UFV Theatre presents the first production of its 2021/22 theatre season, Climate Change Theatre Action 2021, directed by visiting guest artist Elaine Ávila.

Climate Change Theatre Action 2021 is a globally distributed theatre festival, now in its fourth iteration, made up of 51 short plays by world-renowned playwrights and creators from every continent on earth, to encourage conversation, community, and action around the climate crisis. This festival is presented in conjunction with the biannual United Nations Climate Change Talks, held this year in Glasgow (COP 26).

UFV Theatre has created theatrical videos of 10 of these short and engaging plays. After a season of performing live online due to the pandemic, making these videos marked a restart to creating, rehearsing, and designing theatre live and in person. Students are utilizing a wide variety of tools available at UFV to create the videos, including editing software, green screen technology, costumes, make-up, sets, lighting, video design, indoor and outdoor shoots, and Adobe animation software.

The plays range from an exploration of the personal costs of turning Canada into an ecological preserve 150 years in the future, to the comic perspective of a baby salmon in our waterways in B.C., to an in-depth look at what “consultation” between government and First Nations truly means, from the perspective of a Palawa author.

Director Elaine Ávila is grateful for the opportunity to direct UFV’s contribution to Climate Chagne Theatre Action.

“I am enormously grateful to UFV SoCA for programming and participating in this year’s Climate Change Theatre Action, an initiative I co-founded six years ago which now reaches 40,000 participants worldwide. Students at UFV are learning about international performance and innovative initiatives to face the climate crisis.”

The authors of the plays are Métis, Algonquin, Oji-Cree, Azorean Portuguese, Ugandan, Canadian, South Asian, Mohegan, Aboriginal Australian from the Palawa people of Tasmania, and Turtle Mountain Chippewan. The plays chosen for this production are: Initiation by Angella Emurwon; The Consultation by Dylan Van Den Berg; Mossom Creek by Elaine Ávila; My Apology by Keith Barker; When by Wren Brian, Mizhakwad (The Sky is Clear) by Dylan Thomas Elwood; FRIENDS FOR LIFE By Himali Kothari; Green New Steal by Corey Payette; Ranger by Yvette Nolan; and What We Give Back by Madeline Sayet.

CCTA 2021 features UFV Theatre student ensemble actors Sarah Byers, Emmanuel Akpoviroro, and Jennifer Steadman. Student production designers include Brooklyn Doornbos (hair and makeup), Lisa Patetta (costumes, assistant stage manager, assistant director), and Makayla Pollock (lights and costumes). The backstage student crew includes Stefan Boekhorst (sound/set), Joshua Franklin (lights/props), Trevor Marsh (sound/voice), and Aimée Payeur (set/props). Students are mentored by part-time faculty member and UFV alumnus Matthew Piton, wardrobe manager Heather Robertson, theatre technician Mark Sutherland, and media arts assistant professor William Maher.

Performances will be held via zoom and tickets are free; however, audience members are encouraged to make a donation to the UFV Indigenous Student Emergency Fund when they reserve tickets, and we encourage audience members to educate themselves about the ongoing legacy of residential schools and the relationship between climate change and the intergenerational effects of colonization.

Donating to the UFV Indigenous Student Emergency Fund is one small action we can take to begin to reckon with the enormity of colonial practices and to become better stewards of this place, and by helping Indigenous students at UFV meet their educational goals, audience members can take a positive step towards Indigenizing and reconciliation.

Video Performances: November 25 and 26 at 7 pm, and November 27 at 2 pm, via Zoom.

Post-Performance Talkbacks will occur after every show, which promise to enhance audience members’ understanding of the performance. Special guest playwrights will also be attending the Post-Performance Talkbacks to discuss their ideas and answer audience members’ questions.

Thurs, November 25, 2021. Guest playwright: Angella Emurwon, Initiation.

Fri, November 26, 2021. Guest playwright: Dylan Van Den Berg, The Consultation.

Sat, November 27, 2021. Guest playwright: Yvette Nolan, Ranger.

Bookings can be made through Eventbrite

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/185954955277

Ticket registration ends 2 hours before performance start times.

Email theatre@ufv.ca for questions.

For more information about UFV Theatre productions go to https://ufv.ca/plays/

About the 2021-2022 Season of Theatre at UFV

With sea shanties aplenty, UFV Theatre will present Shakespeare’s Pericles in Winter 2022, with adaptation and direction by Anna Griffith. Pericles is the story of a man fleeing persecution who becomes a refugee on the high seas. It is also a story about a family fractured by circumstance and loss who dare to keep hope alive. Shakespeare’s rollicking epic travels from port to port in a tale where the sea that divides is also the sea that unites. On view March 23-April 2, 2022.

The Emerging Directors’ Showcase is the final project presented by UFV Theatre’s fourth-year directing class and is a chance for students to apply everything they have learned in the course. Audiences can expect a wide range of performances, from broad physical comedy to thought-provoking drama, and from movement-based devised work to explorations of performance art. On view April 2022.

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School of Creative Arts, University of the Fraser Valley

33844 King Road, Abbotsford, BC