A Season of cancellations: Quebec Theater Companies Struggle with Funding

Several companies scheduled this season in major theaters, such as the Center du Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui, Espace Go or Périscope, do not obtain their production subsidies. They cannot supplement their budgets.Some choose to cancel performances.Others are moving forward, at their own expense. Is this a generation of sacrificed creators? A look at a new season of the canceled. First text of two.

Companies compensate for the lack of money by setting up their own financing campaign, knowing that, even with success on this front, they will manage, at best, “to put on a show, while giving bargain conditions [to] artists and collaborators,” as summarized by Jon Lachlan Stewart of Surreal SoReal.

Cédrik Lapratte-Roy, 31, left theater school in 2015, director of The Least of Things, sees a funding problem specific to a generation – his own.

His company, like all those named here, was founded roughly ten years ago. None can access operating funding. They have to ask for more money for each project.Money that can be refused each time.

Édith Patenaude, artistic director of Espace Go, hard hit by the domino effect, also believes that a generation of creators is being sacrificed at the altar of poor financing.

“The issue has become systematic,” she wrote to Duty. Of the two seasons she has signed since her arrival at Go, eight shows involved the financial contribution of guest companies. Six of these shows “were underfunded for their project here”.

The considerable increase in the budget of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ), in the last budget, therefore did not resolve all the problems.

And “it’s a massacre on the side of the Canada Council for the Arts,” continues M.^me Patenaude. This contribution usually completes the financial package. “It seems like no one is getting their support anymore. »

According to the artistic director, this poor production funding affects the most exciting companies of the new generations, “those which have proven themselves and are recognized as the new essential figures of contemporary Quebec theater”.

“They have the wind in their sails and must be supported to develop in keeping with the wave they generate through daring, impactful works at the forefront of practice,” believes M.^me Patenaude.

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