 Welcome, I just, I went to the bookstore just down the street at home and said good evening and I think that has to do with the light outside. But thanks everyone for making it through the remaining day and joining us here. On behalf of the National Theatre School of Canada, Haaland TV and the Spider-Man show, I want to welcome you to our Saturday morning and to a conversation with Ames to keep our feet on the ground. My name is Sarah Grant-Sanley and I'm your moderator for today. And along with Lisa Palmer, our assistant director for the English section at NTS, Rose Plotec, the coordinator for the directing program and the director of students for the Chamberlain and Tanya Rintuel, I'm super charged to welcome you to, from where I stand, Canadian Theatre in Context. Nice. And to all of you listening or watching at home, I still hope you have your pajamas on because that sounds nice. Arriving to everyone here, this event is being live-streamed by Haaland TV. We hope, I think it is actually because I have my hands. So, I love you too. So, we encourage you to tweet as you wish and to use the hashtag Canadiancult, that's CBNcult, when you do. Spider-Man show CA is delighted to be part of this, our first live-streamed adventure. And you can find out more about today by following us on Twitter at Spider-Man show or by visiting us at Spider-Man show CA. This morning is to be divided into three sections. The first section, each of the participants are going to spend five minutes speaking to us about their perspectives on Canadian Theatre. And to find out more about our speakers, you can turn to the menus provided, menus provided by our hosts, Tanya and then Carly, or you can link to them as well through any number of hashtags like Canadiancult, Haaland TV, Spider-Man show, use your connectivity today. Tweet as you wish. So, after our citizens have had their five minutes say, we'll take a brief break and return to our long-term discussion. This will last about 90 minutes and then we're going to finish off by awarding the Canada Council for the Arts John Hirsch Award, which is really exciting too. So, if you've not had the opportunity to place yourself on the map, hi me, I hope you will do so during the break. And as you can see, the room is set up somewhat non-traditionally. In fact, you might think I directed it because the sight lines are so bad. So, we're engaging in a process called the Lawn Table, and it comes with Lawn Table etiquette. And hopefully you've got this drinks menu etiquette when you came in. And again, you can find it online. The Lawn Table was conceived by Lois Weaver, who in turn was inspired by the 1995 Dutch film called Antonia's Lime. And if you haven't seen it, I suggest you do. Lois Weaver is a Guggenheim winning artist, activist, writer, director, and professor of contemporary performance at Queen Mary University of London. Her work centers on feminism, human rights, and possibilities for public participation. Active for over four decades, she's the founding member of significant New York theater companies, Spider Woman Theater, 76, Split Bridges in 1980, and wow, the Women's One in World Cafe, also 1980. So, I'm going to kick off by giving a brief modeling version of quote-unquote from where I stand. My talk will be three minutes. At one minute remaining, I'll be given a polite, understated signal from one of the hosts, how are we timing? At zero minutes remaining, I'll be given a less understated, no time left signal. And when I go one minute over, I'll be provided with some, you know, award show-worthy iPhone available music that will not stop playing until I stop talking. Okay, here I go. It all started in the 12th century AD. Okay, kidding. Well, actually, probably did it some way, but I thought it would be my seven-minute talk. Last night, as part of my keynote address, I spoke about my sense of citizenry. I know this to be a difficult word, but I use it here in a poetic way. It's my belief that we're living in a time of citizen story theater, that the citizen in each of us is waking up, and that as artists, we're doing what we do best. We're looking at the world we inhabit and responding to it. We feel as citizens and we respond as artists. This is our gift and our responsibility. Our stories must come from this sense of participation in the health and well-being of our world. And our goal must be always to employ our various skills and trainings to this end. This doesn't have to be onerous. It doesn't even have to be heavy. But it should be a bit awkward. It likely involves a bit of danger, for sure some risk, and it needs, at least occasionally, to be heart-stoppably funny. We laugh as citizens, but we can make the world cry for this as artists. As my citizens, we have the privilege of offering laughter as a ton of from the gods. We as theater makers have the capacity to share joy and the resources to give space for the presence of agony. Theater is a space for contemplating in public that which is too difficult to think about or even click on at home alone. And in this moment of need, I contend that theater becomes a square for civic engagement. So meeting Lois Weaver, the divisor of this long table, in this way, is part of why I love this crazy life as much as I do. Here's why. The woman who predicated with today's approach to our discussion was a founding member of Spider-Woman Theater in New York City. Spider-Woman Theater is now, and for most of its lifespan, has been led by Meryl Mbwell. Meryl Mbwell has been one of the most influential teachers and creative voices in First Nations work on this land. The Indian borders are not recognized by many First Nations people, and this lovely line from Lois Weaver to Meryl Mbwell to the Turtles to Ryan Cunningham, one of our speakers today, both a super exciting and a testament to this. Equally compelling is the fact that I can pick another strand of Lois Weaver's influence and attach the line that passes directly through me and gets picked up by Mel Haig, another of today's talkers. And given this kind of easy connection, I'm pretty sure that never even having met Lois Weaver, that we're all sitting at her ideas table, not just because of this web of connection, but because we all end up being connected. The fifth hope you prophecy is that the land should be crisscrossed by a giant spider web. This is largely thought to refer to the first power lines and more recently the internet. But as you see behind me, once the world is mapped, it becomes inevitable that we will all connect. Our lines will eventually cross. We're interdependent. Last night I mentioned that we should always act as though we will meet someone again. That's how small Canadian theater still is. But when I think of the map behind me and the ways in which we're all crisscrossing it, when I think about the hope you prophecy and Lois Weaver and all of us here becomes impossible not to feel that our job is to live with everyone in mind and to tell stories that will help us all. From where I stand, that's our job. How's my time? Last note. To all the speakers. Microphones are optional, but speaking clearly is not. I let that sit with you for about 27 seconds. I wanted to get some of my music, but I'm not my team. So, with all this in mind, the practical and the high-faluting, I turn... Who pronounces high-faluting with the G at the end? There's my music, but I'm panicking. I turn this over to Tanya Rintual to introduce our first speaker. Thank you. Paul is from Charlottetown. He had to come up with one sentence to describe Paul and his career. I was unable to do so. So I'm just going to hand it over to you, Paul. Okay. Imagine it is 1970, and you're a smart person in the university term, so you know that Northrop Fry has said, England had tried to make a garden out of this country, and they couldn't do it. I tried to fit into the Canadian theater at the time, so I was trying to be the Assistant Director of this town. I tried to fit into the Canadian theater at the time, so I was trying to be the Assistant Director of this town. I was trying to be the Assistant Director at Stratford. I did brilliant stuff, and they didn't like me. I was turved out. That was the best thing that happened to me, of course, and found a pass-marine where people were inventing theater. Things were happening. Obviously, the model of trying to make the garden wasn't working for me. What could you do? And immediately, almost, I started this impulse of trying to find our own stories. I did a play called Duke of Boers, and we didn't have the resources to actually go and meet the Duke of Boers in British Columbia, but we met caseworkers who worked with them, and we did a lot of research on stuff, and had a really interesting hit. I did a play about head-checking. I got to go across the country, and I actually met the Duke of Boers who were taking their clothes off in their little huts as they were sitting outside the jail where one of the people were in jail because they had taken their clothes off and told them. There was a big movement in Toronto happening in the early 70s original work. I ended up running past Mariah, and people came in to me, wanted to do Canadian plays, and I said, give me your Canadian accents, and they didn't have any. Or it was like Charlie Fart was a French Canadian so I scram a little bit of money and con some actors into going into the countryside coming face to face with our landscape, and also wanting to hear voices and see what the place taught like. Farm Show was a result of that, and in fact my wife reminded me the other day you have to tell them this, these students, the crazy things that we were doing at the time. You made us lie on the ground in the barn and paint the landscape outside with your feet. This is an exercise to try and put our landscape on the stage. In the play we actually came up with a pseudo Japanese no-style of physicalization of the landscape and people said, oh the finest one, understand that, that's pretty fancy theater stuff. And they got it immediately, the gesture and the image became one. The actors had to literally lie on the earth and understand it as well as work with the farmers. That was very exciting stuff. It worked because there were brilliant actors and they were willing to go with it. But I then went on a trek of trying to find different voices across the country and the different places of power where theater might be able to have. I went to Northern Ontario, went to Petroleum, Founding of oil in the world. First oil wells in the world in Petroleum. Saskatchewan ended up being a huge, huge place of power. Saskatoon in particular for us. And we created something called the West Shell where Eric Peterson, I got to meet everybody in Eric Peterson's hometown because in the process of making the West Shell he brought out every character that he'd ever known. At the same time, Linda Griffiths and Lane Coleman and a bunch of young people were at 22-speed theater and they were eager for this stuff. So we ended up making two shells instead of one. They made a shell called If you were so good, why are you in Saskatoon? It was a huge hit and I watched them towards hearing the voices, meeting the people. It was all coming out of the land and there were these power places. Later, Saskatoon became a go-to place for at least five of our shells. Many of them here had its own town try out there. We did the impossible play called Jessica. First Nation in the experience of the highest order that Linda Griffiths and Lee Campbell ended up arguing over for the rest of Linda's life. And all of that was about hearing the land, meeting the voices. I guess all in all, I think I've done eight. Plays in eight different provinces in one territory and each of them has a different voice. I could go on for a long time but we'll talk again. We'll workshop a little bit more about this. What you have to know is it's never done and even when you do it it'll be done again. We are a country that reinvents itself every 15 to 20 years. And the theater that you guys will be running 15 years from now is not going to be anything close to what you have imagined it now. Oh, I promised also one other thing. There'll be blood on the floor and you'll be in bed with people you never expected. I argued endlessly at the beginning of my career with a guy called Timothy Findley who was a fancy woman writing horrible plays. Not that much, but horrible plays. And at the fifth phase of my career I ended up creating and getting an office title for Elizabeth Rex at Stratford. The whole world that had rejected me. The whole world that I've been spending my time with the last 40 years. Love your... Hate your enemies, but realize you might end up in bed with 40 years later. Next up we have Janet Sears. Janet was born in London, England. She's now based in Toronto and is an awarding playwright and director, including she's currently directing her graduating acting class in sports, which is up to where I stand. What does that even mean? From where I was to where I am. I was 17 the first time I read a book by an author of African descent. Now this to most people of the mainstream culture is something you take for granted. But I knew I wanted to be an actor. I knew I wanted to be an actor from the time I was six years old, living in England. My sisters and I were out in the backyard playing and it was it would have been the mid 60s, late 60s and my mom shouts from the window, Carmen Jones had Pearl Bailey. It was the all black musical version of The Overcommon. And I knew after seeing that I knew that's what I wanted to do. I, whatever they're doing, study theater, I feel even though I'm a player by nature I think I'm an actor. And I remember after studying acting the complaints I heard myself complaining about the kind of roles that I was auditioning for. That was the main. There was the drug addict's girlfriend. There was the drug addict. The stories that I was being asked to audition for did not represent the people I knew in England. I'm not speaking for a world of black people. Black people are not homophilists. They're all really different. There were no stories that were familiar to me. So I used that complaint as a way to write a new truth of me all throughout university. And when we talk about where we stand and I look below me and I see that I am standing on the shoulders of a myriad of people. Major role was one of my playwriting teachers. And one of the things about Major Moore one of the things that he taught me and my entire class was don't wait for people to produce your work. Do it yourself. And he talked about how when he was growing up that there wasn't a lot of Canadian theater around. They were doing British theater and so he and his friends decided to do it themselves. So that was already inside me. And so when I had I talked to her because I wanted to know what the roots of my own ass ancestry were. Roots have just come on television. I go with this love. And while I didn't find any of my relatives it was an experience that I wanted to tell. And theater was the form that I knew. And I would encourage everyone. I think one of the things I do and I'm depressed terribly but one of the things I do is I teach playwriting. I also direct plays. But I think I'm an extraordinary playwriting teacher and the reason why is that the reason why is that I'm struggling to find my own voice and I think I'm good at encouraging others to find their own voice. I've been there. I know what it's like to get stuck. I know what it's like to be afraid to say the words you really think. So I am good at encouraging students to find their own voice. But for me one of the most important things was finding a way to encourage more people that look like me on the stage in Canada. And so from where I stand also echoes a piece of a speech given by August Wilson called The Ground On Which I Stand. I would encourage you all to find it and read it. It was published in 1996 in the American Theater Magazine. And there so writers he says there can be no black theater without black writers. And it's true that can be no black theater without Canadian writers. And so encourage the writers is what I want to say. All of you you're studying acting, you're studying directing, you're studying playwriting, find ways to write. Find ways to write your story. That's good. We have Phillip Lincoln who was born in Kingston, Jamaica and is now based in Toronto and is the artistic director of Kingston in here. Phillip. Wherever she goes is where she stands. I think it's pretty cool. Yeah. What good does it do to stand some place and not know where you are? To not know who you are? To not understand yourself so that you know what you are seeing. We all have lenses that show us the world in a particular way. And you have to understand your lens. Otherwise you don't understand how things are focused in your head. I work for a black lens. I run a city in theater. And everything's got to be above being black. But it is and it isn't because your lens can be really narrow, it can be parochial, it can be ecumenical, it can be huge. But you have to know it. And therefore you have to know yourself in an honest and true way. I think of images of the Roman god Janus. You may see him sometimes. There's one head looking one way, one head looking the other way. That's where we get January from. That's where we get all of our rituals about at the end of December. Oh, what was my year like? Oh, I never did go to the gym. I will. Right? All of that comes from Janus, from looking backwards and looking forwards. In black theater and I'm going to generalize so I can get smacked down later at the table. In black theater there is a propensity for looking back. It's exacerbated by February plays, the black history plays, where we look back. Where we learn about Harriet Tubman but we don't learn about Lincoln Alexander. We learn by looking back we place we make simple stories that allows us to not engage with the complex stories of today. So I saw a show in Toronto. It was about 20 black women on stage singing beautifully and it kind of broke my heart because in this story were simplistic images of poor downtrodden black people who somehow find victory and every white person in there was an awfully human being. I was bored by that. It was a simple old story and we live in a complex world that we have to open up our vision and open up our lens to take in the complexity of that. Let's just think that out of city and we just kind of do if you're not black you can't come in the door. That isn't true. And so I'd like you all to come visit me when you come to Toronto. I'll take you up for lunch. I'm not kidding. So we have we had a situation in a play called Shakespeare's Naga which I was directing by Joseph Jomo Pierre a really raw, rich writer that I'd love to direct. We had an assistant director that I brought in from Winnipeg. I had an apprenticeship director who was part of our mentor apprenticeship program. I had three white auditing directors who sat in the room. One was from the directing at Ryerson. One was an engaged person already working in the community. The third was a white community theater director from the Kitchener Waterloo Little Theater who made her way into Toronto to sit in this quote black thing. Right? I like to be ecumenical. I like to be large. I want from where I stand that other people join in that exploration of those themes and those ideas. I love it. 20 seconds. Who's next? They can have you. Our next speaker is Annabelle Soutar. She's from Montreal and currently lives in Montreal. She's a playwright, director and theater producer and co-director of theater theater. I plan to speak with myself but I found from the previous speakers that it actually really helps to know where a person stands to hear a little bit about how they arrived here today. I was born in Montreal in a very privileged suburb called Westmount. I went to all girls private school for 11 years and then I studied at Princeton University. I had absolutely no intention of going to theater. My parents really hoped I would go and I studied journalism and history and politics and I always thought I would go into that field because I'm obsessed with current events. I love the contemporary world. I love the issues that are driving people today in whatever country and I always thought that I would grow up and write about that. And certainly not in theater because I always perceived the theater to be a very niche community that really just go to itself and perform things for itself and I just wanted to do that. But when I got to Princeton, I met a woman named Anna Tire-Smith who was performing her first shows documentary plays in the town of Princeton and when I saw her three plays I realized that the best way to tell contemporary stories was in the theater and I said my parents are going to kill me because they just spent $120,000 on my education but I'm going to go into the theater. So they're not here today I mean they're alive they're not here and even though I send them the link to this live streaming they're not going to be watching they're very proud of me but to them the theater is kind of beside the point because it has an impact on the world. So what I did is instead of kind of talking about me and my work I just wrote down seven points so I'm just going to start them about where I stand, what I see one, Canada is deeply divided ideologically but this might be an imaginary narrative that people are telling me that is actually falling apart Sarah Stanley used that phrase last night it's an imaginary narrative and I think if you follow Paul's advice if you go out and travel around Canada you will not find yourself divided so I think it's time to realign that narrative My second thing that I see that I understand theater is underfunded, under attended, under practiced which is weird because if there's one medium that can realign imaginary narratives it's the theater so I want to accelerate that realign into the work that I do Three, collective impact is a big buzzword in Canada right now we need to do things together but we're so fragmented we need to build a common narrative a national story but this is not about patriotism it's about people learning how to talk with each other again building new language that doesn't immediately try to force consensus but that allows for distance, dissonance awkwardness, uncertainty failure to connect as a process through which we have to pass through to find connection again breaking down useless barriers taking the conversation away from experts and giving it back to the citizen the true power behind Canada's democracy by the way democracy starts right now in Canada I'm sure you all saw the Iraq-Israel Google or Google it, if you haven't the CPAC Facebook and my viral on Facebook we are not connecting in the most important political chamber that we have and as citizens we're not doing anything about that today Number four theater as a citizen is not just political it's deeply personal because you don't live alone even though you might feel like that sometimes and it's all in noise you make political decisions every day the way you speak to people the way you spend your money the way you raise your kids the way you care for your parents politics is not reading the newspaper and being up on political affairs we're deciding to become MP or starting an NGO we're declaring that you're apolitical it's a conversation we have to have with one another in order to share the planet as gracefully as possible the grace today in political dialogue is a symptom of this abuse of the true definition of politics so I'm going to skip to point number four not number four, number seven because I'm out of time there are not enough lay people in this room today this is the one thing that I really feel strongly about and emotional about from where I stand is that I'm afraid of us sitting in the theater and talking and doing great work of being brilliant people in contact with other people in other fields scientists business people academics children homeless people, whoever they are I would like those people to be in my audience I would like them to be here today I wish they'd been in Sarah Stanley's keynote dress last night because it was brilliant, it wasn't just talking about the theater it wasn't perspective on Canadian theater it was a perspective on Canada and Sarah Stanley should be a political leader too she should be invited to scientific conferences to talk about her perspective because there will have an impact it will change the way people do things because we are brilliant in the theater we really are the way we think the way we create, the way we collaborate we should bring that impact out into the world as much as possible Marcus is from here in Montreal but he's now based in Vancouver where he's the artistic director of New World Theater Marcus, I have a room so I'm going to go get it now where's the problem? not that an actor never has honestly, okay hey so, five minutes alright, here we go for the record I probably mentioned, often stand on the edge of the Pacific Ocean where we're there in Vancouver it's a city called Vancouver which I think I am here in part to assure everybody actually exists margins can be exciting places sometimes in the margins there's more room to breathe or something I've been at this for 20 years since I graduated from this very place in this very room I've tried to quit a couple of times for real mostly because the money's shitty and I find it hard to be both the parent and the artist I want to be but I haven't managed to quit yet so, 17 things I'd love to say about where we or I stand in no particular order I hate the word theater theater I hate the word theater it shows with my friend it has down syndrome it is profound for me because I feel like it demands my total for real presence presence is really important to me I try to practice it and I like it when I witness it or share it in live experiences I didn't say theater I am interested in performance or theater that makes use of the very real fact that everybody, like us right now is in the same room together for real my generation started independent companies as a way of allowing us to make work some people have alluded to that and now we're pretty much in charge and I believe many of you who choose to stay in the theater are probably going to have to think as Paul said of a different way I believe jealousy and envy of other success is natural human and inevitable and what I try to focus on is letting that go I'm the artistic director of a company called New World Theater that makes a whole bunch of different things happen that almost none of you have ever heard of partly because I'm from Vancouver and mostly because that is I believe the nature of what we do the theater is marginal no one cares for real at least not in the I saw you on TV way and that marginality I know can feel frustrated but I would argue that it also can be hugely liberating it means we have the opportunity to say things and do things in ways that may never be allowed in mass forums and not things that people experience alone in their apartments in front of screens but things that we experience in the same room together often when I teach I say if you stay in theater it might look a little bit more like going into the priesthood than moving to Hollywood which for me is a good thing now didn't used to be this is my problem this is one of my favorite books it's called Impro, I'll talk about it a little bit I think it's my favorite because Keith Johnson talks about the deep intelligence of our uncontrolled impulses and how our school system can really fuck people up every time I consciously decided to do something in order to advance my career it hasn't I don't believe there is such a thing as a career I heard a great thing on the radio the other day a smart behaviorist fellow said we have a fucked up idea of what success is it's not possible to be highly successful at your job in a relationship and as a parent something has to give I have a hard time with the fourth wall in my performance I often think sitting there I know you know I'm watching you why don't you look at me kids I worry endlessly that the fact that I came out of this place and worked with kids meant I was a failure even though I loved doing it now I believe I learned more from those jobs about performance and who I wanted to be in the world than I did at theater school and if you told me at that time I would have said go fuck yourself the industry I believe deeply needs producers and agents and promoters and we need to pay them better and respect them more that is an artistic need I believe if you're good at business awesome that's a really good thing that might be and Annabelle it's awesome that Annabelle is another of my favorite books Annabelle's mentor talks about the individual poetry inherent to the way every single speaks okay, last one which one am I going to choose I'm going to echo Annabelle we need more theater in the real world as Annabelle said and I just ask you to remember that what you're developing is an actual skill it's a real thing one sorely lacking in many politicians teachers, media reps, professors, counselors mediators and others please, please, please know that you guys are good at those things too thanks very much I'm the director, writer, social design I'm the artistic director of Praxis Theater and I'm just going to say well, he's from Toronto originally and accurately from where I stand I just wanted to mention really quickly from where I stand as a straight white guy named Mike from Toronto basically a lot of privilege and I just feel like the answer to that question is just really important to put it out there from where I stand is with a deck that's basically full of jokers but within that experience what I wanted to talk to you about today is what I've been seeing in theater and kind of what we've been working on all week which is what I've been calling the transition from monologue to dialogue and it's a big trend that I've been noticing going on here and it's often been part of my work for the last few years and it's not a new thing Sarah and her talk yesterday she talked about Para Theater being kind of the core theater that we first had on this land and also the need for theater to be part of the real world now in this land without apologies and this is kind of coming out of what I've found opportunities that are brought to us through technology so instead of talking you know, broadly I'd love to give you some examples so the way this first appeared to me is a show that I directed called Timbuk2 where we finished with a debate and then when the debate ended depending on how you agreed with it you would go up one door and you'd go to the other door and you'd counter those people and then you had to come back to our website and find out who won the debate and so that was kind of the first way that we connected with theater, with the internet and the amazing thing that came out of that was because it was a blog you could have comments and so often that debate would actually continue on the website and you'd learn minds open in terms of what we could do in terms of being a theater company that had no money but did have a website so this really quickly snowballed into a lot of works and I just want to tell you about a few of them actually anecdotally one of the funniest days that I had thinking about this, I went and saw a play at Soul Pepper and at the very beginning the stage manager came out and said make sure you keep your cell phones off and this show also really we can't have any light leakage so make sure that your screen is off as well so that it doesn't light up the room and then the stage manager said a little throwaway joke you can tweet at the intermission if you'd like and the whole audience laughed so hard that it was the biggest laugh the entire show because it was incredible or maybe they were incredulous that anyone there would actually tweet about the show so it was quite a funny joke and so we were attempting to make this about age but I had a great experience that day which taught me that it wasn't about age because I went straight from there to reversal of hashtag legacy which was a project that Rob Kempston had been putting on at Hatch which I co-curated that year and hashtag legacy involved four women in their 70s using Twitter to try to communicate their legacy at the end of their lives and involves live tweeting and them tweeting back the audience and them learning how to use new technology and their life experience had been and so that really elucidated for me how these things are about whether we're open minded to change and not necessarily because certain generations are only able to certain kinds of change from there we went on to take a play across the country called You Should Have Stayed Home about the G20 protests and that play basically used Facebook and Twitter to recruit a cast of 20 that wouldn't be part of the show one hour early and you would learn your part and then you would participate in the show and then you could go home and your friends could come back and be into the show the next night and the way that we found all of those people was through social media we had a show at the Free Fall Festival in Toronto in 2012 at the Theatre Centre which I co-curated which was called Group 501 Revisited and this is the only show that I've ever made where the TV cameras were actually waiting there for me on opening nights to interview us and it was because we took a streetcar which Jonathan both of you who's a writer from now magazine gave a live Twitter tour of Toronto while you sat on the streetcar and so anyone can get on the streetcar get a tour of Toronto we could tweet back and forth with Jonathan and he wanted it to be a very quiet streetcar where everyone just listened to his tweets but of course he hadn't really figured out that we're now in the area of dialogue not monologue and so it was actually quite a big party on board this week my last example is many of you may know about the wrecking balls they're a political theatre that happened in a moment of need and they happen often across the country especially during elections and in the last election we connected with hashtags and we had at one point wrecking balls in six different cities all communicating about the art that they were making and really in resistance to a lot of the things that our current federal government are putting forth and that gave me a lot of hope that this technology is not just a new fad or just like a way to distract ourselves but a way to bring about social change and connect our audiences to be within our work and to have an impact on the world. Thanks. Our next speaker is Mel who is the Plain Development Coordinator at the City of Theatre and is the Rubar Pustul Director at the University of Toronto and I want to talk to you about urban coffee in Toronto and if I have time I want to talk to you about the Rubar Festival I was 14 I worked at McDonald's at McDonald's, why nobody gives a fuck about you you have a service to offer and they want it and so you know it's very important to take care of yourselves and to put yourself in a safe place sometimes that sometimes you just have to do things that you don't want to do when you're going to just do them and you're going to make money and then working at McDonald's is that it tastes delicious but you will gain 40 pounds so now every time I go to McDonald's I have the most ridiculous orders because I learned how to make all kinds of stupid things while I was working there and I guess everything has context because other people might feel differently going to McDonald's than I do so everything that you think has a context and has something that like a reason why you think that way and sometimes it's important to just sort of like check yourself and see why you think the way that you think ordering coffee in Toronto I did an experiment this year where I came out as a lesbian to every single person that I met that's funny I just did it right now experiment just to sort of see because first of all the word lesbian is very out of style in Toronto and so I wanted to see how that reacts it's kind of like throwing your sex life in somebody's face and he's like whoa I didn't know that's what you meant somebody's for about 10 years and she said oh you know Mel I used to do that I was like what the fuck is that is that something that people used to do and that you're not supposed to do anymore and this is what I feel about being a young artist that sometimes we're going to do things that people already did before like we're going to do shit that people have done but it doesn't mean that it's not important for us to do because I need to know how people react to being a lesbian now like it doesn't help me to know that someone else did it like I am a person of colour and I pass as white I am a queer person and I pass as straight so I have this marvellous choice of whether or not I say those things or whether or not that comes part of my identity as an artist and what I've actually found is that it is the largest part of my current identity as an artist are these things which I could choose to hide and I could choose to just not bring up out of I don't want to say that it's fear but out of just thinking other people wouldn't be interested or worried about the way in which they would be interested or like we and it is because of like the work that has been done before is that we have this marvellous choice as an artist now whether or not these are things which become part of our artistry whether or not they become things that are part of our ideals as artists today and I myself have chosen over various points in my career to always move towards the thing that myself I actually want to hide I can't believe that I just did that I mean I've been doing it a lot like every coffee shop knows that I'm a lesbian they're like I'm just not gonna put some of your Americano and I'm gay by the way I'm working in buddies now I am a Google search book queer which is a very different thing than just being living out of a world gay like now I have a car that says I work at buddies at bad times in my bio I've got articles in extra magazine like you know it's not so in Toronto in this circle in Toronto where I could have this conversation that I'm having with you with anyone and really not fear for leaving the cafe wearing that someone's gonna follow me or yell at me or hurt me just because that's the bubble with which I live in two hours north of there I don't know that that's the case I don't even have to say that we have to go very very far to find different gaps that when we like I think a lot of us train like we're in Montreal now and Toronto we train in these bubbles of like privilege of privilege to be able to say the things that we say and to be able to be ourselves in a way that other people don't have and I think that actually that's what makes us powerful is that we create spaces where we can really be ourselves thank you from this portion Ryan's originally from Edmonton but he's now based in Toronto he's the new artistic director of the native birth of the woman from where I stand there are no lines going to half of Canada most of the places on this map are Indigenous and First Nations communities I graduated in theatre school in 1997 that was a year after the last residential school closed people by age were stolen from their families and put into residential schools and then slayed out of the foster care system some people argue that Canadian theatre began in 1969 because that's when the Ecstasy of Rita Jo opened the National Arts Centre the Ecstasy of Rita Jo was written by George Riga it portrayed the first Canadian theatre expression of a contemporary Indigenous experience in this country it started from the Highland Highland Canada's most celebrated one of the most celebrated white theatre artists as Rita Jo it was written by Ukrainian George Riga who grew up in White Court, Alberta arguably he had a lot of contacts to write what he did I would like to argue that Canadian theatre began in 1986 that was when Thompson Highway premiered The Rest Sisters co-production of Networks it was the first time that an Indigenous play written by an Indigenous artist in this country actually had mainstream production it was remounted the next year by some of the biggest theatre companies in Canada in 1988 it went to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and went to the world three years later Thompson Highway wrote the follow up Drylands on a Move to Caps casing again it was picked up by Mervish and produced by the biggest theatre companies in Canada so the biggest theatre companies in Canada the Royal Manitoba Theatre Company and Canadian Stage Steven Shea Carter as the director of D.C. Bob Baker as the director at Canadian Stage at the time commissioned Thompson Highway to White Bright the third play Rose Thompson had this dream of a seven play Red Cycle as he called it loosely analogy to Bogger's Red Cycle he wrote it and produced it Rose has never been produced professionally in Canada to argue that Indigenous theatre like Indigenous communities builds on the fringes of our country Indigenous writers are now finding popularity in festivals international markets that are excited by the work that is being created by Indigenous artists here in Canada but mainstream companies and mainstream stages are not producing that work I am honoured and proud to be the artistic director of Native Earth Performing Arts I feel like my role is to support all of Canadian Indigenous artists we are there not to create our own work but we are there to create a hub a lodge a home for Indigenous artists and to disseminate that work to international markets because quite frankly we are finding more success on international markets more interest on international markets on mainstream stages in Canadian theatre from where I stand there hasn't been much difference from the time that I graduated from your school 20 years ago but that's great because I am standing here I am standing here and I have I am fortunate enough to have the privilege of having English as my first language in this country I am privileged to be able to read to have learned how to work the game and work the system and write the grants and network and be charming to the people who are still artistic directors of the main stage theatre companies 30 years later I am so excited that we are not waiting for our government, we are not waiting for our NGOs, we are not waiting for our business because we are finding success we are building partnerships and we are taking our stories to the rest of the world even if the rest of Canada won't listen or doesn't even know we exist that was fantastic very inspiring and a lot to come back to chat about so we are going to take a break and be back sharp on 20 after 11 for the second part to age proceedings enjoy some coffee welcome welcome welcome hi everybody have you ever got some coffee I did So just a couple of things before we move to the second part of today's proceedings. The lovely talented and extremely good playwright and teacher, Janet Sears, had to leave. She's directed, squished, and she needed to make her way to rehearsal. So she said that we could all talk about her behind her back. And it will be live recorded so that's cool. I'll check in after. So just a few things about the rules for the long table etiquette. I'm going to read them to you and I'll ask you to respond to the rules of etiquette as you will because some of them will go against what some of you are doing right now. So from where I stand, long table etiquette. These are the ones that we advise together with the directing students, Michael Wheeler, Rose Plotech and myself based on Lois Weber's long table. We invite you to act based on the comfort of all guests to create an environment of openness and fluidity. Here are the etiquettes. This is a performance of a different kind of conversation. Anyone seated at the table is a performer. There's no beginning. The meal lasts for 90 minutes. Talk is the only course. The people at the table will decide what is talked about. You may write notes or questions on the tablecloth. There is no host. If you have a question, pose it to those at the table. Water may be consumed at the table. Coffee and the rest of the room. To join the conversation. Simply take an empty seat at the table. If the table is full, you can request a seat. If you leave the table, you can come back again and again. The people at the table are present. The people around the table are invited to tweet the present using the hashtag Canadiancult. There can be silence. There can be laughter. It can be awkward. You can break the silence with a question. There is an end, but no conclusion. If you're following the etiquette, bring your smartphone or anything back to the table with you when you come. If there's a tweet you want to bring into the conversation, you can write it on your hand. Write it on the display and bring that back with you to the table. Thanks. Hi, you're Ryan. Nice to meet you. Alright, so I'm going to start off by asking a question. If you could change anything about how you're living your lives today, what would it be? I'm 30 years younger. Like fantasy change or like achievable change? Or fantasy change or achievable change? I think another fantasy. More time. Exactly. More time. That's the fantasy. Yeah, it probably is achievable, actually, but I don't feel like I'm crazy and cheating. So why can't it slow down? I ask myself this every day when I wake up, the alarm goes off, and I get my kids to school, and I have to get into the office, and I have to stop meeting, and I have to write a play, and I... If that is in my control, how has it gotten out of my control to try and slow down? Because what we're supposed to be doing in the theater is providing states to reflect. And to those of us who are making it, I'm such a fraud down in the rush. How are we able to create that space for our community? For our poor form. And so it's hard. If you're looking anecdotally, I was talking about being part of the early wave of theater, and it got pretty exciting in Toronto for a while with the invention of new plays, with all kinds of new companies. And for some reason or another, they thought I should go on the board of the St. Lawrence Center with a whole bunch of business people and all kinds of other... There were no other artists in there, and certainly nobody from the alternate theater was in there. And it was a strike. And initially the management, against IACS-ing, and initially the management stood up against the strike and made it a lot better. And all of a sudden there was energy in this St. Lawrence Center main civic theater in town, like you would believe. And so the managers, the CEO kind of people who were in there saying, you know, what do you think, boss? This is fantastic. And why it was fantastic was because it was a way of claiming the theater back for the content of the show as opposed to the form, like the forms of the show. And this went on for about four or five weeks. No, so at least maybe closer to two months. And then finally there was pressure from the City Hall because a lot of the money supporting the plays was coming from the City Hall and it was actually a progressive group of older women and mayor at the time. I think Cromby was mayor. And we caved in. They caved in. I was going to say, ah, let's occupy it or whatever. And as I looked at theater over the last amount of time, and one of the things I'll talk about with my crew, is there's a real question of who owns the theater? Who owns the theater? A lot of national men, I did a play at Stratford. It was hugely hard to do an original piece at Stratford. Not because they wanted to do it, they loved us. They kept hugging us and giving us money, you know. It was still hard. And we still couldn't get on stage. We had to break the rules. But the national couldn't understand John Hirsch unless he played Hirsch's hits on the festival stage. And we did that at two o'clock in the morning with a friendly watchman who turned his television camera off so we could do it. And a stage manager said, oh, I can't do this. I'm going to cry. And that was what we needed to do in order to, because that stage is holy and powerful. It is one of the most brilliant acting performing tools we have in this country. And it's owned by the unions. It is ailing into original work of any kind of level. And that's just an example. I can give you examples of how the organizational structures have allowed the energy and the power in those spaces to be depleted. And I think if we'd stood up at that moment, it would all have changed. I'll ask you that. What you just said came out of the response to us talking about fueling this pressure of producing and constantly being so busy and our time has reflected what you're saying, that there's something that the system or the institutions or who is holding the capital or the influence of the theaters that has disempowered us. You're eliminating yourself from the center of power. Is that what you're saying? I just want to make sure I understand the question. Is that what you're saying? You're eliminating yourself from one of the best allies of your power center by not being able to do it. We do it in little rooms. In 2010, we negotiate how much time we end up before we actually meet with an audience. And in my understanding of theater, when you meet with the audience, the play isn't done, it's just starting to play. We're working under other people's rules and time schedule. And it's specialized that is nailing a lot of that as opposed to being fed by the, you know, the... But many of us produce our own work. So it's not just that there must be pressure coming from somewhere else. Although I think your structures have been shaped. My understanding is that a lot of the emerging companies feel that they can't move forward unless they parallel the organizational structures of the companies that already exist. The thing that connects all of this to me was I will almost talk about this in my talk instead of what I did, but it was written by Americans who felt inappropriate for this. But Mike Daisy has an article called How Theater Fill America which he turned into a monologue around the States. And it talks a lot about how these institutions have become a place that are not necessarily artist driven in terms of how they create the work and just where the money goes from and how those decisions are made. And because of that, that's why we have so many independent creators now who are doing everything where the producer, who are the publicist, who are the writer and director actor. Because those institutions are not set up to serve them any longer. And so that's what I'd be looking at on time. But in the life of every institution, there comes a triggering point where what used to be, what the institution was formed for, that's a creation of theater or whatever, at some point in life of that institution and it comes sooner than most people expect, it shifts. What shifts is it's not no longer paramount for the creation of theater. It is now paramount for the survival of the institution. Right? And that happens to all of them. So if y'all create something, thing is down the road, it'll be about, you know, the whatever your company name is, it's now viable for that to survive as opposed to the thing of the work. I mean that shift is where a lot of these structures get locked in. So let's say we want to bring Rose to a strategy stage. How do we do that? Do we sit outside and protest and beg and scream and kick? How do we bring that forward? How do we break this barrier and bring it? Just do it. Just do it. I got it to go down after I heard about that from you Ryan, and thank you. I'm sewing around. I didn't even know about that. I was like, get Rose, read it, maybe produce it. I wouldn't talk to the population. I think you can buy it on Amazon. So just do it. Just do it. Just do it. If that's a 17, it's a musical. No, no, what would I say? Read it, you know? And then there will be obstacles. Four seconds in the semi-trailer. Can I ask you a question, Matt? Why do we, and not just you, but why do we feel that our validation has to come from other organizations that already exist? Why do we look to Stratford or Shaw or the Center? The keepers of, they're not the keepers of your story, Ryan. So why do you want that? To protect your story, right? We never should have been. The whole idea for that, the whole idea, the last 20 years, 15 years of my life of saying let me in, let me in was wasted bullshit. Because it's, who cares if they let us in? They actually don't know anything about roles. They don't know about black stories. They don't know about your story. They don't know Marcus. They have no entry into actually producing the work that they have no idea about. So therefore we have to stop looking to institutions to fulfill our artistic needs. We have to do it for ourselves. And the funny thing is, sorry. We totally interrupt. Now I'm interrupting you? Yes you are. Yes I'm okay. I agree. Being fortunate enough to be in the indigenous theater world for a little over a decade, my seniors, the people who have traveled ways and paved the way for young indigenous artists now in Canada, I heard them complain about these, about the challenges they had to go through, about the doors that were always closed in their faces. In the 80's Thompson was quoted as saying, now that we have made art performing arts in Toronto, there will be an indigenous theater company in every Canadian city in the next five years. 30 years later, we now have a handful. But we have a handful. And we are doing it. And as Mashi from M.T. space said a couple of weeks ago, we don't have to knock on the doors. We are doing it. We are now building our own networks. We are producing our own festivals. We are programming each other's work. We have enough allies and peers that we are doing it. And we don't need to be on the Stratford main stage. Because that's not your stories or they don't want that story. You have to watch on that. The real power of what happened with Thompson Highway is that he started in the space adjunct to the Bathurst recanage center. No, Annex. Wasn't that Annex the first before the Navy Center? Anyhow, that's her. Anne, the power of the show took it to 200 seat theaters to 500 seat theaters, to 1000 seat theaters. Dry lips, pasmerine, Royal Alexander Theater National Arts Center, the dialogue that got opened to the world was really, really important in that. So, I don't think we can... I'm sorry? 89, right. Kim's Convenience. I will give you an example right now. Kim's Convenience, starting within one month. But use it, like, because of its notoriety, because of the word of mouth on it or whatever, and the appealing nature of that starting, it has now been able to have a dialogue that requires large theaters, not just a 200 seat experience, not just a 100 seat experience. And I think of that as an example. And what I'm talking about is the power of the states. The Royal Alexander is a powerful state. I do not disagree, but I also go, and I say, Kim's Convenience, which has been trotted around the country like the famous dog of accessibility going, has now started by Fujian Fujian Theater, who's never mentioned in the Queen's story. So, the people who were seminal, the Asian people who were seminal to create and support that story have been cut out of the history of it, and it's now trotted around as if it's this white-red thing. That's bullshit. Well, I wish the author were here to tell us that it was bullshit. Well, I can tell you that he would say I'm full of bullshit, because we have this conversation and he don't agree. That's okay. We don't have to agree. We have to understand where we're coming from. And for me, the fact that Fujian, which was formed because they saw that obsidian had success and could tell black stories, Fujian, future generation of young Asian artists, was formed to do exactly that. And they did it. And then, as always, they got their place in the story has been removed. That is changing. You're telling the story here. It's being live streamed. Now I'm going to go look up Fujian. If that play had not been trotted around the country through these institutions, then at least they invited it. They saw the merit in it. They invited it. And I don't know what it was, and they didn't get credit or whatever. But we are hearing about it. You might not have, have. And now you're able to participate in that conversation. But you see, we're validating where we're... Yeah. Yeah, I know. And that's the lens, right? So that's the lens. So all I'm saying is, that's great. And if that's the nominal check mark for success, then yo, that's great. But for me, I turn around and I go, there's lots of those stories out there. And because you don't know about them doesn't mean that they aren't valuable stories. No, it just means that I don't know about them. And I can't know about everything. It's difficult. You want to be able to get your hands on all this and we have tools in order to find out young people and you know what to go. Stratford. Who grew up in the GTA? And who here saw their first inspirational show at Stratford? Yeah. That's where your love grows. That's where you see something. I saw it play first. It changed my life. I love natural resources. We need to figure out accessibility. And sadly, so sadly, Stratford is that. At least from the downtown core. Stratford is that in the way that that's where you go on your school trips. That's where you use your educational tool. There we go. And so we have to work with it until we pay. I worked there. It was like being part of a huge machine. No, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's like playing a fellow and I played crooks in I don't know the play that I hated. So so but here's the thing. It's a machine. Shaw is a machine. I'm just directing my second show at Shaw. It's a machine. And there's good things with that machine as well because you know it ain't a rusty model A. It's a Cadillac. You need help with your voice like that. You need Alexander's technique like that. You want to go work with some of the best actors like that. You want to be able to go and say, Hey Sean, I'm a mechanic and you know you can do that. It's a freaking Cadillac machine but don't mistake it for anything else. It's still a machine and you have to be good enough and you have to go. Now we can talk about Stratford and Shaw and accessibility and color and all this stuff. I don't know if it actually is of any use, right? But all I can tell you is the artists that have come to me who've been auditioning and I've helped them prep to go there etc. Or the actors, because I get this a lot. Somebody's moving down to Stratford on Saturday and it's 6.30 on Friday night. They show up at my office to say, well, I should I do, right? So all I can tell you is that it's a place where you can go and grow and learn and have your heart broken and get great success. Everything's there. No, I'm speaking as an artist going there. I want to talk about machines because where I come from is a school and it's also an institution. It's also a machine. And I want to come from that place and talk about the question of time because I think I don't have this time either and I'm not I don't know much about all of you. I'm so glad you're here right now but I also know a lot about Google and Google all of you. And I feel like that's what's happening is that we all come from institutions in some way or another and we're not satisfied. We feel like we're not heard. We feel like we're not doing what we really want to do and then we create other machines that serve us and our stories and then have to track of all the other machines that are operating for others around them. And there's not enough time. Like there's even enough time to talk about all the important things that are happening. So I want to turn to this question of time and this idea of an artist within a system and how I find when I want to put in my work I'm spending way more time constructing the system in order to do my work than actually doing the work. So I want to come back to that question and maybe like talk less about Stratford. Yeah. Less about NTS but just about that thing we all share which is like finding the system that supports the work we want to do and the conflict between how much energy we put into maintaining the system and doing the work. I would love to respond to that because I have two thoughts and one is super selfish which is Sarah and I have been working at spider web show for the last year and a half now and what we've been pushing is this hashtag you've all heard 30 times already today CDN Cult but there is a practical aspect to in terms of your question which is we're really hoping that Canadian theatre when stuff happens we'll use that hashtag and so if you are online and you want to know what's going on in Canadian theatre there is one place which is actually aggregating that information which is a very practical thing I would also say though I am really resisting this language because I have been carving out time to do the actual work as opposed to the other work because I actually find that you know somehow all I am sitting here with all of you today is because not because I went here because I did it four times and did not get in but do you have a record anymore? because I spent taking running my own company and learning how to do all the things that I had to do to run my own company and now I am the owner of my own means of production for quote marks per second and no one can green light or red light anything that I do and that's not because of my skills in art it's because of my skills in producing so if you find that those are coming closer together now like to be an artist is to be a self-produced artist I think among a certain number at this table kind of like I mentioned a bit like in the 90s at least I speak for Vancouver that that was the response to feeling alienated and like those and we have fewer of those institutions in Vancouver not only that they weren't accessible but they were sort of accessible but the way they were like literally a lack of transparency literally when you try to negotiate something or figure something out people wouldn't say what they were thinking they would hit or play their cards close to their chests and so our network of people I think evolved in in response to that I think that sort of for me the elephant in the room a little bit and some of you guys might have seen this piece about five years ago some of you guys wrote it like please don't start another theatre company which is worth looking at I think because that's like I think one of the elephants in the room as people of my age 45 talk to you guys in school is that yes we built that but the fact remains that whether you're at Stratford or you're at New World a giant chunk of the money that allows you to do what you do comes from the government and people like me are now the establishment of a different kind of a different model and we're swallowing up all that money well and that's what I want to talk to you guys because you have two voices of youth coming here that are actually I feel like our generation is more aware of the institutions before the startups there's somehow a return in a way and I don't know like I hear in what you were saying a desire to recycle I don't know if that's like a question like there's so much already like I don't want to start again I'm tired already like I was born in Stratford yeah I don't know I graduated from school like three years ago so I'm not that far away from being in an institution like this and so the first thing I did when I graduated from school was like there's a lot going on there are a lot of machines but you can't undervalue the people that are behind the machines and so like these institutions can feel very like if you just look at the shows and you just look at the brochures like it can feel like a really like alienating place because like now I'm working for two institutions I'm working for Obsidian and I'm working for buddies but I'm actually still a person whether or not I am behind an institution and like my job is actually to make these machinations easier for artists to pass through like to and I think that inserting yourself like actually meeting the individuals can kind of break down that wall of it being a machine and like actually like realizing that we are all people within these machines but it isn't actually like something that is like a sort of like when you say oh it's the Patriarch's fault the Patriarchy is actually like a very clear system that you can break down like as are like theater systems like you participate in and that you can like you can actually like look at how how these theater companies work it's not like Stratford is this big mysterious fucking like the man behind a curtain like there are people behind there and it's very easy to understand how they make their decisions because you can ask them like you can actually ask them I just want to jump in on time about a month ago I started an experiment, a personal experiment called my intervention and it's an experiment in email and productivity and I was inspired by a 23 year old guy who graduated from the University of Oregon who decides to do his own year of personal productivity experimentation rather than going for a master's program I decided to look at different modalities of productivity and how the world was impacting how he was living so he did things like all day meditations he tried to eat soylent for a bit he took email off his phone he did all these different things and I found it really interesting he wrote a blog and I can fill you guys in on that because I can't remember the address right now but a really interesting young guy and he got me thinking about time and you know here you say I'm already tired I'm going to chuck away a little bit because it's like man it can't be tired before we even start to do what we want to do so that's what I began to think about with respect to email and institutions and getting outside of buildings and all these places and thinking like how institutionalized I am being just by virtue of how I'm being asked to conduct myself on this planet and so I did a very simple thing I think I'm just struggling with it a lot and for three months I made some very basic rules on email and to make a pledge to make my email sending to other people as light as possible so I wouldn't add to their workload and then also to command myself to read, see, or watch five plays a week to ensure that as the Associate Artistic Director at the National Arts Center that I'm prioritizing that my ongoing education and knowledge of what's going on it's so easy to just spin and spin and never get to the work so when Wheeler says I have problems with that question of separation I agree with the complexities but I also think there's some larger institutionalized things that are in place that are making it difficult for us to just think and be and feel and relax and do all those things that we need to in order to recycle to come up with great ideas and to be compassionate to one another because when I'm tired I'm just an asshole which I'll probably be by the end of today just because I just lose my capacity because I need reps I need to take a step back and I just want to speak to institutions when Jill Kylie and I went to the NAC one of the jokes that we made is hey, we're the man now we're the man so two chicks and we're the man and it's true we are and I take that responsibility really really seriously I love the institution of the National Life Center it makes me crazy there's all sorts of ways that I feel bad within it personally I don't feel successful enough I don't dress well enough but I certainly don't know how to do dinner parties but that aside I love what that institution has the capacity to do I love the theater so when Paul was talking about what it is to be on that stage the fact that I break in the middle of the night to be on it in the regular showtime whatever these institutions have the capacity to promote what we're doing on a massive scale and to tell our stories in a much larger way than the smaller interactions which are in no way less important but the institutions and this is true are us we're the fucking institutions those of us who choose to come to National Theater School are the institution any of the institutions directing and shot, directing this rapper we are the people and we keep removing ourselves from this as though there's something else out there that's responsible we're actually the people who are responsible it's really it's scary, as embarrassing as weird, but if we don't actually say this is who we are then we're sort of recreating this kind of echo chamber that you were talking about about no gay people here we are the people living in this country and we are the institutions so if your idea is to protest outside Stratford I don't think that'll work, but it might do it I feel like it's doing it I feel like it's what I've heard it's indicative of our generation that we are not waiting for the institutions for us to get the callbacks and jobs because we couldn't wait so we just started producing our own work doing off fringe like that was the thing we did off fringe 20 years ago because we couldn't get into the fringe so we did it after hours of nightclub in downtown Edmonton across the city from the fringe so we didn't wait, we just did it we just wrote it, we just did it in parks in after hours clubs, in gazebos and we just did it then we started to learn what the system of funding is what are the grants, what are the federal funds, how to operate within that, how to utilize how to take advantage of that and I feel like not waiting for those systems to accept us we created our own work and therefore started getting awareness from those systems of the work we were doing starting accessing the funding to have larger presentations larger productions not waiting for the institutions and therefore they become a situation where they have a model based on subscribers and the subscribers are at the value of the generation and we know what's happening to them and so now they have to really incorporate new models because they can no longer rely on subscribers and so they're looking into the younger generations what are they doing, how have they been operating without these systems in place and then we are becoming a system which is great because we're also shaping that system because that's how I've operated from my experience is that I can't get yes, I did audition I can't get into stress I can't get into shock that's fine, I don't need that let's do it but it's a fallacy to believe that every one of us should have the same goals of getting to larger and larger I have no interest I have no interest in the kind of work that I am developing and the kind of work that I want it it doesn't fit there, it doesn't make sense for it to go that big like sometimes it actually is meant to have 100 seat theaters sometimes it is meant to be in downtown Toronto downtown Montreal where the audience is speaking to so this idea that we are on some sort of growth continuum for shows is a fallacy that is not my goal that is not where I want to be the kind of work that I'm developing today so and that has never been something that I went for so the fact that I'm working within an institution that like whether or not that is my goal that doesn't make me any less a part of the system but my question is actually accessibility it was about how we can explain the stories that are being done that do have that credible impact to these stages but it needs as little to the audiences who don't I do not try to be accessible you can only get there by a car but it should be they don't want buses it's like what's strapped because that's what I know like as someone who like everybody like what's the main demographic of strapped for the audience like who are we so my question I think my thought here is kind of tied to when animals talk about a fractured country to me I feel like we're fractured to me I really really think there's places in the world that don't operate government funding they don't have government funding because if you have enough people you're actually speaking to people in your country it will support itself and my panic and my I wanted to respond to the idea of panic because I'm a self producer and I want to invite Elena to come up here too because I want to talk a little bit about institutions specifically in Edmonton because it's something you know I want to speak with an Edmonton so Brian can speak about it and my panic comes from the fact that I was born and raised by the institution man it's in my blood and the Citadel Theater raised me and injected I'm injected with the system I'm part of that I'm totally I'm totally the system and they're my parents I love them I love what I was raised on all my values in theater come from literally the clap theater in Edmonton at the Citadel model it's built with the same model of the strapped for the main theater I mean it's not even I'm not making this episode joke at a guttural reaction I'm like oh this is like my home and this feels like my home and my panic is about as a self producer who's supposed to be this independent the next generation or something I feel totally disconnected from my people in and I'm talking about Canada and I'm wandering around this fucking country looking for my people are I feel really panicked and scared because I'm 28 I'm not really a kid anymore I'm not wandering around my panic is about how it's about fractured country and for me I feel an illusion of connection through social media I don't really I don't really think it's a it's the way communities should be connecting and I think it's a kind of fuel I can fuel connect to people on crew and I think we're lacking real communication between our provinces and between our and this is a general thing I'm throwing out the massive disconnection from my people and what as a country in that thing like what do I have to bring to other provinces that was kind of raised on this so my point about also one thing about the Stratford I feel you were saying you were saying that's what we're raised on that's what we were I think you made a great point in saying that is our education yet it's part of our education yet I don't think we can I really don't think we can go to the institution to try to I believe this now I don't think we can try and honestly convince places like Citadel Theatre to produce native plays or to produce Citadel doesn't produce local playwrights sorry I'm almost done I really don't think we can because they've been around since Citadel Theatre in 1986 and they have not I don't think through maybe two or three artistic directors at least I'm speaking from my province the responsibility hasn't been nobody's finally kind of made a stand and said like if our fucking building crumbles because we don't get the audience to pay for this then fuck it we don't do it in any context because some people have to make a sacrifice and get kind of the money out of the way and figure out what people actually want to actually come to I think it's it's ridiculous to believe that the Citadel should be staying in the indigenous stories of this country it is not their responsibility so why are we looking at them to take on that responsibility I know I don't really want to do something but I also think there's a responsibility in those institutions to their communities kind of an indigenous idea about being responsible to the community you are a part of and so I feel like these major institutions are separated from the community they are like a Citadel who is half their seasons are now pokros half their shows are American or yeah and so it's unfortunate that there isn't a responsibility to their community Hamilton has the second largest urban Aboriginal Aboriginal population in Canada and so it's not their responsibility to tell the stories but I feel like it's their responsibility to their communities and to provide access to the people who have that voice in the community and I do feel like it's encouraging the fact that the Citadel Nat House is a bar series in the Rice Theater that there are festivals now being produced like in the Belfry they have the Sparks Festival which is now presenting really edgy of work there's festivals like the Summer Works there's the High Performance Rodeo which is the Gem in Canada Calgary High Performance Rodeo and no one knows us because they're like hey we're in Calgary we're bringing the best theater in the world so why are we doing that in Canada what percentage of quick counter theories is the Rice Theater you know studio series called the Rice Theater they're great is Bruce here Bruce yeah I was talking about Ayatsu with you you know today the Rice Theater I propose that the Soul Motivation for creating this Rice Theater series that's like oh yeah see we're gonna open it up and have locals we're gonna have locals do stand up and do jazz or whoever like PJ Perry can come in here and whatever and I propose that the Soul Motivation for Ayatsu Christ that they can't afford to produce theater in that place more because they bring in solo performances from all around the country and they don't sell the houses literally not big enough to support Ayatsu peace so yeah I do think I feel like it was a last draw or like finally turning to the community but it was motivated by financial institutional yeah okay so with that I'll put the lemonade part of the story together because to make that Rice series work they canceled all of their commitments to their local playwrights who were developing plays right wait a second it's a good part to this story one of those local plays was The Advocation of Tolerberg's Dremel by Beth Graham a white writer from Edmonton who I happened to read a copy of that play when I was on the band's juries for the playwrights colony and I phoned up Beth and I said Beth I love this play I want to produce it I need to do it with a black cast it's a family I need it to become City in Black here we have to do it with a black cast she said great so because the Citadel cut those plays loose that play was now available for me to do the world premiere of it with a black cast it is now being produced at theater network Badge and Edmonton getting a second production and I think a third one was made in Vancouver you know there's good work I concur with you I was in her writing circle writing the play with a month or an eye and the five of the playwrights in that circle probably all sit at this table and agree and that I completely agree with you and I sincerely I completely agree and it's not even as Colin Doyle's play in that writing circle in the theater network it's kind of like oh this is fantastic the regionals are where the means are at the end I don't understand a kind of undercurrent of kind of a lack of respect in where like what I mean is in these certainly you know we're not in disagreement it's not like don't waste your energy on that put it into the new work that's right and I just wanted to reply to the young lady who's left the corner's chair there I would just talk to that chair I don't like this exact because that's so real okay now what when you're out there when you get away from this place and start working you want to go into a room and get energy with other people if you're really smart you get people who are better than you and you steal ideas the best of all of the movements that I've seen have been a conglomerate of really amazing talent the best of buddies was when these four guys were trying to fuck each other and all of them were artistic directors and one of them was pretty and sky was the only one that nobody else wanted to fuck and all of that work was coming out and they were stealing each other's actors and it was the most exciting work on George Street in Toronto at that time just blew my mind cut to summer works four years ago three or four years ago there were these hotshot directors and writers and they were all in bed with each other in one way or another already they didn't have to wait 20 years like me and I'm interested in what's happening to them because it kind of looks like it's disintegrating one of the more brilliant members of that is now running this institution and has grabbed his wife so she cannot be in a room generating on the way that those guys used to work on each other others have been grabbed off in the Stratford merry-go-round so I guess here is what I'll say you'll be inventing your audience as you're going along and that's one of the most exciting things about the new work is that you get to invent a new audience and when they actually get into a bigger space it's really interesting to see them invented at that point too but that isn't essential to what you're doing that's applied for that all of that hang with it often there's no economic return on it understand, survive don't put that as an expectation on it and hang and learn and grow and challenge each other together because that still seems to be one of the smartest models that we have in this country well no, I'm sure there's a little bit of it but work despite all what you're talking about and you're going to do it no matter what I disagree sometimes it's going to be great that everybody likes that everybody enjoys doing it it's going to fail but you still do it and it's about I'm interested in creating light-long artists not single-show artists I'm interested in how we develop artists which can not just create one show and whether that's with each other or as individuals or as so when we talk about institutions that complicates matters there is actually just something inherent about doing this kind of thing with your friends just continually generating ideas and continually saying shit that people disagree with I am a master devil's advocate I just make jokes sometimes and I talk about it until I figure out whether or not I'm actually completely bullshit but that's sometimes how you can make up really great stuff or terrible stuff and go through that I really want to introduce Elena I'm a superstar I'm really well I was interested are we that worthy? you fractured and Elena started a festival in Edmonton and I think it's a really good example of a company starting right from the ground actually really really looking for the people in the actual place and so I really think it must be a top all starting out and I wanted to compare notes because I'm surprised by you relating to the idea of panic because I feel from what you described about your work you're actually talking to real people in the country I just wanted to see a minute to share kind of what you feel about talking to real people to represent actual people in the country well the festival that John is talking about is called the Down Festival that I've been producing for a few years with not the profit in Edmonton and so it's emerging artists putting up site specific work all a bunch of different disciplines curated and I don't know one of the things like the first year we did it like we had we started with $0 we did a bottle drive and that's how we got the money to then do our first thing and then we started getting lucky and having some grants and like in terms of talking about like the dependence on or need to be interacting with the institution I love doing my work I love also being able to eat like it's hard it's really hard doing like literally a year's worth of work and like I think we shall see it done for this and then also like in terms of the model of what we do have done it's intentionally done there are a whole bunch of shows that have been hoping that students or people just walking by are going to have no idea that we're doing anything and they're going to kind of just fall upon it which is great when that happens our board gets I mean love the board but it's so mad because I'm like what is this model where you have all these people like it makes it so impossible to track how many people actually show that you know what I mean like people seeing these shows who aren't managing the board but at the same time like that's the best in terms of like actually having contact with your community that's the kind of work that I'm interested in creating but again it's hard because phone bills and internet bills and that's that sort of thing and like when you're offered to act as a director you just have to sit down at the theater and you know what I mean board is your turn just on that I would argue that there is something that the artistic director and I don't know how these conversations end up being about the big theaters but there's something I believe that the artistic director of the Citadel Theater can do or the Artistic Director of the Arts Club or a version of that in Vancouver I think there is something that they can do and I believe they form capital they have access to like it's actually like I grew up in business families so it looks like I like words like that they do they have they have pools of resource that I believe they could act as kind of more like venture capital investors literally and like disseminate money into the community as opposed to feeling like they have to own everything that everything has to be something that they own I'm Royce in the room and I know Roy here in Montreal he has festivals of new work he goes out and he sees what young people are doing in the city or all the capital is going but there's an attempt at least to say what are the voices outside of my institution I'll bring them into the institution it might be a failure because it might not work in my audience but something interesting is going to happen there so that's where I like to get away from this dialectic of institution one thing like emerging artists other I think that we have to be in contact with one another the young lady sitting at the table here you walk through that gateway or the introduction to theater you can do what you want with that you can go back you can never go back but having passed through there does not teach you with a sort of bad blood of the institution it's just that's what's happening there you can get a dialogue with that or not but I think that what I'm hearing around this table most of all is just whatever just do it just work and in the work you will get into conversation and you know you get a ball drive to start your work I mean I thought it was unbelievable I thought it was my mom you know then you started getting grants because it's like you use money it is everywhere and the world is the way and of course some people have a lot of jokers in their pack and I did I was one of those people who could borrow one from my parents to write my first play but eventually in order for the good work to emerge you got to stand on your MGP you've got to produce good work and you're only going to do that after failures and many attempts but just don't say this person is one thing and I'm another we have a contact this is a great example we're in an institution right now look at what these people have done but actually creating an event that brings down barriers and puts us all to feel can I say one thing and that is you for sure and then I'm going to go sit down again I just want to be one because there's a lot of talk about keep making shows keep making the work happen all that kind of stuff which I absolutely believe I just want to say refer back to something I said when I was talking up there but you just really think it's super important to me because of my experience that life long artists as Mel talked about I believe life long artists do other things too they do they come back and then again this is real this skill that is happening right now getting up and speaking at the table when you don't know anybody or whatever and the world needs and that kind of arbitrary definition between if I'm making shows that's real work and if I do something else that's not I think that that's an important distinction totally I just like to pose a question to all of the viewers that we're talking about building the shows and finding work and just doing it and if it fails or if it's successful what does that mean to you what is success what is success and what is success it's just you feel a connection or you don't and it's in the room when you reverse and it's in the audience with the audience when you're experiencing a story it's a taut line or a slap and that's just something you get to feel and that's where you try and always locate that connection that we need to be in this room like sometimes when I'm sitting like on my place and it's so excruciating because I'm like no one needs to be here no one fucking needs to hear the story how do these people pay for these tickets that's failure but it's not a failure that's useless because it could be that first of all it's not the right time for that player this is the wrong audience or I'm in the wrong place but there's information coming out of the experience if I was too cowardly to sit in my audience and hear it I wouldn't get that information and I wouldn't know how to proceed and go next we all do know what success feels like it feels alive it feels like a risk it feels awkward but it's it's alive I guess maybe alive is the best word to explain it I would like to say that I believe that idea of success is completely from a place of privilege the idea of success that you're getting people to buy your tickets that are 20 to 50 dollars a day is from a place of privilege that means that you are in a place that you are being supported and success is a popularity monetary thing is it the word they have a problem with is that even talking around a word that's been introduced here I'm speaking from a place where success is just getting our stories on the stage success is not even having an audience because there isn't an audience that the Aboriginal people in our country don't even know have never been to the other side of Canada when you put on a play until you may not find a Canada the idea of success what you're talking about I feel like it's sort of somehow a part of ticket sales we just did an event in Edmonton at the shop to theater 700 seats it was an Aboriginal play from an Aboriginal youth program the sort of program it was a predominantly Aboriginal audience and my co-producer co-founder Christine in the preamble before the show and the mayor was there she asked alright how many people in the audience are Aboriginal most hands went up to the 700 seat theater she asked how many people have ever been to the Citadel Theater before same hands went up into the audience the idea of success where I come from is the fact that that was the first time they've been in the Citadel Theater so this idea of success type of ticket sales she asked the question how do you measure success she never said anything about ticket sales you brought that up you mentioned that ticket sales are yours no I didn't you mentioned ticket price what's interesting is that when a question gets asked noting all it's we all projected great question no no I know what I've perceived as your perspective was a kind of a defense of why we shouldn't have this privileged perspective of selling tickets as a measure of success but I think you're the person who introduced it as an idea yes and that is my job for sure I just want to make sure you know that it's coming from you and not any of us privileged people around the table oh okay good, yeah because if I didn't no privileged people would but it doesn't during your suggestion it's our choice as theater figures for any sort of time frame or age but it's our choice not to measure ourselves again then whether that strap or whether it's something completely different it's our choice to put ourselves in these institutions to work and to take that path so I get we need to question yeah how do we define success for ourselves as a generation and we're all tired we're all born over the coffin of exhaustion oh that's interesting I thought I heard about that I think we should define success as a generation I think we should define success as an individual I think that there's no way that my success as a amateur festival director is to be very different than a playwright I mean there's that and then there's also just I think it can be important sometimes to articulate your goals sometimes it's difficult to define the time to articulate why we are doing this why we are doing this at all times not why we are doing this for our audience but why am I doing this can I just throw a little something out because I was at a meeting of artistic directors in Toronto and it was like a two and a half hour talk and we spent the whole time talking about marketing mutts and seats I think was a big word right audience development and outreach which is a code word for let's do a diverse play and bring all those people in and they said that was a great meeting does anybody have any ideas about what you'd like to do the next time and I said what I would like to do is talk about the art because we all know about marketing we all know we do the same things we throw it up against the wall and it's a mystery sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't sometimes you gotta box up and you know what we all do the same thing we do fruit going on the walls but about the art what is it about the art what do you want to make what makes you what makes you get all kind of yeah like that over a piece and it doesn't matter what it is but I think it's important that we talk about what is it that turns us on what is it you know that makes us excited about our art I think you're leading to something that's been missing to me in this whole conversation which is that our chosen form of art requires those butts and the seats and there's a they're not two separate things the butts and the seats and the thing we throw in on the wall but this whole thing the talking about the institution and all that sort of stuff to sort of dance around the like well who are we creating for I'll tell you right now as somebody who's in the end of his first week of a play that sold them as a Shaw festival right that we brought to Toronto who I had 20 people in the audience last night there was 200 people ready to pay $70 a ticket at the Shaw I can't get more than 20 people to pay $20 if I rely on butts and seats for my feeling of success I'm pooch I'm done and so I'm trying to say this is my own personal belief it's about why do you choose a story what makes you hard, what makes you wet what makes you excited if you aren't doing that if you can't define your art in that term then I think all we've done is wonderfully created many institutional minds and we can't do that what's the point of getting hard in a vacuum you know what I mean? I can't answer that for you I can't answer that for you but I can tell you that I still keep voting out for stories that need to be told I go out for a necessary theatre if I'm doing a play called Shakespeare's Nega oh yeah that's a terrible title right but I believe in the story right I may spend 2 years saving up enough surplus to make sure I can produce it it won't damage the company but it's a necessary thing what is necessary for you to say and yeah you can visualize, you can frame what I'm saying is what is necessary what is necessary for you for anybody here what do you have to say and then let the rest of it work its way up because you know what, there are great people who can figure that shit out but it has to start from the necessary theatre and I think you're like totally absolutely right but I just want to say that I have 100% agree with you and I think the big problem is that when we say Bums in Seats it's being misinterpreted here as money as we are viewing Bums in Seats as money somehow and what Elena said earlier I'm touching this I'm touching this right here is that she doesn't care about the money she's saying she's putting on street art and people can come and see the art and for her well actually I don't want to say that because I don't know but the idea of success is like people seeing the work I want people to see the work if I didn't want people to see the work I would write in my diary and send it home and write my diary I create theatre so that people can come and see it I don't see a bum in a seat as money I see a bum in a seat as someone that I'm telling a story to and you cannot have theatre without an artist so yes it is important to figure out what art you want to make and go and focus on that yes but thinking about who our audience is and how to speak to those people is not what I view as success as a theatre artist I'm not saying anything about success I'm trying to hold the conversation away from that and say yes of course you're right sure and I'll also say Pete wrote a really interesting diary that today is still a definitive test of what life was like in that time so perhaps if you actually did write that diary it wouldn't be as important a piece of art as anything else in this world right so that's this one yes of course sure I didn't watch the pre-work that's going to speak to that original community I want people to go back but take this step back if we take that as a contextual given what I'm talking about is what is the work that makes you happy that's what I'm talking about I really lord knows I understand all those other arguments I really do and I'm not disagreeing but I really love us to get back to what what makes us what makes us desire as an artist well it's interesting because I love producing now I'm an artist and what has excited me about producing these scene stories that gets me hard in the vacuum it's like that's what I love it's like this whole world for me about the arts world and industry as being a producer and seeing it I also come from a place in privilege where English was my first language in this country and I know how to read and I know how to work my way through grants and how to write those based on the criteria for the floor and so I get really excited when I see a story that makes me excited and I know and have the capacity to get that story to audiences when I saw Hukwe mounted at the National Arts Center after winning six door awards at Buddies in Bannetimes Theater I was like how the hell did we get this play to Canada, the rest of Canada while we were saying that boy went to Buddies they were like no it's done whatever so we banded together we did it we made it happen I saw Cliff Cardinals hop same thing so excited by this work how can we bring that to Edmonton how can we move it forward and so fortunate that we're in the same way as well this is such a great story how can we get it out of the wider audience international audience and this is so exciting this is where I won't say the couple but I think I feel successful because I'm so excited by this and it's getting out there and I'm not relying on and I'm not having to try and get the door open and scratch over Shaw that's really exciting I just want to say that since you're talking about art the time you were saying when you had having people line up around the block willing to pay 70 dollars to the show but then no one would see it I don't understand why that's a bad thing to have that Shaw and be getting the story out there and using that to our advantage okay you want to it's just a thing here because I don't go looking for I mean I don't go looking for larger theaters that actually is a very little interest to me and the minute that I adopted that and said what I'm going to concentrate on is making the best work and I'm going to have a theater company whose job it is is to help other people make their best work once I've done that then all of a sudden people come and say oh we love your work and they say okay that's fine but part of Mel's job in Obsidian is to be a free dramaturg to anybody in the city who wants it Obsidian pays her so that if you've got a play or you've got a play you can come and you can talk to Mel she'll work with you and if there's a simpatic hole of ideas as long as you need it and it doesn't even have to be in Toronto we deal with people across the country right? because it's not to me you want to talk about success that's the biggest success we've got going I want to take up on that because we've been talking a lot about institutions and actually I also wanted to bring in a tweet that we had from outside about these things because I've been noted on Twitter by Fulverstein that it's blogger and Twitter and Professor University of Toronto that no one is speaking unreservedly on behalf of the institutions here and I thought that was kind of funny that that's our big problem in our data but that aside I actually do think that Philips example right here of that Mel being your free dramaturg is the example of an institution that something is an institution does not necessarily make it against making that art that you're really power powerfully connected to it's just about whether or not the institutions choose to fulfill whatever mission they think is necessary and if there's the right pressure for them to do things like find the dramaturgs for the city they can do that and have a positive contribution and so just you know on behalf of the global community I think it's a decent point that institutions themselves are not negative just how they choose to use their resources and the biggest resource that they have are the ability to put bums in seats so they can bring you an audience whereas you know on your own you don't have them working you don't have those lists so he was saying why isn't anybody talking for the institutions that's kind of really interesting the University of Toronto why do they need to talk I'm sorry they have publishing houses they have professors they have a tenure they have all the resources at their disposal just like straggers just like the regional theaters they have their voice they have their subscribers they have their multi-million dollar budgets why do they need a voice why do they need more of a voice than they already have I think that's a really interesting question I'm not going to continue that I'm sorry are we going to ask you a question about the park sorry I'm not on the table I just want to talk about the institution really interesting I'm from Nova Scotia where we don't really have that many institutions like I'm interested to hear what you guys think you can do within institutions where there may not be because I didn't even go up in Halifax there are a few companies in Halifax now but I saw maybe one Neptune show growing up I saw some community I didn't even know big theater and I come here and I keep being told that as a maritime artist if I want to do well I have to go to Toronto in fact I got told that I had to come to school out here because I did my degree in maritimes and they were like but none of them are faculty of Indians and that's no offense to anyone from out here but I'm constantly being told you know go back home create theater all this stuff here but then when I go back home there's not a real place for me and the institutions that are there there are people there just hanging on for their jobs there's Neptune theater but the same people have been employed at Neptune theater for the last 15 years I've worked in theater for 7 years and I'm never going to show in Halifax do you want to create theater for your like like you and then this is I wanted to introduce the word audience and now I'm going to do this discussion but I really perceive that the audience is the kind of private institution of theater because you know you can learn lots of things in order but you know you can have a conversation maybe like you know who went home there's a lot of things you wanted to make theater but here should be the site of the first audience you know you know sounds to me that theater is important to you and your home is important to you so you're going to go back there and find a way to create a place that can get you a conversation with your community and that is the theater that is the theater you know and so whether an institution goes out of that or not it doesn't matter if that conversation is happening then you can create a new place and I think in a way that's like a really exciting opportunity it's funny because when I came back from Quebec I trained in the States and all these places to go to somewhere and I thought well you know I have a connection to this and I'm like well why would you be here but yes because I don't want to have a conversation with my kids so Sinar United States back to Canada where I have it deeply and this is an answer to a question why do I desire to make work better for myself and my community and things that find us and put us into conflict and so I think that that should be about an institution and so in Toronto there's this magical place called the video deck and the fact that you guys know about that is insane it is their living room and we are sitting here at the table a national fucking theater school and we are talking about some people living here since that is where the art is happening like so when we talk about like what you need to have a theater it is a linoleum floor with one bathroom and sometimes I'll bring a toilet paper because I feel bad because like because there are audiences coming in every single night they filled the place with sand for one of the pieces like they filled the entire floor with sand and they had a scaffolding go up that the girl was doing like trapeze tricks off of so imagination is key when we talk about like how do we get like I think seeing the video deck having this experiment as I was coming out like it was very important for me just to know that like we actually don't need a whole lot there's only 40 people that can fit in there I'm sure they're absolutely going to grow but a lot of excellent art is already out of there I don't know why I brought this up but the audience yeah I think there's such a fine line for emerging artists where what you're so passionate about and the relevancy of the time will sink up when you are able to put it on the stage like how much responsibility do I take on to produce my own show or do I find someone who's in business, who's in science how long will it take me to create this team and yet for me to put it on stage because that time from now is it now where I have to do it so I'm just going to go run out and performing in the streets or will I wait for the time when I have the money to put it out will it still be relevant and will I still be so passionate about the subject like I'm still afraid of that time slipping through my fingers as I'm an emerging artist sorry so also on a point faced you know a lot of I have is we are told that we are not a real artist we are student artists and we are devalued and we're put into places where so I would say you know like an instructor and they were like well you're not don't call yourself an artist don't call yourself an artist don't call yourself an artist you find like a huge block for you to find professional work like you find that that I don't know are there outside definitions and you should just anybody who tells you that kind of stuff just understand they're there to fuck you up they're not there to help you so you need to you need well who knows why don't waste your time on psychology just you know put up a mirror let it reflect back and go because you can't let other people define you right and I'm not going to go into boring black stories about what that means but I'm just saying don't let that outside people define you you have that's why I talked about the way I talked is that you have to find you have to be yourself you have to understand yourself truthfully and then you have to you have to do that and then as a theater artist I like the concept I just say she has to go net okay she has to go net not you I'm going to turn it on it's back a bit so maybe I'm not going to be a student so I don't think the institution is many I've learned theory that has made my life richer and has me live more of an ethical movement through this world so I just want to start off by that and I want to bring it to something specific and I want to thank Brian when he was speaking and he talked about accessibility we're talking about this word accessibility so I come from a community disability and theater and we're talking about accessibility we're talking about disease and quite frankly there's a lot of theaters where a lot of individuals can get into theater and casting and this is probably one of the main reasons why I came here because it's a dialogue that's not brought up a lot it's a minority and I appreciate your discussion sometimes we're just so bad so I'm bringing it to something specific I want to talk about accessibility and theater I want to talk about how people and artists with disabilities whether they're visible or invisible, physical or developmental how are we casting them how are we making them their tools how are we ensuring that we're representing them in a way I just want to talk about accessibility and what we're doing as a community to support those that perhaps may not speak in English as probably wouldn't be able to take part of this dialogue that we're having in English and we're talking there is in some way that's using sign language there is in some way it was extrapolated that's great and let's talk about it that's awesome can we just talk about some of the things we do to make theater accessible whether people are audience or people aren't Humber does that a lot and when I open this book where I'm the chair of their theater it's not that important but one of the reasons that I am there is because of their their openness and inclusion and the fact that when you go you see Humber at the Ontario showcase when you see their classes you will see a range of accents you will see a range of people you will see people with one disability or another they actively work and I will this winter actually have somebody signing a show that I'm doing it's one of those areas that has opened up and found a place at the table in the last few years and I'm sitting here trying to think of the organization in Toronto and really sticking to it but you're right I mean that's right so up until this last year you couldn't get to factory the theater unless somebody was willing and we've done this intro carry people up in their wheelchairs up to flights of stairs and frankly speaking it would be real hard to get upstairs to the room up there where we're going to be doing our T-Con later it's amazing Grant before I joined there earlier this year to bring in stir titles computer directors and have that in place for the Ruthless Pan-American Festival which is the Latin Pan-American Festival and it was fantastic to have English plays translated into Spanish Spanish plays translated into English and there was a play done earlier in our venue it was a two-hander and they had actually solicited to the deaf community and so they brought in two sign language translators into the rehearsal room with the actors and on stage the signers followed the actors and they weren't off stage off to the side and so they had to work with the actors and had to translate the intentions of the acting with that and it was so cool it was such an interesting model and that was really exciting Can I just jump in and say in February in Toronto there's an ANC and Buddies and Progress Festival which some of the work is doing there's going to be a symposium on that day a continuing conversation that started last year at the Ability Center just outside of Toronto and you can check various websites to plan that out there's some more conversations that are happening pursuant to that coming out of that so that's in February and certainly there's a lot of work I think that is being made with this in mind probably not nearly enough yet and there's also a lot of questions that are being asked right now so it's really really great to get that question it's like I'll kill it back one more one more I just completely jumped in there deeper and I was given my cue to say to wrap this conversation up and to thank everybody for participating in this really cool experiment and holding the table and holding the conversation and hearing the various opinions and getting the tweets coming from the other side things and those at the table to the first brave audience who've joined us and grew over that gap across that whatever they're meant for us and other people followed I always I've been taught that first following is the beginning of leadership so that was really cool I want to say thank you so much to this wonderful institution the National Theater School of Canada and I want to say thank you to all of the participants who spoke this morning we kick this off and I don't want to have a chance to to air your thoughts because you will continue throughout the rest of the day and now I think if I thank everybody I should thank the directing students Tanya, Rachel and Kori for this conversation because I know there is so much more to be discussed but the segue will actually connect some more voices in the room and will acknowledge Nurja, Young and Established Artist and somebody from the Canada Council who is here with us now so I'm going to introduce Guylaine Normandet who is the head of the theater section of the Canada Council and we are going to be presenting the 2013 John Perch Prize to alumni of LTS a very good timing, wonderful place a directing student who graduated in 2007 and Guylaine Petite Voltais Guylaine Normandet from the Canada, Monsieur, Collègues, Amis Bonjour, Hello it's been extremely inspiring to be here at the National Theater School surrounded by the makers of yesterday's today's and tomorrow's theater just in these walls you can feel the drive, the talent and the dedication as students from their skills to push the artistic boundaries in other words this is the perfect place the perfect location to present such a visionary award as the Canada Council for the Arts John Perch Prize which is awarded every two years to an emerging theater director who has demonstrated great potential for future accents Lewis Carroll's White Queen said to Alice it's a poor sign of memory that only works backwards in that spirit the John Perch Prize recognizes not only the past achievement of new directors but also their future potential John Perch began his career as a child performing in Hungarian refugee camps during World War II he would go on to become one of Canada's most renowned directors a life that truly embodied hope possibilities and vision I have the pleasure today of presenting the 2013 John Perch Prize to someone who's directing talent was nurtured right here at the National Theater School Arianna Barneson from a female perspective we don't know Odela Creations brings together artists from different disciplines to devise new work through a research and creation process that he develops over time Arianna's work crosses multiple languages and cultures and fuses theater with dance and projection Odela's second piece Adam's Rib Le Mingua Chico was noted for its risk-taking, emotional resonance and evocative imagery it's no wonder that the jury for the John Perch Prize stated that Arianna is the embodiment of the future of Canadian theater multi-cultural and internet literature I'm just a messenger no pressure no pressure Arianna, who was born in St. Louis was recognized for her sensitivity in the way we have the difficulties on the power the politics the culture and the war work with T. Sridhaniya tackled current day conflicts in Iraq, Palestine and Israel her version of Macbeth for a repercussion theater examined the global economic downturn the greed of the financial elite and civic responsibility I have no doubt that Arianna's passion for contemporary theater that asks big questions is going to be passed on to students from the National Theatre School I see that some of them are here today beautiful courageous crazy the Canada Council funds professional audience at all stages of their careers through a range of grants and prizes I have a special place in my heart for awards like the John Perch Prize that are going to be artists that are shipping the art scene of the future artists like Arianna on behalf of Canada Council and everyone here today I want to congratulate you on this tremendous achievement and I wish you many more favorites before I prepare a little something to tell this beautiful room and with these I'm unfortunately real sorry that I missed this the part of the conference you had this month because I was teaching to some of the brave new artists of the future and I got a little sense of this basic round table room so here we are this prize couldn't have come at a better time in my life I had just given birth to my second son he's just on the other side and it is a very late arrival that pushed me to step out of the directing job that would have started one month after the new group I was terrified of being forgotten worried I would forget my craft and be labeled simply as a struggling mother well receiving the Donut Prize reminded me that art and life are not happy but they constantly die out that enhance and relieve the sorrow now my baby is almost one I am still sleep deprived but I am ready and ready to get back to work to sweat rivers and climb mountains the encouragement of the young girls really really helps me but first things first so my thank yous thank you to the national theater school number one to share with yous to all the teachers that taught me that being a theater director is indeed a life philosophy one that stands on humility and constant questioning a solitary job against solitude and laziness thank you to Roa Farma and Sarah's family first of all for making me 24 and pushing me to reflect upon my path and secondly for being a continual inspiration thank you to my husband that is standing out there with my baby it wasn't for him I wouldn't be here today last but not least Christine, a woman Diana, Rose, Veronica thank you all of you and to the many more brilliant songs I had the chance to meet in this life so six days from now I am going to be singing the old Canada together with a brand new Canadian citizens coming from the most disparate places on earth to live in this country I would be looking at the remarkable diversity and the human potential of a truly multicultural society I would be proud and grateful and touched feeling a truthful protagonist of the American Dream and while swearing my oath to Queen Elizabeth the sensation of belonging war in my heart I wanted this the urge to look around and ask myself what makes us a community are you a community are we a community and besides does anyone around me go to see theatre and you can answer that question talk of humility well I think I personally think community is a utopia but a utopia what's fighting for and the necessary base for any of the life project and while we the artists are rejoicing also the new toys of technology we're chasing international visibility and we're worrying about our constant financial precariousness and doing a lot of good work too I actually think there is a lot to do with many challenges to detect and not just in a room is not a community either and watching a theatre show is an individual personal experience yet it is an experience that happens in one place only in a portion of undivided time time during which eels away from our fragmented everyday lives and all its members can exercise is right to imagination to marvel and to contemplate beauty during this unique time is reminded of what makes us humans the capacity to dream to transcend and transform oneself and oneself's reality so for all of us let us make a theatre of beauty of imagination a theatre of its first action let us inspire to win back our full responsibility for every aspect of life from the political to the environmental a theatre that invites us back into the democratic debate that we have been cut out from a theatre that empowers us to become the actors of a new way of living and a caretaker of a communal project of society in a 6 days garden I will look at my new fellow citizens wish them a happy life in Canada and silently promise and hope that we will be sitting again together many and many times imagining it has not yet been done having visions of the possible us and dreaming together in a dark room called theatre thank you