In November 2021, Victoria lost a performing arts icon. Judy Treloar was a passionate teacher, director, performer, and producer in the city’s theatre milieu. At a memorial for Judy in June of 2022, hundreds of friends, former colleagues, students, and family gathered in the upper lobby of the McPherson Playhouse to honour her incredible contribution to the cultural community over almost 50 years.
While Judy was not directly involved in dance, over the years she purchased tickets to a variety of Dance Victoria presentations. In person, she was an enthusiastic supporter of Dance Victoria’s Executive Producer, Stephen White and the work he was bringing to Victoria. Their friendship extended back to Stephen’s early days working in the theatre from the mid 1980s to 1990s.
At the June memorial, Judy’s husband Drew Shand described the vibrant cultural scene that greeted Judy when she first moved here in the 1970s. That description is included here to provide context and background for the many profiles of Victoria dance pioneers contained in this community dance archive.
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1973 – JUDY BRADSHAW (TRELOAR) ARRIVES IN VICTORIA
Victoria in 1973 was a city where the arts thrived.
The Limners, a collective group of artists, brought an international perspective to art.
The Victoria Symphony was well established, with its contract players augmented by musicians from the navy’s Naden Band. Classical musicians studied at UVic’s School of Music and the Victoria Conservatory of Music in Craigdarroch Castle.
Dance flourished with alumni of the Wynne Shaw Dance Studio and Bebe Eversfield’s Victoria School of Theatrical Arts.
Peter Mannering’s Stages Theatre had gone professional in 1971 as Bastion Theatre, a regional theatre under Artistic Director Ed Stephenson, who was succeeded by Keith Digby in 1982.
Kaleidoscope Theatre was born in 1973 when Barbara McLauchlin, Paul Liitich, and Glynis Leyshon applied for a grant to present free theatre workshops to children. They engaged Liz and Colin Gorrie, and introduced alternative theatre to Victoria.
The Springridge Cultural Centre was opened in 1974 by Michael Stephen in the former Emmanuel Baptist Church on Fernwood Road. In 1976 it became The Belfry under Artistic Director Don Shipley, opening with his Puttin’ On the Ritz and giving Victoria another innovative professional theatre option.
Four Seasons Musical Theatre Society was founded in 1975 by Janie Woods-Morris. It offered family entertainment with a variety of children’s theatre, musical revues, and musicals before devoting itself exclusively to children’s theatre in the 1990s.
The University of Victoria’s Department of Theatre was growing, with outreach to the community through its Town and Gown productions and Victoria Fair. It mounted productions at the McPherson Playhouse and at Langham Court Theatre with the Victoria Theatre Guild, which had been presenting amateur theatre for forty years.
Another amateur company, The Victoria Operatic Society, had been presenting musicals since 1945 and was producing two Broadway shows a year at the McPherson.
With the arrival of John Krich in 1971, UVic expanded its outreach. He and a group of fifteen theatre students formed the Phoenix Players in 1972. In 1974 they were renamed the Phoenix Summer Theatre, and became a staple of the summer theatre season.
Summers also featured comedy at the Mac with Jerry Gosling’s long-running Smile Show, succeeded by the music and comedy of the Hosie Connection featuring Bill, Sylvia, Dorothy, and Da Hosie, and then by Colin Skinner’s annual presentation of riotous British farce with Capitol Comedy Theatre.
UVic English professor Anthony Jenkins cast Judy in her first role with the Victoria Theatre Guild, Alison in John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger.
Judy then played Lucy Brown to John Krich’s Macheath in a UVic/Theatre Guild co-production of Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera in 1974 and Beatrice to Reg Terry’s Benedict in the February 1975 UVic production of William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing directed by John Krich at the McPherson.
Judy’s next role was Caitlin, the wife of Dylan Thomas in Stephen Michael’s Dylan, with Anthony Jenkins as the lead in a Victoria Actors Association production directed by Allan Purdy, also at the McPherson in the fall of 1975.
She wrapped up the year with what Daily Colonist reviewer Jim Gibson described as a “willowy and wonderful Blanche” in costumes by Clayton Jevne for the Victoria Theatre Guild’s production of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire directed by Robert Price.
In her first three years in Victoria, Judy was cast in five major roles with four different companies. She had found a home.
Judy Treloar, Norfolk House School 1978
Judy Treloar, Bastion Theatre School 1985
Judy Treloar, Pride & Prejudice program 2014
Judy as Lucy Brown and John Krich as Macheath in the 1974 UVic/Theatre Guild co-production of Bertolt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera