While all eyes have been on scandal-ridden Soulpepper Theatre this past month, it bears noting that the city’s other major institutional theatre is also in a period of significant uncertainty around leadership, as well as around its financial state.

Following the resignations last year of its two ranking figures, artistic and general director Matthew Jocelyn and managing director Su Hutchinson, Canadian Stage entered 2018 with the distinct possibility that, come July, it will find itself run by a single interim leader — executive producer Sherrie Johnson, currently double-jobbing as the organization’s interim managing director — and in the midst of two executive job searches.

Canadian Stage also incurred losses of $367,876 in 2017, bringing its accumulated deficit to $1,648,343, effectively erasing the small gains it had made in reducing its debts since 2012.

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Canadian Stage and Soulpepper have arrived at the current moment as a result of different circumstances, decisions and actions, and the intent here is not to equate their situations or trajectories. The cloud of allegations of sexual misconduct and related abuses of power does not hang over Canadian Stage as it does Soulpepper.

But it remains striking that Toronto’s two flagship not-for-profit theatres are both, in their different ways, at points of significant instability and transition.

This prompts questions about whether the leadership model to which both institutions have adhered — a charismatic individual artistic chief representing the theatre’s vision and brand, in both cases a white man — is in need of reconsideration. But it does not appear that Canadian Stage, at least, is ready to shake things up.

When Jocelyn announced last October that he would be leaving Canadian Stage’s helm at the end of June 2018, the theatre said the search for his replacement would begin within weeks. And yet the co-chairs of its board, Alexandra Baillie and Tony Baylis, confirmed to the Star last week that they are in the process of retaining an executive search firm and that official recruitment “has not yet commenced” to find Jocelyn’s successor.

The intervening time has been spent “clarifying (the) organization’s needs.” Amongst the decisions made is that Jocelyn’s position of artistic and general director will be split into two jobs, artistic director and executive director, in recognition that “both skillsets are equally important to the future success of the company.”

Such a shift could have a major effect on the theatre’s internal culture, spreading responsibility between two individuals who will report to the board, as opposed to the current structure in which the managing director reports to Jocelyn.

It does not represent much of an innovation, however, in that it follows the dual-leadership model followed by all other producing theatres in the city, one in which, despite such shared responsibility, the artistic director serves as the organization’s public face and voice.

Alternatives to such models — the topic of much conversation at the moment in the city’s theatre circles — include multiple or successive curators rather than a single artistic director, which could allow for a greater diversity of creative visions and more varied types of programming.

When asked whether Canadian Stage had considered such alternative leadership models, Baillie and Baylis’s response was startling: as far as they are concerned, their organization already employs one. They point to the roles of executive producer Johnson and dramaturge and artistic associate Birgit Schreyer Duarte in contributing to the international, esthetically adventurous and cross-disciplinary programming that is widely considered Jocelyn’s hallmark: “We would like to demystify the notion that one individual has been or is responsible for the success of Canadian Stage.”

Such mystification, however, has been propagated by Canadian Stage itself: it’s Jocelyn alone who has spoken publicly about the company’s work and his curation of it; his photograph that has smiled out from season brochures and show programs; and his name alone that sits underneath the company name in its logo. While it’s useful to note the role of others in curation of its seasons, to present this now as evidence of nonhierarchical artistic leadership comes across as revisionist history.

Whoever comes in to replace Jocelyn will step quite literally into his programming shoes: he will announce the 2018-19 season in mid-February and the new artistic director will deliver it along with the rest of the curatorial team. Baillie and Baylis affirm that, going forward, they’re looking for an artistic director to “build on the mission, mandate and multidisciplinary programming” that Jocelyn established and which they “celebrate as an organization.”

Amongst the other challenges awaiting the new leadership will be staff retention, which Baillie and Baylis identify as “a priority”: there have been a number of significant departures in recent years, and the theatre recently advertised for both a new director of marketing and communications and associate director of government and community relations.

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As regards finances, some good news is that the theatre is being held at its existing annual grant level ($471,800) by the Canada Council for the Arts, in decisions announced publicly this week. But working under an accumulated deficit that nears 20 per cent of its annual revenues is a daunting prospect: Baillie and Baylis say a deficit reduction plan has been crafted and that “deficit elimination remains a priority.”

Unless the board have a new artistic director already in mind, it seems highly unlikely that he or she will be in place by the time Jocelyn leaves: five months is a short time for the kind of high-flyer capable of taking on these responsibilities to make themselves available. The executive director search will start up after that for artistic director, but it is considered best practice for the artistic leader to have their say in who their counterpart will be, so that person is not likely not to be in place anytime soon either.

For the ongoing good of its existing staff and audiences, and for the artistic life of the city as a whole, one certainly hopes that strong figures will step up to the plate at Canadian Stage. But for the moment, it looks like fresh ideas for leadership in Toronto theatre will need to happen elsewhere.