer holds the Williams Legacy Chair in Modern and Contemporary Arts of the Pacific Northwest at UVic. Her current program of research focuses on critical regionalism, and she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in the modern and contemporary arts of Oregon, Washington, BC and Alaska.
She’s also developing a practice of community-based research and curation focused on the Williams art collection, which features paintings, drawings and sculptures by some of the most renowned artists of the Pacific Northwest. Learn more about the university's art collections.
Poetry for the soul
UVic’s Lorna Crozier, winner of the Governor-General’s Award for poetry, continues to play a leading role in the Canadian literary landscape, captivating readers around the world with her poetry, essays, and creative nonfiction. The arresting, lyrical honesty for which she is best known infuses her 14 verse collections as well as her 2009 memoir, Small Beneath the Sky.
A member of UVic's writing faculty since 1991, Crozier is one of only two writers to have won the prestigious Pat Lowther Memorial Award from the League of Canadian Poets more than once. Learn more about Lorna Crozier.