MFA Studio

Studio Explorations by Jaeden Walton
Current // The School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser UniversityJaeden is currently taking their MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts at the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University. Here you will find various different artistic explorations conducted by Walton during their studies and studio time.

Production Team:Concept, Choreography, and Direction by Mirko GuidoCreated With & Danced by Elisa D’Amico, Zen Jefferson, Roosa Törma, Eliott MarmousetLight & Video Design by Christoffer Brekne Composed by Fredrik Arsæus NauckhoffOriginal Sculptures by Søren EngstedVancouver Sculptures by Jaeden Walton & Taha SaraeiChoreographic Consultants Alice MacKenzie, Alberto Franceschini, Sunniva Vikør Egenes, Shumpei NemotoVocal Coaches Johanne Baadsgaard Lange, Mariane SiemCostume Consultant Mie Gillings Jørgensen

All That Remains is a choreographic work at the crossroads of dance performance, installation and sound performance. It investigates the concept of 'wound' as an experience that traverses the landscape and bodies — as a phenomenon that invites us to slow down, re-sense and re-consider our entanglements with the world around us.The performance takes place on a bare stage where sculptures of industrial waste and natural elements are spread throughout the space. The dancers inhabit this environment of wounds and cracks, navigating new pathways of connection between themselves and others. The work invites the audience to immerse in a state of suspension, and witness a collective body-landscape of shape shifting, spillage and hybridisation. In a movement that alternates between playfulness, resignation, ecstasy and abandonment, the performance unfolds as a rite of passage into unexpected and unknown universes of gathering.

Facilitated by:Mohammadreza (Momo) Akrami
Wyldie Bracewell
Alex Calcagno
Liz Ellis
Marcela Oñate-Trules
Christopher Outten
Taha Saraei
Jaeden Walton
Boyu Xu / 徐

Production Team:Directed by Bonnie GratzDesign by Jaeden WaltonStage Managed by Jaeden WaltonAssistant Stage Managed by Riegar Marks

After one fiery year together a couple puts 52 scenes about their relationship on playing cards and throws them into the audience. Throughout the course of the play each card is picked up, a scene enacted, and the audience sees just what happened between the young lovers.

BFA Studio

Studio Explorations by Jaeden Walton
2020 - 2024 // The University of VictoriaJaeden holds a BFA in Theatre Design with Distinction from the University of Victoria. Here you will find various different artistic explorations conducted by Walton during their time in the design studio.

Abstract Set Design Concept

The Song of Death by Tawfiq Al-Hakim.

The song of death is a revenge drama written by an Egyptian writer Tawfiq Al Hakim. It shows the conflict between traditional thinking and modernisation. Through the characters, the drama also tries to show the two different thoughts of two different generations. It also shows how education changes one's way of thinking.

Design concept created by using paint (and a few other materials) in a blind matter, separated by a wall so that the product could not be seen until the very end. Designed by thinking about the feelings of the subject matter, wondering how the story progressed and what lied before the characters.

Ballet Design Concept

Based on the poem Pluto Shits on the Universe by Fatimah Asghar. Inspired by the design works of Léon Baskt and Pablo Picasso.

On February 7, 1979, Pluto crossed over Neptune’s orbit and became the eighth planet from the sun for twenty years. A study in 1988 determined that Pluto’s path of orbit could never be accurately predicted. Labeled as “chaotic,” Pluto was later discredited from planet status in 2006.Today, I broke your solar system. Oops.
My bad. Your graph said I was supposed
to make a nice little loop around the sun.Naw.I chaos like a motherfucker. Ain’t no one can
chart me. All the other planets, they think
I’m annoying. They think I’m an escaped
moon, running free.Fuck your moon. Fuck your solar system.
Fuck your time. Your year? Your year ain’t
shit but a day to me. I could spend your
whole year turning the winds in my bed. Thinking
about rings and how Jupiter should just pussy
on up and marry me by now. Your day?That’s an asswipe. A sniffle. Your whole day
is barely the start of my sunset.My name means hell, bitch. I am hell, bitch. All the cold
you have yet to feel. Chaos like a motherfucker.
And you tried to order me. Called me ninth.
Somewhere in the mess of graphs and math and compass
you tried to make me follow rules. Rules? Fuck your
rules. Neptune, that bitch slow. And I deserve all the sun
I can get, and all the blue-gold sky I want around me.It is February 7th, 1979 and my skin is more
copper than any sky will ever be. More metal.
Neptune is bitch-sobbing in my rearview,
and I got my running shoes on and all this sky that’s all mine.Fuck your order. Fuck your time. I realigned the cosmos.
I chaosed all the hell you have yet to feel. Now all your kids
in the classrooms, they confused. All their clocks:
wrong. They don’t even know what the fuck to do.
They gotta memorize new songs and shit. And the other
planets, I fucked their orbits. I shook the sky. Chaos like
a motherfucker.It is February 7th, 1979. The sky is blue-gold:
the freedom of possibility.Today, I broke your solar system. Oops. My bad.

• read the full paper here

IntroductionAs Canadian scenographers attempt to create a nationalistic aesthetic through design, wood is often used as a theatrical device. What are the reasons that Canadian designers choose this material as a vessel into exhibiting this nationalistic aesthetics through their designs? Does the material have any correlation to the designer’s Canadian identity being preserved on stage or is there another reason for the usage of wood? Why are Canadian scenographers drawn to wood?This project is a call to action for scenographers to transition their usage of wood into an ecoscenographic standpoint as opposed to this nationalistic aesthetic.¹ My artist’s statement compliments a half inch scale model (Fig. 1), which proposes a gallery exploring the previously mentioned questions and ideologies based on my own research into the topic. The gallery is to be set in the Barbara McIntyre Studio located in the University of Victoria’s Department of Theatre. This black box space allows for a walkable exhibit with a distinct entrance and exit and is in the building in which this project was conceived. The mise-en-scène of my exhibit features four different variations of wood; natural wood, raw wood, exaggerated wood, and artificial wood. I will first define these four wood variations,² discuss my academic research in ecoscenography contributing to wood in design, and then discuss four different Canadian theatre pieces and their usage of wood in relation to the previously mentioned topics.

¹ ‘Ecoscenographic’ is not yet recognized as a real word. I will be using it in relation to the words ‘ecoscenography’ and ‘scenographic’.
² Definitions are of my own interpretation, and not literal definitions of the words. It could be argued that there are more than four scenographic wood variations, however I am to believe these are the four most common types.

Production Team:Arrangement by Mac HuffDirected and Choreographed by Pia WyattMusical Direction by Stephanie SartoreSet Design by Jaeden WaltonCostume Design by Tiffanie LegerLighting Design by Carson SchmidtSound Design by Thomas MooreStage Managed by Megan Farrell

Step into the world of musical theatre history with our Broadway classics revue! From Carousel to Cabaret, Gypsy to Grease and Peter Pan to The Phantom of the Opera, enjoy the songs you love and discover new gems. All while tracing Broadway’s incredible journey from its origins to its modern glory.Like a night of speed-dating for Broadway lovers, this musical revue takes the audience through a century of Broadway in just one fun, crowd-pleasing, magical evening for all ages.

Production Team:Written by Ella MacdonaldDirected by Aiden FinnSound Design by Jaeden WaltonSound Design assisted by Zoey CollinsSet Design by Emilie Shjarback & Chiara PowerCostume Design by Lilian DoucetLighting Design by Theon WinnStage Managed by Connor Gleeson

Production Team:Arrangement by Mac HuffWritten by Nadia MyroonDirected by Thomas MooreSound Design by Jaeden WaltonSet Design by Stevie WelshCostume Design by Aiden Finn & Morgan ChristopherLighting Design by Syrah KhanStage Managed by Aiden Finn

Voted 2nd Favourite Comedy at the Victoria Fringe Festival!

Carpet is an absurdist dramatic carpet comedy carpet carpet carpet that analyzes the carpet carpet relationship between carpet carpet carpet what would carpet happen carpet carpet carpet if carpet carpet carpet carpet carpet carpet carpet carpet carpet carpet carpet carpet.

Production Team:Brooke Hogewiede: Costume Design and Urban Intervention leadCarson Schmidt: Video lead, publication, and Urban InterventionEmily Schuler: Costume DesignJaeden Walton: Sound Design leadJane Wishart: Costume Design and Urban InterventionKen Matthews: Set Design leadLisa Van Oorschot: Set Design and VideoMallory Goodman: Costume and Set DesignZoe Bechtold: Costume and Set DesignZoey Collins: Lighting Design Lead and SoundBased on the script by Jason Patrick Rothery and Eric Rose

The production does not follow the linearity of the script but instead presents each scene as a vignette. An installation the audience can experience in any order, originating from an interest in immersive audience experience. In Canadian theatre, these experiences are rare and connected with the show’s core theme: distortion, whether in memory, history, or time itself. Accounts of the past take on new shapes with each retelling, affected by unique biases and lived experiences. Impressions of the play vary depending on the path each audience member pursues.Spectators move through rooms and levels of a large warehouse, stumbling upon a New Year’s Eve party frozen in time, an airplane within the past and present, a classroom ruined by a Care Bear’s mass shooting, and other bizarre, dreamlike scenes. They witness the assassination of JFK, underscored by Thriller, a computer from 1999 reports the coming destruction of humanity, and an online debate about whether America faked the moon landing. A cacophony of oddly placed pop culture references, warped major historical events, accounts of personal memory. The script is a fever-dream of life. Can individual perceptions of reality be trusted as truth? This otherworldly realm is playful, humorous, disorienting, and frightening, the foundation on which our design rests.Designing the costumes, the students drew upon the uncanny valley, where objects resemble the human form closely but imperfectly, evoking discomfort and fear, found in the use of masks. The masks create an unsettling visual, a foothold for the play’s distortion of memory. The ensemble’s nylon masks represent how the faces of strangers, acquaintances, and even loved ones fade from memory over time. JFK’s paper mask illustrates how society views public figures as flat, one-sided creatures. George and Katherine’s masks exaggerate the archetypes of the nuclear family, showing our oversimplified view of history. In all, the costumes represent a reality adjacent to truth, one familiar but off-kilter, missing the pieces that separate a dream from reality.

This project was a design concept submitted by the University of Victoria to the 2023 Prague Quadrennial. Supervised by Kerem Çetinel & Patrick Du Wors

“In the set, we challenge typical Canadian theatre by setting the show in a local historical building. We chose to show the back of the flats to the audience. By revealing the ‘workings’ of theatre, we stretch the line between truth and fiction thinner. Is the audience experiencing a reflection of reality or simply a simulation adjacent? Are they watching a pop culture reference or something more? Last, we provide interaction with the audience. While they can walk through most scenes, a few can only be seen from above or through peepholes. Walking down one hallway, you may hear the sounds of several rooms and see the projections bleeding out, contaminating areas that are not their own.Our urban intervention exemplifies how distortion of memory can frighten or confuse. Inspired by the ‘Care Bear School Shooting’ scene, we chose to explore deterioration of childhood innocence through a cryptic and provocative poster, with altered used teddy bears around high-traffic areas. We look to elicit curiosity through confusion in onlookers. We gave the bears tags with show-related questions prompting the public to call and leave a voicemail. We put up posters with the same questions, letting us reach more people. The posters create a picture incomplete without its context, a fragment with no answer. Like the design, the intervention seeks to prompt interpretations and questions about the project and PQ. The voicemails we received have become integral to our sound design. A stranger posted a photo of our large poster installation on a local subreddit, inspiring comments from other community members. We embedded the ensuing comments into our design for ‘moon landing’ room and urban intervention video.We hope that you enjoy our design proposal for Window.”

Production Team:Written by Carol ChurchillDirected by Francis MatheuSound Design by Jaeden WaltonMusic by Helen GlavinSound Design assisted by Ky Lands & Andrew ShepherdMusical Direction by Naomi HarrisMusical Arrangements by Naomi SehnSet & Costume Design by Mallory GoodmanLighting Design by Ken Matthews & Carson SchmidtChoreography by Alison RobertsStreaming Direction by Kevin EastmanStage Managed by Georgia Sherman

Set in a time when it’s dangerous to be a woman without a husband – or just a woman who’s different – Vinegar Tom is a wild mash-up that blends a 17th-century witch hunt with modern musical numbers that cleverly connect this tale to how women’s bodies remain a battleground today.The play, written in the 1970s by the much-acclaimed British playwright, leads us to question not only the historical persecution of “witches” over the ages, but why anyone persecutes anyone. In this work Churchill is at her best: raw, satirical, political, and mad as hell!