Virginie conducts research across performance studies, cultural anthropology, qualitative research, arts-based inquiry, Indigenous epistemologies and methodologies. Her two monographs, The Performative Power of Vocality (Routledge 2020), and Grotowski, Women, and Contemporary Performance: Meetings with Remarkable Women (Routledge 2014), are both based on her SSHRC-funded research. The book chapter “Experiencing Resonance as a Practice of Ritual Engagement,” also supported by SSHRC and co-authored with seven Indigenous artists, scholars, and Elders/Traditional Knowledge Keepers and four graduate students, is featured in Research and Reconciliation: Unsettling Ways of Knowing through Indigenous Relationships, edited by Cree scholar Shawn Wilson (Canadian Scholars 2019). The companion documentary film to this chapter is hosted on the UBC Institute for Community Engaged Research website (https://icer.ok.ubc.ca/research/).
Virginie's training as a performance practitioner and educator is rooted in the physically-based, experimental approach of influential theatre innovator Jerzy Grotowski, and she is especially indebted to the teachings of master-performers Rena Mirecka and Zygmunt Molik, ​two key founding members of Grotowski’s internationally acclaimed Laboratory Theatre. For an example of her participation in the voice-body integration training led by Molik, please see the documentary film Dyrygent, featured on the companion DVD of Zygmunt Molik’s Voice and Body Work (Routledge 2010). For an example of her participation in the paratheatrical training led by Mirecka, please see The Dream, which is part of the Meetings with Remarkable Women documentary film series produced by Virginie and featured on the Routledge Performance Archive .

Completed Projects

"Culture, Creativity and Well-Being" Retreat - October 20-26, 2019

This retreat was held on Galiano Island for a group of international students from Pearson United World College (https://www.pearsoncollege.ca/), co-facilitated by two Pearson College alumna, Virginie Magnat and Emmy Chahal, a yoga for well-being specialist.
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Pearson College students seen in the video and photos: Racim Bedjaoui (Algeria/Canada), Tenele Ndzinisa (Swaziland), and Carrsyn Haley (Canada).
Video documentation: Retreat participants. Photo documentation: Virginie Magnat.
Galiano Island
In A Moment
- by Carrsyn Haley (Retreat participant)
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Looking around at the rocks, leaves and moss,
Taking it all in and breathing with the trees.
The water droplets on the bark shining like gloss,
Movement is surrounding me swaying with the breeze
​
The energy in the air is known
It feels as if time stands still
Even by myself I know I’m not alone
My heart beats slow and feels filled

Where I sit is hard and firm
The rock is there with a purpose
I have much from it that I can learn
The feeling is very curious

​I take one last breath and look
And thank it for the stress that it took
Carrsyn's Spirit Spot
Racim's Spirit Spot - Excerpt 1
Racim's Spirit Spot - Excerpt 2
Tenele's Spirit Spot - Excerpt 1
Tenele's Spirit Spot - Excerpt 2
Tenele's Spirit Spot - Excerpt 3

Claire Fogal - "Creativity and Well-Being: An Introduction to Physical Theatre" Workshop - November 1, 2019

This workshop focused on how our capacity for creativity and well-being are naturally entwined in the body. It was open to all members of the Pearson College community, who engaged in playful collaborative exploration facilitated by theatre director, actor and educator Claire Fogal. Claire also shared her history with Tooba Physical Theatre Centre, founded by her father Dean Fogal, who trained with Etienne Decroux in France. She spoke of Tooba's focus on creativity and well-being and its blending of techniques derived from the work of Decroux and Jerzy Grotowski, two of the most innovative theatre researchers of the 20th century. Claire is currently pursuing SSHRC-funded doctoral studies in Theatre at UBC under the co-supervision of Virginie Magnat and Kirsty Johnston.
Excerpts from Claire's Workshop
Participants:  Guy Ouradou, Christine Ouradou, Elizabeth Shaw, Silke Kegel, Sarahi Perez de Leon, Eva Ingver Gimenez, Nadia Vaillancourt, Sarah Lewis, Don Seres, Tom Aberman, Wura Oni, Virginie Magnat
​Video documentation: Olivera Kamenarovska (first-year Theatre student)

Indigenous Theatre Artist Floyd Favel’s Guest Artist Residency
Pearson United World College - December 1-7, 2019

During this one-week Residency, international students who study theatre at Pearson College had the opportunity to work with one of Canada’s most accomplished theatre artists, Floyd Favel, who is a theatre theorist, director, actor, essayist, and a Cree cultural leader based in Saskatchewan. Favel studied theatre in Denmark at the Tukak Teatret, a school for Inuit and Sami People, after which he studied in Italy with Jerzy Grotowski, a Polish theatre director and one of the more influential theatre figures of the 20th century. Since then he has travelled and worked across the country and world developing his own unique theatre process he entitles ‘Native Performance Culture’, or NpC. Indigenous theatre is an artistic genre with its own methods, techniques, and body of knowledge that is open to all Peoples and not defined by ‘identity’ and that is multi-cultural in presentation. Favel has also done extensive radio work with CBC, starring with Thomas King in the Dead Dog Café for a number of years. His essays have been published in Canada, the United States, Poland, and France. He is the curator of the Chief Poundmaker Museum, winner of the 2019 Indigenous Tourism Award  (https://miyawataculture.com/).

  Guest Artist Floyd Favel
​ "Indigenous Ways of Knowing"
  Theory of Knowledge Class
  December 4, 2019
"I was fortunate to meet Cree actor, director, and writer Floyd Favel, who worked with Grotowski during the final phase of his post-theatrical research. Favel shared memories about his experience with Rena Mirecka, the leading actress of Grotowski’s Laboratory Theatre and a trusted teacher, with whom Favel had a special creative relationship" (Magnat, The Performative Power of Vocality 1).

"Favel recalled Mirecka as a particularly inspiring teacher. He had had wonderful human experiences [with her], which he said had been healing for him. This, he stated, was a very important aspect of any technique, for a technique was only useful and valuable if it made people feel better. He observed that ceremonies in his culture served this very purpose [and] explained that [being well] means that there are no obstacles between oneself and another person, oneself and the tree, oneself and the universe. To avoid mental or emotional obstacles, it is necessary to be in good relationship with the universe, which implies being in good relationship with oneself and others, including one’s ancestors." (Magnat, Grotowski, Women, and Contemporary Performance: Meetings with Remarkable Women 41-42).
Excerpts from Floyd Favel's Workshop
Participants:  Nadia Vaillancourt, Sarah Lewis, Don Seres, Hanako Chen, Tom Aberman, Wura Oni, Nikkie Bendtsen, Anonda Canadien, Gracie Kuppenbender, Cosme Aquino Ovelar, Dinhom Patarapotikul, Sofia Torres Mendez
​Video and photo documentation: Silke Kegel
First Meeting with Floyd
Physical Training: Part 1
Physical Training: Part 2
Physical Training - Part 3
Floyd's Feedback
Hanako's Story
Gracie's and Don's Stories
Floyd's Song - Part 1
Floyd's Song - Part 2
"Red People Red Magic" by Floyd Favel - Spiritual Centre - Friday, Dec. 6, 2019

“Land Acknowledgement” by Virginie Magnat
​2020 Canadian Association for Theatre Research Conference, Working Group “Moving Together to Reclaim and Resist”


’alhut (Hul’q’umi’num’ word meaning to honor, to look after, to be very careful with, to restore)

​Embodied Land Acknowledgement honoring the Sc’ianew First Nation’s traditional, ancestral and unceded territory on which Pearson United World College is located.
https://youtu.be/_VcAQ2WkoWM
Performed on July 29, 2020 by Virginie Magnat, who is from Occitania in France and who was a Pearson College student in 1982-84.
Filming and editing: Arvin Singh Uzonov Dang
​Funded by the “Culture, Creativity, Health and Well-Being” Research Cluster co-led by Virginie Magnat and Karen Ragoonaden (University of British Columbia).
Companion piece: Oral Land Acknowledgement honoring the Sc’ianew First Nation’s traditional, ancestral and unceded territory on which Pearson United World College is located.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NmNPfdz8oI
This audio recording provides historical context about colonialism in Canada and addresses the current political context of the post-Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) era.
Video presentation: “In Search of Healing: Artaud’s Quest for Alchemical Theatre and His Encounter with the Tarahumara” for the 2020 Poundmaker Indigenous Performance Festival (selected excerpts of the second chapter my new monograph The Performative Power of Vocality (Routledge 2020). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2vhTyWkJ30
This research project is funded by UBC's Eminence Program
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