With federal funding in question, four theatre leaders reflect on the joys and trials of performing arts venues

Speaking in Draft is an interview series in which Intermission staff writer Nathaniel Hanula-James speaks with some of the artistic voices shaping Canadian theatre today. The column invites artists to share nascent manifestoes, ask difficult questions, and throw down the gauntlet at the feet of a glorious, frustrating art form.

It’s a high-stakes time for Canada’s performing arts spaces. 

In Toronto alone, several beloved rehearsal and performance venues have recently faced closure, or narrowly avoided it. In January 2024, the nonprofit Artscape entered receivership after becoming insolvent. The Fleck Dance Theatre at Queens Quay shut its doors last March. And, at the end of 2025, Bygone Theatre closed down the Bridge, which offered indie artists affordable space at a rate of 10 dollars per hour, after corporate landlord Allied Properties REIT cancelled its lease. 

Don’t get me wrong: there’s also been plenty of positive venue news. With the support of the city and several other organizations, two new nonprofits took charge of several spaces once managed by Artscape. Toronto Stage Company has acquired the lease for the Fleck, which re-opened this past December as the Terminal Theatre. And in 2022, Young People’s Theatre finished a massive renovation and expansion of its facilities which had been years in the making. But even with these brick-and-mortar victories, the future of our arts spaces remains precarious. 

With this in mind, I was curious to meet with four leaders whose venues represent a cross-section of Canada’s theatre landscape, to learn more about the highs and lows of venue management. 

Eric Woolfe is the self-styled caretaker of the Red Sandcastle, Toronto’s oldest indie storefront theatre and home to Woolfe’s company Eldritch Theatre. Catherine Savoie is the artistic and managing director of the Montreal-based Repercussion Theatre, a Shakespeare-focused Anglophone company that turns the city’s parks into temporary venues every summer. Evan Klassen is executive director of the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, which was Canada’s first English-language regional theatre. And, as executive director, Heather Redfern oversees the Cultch, one of Vancouver’s largest and most dynamic presenting theatres.

Schedules dictated that I wasn’t able to meet with all four leaders at once. Klassen, Red, and Savoie joined me for a Zoom roundtable; a one-on-one video call with Woolfe followed later that day. In the best way, these conversations felt like a burst pipe: a generous stream of insight, ideas, and calls to action. The next time I go to the theatre as an audience member, I’ll be thinking about more than the stories onstage. I’ll be wondering how much the HVAC costs, who cleans up the candy wrappers at the end of each show, and whose job it is to turn out the lights once we’ve all gone home. 

These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

 Could you tell me a bit about your respective organizations’ venues?

Heather Redfern (HR): The original building, the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, has been a cultural space for 53 years, and was originally a church. In 2009, we expanded the Cultch into what was the parking lot. Around that same time, we were also renovating the York Theatre on Commercial Drive. That project was completed in 2013. In 2016, we renovated the building next to the original cultural centre, called the Greenhouse. It used to be a manse for the church. The city owns all three buildings. We pay them a nominal rent of one dollar a year. 

Evan Klassen (EK): At Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre (Royal MTC), we have two theatres. There’s the John Hirsch mainstage in the Exchange District, which is a national historic site. It’s approximately 780 seats. The building opened in 1970. We operate the building and undertake all of its maintenance, but it’s owned by the Manitoba Centennial Centre Corporation (MCCC), which is a provincial crown corporation. Our Tom Hendry theatre is a converted 1940s warehouse. It’s approximately 250 seats. It’s also owned by MCCC. 

Catherine Savoie (CS): We have an office, but we don’t have a fixed theatre venue. We’re in a pretty unique situation, even for Shakespeare in the park, because we don’t perform in only one place. This summer, we have 23 shows in 19 different parks. 

What’s one rewarding thing about a venue you manage, or engage with? 

CS: Accessibility. Doing the tour for the first time last year, I’d never seen so many theatre attendees who use wheelchairs at the same show. Plus, because we go from borough to borough, audiences don’t have to travel far. In the park, it’s like every performance is a relaxed performance. 

EK: Royal MTC was imagined as a theatre for all Manitobans. That’s baked into the DNA of the building. Our lobby was built with these giant two-storey windows, facing onto Rorie Street. In the evening, if you’re passing the theatre, you see the light from the lobby shining out as a lantern into the community, welcoming people. 

HR: Welcoming spaces are hugely important. We worked with Henriquez Partners Architects to rebuild the York’s lobby. Similar to Royal MTC, what I really wanted was a sense that, if you were walking down the street and happened to look into the building, it would be like you were an audience watching a stage. So the architect did this beautiful red frame of tile around these huge windows. We’re in a fairly low-income neighbourhood, so it’s been very important for us to have that sense of openness and interaction.

What are some of the challenges you face?

CS: Climate change — flash storms, air quality, extreme heat. Inclement weather can be a lot more sudden than it used to be. Also, in Quebec, we have a provincial government that’s not really interested in minority languages [such as English]. Each borough of Montreal has a maison de la culture with its own limited budget, but funding minority language projects isn’t part of the city’s strategic plan. So boroughs don’t necessarily have the money to purchase a show from us.

HR: I did building projects from the time I started at the Cultch in 2007 until 2017. I was doing construction of major buildings for 10 years. It’s kind of terrifying, because now I’ve been here long enough that things are starting to break and need to be replaced.

EK: We maintain our buildings. If something happens — the roof collapses, the boiler needs work — we’re on the hook for that. At the same time, we don’t own the asset, and so there can be a struggle between us and the province: When does the landlord step in? 

The mainstage is almost 60 years old and is reaching a critical phase in terms of theatre systems and accessibility. There are 40 steps down to the front row, and 40 steps back up, and limited spaces for folks in wheelchairs or who have other access needs. The Warehouse theatre has an aging roof that’s leaking. A stage manager’s prompt book was ruined recently by water dripping down onto their desk. 

What’s something about your work with venues that might come as a surprise?

EK: There’s no money tree. Fundraising to maintain these buildings is hard work. It’s individual relationships. It’s building supporters who rally around these needs. Some of our supporters were around in 2002 when Royal MTC did its last big update. That’s almost 30 years ago now. A lot of those folks say, ‘Well, we did that. We fixed that lobby.’ But 30 years on, that carpet is now threadbare. The needs are cyclical and ever-expanding. 

CS: One thing people might not think about is the size of Repercussion’s team. During production, about 20 people move around, set up, and strike every day, not including the cast. Because we’re outside, and our stage isn’t huge, people might think our work is fairly simple. But we need to set up a sound booth, lighting, and the stage every day, and then we need to take it down and pack it away and do it somewhere else the next day.

HR: What people don’t know about running buildings is how many things need to be done that are nobody’s job. Whose job is it to let the pest control people in? Whose job is it to pick up the garbage at the end of the show?

Ultimately, when you’re running a tight organization, if it’s nobody else’s job, it’s yours. I do a lot of things that people don’t know I do. I scrub the showers in the dressing room sometimes, and clean the lobby and the public washrooms when our cleaner is sick and can’t come in between shows. It’s not just me, it’s the other management staff as well. 

EK: When we talk about the hidden roles in running these venues, our reliance on volunteers to operate our venues is very high. We have about 600 volunteers annually who serve as ushers.

This means we’re managing volunteers’ expectations too. They tend to skew a little bit older, and come with their own access needs and their own sense of what welcoming is — which may or may not be my sense of what welcoming is.

CS: We have a welcome team at every show to help people figure out where to sit, where the bathrooms are, because obviously they’re not in the same place every day. We try to make our location for each performance clear on social media. All our communications are bilingual, and we offer [captions]: the script is available online in French and English. 

Heather, you mentioned 10 years of overseeing major construction projects. What did it feel like to accompany those over such a stretch of time? 

HR: I love it, honestly. It’s way more fun to do it than it is to try and raise the money for it. Funding is changing. At Canadian Heritage, the Cultural Spaces Fund is going away for buildings. In future, they’ll only be able to fund equipment. Arts organizations and arts centres are going to have to apply to a new housing and infrastructure ministry program, which hasn’t been created yet, in order to access funds. So I’m very concerned that federal [funding] for cultural infrastructure in this country has completely disappeared. 

EK: It’s a huge problem. The federal government says it wants to make this Building Canada Strong capital investment, but we have no clarity about whether there’s going to be an arts stream, or whether we’re going to be lumped in with every gymnasium and community hall around the country that’s falling apart. We bring new Canadian works, new Indigenous works, new culturally rich works to the stage. We need the spaces to be able to do that.

Right now, we should be lobbying to make sure there’s a carve-out for arts money, because we just can’t go up against hockey rinks and swimming pools. Our needs are different.

HR: We need a letter-writing campaign. Gregor Robertson, who used to be Vancouver’s mayor, is minister of housing and infrastructure. The York Theatre was actually his city council’s first signature project, so he has an awareness of [how important performing arts venues are]. We should be lobbying him right now.

I hope people read this and write some letters! 

EK: Cut the red tape and give more funding to the arts.

Evan, I know you said there’s no money tree — but if you all had infinite funds, what would be your biggest dreams for your venues? 

EK: We have these ambitions of being a hub for all of Manitoba. We need more circulation space, classroom space, space for people to break bread together and enjoy a meal, both pre- and post-show. We need artist co-working spaces. Internally, our workshops are too small: we need to increase our shop capacity, our paint space, props and wardrobe. 

We need more rehearsal halls, artist studios, and accommodation. We employ between 70 and 80 per cent Manitoban artists each year, but we’re necessarily bringing in colleagues from around the country for collaboration and cross-pollination. Building some purpose-built artist accommodations that we control and have access to is something we’re looking at. 

The number one complaint we get from people is ‘there’s no parking.’ There are more condos, more residents, and so parking’s become really limited. I would love nothing more than to own a parkade, where people who come to the theatre could park for free.

CS: More flexibility. We could have at least an extra week of shows, to make up for any that are cancelled because of weather. And we’d simply go to more parks! Our shows depend on towns and boroughs being able to book us, so it would be wonderful to go to places that don’t necessarily have the money, or have the bilingual status required to get funding for minority-language performances. 

HR: Here’s a big, hairy dream: I would love for the Cultch to own a hotel on Commercial Drive. Right now rents are going up, we’re losing independent businesses, we’re seeing papered-over windows. It’s so depressing! If we had a hotel, we’d have places for tourists, we could improve the economy of the street, and we’d have places for visiting artists to stay. 

It would be amazing if we had a commercial kitchen. More and more, especially when you’re doing Indigenous programming, you need to have feasts, you need to have meals. People would often prefer to do their own thing, rather than bring in a caterer.

EK: Imagine the culinary variety that could accompany a show. And I love the hotel idea. 

HR: We looked at converting a house. That’s four-million dollars in this neighbourhood. But I would love for the Cultch to own our property. There’s a move afoot to have not-for-profits actually own their facilities instead of the city. We need to control our own buildings.

Woolfe wasn’t able to join this first conversation, but we connected later that day to talk about his experience running one of Toronto’s stalwart indie performance spaces. 

Can you introduce your venue?

Eric Woolfe (EW): The Red Sandcastle’s been operational for about 15 years. It was started by Rosemary Doyle, [now artistic director of Theatre Kingston]. Before it was a theatre, the building was a restaurant, then a pottery studio. I can only go back 30 years. The building itself is over 100 years old. 

Eldritch was one of the first theatre companies to rent it. During the pandemic, Rosemary said she was either going to close Red Sandcastle or pass it on to us, so Eldritch took it over about five years ago. We updated all the lights and seating, and we’ve been working to make it a place that attracts magicians, puppetry companies, circus-based entertainers: a wider variety of the quirkier arts.

I love walking by your windows on Queen Street East. They’re always so wonderfully decorated.

EW: Our windows are done by a couple of sideshow entertainers, Karl and Lesley Thurston-Brown. Every four months they put on a new exhibit. The windows and the bathroom on the stage have become the two iconic symbols of Red Sandcastle.

What’s one challenging thing about running an indie venue?

EW: The most challenging thing is that it’s really just me. Emma Mackenzie Hillier helps me keep Eldritch Theatre together, but she focuses more on programming and grant applications than the venue. 

I’m the magic consultant on this season’s production of The Tempest at Stratford. In one of our early meetings, [Stratford’s outgoing artistic director] Antoni Cimolino, [who’s also directing the production], said: ‘Thanks for coming down. I know you have your own little theatre to run.’ 

I said, ‘You know how it is, Anthony. Things are going just fine, then all of a sudden someone calls because the toilet’s broken. You’ve got to leave whatever artistic stuff you’re doing, go down and unclog the toilet. That’s the real problem with running a theatre, isn’t it?’ 

There were about five full seconds of silence where he tried to decide if I was joking or not. 

What’s been the most rewarding thing?

EW: I’m delighted by the number of people who just wander in off the street when a show’s going on. We’re becoming a place in the east end for people to find really neat work. Plus it’s great to have a place to cook our own, weird, horror-puppet-magic shows.

I remember, when I was much younger, reading about the Grand Guignol in Paris, and Charles Ludlam’s theatre, and New York in the ‘80s: all these places that were home to really exciting, offbeat theatre. It’s cool to feel like, in our own small way, Eldritch and Red Sandcastle are doing something like that in Toronto.

What’s something you wish more people knew about Red Sandcastle?

EW: It’s haunted. Rosemary used to joke about it. But when we first put in security cameras, I had to turn them off at night because alarms that something was in the space would be going off every five minutes. So I adjusted the cameras to only go off if a human-shaped thing was there. But it would still detect human shapes all night long. 

If you had infinite money and carte blanche, what would be your dreams for the space?

EW: The place needs better air conditioning. I wish the seats were a little more comfortable. But what I wouldn’t change is the size! I love that it’s only 45 seats. We need more 50-seat theatres, because let’s face it: How often do more than 50 people come to your indie show? So a place where you can have 50 seats and the math works is a kind of little miracle to me.

WRITTEN BY

Nathaniel Hanula-James

Nathaniel Hanula-James is a multidisciplinary theatre artist who has worked across Canada as a dramaturg, playwright, performer, and administrator.

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