Helping independent theatre help itself in Toronto

One, the RISER Project, supports indie companies and artists by redirecting resources from more established organizations. Its founder, Why Not Theatre’s artistic director Ravi Jain, rather gleefully calls RISER “Robin Hooding.”

The other, Generator, is an organization helping indie companies and artists through producer training, shared office space and resources, mentorship and workshops.

The goal of the report, says Margo Charlton, research and impact manager of the Toronto Arts Council and Foundation, is to offer positive models for “sectoral change” in the performing arts.

What needs changing? “Independent theatre is where the new energy comes in and where things are tested out,” says Charlton, “but it’s the most precarious area of the sector. People come in, but they can’t sustain their practice.” RISER and Generator have “looked at what’s needed and have provided it.”

The report defines independent theatremakers as “people involved in the making of theatre who are not students and do not consider themselves living an established life with steady, predictable stream(s) of income.” The big message is that many of the hundreds of professionals in Toronto’s indie scene want to stay there, that it’s not necessarily somewhere people pass through on their way to full-time jobs in building-based theatre companies. So how to make indie theatre careers sustainable is a crucial question.

The report’s author, artist/researcher Helen Yung, says a core value of both initiatives is “collectivity. Neither Why Not nor Generator think they’re going to fix the sector on their own. This is not about single-company heroism. It’s about doing things together.”

Why Not Theatre piloted RISER in 2014 to respond to “the high cost of production and the challenge of getting people to your show,” says Jain. To an audience member, RISER looks like a theatre festival — four productions running in repertory at the Theatre Centre for two weeks in April and May — but the producing model is innovative.

Shepherded by Why Not, senior partner companies — currently fu-GEN, Nightwood, Modern Times, Necessary Angel and the Theatre Centre — pool resources, financial and in-kind, to get the shows onstage and do not expect a return on investment. “It’s a gift,” the report underlines.

“The way our ecology has traditionally been funded is like a pyramid,” explains Jain, with a small cadre of well-established companies at the top getting the lion’s share of funding. Project grants, and established companies supporting younger artists by developing their scripts or renting them space, are supposed to fill the gap below, but Jain says that isn’t really working — not quickly enough for ambitious young artists, at least.

The success of the model is there in the numbers: over four seasons, RISER has produced 15 new Canadian productions that have been seen by nearly 5,000 audience members and garnered 12 award nominations. The 2018 RISER projects — revealed here for the first time — will be Lester Trips Theatre’s Mr. Truth, about consent and female desire; Spiderbones Performing Arts’ Everything I Couldn’t Tell You, about Indigenous healing; daniel jelani ellis’s speaking of sneaking, about growing up queer in Jamaica; and the band Zuzeverse’s multidisciplinary piece Zendegi.

Generator, for its part, is a place with two full-time staff “where artist-driven companies and creators can go to get all the resources they need to self-produce,” as one participant in its artist producer training program (or APT) says in the report. Founded in 1992 as STAF (Small Theatre Administrative Facility), it rebranded as Generator in 2014 and altered its model from offering support services to helping companies do things themselves.

Eight individuals each year are chosen for APT, twice-weekly classes in all aspects of producing ending with a trainee placement (and a stipend of $1,000 for the year). ArtistProducerResource.com, an online compendium of resources complied over the years through APT, is launching Nov. 13.

Resident companies (at the moment, The AMY Project and House + Body) work in Generator’s space for free, while company collaborators (Shakespeare in the Ruff, Outside the March, Common Boots and Fixt Point) pay a small desk rental fee; all the companies get a load of perks including meeting space, printing, free internet and auditing APT classes.

“Someone can turn around and say, ‘I’m having trouble with the city on this permit’ and someone else will say, ‘Oh, I’ve had that problem . . .’” says Lemieux. “You can ask the question in the room, rather than spend two hours googling.”

Lemieux, who joined the company in 2016, has broadened Generator’s remit to include dance and interdisciplinary companies and artists, because “dividers are slipping” between genres and producers need to respond. (Full disclosure: I am in talks with them about a theatre criticism training initiative).

Charlton, who’s been working in theatre for 35 years, says that while many of the issues the report covers aren’t new (there’s never going to be enough money), what feels fresh is the openness of this generation to “talking about their personal needs. To reveal that you were struggling with mental health and stress used to be self-indulgent. Now a more holistic idea of health is being talked about openly.” Theatre professionals in today’s Toronto aspire to “work-work-life balance”: most artists and producers have day jobs as well as theatre jobs to afford to live here.

Yung hopes the report will raise public awareness about the vitality and excellence of independent theatre: “People don’t know all the gems that we have hidden in lesser known venues, playing smaller shows, shorter runs. We just need to find ways to connect the people to the performances.”