Anglo theatre: to be, or not to be (nervous)?

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October 11, 2012

The Gazette
September 29, 2012
By Pat Donnelly


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That is the question for Montreal companies in light of a new government, an altered media landscape and fluctuating sales

MONTREAL — As the cultural season moves into full swing, more than the usual amount of insecurity is being expressed among those who practise theatre in the language of Shakespeare in Montreal. The recent election of a Parti Québécois government has renewed old anxieties about an anglo exodus. English-language print media took a double hit over the past year with the deaths of the cultural weeklies Hour and Mirror. A less-than-culture-friendly federal government tends to pay far more attention to francophone artists than anglophone ones in Quebec. And audiences, as always, are elusive and unpredictable.

On the positive side, overall ticket sales are up by four per cent at the Segal Centre, thanks partly to the draw of a blockbuster musical, Guys and Dolls, which begins previews Sunday. As Centaur Theatre prepares to open its first play of the season, August, an Afternoon in the Country, by Jean-Marc Dalpé, next week, its subscription sales are at the same level as this time last year. And the action began early with Teesri Duniya’s Where the Blood Mixes and Metachroma Theatre’s Richard III, following the summer successes of Repercussion Theatre’s The Taming of the Shrew, which was seen by more than 10,000 people in Montreal-area parks, and the Montreal Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Macbeth. (More Shakespeare is coming, as Persephone Productions prepares its Hamlet for November.)

Still, Centaur Theatre artistic director Roy Surette admits to concerns about this post-PQ-election season.

“I’m kind of nervous,” he told The Gazette this week, “as somebody who is kind of an outsider.” Surette arrived from B.C. in 2007 and has never witnessed a referendum, nor dealt with a PQ government before. “I feel it’s going to kind of compound our challenges,” he added.

Surette’s angst boils down to this: “We do plays in English,” he said, “and we need an English audience as our base. If some of the (political) changes cause more people to leave the province, we’ll be in trouble.”

Student protests hurt attendance

Centaur attendance figures dropped sharply last spring, due partly to the “printemps d’érable” factor, he said. It was hard to convince anglophones to drive in from the suburbs when protesters were milling in the downtown streets. And many of the younger generation who might have taken in an edgy musical like The Haunted Hillbilly at Centaur were out demonstrating themselves. Other companies that presented shows at Centaur also took a hit. Still, the Segal Centre’s location in Côte des Neiges/N.D.G. rendered it largely immune, and the innately subversive Montreal Fringe Festival thrived (attendance: 62,500).

Since subscription seasons are planned a year in advance, Centaur and the Segal Centre are moving full speed ahead with ambitious lineups. They didn’t anticipate rough waters. And now it’s too late to trim the sails.

“Ours is one of the largest seasons in years in terms of artist employment and the scale of the shows,” Surette said. “They’re all fairly big.”

August, an Afternoon in the Country will be followed by Good People, by Pulitzer winner David Lindsay-Abaire, and Innocence Lost: A Play About Steven Truscott, by Beverley Cooper. Surette had intended to begin with Dance Me to the End On/Off Love, a Danish dance import based on the songs of Leonard Cohen, but it had to be postponed because of a licensing issue (connected to Cohen’s own appearances at the Bell Centre in November). It’s now scheduled for March, wedged between an Irish play, Trad, in February and The Number 14, an award-winning B.C. import, opening in April.

At the Segal Centre, where Richard III is now playing, CEO Manon Gauthier and artistic producer Paul Flicker say their box office is busier than last year so far.

Gauthier talked economics: “We are chronically underfunded,” she said. “And I would say English theatre in Quebec is underfunded.” The Segal receives about six per cent of its budget from government sources and Centaur receives about 17 per cent, she said, while comparable francophone theatres often do much better.

New government culture-friendly

As for the PQ, it has always been favourable to culture, Gauthier said. “We’re hoping it will fulfill its promise of increasing CALQ (Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec) funding and of reaching out to diverse communities.” Like most of the anglo theatre professionals I spoke with this week, she sees hope in the appointment of Maka Kotto as Quebec minister of culture and communications. The Cameroon native is, after all, an actor as well as a poet and a member of a visible minority. If Kotto doesn’t get it, who will?

The retreat of English print media concerns Gauthier more. “Our relationship with the media is primary,” she said.

Guys and Dolls is one of three musicals in the Segal season, which also includes Tales from Odessa, in Yiddish, based on the stories of Isaak Babel, with music by Josh Dolgin (a.k.a. Socalled), and The Mahalia Jackson Musical, by Roger Peace, starring Ranee Lee and co-produced by Copa de Oro. “We’re able to do it because we’ve made some very smart strategic partnerships,” Flicker said.

John Logan’s hit Red should also prove popular, while Waiting for the Barbarians, based on the novel by J.M. Coetzee, should draw the literary crowd. But Flicker said the first rush on tickets was for Sherlock Holmes, featuring movie star Jay Baruchel.

Like Centaur, the Segal is bringing many smaller companies under its wings. “I think that our support to emerging and independent companies is more important than ever,” Gauthier said. “Our future depends upon it.”

One of those companies, Scapegoat Carnivale, headed by Alison Darcy, is playing it both ways this season, presenting one play at Centaur (The Bacchae) and another at the Segal (Bar Kapra the Squirrel Hunter).

What worries Darcy most is not the political situation or the media crisis, but how to get English-speaking young people out to her shows.

“Francophone young people go to the theatre because they’ve been taught to respect theatre as an art form,” she said. “We were never taught that it was a valuable thing to spend money on.”

Geordie Productions director Dean Patrick Fleming shrugs off the election, too. “We’ve always done fine under PQ governments. We started getting provincial funding under a PQ government. I’d say politically the biggest challenge we face is with our federal government, because I think there’s an ideology there that’s kind of against (artists).”

Now touring French schools as well

The continuing closings of English schools hurt Fleming’s youth-theatre company, which has scaled back by one production this season. But Geordie now tours to French schools, too. “That helps,” he said.

What bothered him most about the election was “how ugly it got on all sides,” he said.

“For the first time since maybe 1995, I did think about leaving the province,” he said. The thought passed, however.

While Shakespeare and Broadway musicals like Guys and Dolls guarantee some attention, that isn’t so much the case for newborn plays. At Infinitheatre, Guy Sprung has to sell each of his brand-new works, such as the upcoming Trench Patterns, by Alyson Grant, on its own merits. He gets what he considers reasonable funding from Quebec, less so from Ottawa.

Sprung doesn’t see the PQ government as a major worry. His biggest beef is with the city of Montreal over securing a lease on the company’s main venue, Bain St. Michel.

Anglo theatre artists are insecure, Sprung said, but the damage is cumulative, from many factors.

“I think we have to fight for the recognition of who we are in Quebec. And get the respect from Quebec for the quality of the work that we do.”

pdonnell@montrealgazette.com

Twitter: @patstagepage
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