Partners share a passion for arts
DANCING IN THE DISTILLERY George Brown and Soulpepper build new school Arts education takes a giant leap forward at centre Old brick walls echo with excitement
The air crackles with contagious energy as three students from the George Brown theatre school gather around a table to discuss their work. They are lucid and intense, poised and professional: Above all, they are passionate. Derek Paradiso, Shanda Bezic and Ryan Bondy are students in the college’s theatre arts program, overseen by their equally passionate artistic director James Simon. They will also be among the first to perform at the state- oftheart Young Centre for Performing Arts — a $14-million joint- venture between George Brown and Toronto’s Soulpepper Theatre Company. Founded in 1976, the theatre school was housed in a dusty, cramped space on King St. E. until the new centre opened in September in the historic Distillery District.
“ We had the faculty, we had curriculum, but our home was leaking, unheated,” says Simon. “ So our former dean, Paul Carder, took us under his wing, and saw the potential, saw what the students were doing and saw where they were working, and said, ‘ Why are you in a basement at Casa Loma ( campus) and performing in a rat- infested facility down on King Street?’
“Paul looked at the theatre companies in Toronto and asked who is the most vibrant and sexy and dynamic?” says Simon.
“ Then he asked who we could partner with, because we’re such a small department. The college wasn’t going to put that kind of money behind us without a partner.
“ It was Paul’s initiative to approach Soulpepper and ask, ‘ What do you think about dating? What you think about kind of getting married?’
“ That was about five years ago when those talks began. They continued and then an architect was brought on board,” Simon says. The principal architect was Thomas Payne of Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects, a renowned Canadian company known for its work with clients in the arts, including the Art Gallery of Ontario,
Roy Thomson Hall, the
National Ballet of Canada, the National Ballet
School and the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art.
“At that point, too, this location, the Distillery, was just starting to become an arts haven. So our dean and Soulpepper approached Artscape, the people who manage it, and they found the two tank houses available.” The project was soon underway, with each partner raising half the money.
“ The college has a foundation, and their job is to raise money,” says Simon. “ Soulpepper had a different road to follow because they’re a small company, but they can get water from a stone.” The partners each came up with their half of the money and now enjoy a 45,565- square- foot home worthy of their occupants’ talents and abilities.
Classes at the partially completed centre began on Sept. 6: “ A glorious day,” Simon says. The partners, who broke ground for the facility in June of 2004, are finally seeing their dream become a tangible reality, albeit one rooted in a shell of a structure nestled among the historic brick buildings of the Distillery District. When it is finished, the Young Centre will offer three state- oftheart theatres, five large rehearsal/ studios, four classrooms, a complete costume shop, student lounge, public lobby with a café and an outdoor artists’ exhibition area, as well as teaching and administrative offices. Each year, the school accepts 34 students out of the 650 to 700 applicants for the first year of its three- year theatre arts diploma program. Nineteen students are registered in the second- year class; the graduating class has 13. More than half the students who make it already have bachelor’s degrees in other disciplines, Simon says.
“ As a trend over the past four or five years, I’d say that the median age has increased. When Grade 13 was done away with, we had kids coming to us who were 17 and, well, we all remember what we were like when we were 17. I certainly couldn’t have committed to something like this when I was 17.
“ But that’s not to say we don’t take some kids straight out of high school; we do,” says Simon.
Paradiso, 24, and in his final
year at the school, is a graduate of the University of Guelph in biomedical science.
“ I had no experience acting,” he says. “ But I need a creative outlet in my life, and I was attracted by the practical nature of the program.
“I enjoy the physical work most. It’s so much more demanding; you’re using so much of yourself. You have to be serious. It’s not easy, it’s not fluff. You work for your results.” Young people come from across Canada to attend the school.
“ I love that the students come from all over the country,” says Simon. “ The sensibility of a kid from Vancouver is very different from a kid from rural Ontario.
“ Our pipeline is always people in the profession. As our people from Toronto go out and work, they do question-and-answer sessions after a production, and kids will come up and ask where they can train as an actor,” Simon says.
“ Over the past five or six years, I think our student body has really expanded from what was central Canada to really being a national program. This is what this building allows us to do.” The program is not for the faint of heart, Simon warns. Slacking off is not an option. “ You’re out,” he says.
“ I didn’t want any programs where they hold your hand,” says Bezic, 20 and in her second year of the program. She took a year off after high school, worked in real estate and studied at Actors’ Workshop.
“ But I wanted a solid foundation of training,” she says. “I wanted to be part of this: I love the intensity and passion of this school.” The intensity of the program is also what drew Bondy, 19, from Kitchener.
“ I took drama all through high school and had the opportunity to be in two plays a year. I also had some vocal and acting training,” he says. He is deeply involved in exploring the connection between voice and movement.
“ Sometimes, it just clicks for you — how much the movement work affects the voice work, affects what you do on stage and what you feel about yourself as an actor as you approach a text,” Bondy says.
“ It even affects your everyday life and how you speak,” he says. “ I went home for Thanksgiving and my parents were saying: ‘Wow, you’re speaking more clearly and standing taller.’ ” The school also offers a oneyear program, as an introduction to the performing arts. The school’s performances this winter include Much Ado About Munsch, Dec. 3-10, at Hart House Theatre and The School for Scandal, Feb. 8- 18 at the Young Centre.