Chari Arespacochaga has built a career across continents where community thrives
Photo courtesy of the University of Victoria.
Chari Arespacochaga is a passionate artist, educator, and director whose work bridges communities across the world. She celebrated this year with a UVic Emerging Alumni Award, which recognizes alumni who have graduated within the last ten years for their outstanding professional achievements and contributions to the community.
Arespacochaga’s immigration experience and deep roots in the Filipino diaspora greatly inform her work, manifesting in a commitment to creating spaces in theatre where collaboration, generosity, and storytelling can thrive. From her classroom at the Florida State University College of Fine Arts to the stages of international productions, she approaches her art with inclusion and boundless curiosity. She aims to shape the upcoming generation of theatre artists while constantly evolving her own practice.
Arespacochaga’s journey with theatre began long before she completed a Master of Fine Arts in Theatre at UVic in 2018 — rather, it started in her childhood in Manila.
“I was a very curious child,” Arespacochaga said in an interview with the Martlet. “I lived a lot in my imagination … stepping into worlds via books and movies.” She described this imagining as the act of putting herself in someone else’s shoes and asking: “Who might that person be? What things could happen here?”
With musicals like Annie and The King and I at the forefront of Arespacochaga’s childhood, she discovered her passion for the arts. She decided to really follow her dream the summer before she started her undergraduate degree, with a summer theatre workshop. “It felt like coming home,” she said.
Interestingly, she started her academic career in Industrial Engineering at the University of the Philippines, under her mother’s advice, for a stable and financially lucrative job. She remembers the thick math books with the answers in the back, and once asking a professor, “Why are we studying this? Someone answered this already.”
One day as she walked around her university campus, she instinctively found herself at the College of Music. Outside, a group of people danced to Madonna’s “Vogue” in the middle of the afternoon. “Oh, I’m going to look for something to study here,” she thought. Shortly after, she enrolled in Film and AudioVisual Communication.
After undergrad, Arespacochaga freelanced full-time in theatre productions and embodied different roles of the craft from acting to teaching and directing. Her resume became stacked with major productions such as Legally Blonde, The Little Mermaid, and Spring Awakening.
After gaining practical experience, Arespacochaga applied to UVic for a Master of Fine Arts degree in Theatre, a program for which she was the only student selected that year. This is how she ended up presenting her thesis project, Amadeus, at the Phoenix Theatre in 2015.
The inspiration for her thesis project came from practice recontextualizing other playwrights’ work in the modern day. Her project places Peter Shaffer’s award-winning fictional play about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in an asylum. The production was nearly sold out, and received a 4.5/5 review from The Times Colonist.
Now that she is Program Director of an MFA directing program, Arespacochaga reflected on her own post-graduate experience. Although her technical experience was incredible, she said her journey at UVic underscored the importance of community-building in theatre. “When I moved to Victoria I literally knew nobody,” she said. “I’ve made [a] wonderful community.”
Arespacochaga believes that the most important thing in theatre is to make sure that everyone involved feels ownership of the piece they are creating. “When I’m in the classroom, it’s about the students…. When we are in a rehearsal room, it’s about the show we are putting together,” she said. “There’s always a budget limitation, there’s always a time constraint, but we believe in it so much that within that process, you sort of discover how limitless it is, too.”
As the theatre industry evolves, the importance of equitability becomes greater, said Arespacochaga. “I think there are a lot more people committed to opening up new ways of telling stories, and also realizing there are so many more stories to be told,” she said.
Arespacochaga is currently directing Into The Woods for Theatre Group Asia to be presented in Manila, starring many of her old Filipino friends with whom she is excited to reunite. She will also be directing Primary Trust at the Asolo Repertory Theatre opening in early 2026, and she is in pre-production of Sweeney Todd for Florida State University, which will be presented in the fall.
“Theater always saves my life somehow,” she said. “The generosity and what you put into it is returned.”
