| The outgoing artistic director of Theatre Calgary, Ian Prinsloo, says he’s concerned that the theatre company’s board of directors wants to steer it in a more commercial, corporate-driven direction, in which finances are more important than the quality of work being staged.
Prinsloo has been TC’s artistic director for the last eight years, but this month the board decided not to renew his contract and launched a national search for his replacement.
Prinsloo says that during his time as TC’s artistic head he helped rebuild the company from the point of near-bankruptcy. During his tenure, subscribers have increased to 8,600 this season from 3,600 in 1997. As well, TC has finished the last seven years with a surplus and has $2.4 million set aside in an endowment fund. Prinsloo says he’s also helped "foster and grow" the local artistic community and has attracted internationally recognized artists to the theatre, including Christopher Newton, past artistic director of the Shaw Festival, who is currently directing Macbeth for TC.
Prinsloo says he was told his contract wouldn’t be renewed this year because the board wanted to increase the number of subscribers to 12,000.
"If you want to get more people, how are you going to get more people?" asks Prinsloo. "What I worry about is (the theatre) goes to a much more corporate, market-driven model and that again the commercial aspect of theatre becomes its most important defining factor, instead of the excellence of the work it’s producing."
Prinsloo says he’s decided to speak out because he’s concerned about how an increasing emphasis on making money could prevent certain plays from being staged.
"I think they’d try to find the safest plays and try to make sure they found plays that had the widest appeal, the least amount of chance of offending and the least amount of risk involved with it," he says.
Prinsloo says Copenhagen, Michael Frayn’s acclaimed play about nuclear physicists, which Theatre Calgary produced in 2003, would be an example of something the company might be leery of staging in the future.
Prinsloo says he was advised by Maggie Schofield, chair of TC’s board, not to speak out about his contract not being renewed. "One of the things that was said to me by my board chair was, ‘You have to consider whether you want to say anything publicly, Ian, because this may not be good for you to do.’"
Schofield claims the goal of 12,000 subscribers has been in Theatre Calgary’s strategic plan "for the entire eight years Ian has been with us."
She says that, before the financial difficulties of the mid-1990s, the company had a subscriber base of 10,000. She acknowledges that Prinsloo helped rebuild the company, but she says more subscribers are necessary again.
"The growth patterns are very, very important to us," she says. "The underlying concern with theatre is always to do the best productions we possibly can with the highest level of quality (and) highest appeal for our audiences. It is about the art, but without the finances there isn’t any art."
Schofield says TC’s artistic mandate won’t change, but the company doesn’t want to stagnate, either.
"We want to make sure we have a chance to infuse new blood when we’re in a position to attract someone," she says. "If we were to take a turn for the worse and all of a sudden have a debt position, it makes us a lot less attractive to bring someone new into the theatre. So while everything is running really well it is an opportune time for change." |
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