| The nominees for the eighth annual Betty Mitchell Awards will be announced on Tuesday, July 5, reflecting the best work of the 2004-05 theatre season. But will they also reflect what an unusual – not to say, downright strange – season this has been?
First and foremost, there was the surprise sacking of two long-serving artistic directors, Theatre Calgary’s Ian Prinsloo and Lunchbox Theatre’s Johanne Deleeuw, for reasons that have yet to be adequately explained. Then there was the noted absence of Theatre Junction for most of the season, and the displacement of Calgary Opera due to the Jubilee Auditorium renos. And this was also the season that saw three novice artistic directors make their debuts.
The word that Prinsloo was getting the heave-ho came after Christmas. Following an eight-year run as AD that was far more tranquil than those of his immediate predecessors, Brian Rintoul and Martin Kinch, and saw Theatre Calgary steadily reclaim its lost audience, Prinsloo was told by his board of directors that it’s time to go. And, frankly, it probably is. But the optics were very ugly. Prinsloo protested. The board argued lamely that the theatre needed to increase subscriptions (which Prinsloo had been doing) and, in the words of board president Maggie Schofield, "infuse new blood." The theatre community, if not the public, was bemused: Who fires the head coach when the team is winning?
The best way to manage this would have been for the board and Prinsloo to reach a mutual agreement over his departure, which would have allowed him to make the announcement that he was leaving at the end of this season. Instead, TC’s board came across as harsh and ungrateful, while sending a disconcerting message to Prinsloo’s potential successors. Would you want to apply for a job where your employers might get rid of you even if you were successful?
Worse, however, was the treatment of Deleeuw by her board. At least Prinsloo was given plenty of advance notice (his contract wasn’t officially up till this fall, but he’s chosen to leave early); Deleeuw was terminated without any advance notice. Maybe the corporate types on arts boards have begun to apply a corporate model even to the dismissal of staff – it’s a wonder Deleeuw wasn’t escorted from the theatre by security guards like a fired CEO. What did she do to deserve such treatment? Again, the board’s explanation was pure corporate-speak. President Karen Brawley-Hogg told Fast Forward the company was not in any financial trouble but was "ready to embark on some renewal." Renewal of what? Lunchbox has been doing what it does pretty much the same way for three decades. It started in the ’70s as a little mom-and-pop operation, founded and run by husband-and-wife team Bartley and Margaret Bard. Deleeuw came up through the company’s small ranks and was their chosen successor when they decided to get out of the theatre biz. Now I have a feeling that going to Lunchbox will be like going to that familiar, family-run corner grocery in your neighbourhood, only to find strangers running it.
Sure, companies need fresh blood and fresh ideas from time to time, but the treatment of Deleeuw and Prinsloo shows a woeful lack of respect for the artists who are, after all, the engine that drives the theatre.
Sage Theatre (whose founder-artistic director made his own decision to step down) got a freshening up this season from new AD Kelly Reay. The former Theatre Junction stage manager used his connections with fellow TJ alumni to produce a couple of noteworthy shows and launch yet another festival of new works. Casual observers might have a hard time detecting the differences between Sage’s IGNITE! and those other new-work showcases, Theatre Junction’s Random Acts and the Solocentric Festival, but the specific raison d’être for the Sage fest is to spotlight young and emerging talent. In any case, Calgary, the only major Canadian city without a fringe festival, may soon have so many mini-fests that it won’t need one.
While Reay got to show his stuff, the other new artistic directors this season, Vertigo Theatre’s Mark Bellamy and the children’s festival’s Kate Newby, were overseeing their predecessors’ programming and won’t get a chance to make their imprint until next year. But Bellamy’s strong ties in the community and his eagerness to co-produce with smaller companies like Ground Zero are good portents for the future.
This was bound to be an odd season for the performing arts with the centennial refurbishing of the Jubilee, which temporarily put Alberta Ballet in the Vertigo Playhouse and Calgary Opera in various venues, while permanently ending Theatre Junction’s tenancy in the Jube’s now-defunct Dr. Betty Mitchell Theatre. TJ took most of the season off to fundraise and begin construction on its new Grand Culturehouse. The name sounds like a European state institution (Das Kulturhaus), or maybe a yogurt factory, but the reclamation of the historic Grand Theatre from its recent sorry fate as some kind of indoor golf range is a welcome one. I can’t wait for TJ to move in and start up again. I don’t think I fully appreciated how much I looked forward to its productions every season until suddenly they were no longer there.
And speaking of a notable absence, am I the only one who’s wondering why almost none of Calgary’s professional theatre companies are marking the Alberta centennial with any kind of special, or even just relevant, programming? Has the Alberta government’s apathy towards the anniversary become contagious? True, Vertigo Theatre ended this season with a token centennial double bill, presenting two acclaimed Alberta fringe plays, Tuesdays & Sundays and The End of the Rope – although only the latter is based on an episode in provincial history. But in September, when the province officially turns 100, what are Calgary’s two major companies offering us? Alberta Theatre Projects (note the first word of that name) is reviving Amadeus, a British play about an Austrian composer, while Theatre Calgary is mounting that old American warhorse, The Miracle Worker. Surely this would be the time to revisit Sharon Pollock’s classic Walsh (a play about historical Canadian-American relations that certainly has resonance today) or Conni Massing’s dramatization of The Aberhart Summer, a lively mix of whodunit and historical drama that was a hit at playRites several years ago. (Incidentally, Edmonton isn’t any better. The city’s flagship Citadel Theatre is opening its season in September with Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit.)
Alberta has some of Canada’s best playwrights, who have written all kinds of plays about life in this province, but their work is conspicuously absent from Calgary stages right at the time when you’d expect it to be celebrated. And you thought this past season was strange! |
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