a Treatise on making Canadian Theatre more like Hockey

So far, we’ve examined the current climates of Professional Hockey and Theatre in Canada and found room for Theatre-makers to learn from our peers in the NHL. We’ve discussed how we can translate the visceral personal engagement of sport into the realm of theatre by drawing exclusively from local talent and plays with local relevance, and promoting fandom through competition with regional rival companies in a league format. We’ve explored improved practices that management can adopt to encourage fan base growth and a superior, higher-energy on-stage product by forging connections within the community and collaborative efforts with other local artists and institutions. We’ve analyzed how adding some flare to the on-stage product can be instrumental to attracting new theatre-goers: implementing multimedia displays during scene changes and intermissions to reduce natural lulls in action, pre and post-game interviews to engage with our patrons, and providing inexpensive tickets, refreshments, and merchandise to compel audiences to devote their evening. Finally, we’ve found that emulating Hockey’s Culture of Accountability through the critical discourse of League Reviewers and the dedicated commitment of company management is ultimately the key to bringing Theatre forward into the Canadian Cultural foreground.

If we as an artistic industry have the courage to take these first steps towards reclaiming the relevance of our medium, we have the potential to come together under a collective banner and push one-another as artists to new heights for years to come by way of a little healthy competition. We’ve spent adequate time postulating about those first steps into our new League Theatre structure, now we’ll conclude by looking forward to where these steps might one day lead us, if properly implemented on a provincial or national scale.

Let’s re-examine our 20 company Provincial Theatre League we theorized about earlier, shall we? The League commissioner has laid-out the rules governing scripts, scheduling, and performances, and now our season is underway: 20 Technical Directors are laying the foundations for strong community engagement, 20 Artistic Directors are hiring local playwrights to write relevant stories and talented local companies to perform them, and as a result, 20 communities now have a new cultural hub at which to drink, carouse, come-together, be entertained and spend their money. Audiences are always growing due to aggressive brand-marketing: local ice-rinks, churches, hospitals, schools – cast and crew of the local theatre company are seen at all of them, putting on improv shows, sketch comedy, running raffles or fundraisers, teaching workshops, promoting their new shows and those of their collaborators… They go to the local university and enlist a full volunteer cast of post-secondary actors to do a regular series of experimental performances at their venue, ensuring talented and experienced new cast members for future productions.

Because the company has worked hard raising funds through grants and local business sponsorship they can afford to film lots of great promotional material for multimedia displays and advertisements, as well as a high-quality film recording of their productions themselves. Because the League makes all of this content available on their website (whose name, logo, and web address are featured prominently in the publicity for 20 hardworking companies in the region) and all 20 companies have been making names for themselves touring between locales for competition, even people outside the community begin to take notice – and certain companies begin to draw a larger crowd even when they’re away from their home stage. Audiences gain a new appreciation for their home team when they can see how they stack up against competition from down the highway: Rivalry is born.

The League Reviewers have seen all the season’s productions and reached their verdicts. Reviews have been published on the League website as well as team websites, and probably in print, so audiences have been able to keep apprised of how their local company is doing. As a result, it may not come as a surprise when two of the region’s most popular companies are elected the season’s champions. Audiences in communities whose companies have not made the cut may even decide to make the 45 minute trip to the closest competing city for the finals, where two companies present their most exciting productions of the season and audiences themselves have a chance to help crown the season champion. A $500 cash prize and a handsome trophy go to the winning production, and the League even helps publicize an independent tour of the production in the off-season. Word of mouth spreads and audiences continue to grow throughout the province.

In the next year or two there may even be enough interest to expand the League into a neighbouring province: 20 new companies join in the battle of growing the League and its art form, and now the champions of each provincial league will compete in a new Canadian Theatre League Final, battling to hoist the Theatrical equivalent of the Stanley Cup. News outlets begin to take notice and cover the exploits of their local team and their quest for the cup, the League website generates more traffic on the strength of additional exposure and media content from an expanded number of teams, and audiences continue to grow as a result. With greater recognition the League can continue to grow culturally and financially, and can offer larger cash prizes and more prestigious opportunities for its champions, encouraging more interest from new companies.

With more exposure comes larger audiences, and with larger audiences comes more revenue. Put to proper use by League and Team officials, that revenue can foster further cultural prominence and even more exposure. The League could one day conceivably expand to every province and territory, companies competing primarily within their own regional division, traveling to other geographical areas only for conference or league finals (perhaps one day the League itself could even subsidize team travel and make it even more feasible for budget companies.) As the pool of companies grows, the League will be compelled to relegate certain companies who have floundered, promoting in their place a more deserving company and in turn ensuring a competitive climate within each region, with each team knowing that a continued lack of success means replacement by a new team that will benefit from the support of the League.

This is, of course, an optimistic projection – but I am genuinely convinced that this optimism is justified when I look to the success of Professional Hockey in our Country. While hockey may be “Canada’s Game” I have no doubt that there is room in our collective heart for another performative art form which truly engages audiences and works hard to earn their respect and fandom. Certainly there will be hurdles to overcome, many of them unforeseen by even the savviest of theatre-makers intent on revolutionizing our medium, but the success of the NHL should inspire rather than disillusion us in this pursuit: in theatre as with hockey, the play’s the thing – and any performance that brings a community together to play will be one that can truly capture the Canadian consciousness and remind us that, while the world has been changing all around us, Theatre has not remained in the dark ages.

(Thanks very much for reading – if you missed Parts One through Six, they can be found on the homepage http://www.fallofthefourthwall.wordpress.com in reverse chronological order. If you are involved in a theatre company and would like to be kept abreast of advancements in the Canadian Theatre League movement, please send me an email via the feedback section of this page and I will add to you a mailing list for notifications as I move forward in my attempts to make this dream for Canadian Theatre a reality. As always, please like, share, and discuss in the comments – we’ll all need to work together for this movement to gain traction!)