Canada's Stratford Festival Posts 2.6m Deficit

The Stratford Shakespeare Festival is appealing to government for financial support to help it through the recession. The Stratford, Ont., festival revealed that it had suffered a $2.6-million deficit in 2008 despite a program featuring Christopher Plummer in George Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra. The loss last year was the company’s first since a three-year streak from 1991 to ’93. Attendance dropped by 4% to 534,000 in 2008. Though sales to Canadians were up by 2%, many Americans skipped Stratford, tipping the company into the red and forcing it to reach into its $5.6-million stability fund, which was set up for weathering recessions. Though some will remember a Stratford season that included Caesar and Cleopatra, a Hughie / Krapp’s Last Tape double bill and The Music Man, others will recall the collapse of a triumvirate of co-artistic directors last March. Marti Maraden and Don Shipley resigned before the season had even started, leaving Des McAnuff standing alone.

Legit Canada Succumbs to Economic Downturn

The quake may have first hit Broadway, but the aftershocks are being felt all over. Canada's legit theatres have begun to suffer the shockwaves of the current economic crisis. Theatres are cancelling shows, reducing ticket prices and cutting seating capacity. Even surefire hits like The Sound of Music and Jersey Boys are offering discounts. Read a full report of the situation here.

Canada Likely to Cancel International Tours

A survey by the members of the Conférence Internationale des Arts de la Scène (CINARS) suggests that up to 600 out-of-country performances by 36 Canadian arts organizations could be cancelled in the absence of two cultural diplomacy programs and a stalling economy.

CINARS said the questionnaire was informal, sent to 220 organizations, of which 36 responded. But the numbers hint at the broader impact the recent cutting of PromArt and Trade Routes - two programs until recently administered by the federal government to help artists and organizations tour their work abroad - will have on Canadian's foreign profile.

CINARS general director Alain Paré said the timing could not be worse with the economy already struggling. He hopes to have a more accurate picture of the fallout after its annual conference, now under way in Montreal. "Canada's a huge country, but we don't have the population to support our artists. It's a question of survival to tour abroad," he said.

Paré added that it would be dangerous to cancel so many shows, leaving international buyers hesitant to book Canadian acts they fear might not honour their agreements. Companies responding to the survey included the Alberta Ballet, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens and Les 7 doigts de la main. Their estimates put next year's resulting financial losses for all 36 companies at $4.9-million.

James Bradshaw
Canada's Globe and Mail
November 21, 2008

MacIvor Wins Siminovitch Prize

Canadian playwright, Daniel MacIvor, was awarded the 2008 Siminovitch Prize in Theatre. The $100,000 prize has been given out annually since 2001 with a director, designer and playwright winning in successive years.

MacIvor, 46, is a native of Nova Scotia who now lives in Toronto. He is best known for the series of solo shows he produced with Sherrie Johnson for their theatre group da da kamera with plays like House, Here Lies Henry, Monster and Cul-de-Sac.

The Siminovitch Prize is divided in two; $75,000 goes to the lead artist and $25,000 to people the artist chooses to share in the award. MacIvor has selected as his protégé co-winners Daniel Arnold and Medina Hahn, two writer-performers he met last year in Vancouver.

Stratford Festival in Red

As Wall Street collapses and the U.S. government is using all its taxpayers’ money to fund an unjustified war and bailout greedy corporations who mismanaged (or flat-out stole) ‘Average Joe’ citizens’ cash, the first theatrical casualty has been noted, and it always starts small. The 'Toronto Star' reports,

“Eleven employees of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival have been let go in reaction to an operating deficit for the season that is expected to run well into seven figures. It's not expected news from an organization that has run its last 14 seasons in the black, a tribute to former artistic director Richard Monette, who died last week at the age of 64. What general director Antoni Cimolino called "a perfect storm" of rising fuel prices, a weakening U.S. dollar and an uncertain economy have combined to find the festival facing red ink for the first time in its recent history.

This past season, the first for artistic director Des McAnuff, got off to a rocky start when his two associates, Don Shipley and Marti Maraden, resigned in March over personal differences. Still, the season that opened in May received generally enthusiastic reviews, even from the New York critics who had been largely absent in the last decade. But the economic situation, price of gas and other external factors slashed the American audience by close to 14 per cent, a devastating blow to the festival.”

'Goodness' May Not Make Rwanda

Volcano, a Toronto theatre company, has been invited to perform their production of Michael Redhill’s Goodness at the second annual Festival Arts Azimuts in Huye, Rwanda. Trouble is, the Stephen Harper Canadian government has cut close to $45-million in arts and culture programs, including PromArt, which supported touring Canadian artists with travel grants, and Trade Routes, which supported the export of cultural goods and services. The Azimuts Festival has offered to pay €20,000 ($30,500) to bring Goodness to Rwanda, but Volcano’s artistic director Ross Manson estimates the total budget for the tour at more than $80,000. Recipient of many awards, including the ‘Best of Edinburgh 06’, Goodness is about a Jewish descendent of Holocaust survivors and an African woman who has been victim to a much more recent genocide. Read the ‘Globe & Mail’ article here.

Busk or Bust

‘The Toronto Star’, covering the annual Buskerfest, which aims to attract more than 500,000 spectators and presents more than 40 acts on eight stages representing Canada, the U.S., England, Australia, Hungary, Sweden, the Netherlands, Argentina and Japan has interviewed four street performers to determine the pros and cons of the business, training and where the best locations on earth are to entertain passers-by. Check out the article here.

Conservatives Cut Arts Funding by $45 Million

The Canadian Tories are committed to cutting $44.8-million in spending on arts and culture by April of 2010. The Conservatives have earmarked 10 programs and parts of another to be eliminated and will reduce spending on two others, after a "strategic review" process that audited all Canadian Heritage programs for efficiency and effectiveness. All but one cut falls under the Heritage purview, the lone exception being the previously reported $4.7-million PromArt, a grant program for foreign travel administered by Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

The most expensive of five new cuts approved in February was the $11.7-million Canadian Memory Fund, which gives federal agencies money to digitize collections and mount them online. Also chopped were the $3.8-million Culture.ca Web portal; the $560,000 Canadian Cultural Observatory; the $5.64-million research and development component of Canadian Culture Online; and the $2.1-million Northern Distribution Program, which distributes the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network signal to 96 Northern communities.

The departments says a rarely advertised $500,000 annual fund - part of the Sustainability program designed to rescue arts organizations on the brink of extinction - has also been axed, after helping rescue four groups on the brink of disaster in the past six years: the Winnipeg Symphony, Calgary Philharmonic and Théâtre du Rideau Vert received $250,000; and the Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal received $100,000.

Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay and Toronto Mayor David Miller's joint letter to Prime Minister Harper, which decried a perceived reversal in a generous Conservative approach to the arts, only added to the exasperation of the Prime Minister's communications director, Kory Teneycke. "To listen to some in the arts community and the opposition, you would think that there's blood in the streets…When we find examples of programs that are clearly not meeting their objectives, without apologies we will cancel them. That is the entire purpose of Strategic Review. We owe that to taxpayers," Mr. Teneycke added, calling PromArt "a boondoggle."

Money + Education = Greater Arts Attendance

According a recent study conducted by Statistics Canada, the more money one makes and the more education one has, the more likely that person is to go to plays or concerts. The report suggests that the type of job a person had influences their choice to attend cultural events.

Those whose parents had advanced education, such as a university degree, were much more likely than those whose parents with lower education to attend most cultural activities. Mom's education had more of an impact than did dad's schooling, according to the report.

For those in a romantic relationship, their partner's education had an even greater effect than their mother's schooling on their likelihood of participating in cultural activities. But factor in a kid or two and the time they spent going out declined, the study found.

Statistics Canada researchers based their report on data from the 2005 General Social Survey which contains details on how nearly 10,000 Canadians aged 15 and over spend their time.

Kosova & Canada do Punch & Judy

Submitted by our friend and colleague, Jeton Neziraj, currently the Artistic Director of the National Theatre of Kosova.

Punch and Judy Murder Love is described by the playwrights as "a cartoon for adults in 12 episodes". The famous traditional puppet characters of Punch & Judy are brought to life in modern times, facing all the problems and challenges of a modern relationship between two psychopaths. Punch is an insecure Austrian who behaves like Hitler; Judy is a neurotic Hungarian porn star. The clever but lazy Arlecchino is their not-so-willing servant in trying to bridge the communication gap that exists between languages and cultures.

The play takes place in 12 separate "episodes" which, like cartoons, feature the same characters in different eras and circumstances. The language is Albanian mixed with nonsense Hungarian, German, and Italian. Playwright Jeton Neziraj and playwright/director Michael Devine worked with actors in 2 countries, Canada and Kosova, to develop the improvisational structure of the play. A little bit naughty, a little bit provocative, and extremely silly, Punch and Judy Murder Love is a play about ethno-centrism and the war between men and women, otherwise known as love.

Punch and Judy Murder Love is designed and directed by Michael Devine and features Ernest Malazogu (Punch), Alban Morina (Arlecchino), and Xhejlane Terbunja (Judy). It premieres at the Prizren Professional Theatre on June 21, 2008.

Dubai-Owned Cirque du Soleil?

Cirque du Soleil is denying reports that an oil-rich Dubai investment fund has approached the Canadian company with a takeover bid. British media reports say an investment arm of the Kingdom of Dubai has offered the equivalent of close to $2-billion for the wildly successful Montreal-based circus company.

"Cirque du Soleil is not for sale," Cirque spokesperson Renée-Claude Ménard said, calling the reports "rumour and speculation."

When asked whether Cirque du Soleil has received any interest specifically from Dubai, Ms. Ménard wrote: "We do not comment on which organizations or individuals we have conversations with."

Last year, Cirque du Soleil announced a partnership with Dubai-based Nakheel, which describes itself as the world's largest privately held real estate developer. The 15-year deal will see a new, resident (as opposed to touring) Cirque show offered at a purpose-built location in Dubai, beginning in 2010.

This year, Cirque will offer 18 different shows around the world, including 9 resident shows (6 in Vegas). Close to 80 million people have seen a Cirque show since '84, according to the company.

Toronto takes on Montreal

With global arts funding being cut across the board, it’s nice to hear a story where those budgets are actually increasing. It appears that Toronto now has the funding to climb the ladder and challenge Montreal as the cultural capital of Canada. The Ontario government had some extra money lying around after fiscal year 2007, so Dalton McGuinty gave the arts community over $75 million. The biggest winner was Luminato, Toronto's festival of creativity, which made its debut last year. It received $15 million as a legacy gift to plan for the future and commission new work. Read more here in ‘The Star’.