TALES ON TOUR
Storytelling project about Canadian communities is making a nationwide run,
In 2008, Lisa Marie DiLiberto had an idea: to make a theatre production celebrating Canadian main streets and downtowns. This came to her while touring across Canada, but she decided to make the new production about the neighbourhood she was then living in: Parkdale.
Among the team that she brought together was Charles Ketchabaw, a theatre technician with a background in radio. The production they made, The Tale of a Town, gathered oral histories from people living in Parkdale and presented them in a storefront theatre, using live actors and recorded media.
Nearly a decade, 124 towns, 3,259 interviews, 157 performances, one marriage and two kids later, DiLiberto and Ketchabaw are bringing The Tale of a Town — Canada to Theatre Passe Muraille next week, as part of a nationwide tour.
To say the The Tale of a Town struck a nerve with Canadians is clearly an understatement. After making a number of Tales around Ontario, in 2014 the pair turned it into a national project and have since made shows for every province and territory. They’ve raised over half a million dollars in government and foundation support and employed 119 artists along the way.
The Tale of a Town — Canada is a sort of highlights reel, which DiLiberto and Ketchabaw perform with a local choir, live band and special guests from the community. Some of the narration involves what they call Tiny Towns: miniature mockups of the downtowns, projected onto a screen using live video to illustrate the stories being narrated.
DiLiberto says the impetus for the first show was to capture the spirit of a Toronto community that seemed in danger of disappearing; She’d seen globalized retail outlets come into her native Ancaster and erode its downtown.
“Parkdale is such an amazing neighbourhood. And then we thought, ‘Wow, what would happen if big box stores invaded Parkdale?’ . . . We decided we’d celebrate the stories and the places around us.”
In some of the communities they visited, participants brought history books or tried to explain what was commemorated on plaques, but DiLiberto says this is not the focus: “We’re actually interested in what you can remember in your own lifetime, personal stories about the way it used to be, here, in your downtown, where you grew up.”
So are these sad stories about main streets dying and communities losing their souls?
“No, not at all,” Ketchabaw says. “I think it’s a series of stories that have touched us, and then along the way you sort of discover that things change. And change is inevitable . . . I think it’s illuminating to hear things that are from another part of the country, yet totally relatable . . . you start to find connectivity.”
“I think there is a sense of loss,” DiLiberto says, “buildings that are torn down or things that are gone, but then there’s also the thought of, ‘Well, why were those things so memorable?’ . . . Maybe it wasn’t the place but the feeling people had in those places and how can we carry that feeling of community forward?
“People would all go to Main Street to see each other, to connect and now people connect in a different way,” DiLiberto says. “So perhaps the play can question: If that was so wonderful, how can we make sure that there’s still space for that to happen, in whatever we build or create or what’s next?”
This project has shaped and trans- formed the couple’s lives. “It started off as just a little idea for us to do and now it’s grown into an organization,” says Ketchabaw, who is managing director with DiLiberto artistic director of their company, Fixt Point. “We’re able to provide a lot of jobs for a lot of people.”
Many of these are artists who work in the company’s two Story mobiles: teardrop trailers that they drive around, where they identify interviewees and record their tales.
They’re also the creators of Main Street Ontario, an animated TVO video series about 10 main streets in the province, and they take on side gigs such as The Cyprus Project, an audio/video installation that accompanied Driftwood Theatre’s touring production of Othello this past summer. Their website, thetaleofatown.com, includes an interactive map of their Canadian travels and excerpts of many of their interviews.
While the current tour is a milestone, they say the project is far from over. “We’re looking at our next steps,” DiLiberto says. “There’s a lot more towns and no lack of interest in The Tale of a Town . .. We’re going to continue; not necessarily us, but we’re going to train artists, hire people, send them out, get funding and continue the oral history of main streets and downtowns.”
While towns might not always be the subject, Ketchabaw says he’ll always be “interviewing people and investigating things and working with interesting folks . . . I like finding the extraordinary in ordinary people.” The Tale of a Town — Canada plays at Theatre Passe Muraille, 16 Ryerson Ave., from Dec. 13 to 17 (passemuraille.ca or 416-504-8988); Milton Centre for the Arts on Jan. 20; the First-Ontario Performing Arts Centre in St. Catharines Jan. 25 to 27; the Grand Theatre in Kingston Jan. 30 to Feb. 4; and the Burlington Performing Arts Centre Feb. 8 to 10. Karen Fricker is a Toronto Star theatre critic. She alternates the Wednesday Matinée column with Carly Maga.
“It’s illuminating to hear things that are from another part of the country, yet totally relatable . . . you start to find connectivity.” CHARLES KETCHABAW MANAGING DIRECTOR, FIXT POINT THEATRE