Newsletter
October / November 2008

Accessible To Audiences

by Brandon Moore
Communications Coordinator

The audience is essential to theatre. The art depends upon it; the institution cannot thrive without it.

And while we can debate about how far we go to meet the desires of our audiences; no one would argue that theatres must always be keeping the audience in mind. But in Ontario, when it comes to audiences with disabilities, it’s now a matter of law.

On January 1st of this year, the Accessibility Standards for Customer Service (O. Reg. 429/07) came into force. Theatres with one or more employees in Ontario have until January 1, 2012 to be in full compliance with this standard. (There is a 2010 deadline for a number of designated organizations; a review of the list suggests that college, university and public school theatre programs may have to meet this earlier deadline.)

Like many regulations, it can be challenging when it comes to interpreting the standard for a theatre. The standard addresses “customer service” for “goods and services”; terms that are not always (if ever) part of the theatrical vocabulary. One of the things that the guide to the standards makes clear is that it is the “provision” of the goods and services—and not the goods and services themselves—that must be accessible. (The example given is a store that carries printed forms and templates for drafting wills must comply with the customer service standard in how it serves its customers and sells those documents. It is not required to provide accessible goods, such as accessible versions of forms and templates.)

There are eleven requirements under the standard. Broadly summarized, theatres must:
1) Establish policies and procedures for providing goods and services;
2) Ensure consistency of those policies with certain core principles;
3) Establish policy for use of personal assistive devices;
4) Communicate with a person with disability in a manner that takes into account his or her disability;
5) Allow access by service animals;
6) Permit use of support persons;
7) Provide notice of admission charges for support persons;
8) Provide notice of disruptions;
9) Train all staff, volunteers and contractors on specified topics from the standard;
10) Train staff, volunteer and contractors responsible for developing policies;
11) Establish process for feedback.
If you have more than 20 employees, there are also requirements for documentation of these policies, and for making those documents available in a format that takes into account persons with disabilities.

Theatre Ontario has begun work on a project to help our members implement this standard comprehensively. Research and interpretation is our first step, and I’m interested in talking with any theatres that have existing policies in these areas. We’re also exploring funding opportunities for delivering the policy and training requirements of this standard.

A Theatre Update From Last Summer

by Tim Chapman
Professional Theatre Coordinator

Yes, it is now “last summer.” How quickly they go by. Between John Goddard and myself, we were delighted to attend shows at seventeen Ontario theatres this past summer, including fourteen which are 2008 members of ASTRO (Association of Summer Theatres ‘Round Ontario.)

My travels started with a trip to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in June to see Hamlet with Ben Carlson. I did not get to see his Hamlet in Chicago last year, so I was not going to miss him again. I have known Ben since he was a young teenager absolutely into playing the double bass, not at all into acting. I may be a bit subjective but I thought he was a superb Hamlet—youthful, passionate, literate, ironic with a really impressive command of the huge amount of poetry in the role. And I am not the only one impressed. He received critical raves in Toronto and Charles Isherwood in the New York Times, who also saw the Chicago Hamlet, says Ben “is a well-trained classicist whose performance in the role remains compelling.”

In early July came a first visit to the Festival Players of Prince Edward County to see Goodnight Desdemona, Good Morning Juliet by Ann-Marie MacDonald. Now in its third season—first under current Artistic Director Sarah Phillips—the Festival Players each season present a Governor-General’s Award-winning play. Desdemona was this season’s choice, and I thought they gave it a really superb production. It was well paced by director Jennifer Brewin, Julie Stewart gave a great comic performance in the lead role, and the production values were solid. The Festival’s season of four Canadian shows ran just from July 2 to 26 in four different venues in Prince Edward County, the largest being the Regent Theatre in Picton. Sarah is committed to another season next year, but summer theatre is never easy without any support from the Ontario Arts Council and with only in-kind support of rehearsal and performance space from the county.

Just an hour away from Picton, just outside of Campbellford, is the Westben Arts Festival Theatre now in its ninth season. Westben is primarily a music festival—mainly classical and jazz—but it has also programmed theatre, and Artistic Director Brian Finley told me he hopes to do more in the future. Westben joined ASTRO for the first time in 2008, so I attended a Broadway concert there on July 25th at its uniquely fine facility “The Barn” set in the beautifully landscaped countryside. Nearly filled to its 400-seat capacity, the concert of Lerner and Loewe was extremely well received on that sunny afternoon. I came away very impressed with the whole event; one feels in good hands from arrival to departure.

I journeyed further along in Eastern Ontario to see Thousand Islands Playhouse’s production of the big musical, Les Misérables, for which Artistic Director Greg Wanless finally received the rights. Greg and the Playhouse rose to the challenge with a rousing, well-conceived production, adapted well to a smaller stage. Box office for the show was booming. Greg said the season started slowly so he was thankful to be catching up. Next up is John Mighton’s outstanding play Half Life. I am tickled that residents of the area will get to see Kingstonian Carolyn Hetherington’s beautiful performance. She has been with the show since the original production in 2005. I did not get up to Upper Canada Playhouse in Morrisburg, but Artistic Director Donnie Bowes says they had a great summer running about 98.5% attendance with just one show to go, David S. Craig’s Having Hope at Home. They introduced a successful spring show this season celebrating the 50th anniversary of the St. Lawrence Seaway.

On the other side of Toronto, I attended shows at the Lighthouse Festival in Port Dover, at the Drayton Festival Theatre, and at The Shaw. At Lighthouse I saw Norm Foster’s Mending Fences directed by Artistic Director Chris McHarge with Norm Foster himself acting in this funny and moving three-hander. It was one of those grand nights in the theatre when the audience and the performers are totally connecting with each other making it a memorable experience. It is the third show of the 2008 Lighthouse season and Chris says he is really happy with attendance, noting an increase so far over the successful 2007 season. At the Shaw Festival I have seen three shows this summer, Belle Moral, Getting Married and The Stepmother. Rarely am I disappointed by The Shaw and, to no surprise, I really enjoyed all three. Congratulations to The Shaw on their news in July that, thus far, tickets sales were running 8% ahead of 2007. Drayton Entertainment, with its six venues in Drayton, Grand Bend, Penetanguishene and St. Jacobs, have been a major player for a number of years in successfully attracting Ontarians to the theatre. In August I saw Steel Magnolias in Drayton. Believe it or not, it was my first time seeing the play and I never saw the popular movie. It was a fine production of this charmer and the audience appropriately gave it a standing ovation. Karen Stewart gave me some great news from the Blyth Festival. Overall attendance this season is significantly higher than last year and their last show, Innocence Lost: a play about Steven Truscott by Beverly Cooper, was held over for an extra week. At the Shaw Directors Day, Robert More, Artistic Director of Victoria Playhouse in Petrolia, told me it was another good summer there with attendance increasing from 2007.

In Toronto, I caught up with the Driftwood Theatre Group, who also joined ASTRO for the first time. Driftwood is a touring Shakespeare company that performed Romeo and Juliet in 21 locations across Southern Ontario this past summer. I got to see them in my Riverdale neighbourhood at Withrow Park. Their inventive and lively show worked well for me and the set-up and touring stage was very well organized. Driftwood has been around since 1995—one can see they have learned a lot about touring over the years.

Executive Director John Goddard has also been busy seeing our fine summer theatre in Ontario. He has been to Sunshine & Company in Orillia, Brampton’s Flower City Theatre Festival, 4th Line Theatre in Millbrook, Globus Theatre in Bobcaygeon, Theatre Collingwood, both Stratford and Shaw Festivals, and Century Church Theatre in Hillsburgh.

Let me end my summer theatre update with Dancap Productions’ touring show of Jersey Boys which opened in late August in North York: it’s an absolutely bang-up production of the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Don’t miss it if you can afford a ticket.

Remembering Richard Monette

by Tim Chapman
Professional Theatre Coordinator

The first performance I ever saw at the Tarragon Theatre, where I would later work for nearly twenty-five years, was the acclaimed production of Michel Tremblay’s Hosanna in 1974. Richard was magnificent! I would not get to meet him until 1979 in my first season at the Tarragon when he acted in Tom Walmsley’s Something Red. He was a seminal figure in theatre in Canada for at least thirty-five years. Anyone in Canadian theatre will never forget his legendary “You Pigs!” moment at the Stratford Festival board meeting in 1980; then, in one of the supreme ironies in the history of Canadian theatre, in 1992 he is hired as the Artistic Director of the Stratford Festival, not leaving until 2007 becoming the longest-serving Artistic Director in the Festival’s history.

I’ll end this brief remembrance with actor Diane D’Aquila’s quote in The Globe and Mail: “I’m sure Bill Hutt [who died last year] will be meeting him at the gates and telling him what parts he wants to play next season. Something about Richard was bigger than life. He spoke his mind and did not care if it ruffled a few feathers. His death is the end of an era. There weren’t many like Richard, not many cut from the same cloth, and there aren’t many like him left.”