“Room for Failure Was Abundant”

The SummerWorks Festival has provided the author with opportunities to move toward a theatre practice in which a non-hierarchical approach allows for accountable collaborations across difference alongside rigorous artistic experimentation. In this piece, the author analyzes experiences in a number of SummerWorks Festival productions between 2006 and 2017, weaving in the perspectives of a number of collaborating artists, tracing a development from a personal desire for community, through the facilitation of staging others' stories, toward a desire to speak to one's own culpabilities regarding the inequities of our society. This personal article parallels both reckonings in Canadian theatre around artistic accountability and ongoing conversations regarding responsible collaboration. The SummerWorks productions examined are You Like It. (2006), Still Life (2011), Unknown Soldier (2014), Like There's No Tomorrow (2015), Charisma Furs (2015), and Boys in Chairs/Access Me (2017).

Crowdfunding Canadian Theatre

This study presents a comprehensive exploratory and descriptive analysis of Canadian theatre projects on the Kickstarter platform, using both quantitative and qualitative data. In the country-level analysis, comparative statistics are provided with Kickstarter projects based in the United States. Our quantitative analysis finds that many theatre projects in Canada are successfully raising funds on Kickstarter, with the success rate being similar to that of theatre projects in the US, but on a relatively smaller scale in terms of the amount of money raised. Only Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta, have more than three theatre projects on Kickstarter and of these, only Quebec has a proportion of Canadian theatre projects (and successful projects) on Kickstarter that are lower than its proportion of Canada’s population. In our qualitative analysis we find that theatre crowdfunding in Canada has a strong philanthropic component, and highlight limitations with Kickstarter data and the challenges of measuring success in crowdfunding more generally.

The Guide: An Emerging Role in Participatory Theatre

As Canadian culture continues to grow an obsession with individualism in the era of the selfie, theatre has similarly found a new focus in shifting the spotlight from the stage to the audience. The result of such interests is participatory theatre, which reimagines the audience as players in a shared experience. In an evolving form of performance, audience members abandon the darkened theatre seats and the comfort of passivity in favour of agency. While thrilling, this radical shift in perspective is often accompanied by intense feelings of fear and insecurity. How can anyone be a “good” participant without knowing what to do? What if something goes wrong? To combat apprehension in would-be players, a new role has begun to appear in contemporary participatory theatre: the guide. Existing both in the reality of the performance and the world of the audience, the guide provides a safe space for participation. This role establishes the rules, and eases discomfort when necessary to ensure players can confidently contribute. By applying dramatic theory to a series of case studies, this presentation will highlight where the guide appears in contemporary Canadian theatre, and the critical function it plays in each performance’s success. Not only does it ensure that audience members embrace the attitude of a player, it allows the participant to feel comfortable enough to reflect on the purpose of their newfound activity. Ultimately, the guide will prevent the average theatregoer from dreading participation by facilitating meaningful play that is equal parts entertaining and aesthetically satisfying.