Newsletter
Summer 2006

by Barbara Anderson-Huget

At our Annual General Meeting in Sarnia, we welcomed two new members to our Board of Directors.

Katherine Grainger is a graduate of University of Windsor’s BFA Acting program.  Since graduating she has worked as an actor with such companies as Shakespeare by the Sea and Acropolis Theatre in London.  She is an involved member of the Toronto theatre community.  She was the Manager of the Dora Mavor Moore Awards for two years and is currently on a Metcalf Foundation Internship at CanStage where she is working as the Casting Assistant for their 2006-2007 season.  Katherine was one of the founding members of Cow Over Moon Children’s Theatre in Mississauga and has worked with them as a writer, performer, director and has recently taken on the role of Artistic Producer.

Marcia Johnson is a writer, actor and stand-up comedian.  She was Playwright-in-Residence at the Blyth Festival, and a recent member of Theatre Passe Muraille’s Playwrights Collective.  Her works have appeared in the Rhubarb! Festival at Buddies In Bad Times, the Toronto Fringe Festival, and on CBC Radio.  She has acted in theatres throughout Ontario and Manitoba, and teaches playwrighting at Sheridan College.

We also thank outgoing Vice-President Richard Poore for his three years of service on the Board of Directors.

by Barbara Anderson-Huget

I am very pleased to say that one of the projects Theatre Ontario has carved away at over many years, Artsbuild Ontario, is finally showing tremendous promise.  Theatre Ontario, along with five other arts service organizations has been involved in research, advocacy and planning for Artsbuild Ontario, a facility finance fund for small and medium-sized community and professional not-for-profit performing and visual arts companies.  The clients would be seeking grants and/or loans of greater than $100,000 to renovate or build new facilities.  The steering committee of Artsbuild is in the process of incorporating a new Board of Directors and has just received funding for a new needs-assessment throughout the province.  There is a very short turnaround time for this needs assessment as the Ministry of Culture is showing strong interest in the project.  The assessment survey is being funded by the Ministry, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Trillium Foundation.  The results of the survey are to be delivered by October of this year!

Artsbuild Ontario was originally the dream of our own Sandra Tulloch, and she has agreed to sit on the first Board of Directors.  Sandra has been at almost all our meetings and has done a tremendous amount of work to make this happen.  If the stars align and we are able to get political support for this project, it is because Sandra Tulloch and Jane Gardner and the Executive Directors of all of the organizations who worked with them and after them pulled things together for years.  We have also had the guidance of Jenny Ginder and Judy Wolff, two consultants who truly understand the project and the workings of government.  Some Theatre Ontario members will be contacted this summer by e-mail and by telephone to answer questions about the facility they own or the one they rent.  I ask that you do your part to advance the dream of Artsbuild Ontario.

by Barbara Anderson-Huget

While we were at Theatre Ontario’s Festival, we heard some good news.  The U.S. Senate had voted to push back a January 1, 2008 deadline “that would require travelers to show passports or new high-tech identification cards instead of driver’s licences and birth certificates at border crossings.  The deadline has been extended to June 1, 2009 under the amendment to a U.S. bill that has not yet become law.” (CTV.ca 060518)  President Bush can still veto the senate’s bill and return to the date of January 2008, but there are reports that suggest that there are technical problems with the identification cards that will allow frequent travelers through the border faster, and until those are available the opposition to requiring passports is going to be very high.

Why should Ontario thespians care about border crossings?  Both the Shaw and Stratford Festival get visitors in excess of 40% of their audience from the United States.  Last year General Director, Anthony Cimolino attributed the 5% reduction in attendance at the Stratford Festival to a reduction in visitors from U.S. border states.  Fortunately, the Stratford Festival was able to compensate with some growth in attendance by its regional audience and through cuts to its budget.

Stratford and Shaw are not the only ones who are affected.  Drayton Entertainment’s Huron Country Playhouse near Grand Bend is in an area that traditionally attracts American cottagers.  Theatre Muskoka and Thousand Island Playhouse are also in traditionally Canadian and American cottage country.  The CanStage Dream in High Park, Soulpepper and all the plays the Mirvish organization is running in various theatres over the summer are supposed to attract tourists as well as Torontonians.  The problem is: if they can’t get across the border in a reasonable amount of time (two hours) then they won’t bother coming.

When I drove to the Theatre Ontario Festival in Sarnia, I saw the border crossing hold-ups for the first time.  Fifteen years ago, I regularly traveled to Sarnia and I never had a problem driving right into town to Christina St. North.  This time, there was a line-up of trucks and a line-up of cars, right to the eastern-most edge of town.  I crawled up beside the trucks in the left-most lane wondering if I was going to be able to get off at downtown Sarnia or if I was going to be swept over the bridge and the borderline (without my passport but with my driver’s licence.)  Fortunately, the trucks had made a space for local traffic to cut over onto Christina St. North and I was free.  I can truly understand why people do not want to stay in those line-ups for hours.  We must all pressure our MPs and MPPs to continue to find a better solution to this issue.