Out of the red, into the future
A venerable theatre company has made big strides erasing its deficit — now it is able to make ambitious plans
Canadian Stage, one of Toronto’s flagship arts organizations, has achieved its goal of cutting its $1.6-million deficit in half in a single year.
Last year, as reported in the Star, Canadian Stage’s new artistic director Brendan Healy and executive director Monica Esteves declared their intention to retire the debt that has dogged the organization throughout its 30-plus years. This is the first pillar in a five-year strategic planning process launched under the guidance of American arts consultant Michael Kaiser.
Over the course of its 2018-19 season, Canadian Stage made enough money to pay down half of its accumulated deficit, and
Healy and Esteves say that in the 201920 season they intend to shave off another $300-400,000. “We’re building our season for next year (2020-21) with another surplus to eliminate it completely,” says Esteves, referring to the deficit as an “ogre” that’s haunted Canadian Stage since its creation in 1987 out of the merger of CentreStage and Toronto Free Theatre — both of which brought debts with them.
Healy says that shrinking the debt is having a transformative effect. The deficit “is the lowest it’s been since 2005 and it’s created a kind of energy and hope and vitality in the organization.”
They achieved this initially through a transformation campaign, to which 25 donors contributed a total of $2.8 million. In addition to debt retirement, those funds are going into artistic and organizational investments, artistic program development, and the strategic planning process itself.
The question then becomes how to sustain the momentum. An “initial fundraising burst” is a great thing, Kaiser says, “but that’s not enough to make health. Health then comes from an ongoing process of making great art and marketing it well and building a family of people who care about you.” This is where strategic planning comes in, in a process led by Kaiser over the past year, involving over 200 interviews with artists, funders, and community members.
“The outcome of those conversations was a real confirmation that the mission, the basic mission of Canadian Stage is to create space for the contemporary
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Canadian voice on a big stage that is totally relevant and that people feel passionately about,” Healy says, “which is why I’m here, which is why Monica is here. So it was great to just have that reaffirmed.”
From a nuts-and-bolts perspective, the intent is to continue deficit reduction through careful season budgeting, “so that on the expense side, we have meaningful contingencies,” Esteves says, “and we’re not being aspirational in our revenues.”
Taking its place as “Canada’s leading performing arts organization” — as Canadian Stage’s strategic plan states — involves a renewed commitment to supporting artists in developing new work, something that had “fallen a little bit off the table at the organization,” Healy says.
Mel Hague, formerly director of the Rhubarb Festival and residency program director at Buddies in Bad Times (which Healy ran between 2009-15), has joined Canadian Stage as associate artistic director. Hague’s bailiwick, says Healy, is “making sure that we’re organizing ourselves around supporting artists in developing work, particularly for the big stage.”
Another priority has been improving the organization’s systems and internal culture: “We are investing into the institution, the systems, the processes, and the people that are going to make sure that we’re delivering really high-quality marketing, development, fundraising, customer experience, like the whole gamut,” Healy says. The theatre had been having difficulty retaining staff, and when Healy and Esteves took over, a number of director-level positions were vacant. Following a number of hires, “we have a full staff complement for the first time in quite a while,” Esteves says, “with a team that we’re really excited about” including director of development Steven Endicott and director of marketing and communications T.J. Tasker.
Those waiting for a big Canadian Stage announcement about bricks and mortar are going to have to wait a bit longer. While the planning process has identified facilities as “our most critical issue,” Healy says, more research and planning is required before they make decisions about their three premises: the theatres and office space at 26 Berkeley St., the St. Lawrence Centre and the High Park Amphitheatre. Key concerns already identified include the need for space useful in developing new work, and accessibility — the upstairs theatre at Berkeley Street is not accessible, which Esteves acknowledges is a significant concern.
Two further areas of focus are the continued expansion and nurturing of donors (in Kaiser’s parlance, a “family of supporters”), and improved links with the theatre’s immediate community in the St. Lawrence area. “The Esplanade is an incredible neighbourhood,” says Healy . “It’s like a model for a mixeduse urban redevelopment … between the Berkeley site and the Bluma Appel Theatre, there’s this huge community of people, some of whom know who we are, but not nearly enough.”
It’s with the publication of the strategic plan this week that Kaiser bows out of the picture: it’s now it’s up to Healy, Esteves and their board and team to implement the plan he helped develop. This was Kaiser’s first Canadian gig, and among his observations of the Toronto scene is that there’s money out there: “it feels like there’s more potential for fundraising than is currently being tapped,” he says.