Hello! My name’s Jack I’m a fourth year student studying theatre design. I’m a theatre lighting and set designer, which means that I design the objects on stages or choose how they’re lit, this extends to not just theatre but also opera, dance, and live music. I am also a theatre director and enjoy taking what I’ve learned from classes outside theatre and bringing them into my practice. I’m originally from Edmonton, and back home I have three dogs, Tucker, Lucy and Linus. I enjoy listening to podcasts like Truanon and listening to music, some of my favourite artists are Injury Reserve, Anna Von Hausswolff, Viagra Boys and Billy Woods. I enjoy telling little white lies at parties and talking with the elderly.

I am excited to dig into the material this semester, I’ve always wanted to be a better reader and someone who’s more well-read so I am looking forward to taking steps towards achieving that goal. I am really excited to dig into some more of the texts that dig into the idea of family and the complexities that surround it, some of my favourite theatre texts revolve around family dramas and the internal politics associated. I am also looking forward to reading more post-colonial texts, a lot of media and previous literature that I have enjoyed touches on what post-colonialism looks like and how we can move towards a more progressive future. I am expecting lots of late reading nights and lots of rereading

Speaking of post-colonial, one of the topics in the brotherly conversation that caught my ear was the discussion of a second wave of bastardization of language as a result of colonial means. I think it’s quite interesting and I’m excited to explore how language has evolved in this new manner, hopefully through this study, I can also discover more about the bastardization of the Latin languages into what we have today. It also makes me think about in what ways has language been turned back onto itself as a form of resistance to imperial powers.  Another interesting topic to me was the focus on the language part of the literature, in my background as a theatre artist the syntactic elements usually take the forefront of analysis instead of the words themselves. I think this ties nicely back with the spreading of language through empire, through digging through the language side of the literature I hope that it will deepen my understanding of the history of these locations.