The new management of Canadian Stage is making its first big announcement and it’s not about a world-premiere commission nor some other programming coup. Rather, it’s a commitment to upgrade the way the company does business and to retire its accumulated $1.6-million deficit — a liability that has dogged the company since its founding 30 years ago.

This new chapter for Canadian Stage involves a five-year strategic planning process under the guidance of American arts consultant Michael M. Kaiser and a fundraising “transformation campaign” that, five months in, has already raised $2.8 million, including two gifts of $1 million each — one from Marilyn and Charles Baillie and one from Sandra Simpson.

The company is committing to cut its deficit in half by the end of this season and eradicate it totally by no later than 2021.

Leading with news of institutional change is partly a product of “cycles of activity,” says artistic director Brendan Healy — he and executive director Monica Esteves are finalizing their debut 2019-20 season, which will be announced this spring. But it’s also intended to address concerns about “the institutional stability of Canadian Stage,” which Healy says are often raised.

“It’s important to communicate that things are looking really good institutionally. To make sure that people understand that we are moving forward institutionally as well as artistically,” says Healy.

Kaiser was in Toronto last week to promote his strategic planning work with Canadian Stage, a process that is scheduled to take six months. Remarkably, while he’s worked in 83 other countries, this is the first time he’s worked with a Canadian arts organization. “I’ve never been asked,” he says.

Kaiser is known as the “turnaround king,” famed for taking on the leadership of arts organizations in dire straits — including London’s Royal Opera House, the American Ballet Theatre and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater — and realigning their fortunes.

Both Healy and Kaiser underline, however, that Canadian Stage is not in turnaround and that Kaiser’s work here is consultancy, not a management takeover.

“This is not an organization that is in desperate trouble that needs to have (that) sort of emergency intervention,” says Kaiser. “Whenever you bring in a new artistic leader at an important organization, it’s a time to reflect on how are you going to move forward? What does the new artistic director want to say and do? And how is that going to also affect the way the whole organization supports that person in that vision?”

When Canadian Stage was founded in 1988 through the merger of Toronto Free Theatre and CentreStage, it brought those companies’ liabilities with them, a figure that totalled $1 million. Two years later that debt had doubled and the board of directors asked for (and received) the resignation of artistic director Guy Sprung due to concerns about his leadership, including the company’s mounting debts.

Successive directorates have paid the accumulated deficit down somewhat and built it back up; Healy acknowledges the debts as “a consistent problem.” Freeing the company from this financial burden will have a number of effects: “When you’re carrying such a large deficit you have to organize the operations of the company around the maintenance of that,” says Healy. “It prevents the organization from dreaming, to be honest, about big projects, big capital projects. Liberating ourselves from that will allow us to make some big bold decisions about our future.”

There are also optics: “Carrying a large deficit brings a perception of the company’s viability. I think that Canadian Stage has proven to be a really, really, really important centre in Toronto and Canada, but the deficit works against this positive image,” says Healy.

One of the touchstones of Kaiser’s fundraising approach is the creation and maintenance of a community of supporters, an affiliation he describes in familial terms: “You need to go to your best family members, the most potent family members to have them help you, but you also have to give them the promise of what’s to come,” says Kaiser. “So it’s not just about getting rid of the deficit, it’s about establishing stability so we can accomplish X, Y and Z.”

Undertaking this approach appears to be working for Canadian Stage: 25 individuals, including every member of the organization’s board and Healy himself, have contributed to the transformation campaign. In honour of their $1-million contribution, the Berkeley Street Downstairs Theatre is being renamed the Marilyn and Charles Baillie Theatre; Sandra Simpson’s $1-million gift is made in recognition of the company’s “innovative artistic program” and will support its continued work in putting “the work of Canadian contemporary artists in an international conversation,” the company says.

While he is tight-lipped about details of the upcoming season, Healy says he intends to continue in the programming vein established by his predecessor, Matthew Jocelyn: an emphasis on interdisciplinary work, bringing “some of the most innovative artists from around the world to have a dialogue with local artists,” and making the company “a nexus point for contemporary dialogue in the performing arts.”

A priority for organizational change is staff leadership, says Healy. While Canadian Stage is “blessed with solid staff members,” he says, “there are some key positions … where we haven’t necessarily had the capacity to bring in best in field to enable us to really take our organization to the next level.” Recent hires include director of production Elissa Horscroft, who arrives from the Stratford Festival, and senior director of marketing and communications Jim Valentine, an industry vet who spent many years at Mirvish Productions. Healy says a “top of field” appointment to lead the development department is imminent.

Another focus will be on facilities. The brick building at 26 Berkeley St. has always been Canadian Stage’s HQ, but it “needs some love,” says Healy, acknowledging that the building “hasn’t really received any kind of substantial capital upgrades in decades.”

No. 1 in Kaiser’s 10 rules for positive change in arts organizations — espoused in his writings and in public talks including one last week in Toronto, co-sponsored by Canadian Stage and Business/Arts — is that such change needs a leader, a person with “a single unified vision for the organization” (the quote is from Kaiser’s book The Art of the Turnaround). This strategy has proven highly effective; it’s also hierarchal and patriarchal. The present announcement would seem to position Healy as such a singular leader, though both Healy and Esteves report to the board of directors, whereas Jocelyn served as both artistic and general director, with a managing director reporting to him.

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When I put this to Healy, he says that both he and Esteves will be the organization’s voices, and that both of them are “in service of” Canadian Stage’s mission. Hired in November, Esteves has been moving back and forth between Canadian Stage and Crow’s Theatre, where she was managing director, and was a big part of the week of activities with Kaiser, says Healy. She will be at Canadian Stage full-time by March.

Healy is one of Canada’s most powerful queer arts leaders. He began his career as an actor, trained as a director at the National Theatre School and, from 2009 to 2015, was artistic director of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. In a followup phone interview after we meet with Kaiser, I ask Healy how his queer identity is informing his leadership of Canadian Stage. Referencing the performance artist Andrea Fraser, he talks about moving from “a critique of institutions to institutions as critique.”

“Healthy institutions should regularly question themselves and be open to external forces,” says Healy. “That is what I hope to bring to Canadian Stage, to ensure that there is a vital, critical, self-aware conversation happening within the company, so that we are not resting on our laurels or thinking that we have figured that all out. I like to think that as a leader I can hold space for that.”