Theatre redefined
Leslieville’s Streetcar Crowsnest ‘a dance between commerce, art’
To build the city’s first dedicated theatre space east of the Don River, and the first on the main floor of a condo building, Chris Abraham of Streetcar Crowsnest devoted six years of planning and $11 million.
He knew he’d either pull off his ambitious scheme — which included plans to offer event rentals and a myriad of cultural programming, not just plays — or destroy a three-decades-old theatre company in the process.
His to be or not to be roulette worked, and Streetcar Crowsnest just opened at Carlaw Ave. and Dundas St. E.
Crow’s Theatre as an institution dates back to 1983, when it was launched by actor/director Jim Millan to showcase risky, Canadian plays such as Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love and High Life.
In 2007, Millan decided to move on, so he advertised the artistic director position. Abraham, now 42, who had never worked for the company, applied. “It was a nomadic company, and I though that was perfect. I wanted to tour all my works.”
The Montreal native had studied directing at the National Theatre School and, at the time, was dividing his hours between his freelance directing career in Toronto and teaching at the school, where he was the co-director of the directing program.
But the commute between the two cities was becoming a problem.
“It was a burden on my family life,” recalls Abraham, who now has two children with his wife, actress Liisa Repo-Martell, and a home in the east end.
Under Abraham, Crow’s flourished with plays such as I Claudiaand Winners and Losers, garnering awards and Canada-wide audiences.
But Abraham soon began craving a home for his company. “With touring audiences, you don’t get to know them. I started to become more interested in the place where I live and what’s going on here.”
It was becoming increasingly difficult to establish brand awareness in the city, and that limited the company’s growth — it had to get bigger or risk folding.
Abraham felt he was young enough to take a chance on his career too. “I could afford to do something risky that could destroy the company.”
In 2011, the concept for a bricks- and-mortar theatre started getting concrete when Abraham met with Streetcar Developments, which had a condo in the works and was interested in putting a creative space in the building.
He commissioned a feasibility study, which revealed the east end was ripe for a creative centre with lots of young families and creative arts professionals.
So Abraham signed on to purchase the main floor of the condo and set about designing it, fundraising and putting together a plan for creating a venue with an array of content and revenue streams.
A $1.25-million gift from Streetcar — which landed it naming rights — plus funding from three levels of government, corporate and individual donors helped Abraham bring in most of his $11-million budget. (Individual donors, including many in the theatre industry, gave too by purchasing chairs for $1,000 each. That raised $200,000, a feat Abraham calls an “unparalleled achievement.”)
Opening in January, the finished space has two black-box style spaces, a lobby and an adjoining restaurant. (Gare de L’est brasserie will open in April.)
The 65-seat restaurant will be run by the restaurateurs behind Ascari Enoteca a few blocks away on Queen St. E.
The space’s schedule is crammed with 11 performances over the next four months, some from Crow’s but many from other nomadic companies Crow’s happily supports. There’s also other programming such as a March Break camp, storytelling nights and performance classes for kids.
When theatre season winds down in the summer, the company will ramp up these kinds of offerings and rent out its spaces for weddings and the like in what Abraham calls a “dance between commerce and art.”
Those varied revenue streams have a clear goal: to get reinvested in even more cultural content to turn the population of this half of the city into devoted theatre fans. Says Abraham, “We’re trying to build this audience.”