Close to 300 friends, classmates, teachers and members of the campus community gathered in Lister Centre last week to bid an emotional farewell to Tristan (Tian) Mi, a student in his final year of the BFA Acting program who passed away unexpectedly on January 19.

Speaking through a translator, Mi’s father, Mr. Mi Diqi, described how his son was already fascinated by creative expression at the age of five. Watching an animated movie with his father, the young Mi was struck by a moment when a character conveyed a deep emotion with nothing more than a subtle facial movement, and insisted on rewinding to replay the moment until his father could see it too.

“From that time, I made the decision to support him in his study of the arts,” said Mr. Mi.

In a moving tribute, drama professor David Ley recalled meeting Mi in 2008 shortly after he arrived from China. The young performer’s sights were firmly set on gaining acceptance into the Department of Drama’s acting program, which he accomplished after an audition where he won the professors over with “his ingenuity, his charm and his extraordinary creative potential.”

As an international student, the rigors of training in the prestigious program proved to be even more demanding for Mi than his classmates. “You have to understand that for him, ours would be the most challenging acting training program in the country,” Ley explained. “There is no other acting school in Canada that has the same in-depth focus on exploring classical text. Getting your mouth around the words of writers like Shaw and Shakespeare can be difficult for people raised in this culture, but for someone who speaks English as a second language, this is a huge challenge.”

“Tristan took up this challenge and he really committed himself to mastering his ability to express himself in English. I don’t think many people realize just how much work he put into this.”

As a fourth-year acting student, Mi was part of a cohort of 12 students performing in U of A Studio Theatre’s 2011/12 productions. He made his debut on the Studio Theatre stage in November as Frank the innkeeper in David Greig’s Yellow Moon and was in rehearsals for William Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, where he was to play a leading role.

Dean of Arts Lesley Cormack announced that the University will be awarding Mi a posthumous degree at the June 2012 convocation. “We wish to ensure that Tristan’s academic and artistic accomplishments are properly recognized,” she said. “We believe that he has earned this distinction, and we choose to honour him in this way.”

Mi’s achievements will be recognized in other ways as well: his family has plans to establish a student award bearing their son’s name to support drama students in pursuit of their studies, and at their request a photo of Mi will be permanently displayed in the drama department.

 “We will place this picture in a place where people might gather, and people will look at that picture and they will ask ‘Who is that?’” said Ley. “ And we will tell them the story of Mi Tian, who came all the way from China. He will certainly live on in my heart and in the hearts of all of us, and in the hearts of many others. He will not be forgotten.”