Tom Scholte

No abstract available.

No abstract available.

No abstract available.

Through the following pages I will catalogue my directorial process of researching, rehearsing and reflecting on my thesis production of Les Belles-soeurs by Michel Tremblay. The production ran at the Frederic Wood Theatre from March 16 to April 1, 2017 and was a critical and popular success. Les Belles-soeurs utilized the talents of fifteen women actors from the UBC theatre program, as well as student designers, production personnel and crew. This written thesis will attempt to illustrate my creative choices, script analysis, and staging ideas in relation to my research, and in collaboration with the other artists and design team. An effort will be made to highlight what worked well, what changed, and what perhaps should have changed. There are also notes from my Director’s Diary beginning at the start of my Masters work. These notes chronicle, over two years, my learning curve here at UBC and are included because they informed the process of my thesis production. In addition to a detailed analysis of my process with Les Belles-soeurs, therefore, there is also some analysis of other plays that led up to my thesis production. All of this informed my work on Les Belles-soeurs and are reflected upon within this document as part of my Masters work. 

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This thesis project illustrates how Indigenous-centered performance enables and supports collective meaning-making and indigenous continuity. An examination of the Canadian policies regarding indigenous ceremony, public performances, and community gathering is presented to show the effects this complexity history is felt by indigenous people today. The use of counter-narrative, and telling ancestral stories of resistance provide insight into the way in which indigenous people have resisted these assimilation policies over generations. Our program here is to animate indigenous people within a living framework of continuity and Indigenous Knowledge Systems by focusing on how today’s performance and performing is connected to oral cultures, indigenous intellectual traditions. Indigenous performance and indigenous artists who while giving an insight into how indigenous people are creating safe social and learning spaces and can invoke positive spectrum emotions to combat colonial trauma. Interviewing five indigenous artistic performers, who engage many genres in performance, sets the basis of indigenous research methods including Kovach’s conversational method of interviewing. Presenting indigenous performances’ role in indigenous continuity, education, and generational knowledge transmission affirm the deep consideration of indigenous artists today and their role in leadership and in empowering indigenous people and communities. This research also uncovers a generational knowledge system that values of education, healing, protection and reciprocity that compose legacies of ancestral knowledge that can propagate healthy and loving indigenous realities.

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This paper and the web series, “Paradox” explores the research question “In what capacity do higher end tools affect innovation and creative freedom within low to no-budget filmmaking?” Initially, I had high hopes of producing a feature film I wrote previously titled “Blood Brothers” for the requirements of writing and directing a project for my Masters of Fine Art in Film Production and Creative Writing. I set out with a clear and direct path and felt fortunate to have learned so much through the writing portion of this program, which in turn, enabled me to further develop my storytelling skills. Repeated funding rejections forced me to evaluate backup options and so, during my first year in the program, I shot the first episode of “Paradox.” My whole time at UBC was a creative journey unlike anything I had encountered previously. Winning a chance to direct a Crazy 8, a separately funded Canada Council Short film entitled “Mahcimanitonahk- The Devil Dwelling” which was developed throughout Peggy Thompson’s screenwriting class, employment as a VFX Editor at FuseFX and 7 days of shooting Blood Brothers brought together a host of questions and answers of which I had no previous knowledge. As such, I would say that higher end tools greatly affect creative freedom and innovation within low to no-budget filmmaking with stipulations. In my experience, initial ideas evolve through testing both high-end gear and software allowing deviations to create a more efficient filmmaker.

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No abstract available.

No abstract available.

This thesis explores the directorial challenges of staging Eugene Ionesco's Rhinoceros in the round. It examines the theme of individuals seeking refuge from personal pain and disappointment in collective ideologies through unique contemporary staging and audience immersion. Rhinoceros was presented as part of UBC Theatre's 2012/2013 season running January 24 to February 9,2013.

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The Gift Horse: Creating and Directing a Winter Show for Caravan Farm Theatre, examines the preparation, directorial analysis, and rehearsal process of The Gift Horse, staged at Caravan Farm Theatre from December 10th to 31st 2011. My objective was to co-write, co-create, compose music for, and direct a meaningful family winter production for Caravan. To achieve this, my writing and creation partner, Erin Mathews, and myself, began researching and writing The Gift Horse in June of 2011. Upon completion of the script, my directorial preparation began. As a Caravan Farm Theatre winter production is told and performed at various locations over its eighty-acre property, with the audience witnessing the production from the back of eight horse-drawn sleighs, my directorial methods and goals were atypical to how one might prepare for an indoor theatre show, as detailed in this paper.To that end, Chapter One provides a detailed directorial analysis of The Gift Horse, Chapter Two is a Production Journal reporting on the entire creation period of the play from the writing, to designing, to rehearsing, to its opening night, and Chapter 3 is a short reflection on the entire process.

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Macbeth in Context: Putting the Scottish back into 'the Scottish Play' is an examination of the historical context in which the play Macbeth was written, the process of conceptualizing a production for the Frederic Wood Theatre, and the journey of getting it to the stage.Macbeth is a Scottish play, written for a Scottish King, and containing Scottish characters and culture. It is my intention to illuminate why the play was written, and detail my conceptualization for presenting a truly Scottish production of Macbeth.

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This paper describes and discusses the lighting, video, and scenery design of MK Woyzeck, presented at the Frederic Wood Theatre from October 1st to 10th 2009. The design will be presented primarily through a series of photographs taken by various photographers at several points during the design, cueing, and performance phases of the production. Emphasis will be placed on the use of digital projectors to provide full illumination of the actors, referred to as Digital Video Illumination (DVI), as well as the role of the projection/set/lighting designer as an active deviser within the rehearsal process. Chapter 1 will provide a brief overview of the production concept for the piece and it’s impact on design strategies. Chapter 2 illustrates the overall execution of the design through a collection of photographs with accompanying captions describing the intention behind each of the cues depicted. In a similar fashion, Chapter 3 describes some of the advantages and challenges inherent within the DVI system and the particular projection instruments employed in this production. Chapter 4 is devoted to the actual mechanics of DVI cue construction. These are illustrated through the description of five sample cues representative of the major ways in which DVI was applied to this production. Chapter 5 summarizes the outcomes of this experimental design process through a brief conclusion.

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