speaking in draft
iPhoto caption: Headshots of Signy Lynch, Martin Julien, Anita Majumdar, Donna-Michelle St. Bernard, and Derrick Chua.
Five theatre professionals champion Canadian plays that deserve more life
Across the country, second productions are rare, especially for shows that premiered pre-pandemic. With this in mind, I spoke to five theatre folks about the Canadian play that each of them thinks deserves another live production.
iPhoto caption: Photos of Eric Woolfe (by Dahlia Katz), Catherine Savoie, Evan Klassen (by Jerry Grajewski), and Heather Redfern.
"Arts centres are going to have to apply to a new housing and infrastructure ministry program, which hasn’t been created yet, in order to access funds," says Heather Redfern, executive director of the Cultch in Vancouver. "So I’m very concerned that federal [funding] for cultural infrastructure in this country has completely disappeared."
iPhoto caption: Lester Trips duo headshot Lauren Gillis and Alaine Hutton. Photo by Helen Yung.
Lester Trips wants Toronto theatre creators to ‘make it nasty’
"It doesn’t matter how many reels of a hamster falling out of its cage set to the Requiem I see: The music still hits," says Lauren Gillis. "We joke that the logline for Honey I’m Home is 'normie drone has menty-b from VR Zoom with her own living room.'"
Rhubarb! Festival director Ludmylla Reis wants artists to embrace ‘the detour’
"We do something formative at some point in the arts, and then we just continue doing that in different fonts until we’re no longer on this earth," says Reis. "The important thing is to know what that is, because you don’t want to be controlled by it. You want to be in control."