Theatres managing to keep lights on
EDITOR'S NOTE:
This is the second half of a series looking at Nova Scotia theatres and theatre companies, and how they’re finding ways to keep the lights on in the absence of a live audience.
When you're running a theatre in the absence of live audiences, you have to get creative to keep some form of momentum going.
That's certainly been the case for Halifax's Bus Stop Theatre, a community space that makes itself available for a variety of groups and artists, and Canning's Ross Creek Centre for the Arts, which is home to the Two Planks and a Passion repertory theatre company.
Even with the giant puzzle piece of public performance missing from the big picture, both venues have been able to shift gears since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and stay active as resources for the arts community and as centres for digital production.
Located on an arm of land on the Minas Basin that narrows as it stretches from Blomidon to Cape Split, Ross Creek Centre for the Arts is a spread of buildings and outdoor structures on former farmland that serves as a theatre, studio, gallery and school.
When COVID-19 effectively cancelled last year's slate of outdoor productions, the company forged ahead with its summer theatre classes, using the fields and woods around the property as open-air classrooms where health protocols could safely be followed for group activity. Indoors, Two Planks and a Passion co-founders Ken Schwartz and Chris O'neill brainstormed to come up with ways they could use their space to keep the arts community they've helped nurture over the past 30 years as healthy as they could.
“We are so lucky to have this space. Even just the fact that we can have people come down and do a retreat for two weeks, because we have the accommodations and a commercial kitchen and a chef,” says O'neill, who's seen new projects get workshopped at Ross Creek as a way to keep its core company active and engaged.
“We have the resources we need to make all of those things happen and support the artists in doing their work.”
OUTDOOR SHOWS
Like Point Pleasant Park-based company Shakespeare by the Sea, which recently announced its summer season, O'neill and Schwartz are confident that the current trend of low COVID-19 numbers and the rollout of the vaccine will make outdoor shows possible this summer.
But before they get to work on firelight productions of Macbeth and The Stranger (Schwartz's new adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde) and Vancouver playwright Leanna Brodie's Schoolhouse, there are other irons in the fire.
One is a collaboration with the Halifax Public Library called Collage, working with people in isolation that will result in an exhibition or a sharing of work at the end. Another is a book celebrating Two Planks and a Passion's 30th anniversary of bringing groundbreaking and socially relevant theatre to live in Nova Scotia and beyond.
Immediately on the horizon is a podcast version of Schwartz's adaptation of George Orwell's Animal Farm made possible by an Arts Nova Scotia digital arts fund grant.
“That's really exciting, because it's a chance for us all to keep our chops up in a new way that keeps us learning,” says O'neill, excited to begin rehearsals in early February for the detailed audio production drawn from Two Planks' own adaptation.
AT THE BUS STOP
Going digital has also been a major shift for Gottingen Street's Bus Stop Theatre, which was forced to cancel a busy calendar of 2020 spring and summer events while in the midst of a major fundraising campaign. Government and public support enabled the co-operative space to buy the building in which it resides, but the sad irony was that they couldn't welcome crowds into their newly purchased venue.
“The light at the end of the tunnel really started in July with Halifax Pride renting out the Bus Stop and using it as a broadcasting station where they recorded and hosted online content,” says Bus Stop executive director Sebastien Labelle.
“From there we saw the writing on the wall for what things were going to look like from then on, so we started investing in equipment and software for recording and broadcasting, to up our game on that front.”
The Bus Stop Theatre became home to livestreamed concerts like the Mayworks Labour Day performance by Aquakultre, Arts Nova Scotia's virtual Creative N.S. Galas 2020, and Neon Dreams' performance for CBC'S New Year's Eve: Countdown to 2021.
“Those are the kinds of things that we've been seeing happen at the Bus Stop,” says Labelle, who saw the space become busy in the fall until restrictions became reinforced in November. But now he's seeing the theatre's calendar start to fill up again while the co-op prepares to turn the dingey old basement of the former pharmacy into a rehearsal studio and meeting space.
In the meantime, the Bus Stop Theatre will present an online showcase of up-and-coming talent titled Art Arena in February, its Writers Circle program will produce a first play called The Crevice by Rebecca Falvey for online broadcast in March, and it will host virtual trade workshops on livestreaming and self-branding and promotion.
“There's lots going on. Not so much in the space itself, but between what happens in the theatre and what happens online there's quite a bit of activity.”
LOOKING AT THE LONG TERM
But while many of us are just focused on getting through this pandemic in one piece, Labelle says it's time for arts organizations like the Bus Stop Theatre to consider long-term concerns like the future of arts funding, which he says has been stagnant in this region with no increases in arts sector operating budget grants in over a decade.
“On any given day, we are dependent on support from three levels of government, so what will be the government's ability to keep supporting the arts sector once we're past the pandemic?,” asks Labelle, who expects the economic impact of COVID-19 will be felt for years to come.
“Especially since things were far from ideal before the pandemic, so that's a concern.”
“How are we going to keep going?”