Art and diversity key to the Toronto we’ve built
Five decades ago, Susan Douglas Rubes had an inspired idea: to start a theatre for children. The vision of its founder has been paying dividends ever since to kids growing up in Toronto and to their parents.
The latest acknowledgment of what was achieved by Rubes (who died in 2013) came on Thursday, when Young People’s Theatre won the $10,000 Arts for Youth Award at the city’s annual Mayor’s Arts Lunch.
As usual, the Toronto Arts Foundation’s annual salute to our town’s cultural creators was held at Arcadian Court.
After the dark years of the Rob Ford regime at city hall, when arts workers were an endangered species, it was a tonic for the second year in succession to have the proceedings blessed in person by a mayor who really does understand the crucial role the arts play in citybuilding.
Toronto Mayor John Tory, beaming with confidence and encouragement, noted that the recently elected mayor of the United Kingdom’s capital had claimed London was the world’s most diverse city, prompting the BBC to correct him. For the record, of course, the world’s most diverse city is Toronto.
And the range of nominees and winners at the awards lunch reflected that fact splendidly.
Benjamin Kamino, the dancer and curator who won the $10,000 Emerging Artist Award, grew up in Toronto with a multicultural heritage. His father is a second-generation Japanese Canadian painter and sculptor; his mother is a first-generation Hungarian Canadian dance artist.
At 30, Kamino has already made his mark with Dancemakers and Peggy Baker Dance Projects, and he is heading to Montreal for graduate school. But Toronto will likely woo him back.
“I have a dream to found a dance program at a university,” he says. “I’d love to see it happen at OCAD.”
Musician and composer Ritesh Das, who won the $10,000 Roy Thomson Hall Award of Recognition, has a musical heritage that goes back to his childhood in India. His parents had started a music school shortly after the end of British rule. After moving to Toronto at age 30 in 1987, Das founded the Toronto Tabla Ensemble.
The tabla is a melodic instrument popularized by the music of sitar master Ravi Shankar, which is familiar to listeners of CBC Radio’s Metro Morning because of the show’s opening theme music, of which Das is the composer.
When it comes to the importance of diversity in building Toronto’s rich arts scene, we should not overlook the role played by arts pioneers who crossed the border from the U.S. Among them was Rubes. An actress with a track record on U.S. television, she moved to Canada after marrying opera singer Jan Rubes. She insisted that children deserved nothing less than top-class theatre. For a decade, YPT was a homeless company.
But Rubes found a permanent home in a heritage building on Front St. E. that had once been a stable. And she opened it with a landmark production of The Diary of Anne Frank, starring Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson.
Among the actors who have performed at YPT: Brent Carver, Kate Reid, Sheila McCarthy, Gordon Pinsent, R.H. Thomson and Martin Short.
According to artistic director Allen MacInnis and executive director Nancy J. Webster, on hand to accept the award Thursday, YPT has enjoyed massive growth in recent years. Its annual budget has climbed from $3 million to $5 million.
Even Susan Rubes, a perfectionist, would have to admit that’s good enough. mknelman@thestar.ca