Soulpepper Theatre Company announced it will cancel next week’s 2018 debut production Amadeus at the request of its artists and has severed ties with Albert Schultz’s wife, executive director Leslie Lester.

“We reached a consensus to recommend not to continue with the show. Amadeus was directed by Albert Schultz. We believe (plaintiffs) Diana Bentley, Kristin Booth, Patricia Fagan, and Hannah Miller, and stand with them,” said Soulpepper actors and designers on the Amadeus production, in a statement.

The statement was written on behalf of 33 Soulpepper artists, including the new artistic director Alan Dilworth, acknowledging “there has been an unhealthy workplace culture for a long time.”

Schultz and Soulpepper were served with multimillion-dollar civil lawsuits on Thursday by the four women, who claim that the 54-year-old sexually abused and harassed them in what they all characterized as “Soulpepper’s best-known secret.”

The actresses are seeking a total of $4.25 million in damages from Soulpepper, and $3.6 million from Schultz.

The claims detailed in the four lawsuits have not been proven in court. Soulpepper and Schultz have not yet filed a statement of defence.

The 33 artists who signed the statement said they face “a lot of questions and a lot of uncertainty, but we are determined to reimagine the future at Soulpepper by grappling with where the company has come from, facing difficult questions, in order for healing and transformation to take place.”

The names of four other Soulpepper actors — Ted Dykstra, Stuart Hughes, Michelle Monteith and Rick Roberts — who resigned in a show of solidarity with the women, are not listed in the statement.

On Friday, a representative of the actors said there are “a couple of internal questions that need to be answered” before they are able to discuss the status of their affiliation with the company.

Lester, Schultz’s wife, had temporarily stepped down from her role as executive director when the board announced an investigation into Schultz on Wednesday. The board said it was severing ties with her on Saturday.

“We are committed to a process of reflection, renewal and change,” the executive committee of Soulpepper’s board of directors said in statement.

Plaintiffs speak to press after filing a lawsuit alleging sexual harassment by Soulpepper Theatre Company director Albert Schultz.

“Unfortunately, we did not know that Albert Schultz was alleged to have engaged in any harassment. No such complaints ever made their way to the board.”

The board’s executive committee said extensive inquiries were made about other potential issues of harassment following the investigation into guest artist Laszlo Marton.

It said an independent review by a workplace policy expert in fall of 2017 also did not yield further concerns, leading the board to be “further assured” about its policies and procedures to create a safe workplace.

“That said, this situation has brought home to us that policies alone do not create such a culture. We understand why many artists in the Soulpepper community felt that raising concerns about the safety of the Soulpepper workplace was very difficult,” the committee said in its statement.

The abuse allegations has led the federal Heritage ministry to re-examine the cultural organizations that receive funding from Ottawa.

“Following the wave of reports and allegations about harassment in the cultural sector and beyond, we are currently reviewing our existing funding policies to ensure that recipient organizations promote healthy and harassment-free work environments,” Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly wrote on Twitter.

In a statement Friday, the ministry said it’s reviewing its funding policies to ensure that “recipient organizations promote healthy and harassment-free work environments” and comply with the public sector’s ethics code.

The ministry said “recent events” have prompted it to reaffirm a zero-tolerance approach to harassment on the job, though Schultz was not named in the statement.

Founded in 1998, Soulpepper is one of Canada’s most prestigious stages and paid training programs, with an annual budget of $12 million to run its year-round shows.

The company has received almost $3 million worth of grant funding since 1999 from the Canada Council for the Arts, which reports to Parliament through Canadian Heritage. In the 2016-17 fiscal year, Soulpepper was awarded $185,850 in total through audience development and multi-year operational grants.

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Theatre Ontario, which offers programs and services to the performing arts community in the province, issued a statement denouncing sexual misconduct on the heels of the civil lawsuits.

The organization noted it has observed “the steady rise of whispers” on what they believe to be “part of a greater pattern in our theatre community, one that is regretfully not new.”

“Even though it is individuals that have been perpetrators, it is our institutions, associations and agencies that have failed to expect and demand greater accountability and action,” the statement said.

With files from Canadian Press