Maybe then, I will reveal my true identity to you, since I know who you are!

Good luck.

Yes, maybe I should have jumped in the lamborghini for the ten days of unadulterated fun, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Praxis has put on a play every summer since 2003 – but not this year. It’s too bad you haven’t seen one, because every single production was unfunded by any of your tax dollars. You could just sit back and enjoy it, unencumbered by considerations of whether it was a good public investment .

If you wanted to do some math in your head, you could do this though:

Our last 2 fringe productions did really well, so much so that everyone made around $250!

Around 100 hours of work (minimum) per participant= Working @ $2.50/hour. So if we lost you for a couple minutes in the middle of the show, and you wanted to consider the broad economic forces giving value to the work, the real question would be:

How much is the sweat equity that these people put into this, just because they love doing it so much, subsidizing the cost of entertainment in Toronto?

Sorry, I digress, our next show is called Stranger. It’s an original adaptation of L’Etranger by Camus coming this winter. Although all 3 workshops done over the last year were unfunded, the production does have some public funding, accounting for 10% of the total budget. Please come check it out. We love new audience members.

My real name is not shama, and I don’t reveal myself on blogs. I don’t work for Luminato, I am a computer geek, who loves the theatre, reads newspapers and I have a good memory.

Maybe one day I will check out your work one day to see how a much smaller portion of my tax dollars are being spent. Are you currently working on anything?

would it be better to have:

a plausible funding model for the arts in Toronto, but also have issues with high ticket prices to big budget international shows

or

a wasteland of an economy for local artists (and audiences) but access to reasonably-priced world class performances for 10 days of the year.

i am proposing an either/or. you can’t rent the lamborghini and have money left over for the bus pass.

and yeah, it better not be their only source of funding – if you already have 21.5 mill in the bank and you can’t find a corporate sponsor to jump in bed with you, well that’s not possible because you have to be pretty machiavellian to pull off what they did in the first place.

also. i suspect you work for/are associated with Luminato. you seem a little too knowledgeable about artist names, dates and reviews. tell us who you are and prove me wrong. i’m wrong all the time.

1. I actually found out about the arts worker tickets in the back page of the program. I can understand Luminato not wanting to publicize it because if people heard about it through arts organizations, then you could guarantee they’re actually arts workers.

2. The problem is that World Stage nearly died 5 years ago and even now is on a form of life support. Tina has done a fantastic job of programming but when you look at the scope of the shows she’s brought in, it’s obvious she has a very limited budget to work with. We can’t count on Harbourfront to do this alone.

Nice to see you come out for international festivals. From your post, you presented the completely opposite viewpoint.

3. I wanted to chat with Kristy, but I was stuck working that whole weekend at the POW. I’m envious!

As for the resources, that’s what Luminato says they’re going to use most of the money for. I’m prepared to wait and see what happens in the next year.

4. $50 to see an internationally acclaimed theatre production or groceries/TTC/rent? Is your vibrant/functioning theatre community going to resolve that dilemma? Because until it does, it becomes an either/or situation, which points to public funding to subsidize tickets.

Friday, June 6th, I decided to go to Yonge/Dundas Square since it was close to my apartment and it was free! To my delight, I saw this little girl, named Nicki Yanofsky, who could sing like Ella Fitzgerald. The street was alive and filled with emotion. Everyone was laughing and dancing on the Square! For a minute, I forgot I was in Toronto, this seemed much more like a festival in Montreal were the streets were so vibrant.

I was so thrilled, I bought a ticket to Canadian Songbook at Massey Hall. I thought I was witnessing possibly the beginning of a career of a new superstar. I am the first to admit, I know nothing about technique, or talent, but I knew I was enjoying it and so was the rest of the audience. Nicki did not disappoint, but she only did 2 songs.

At Canadian songbook, I was delighted to see another young Canadian talent named Merika Bernacki. She is about 17 and did a renditition of Oh Canada that brought the house down. I began to think, maybe this festival will help launch the careers of some young Canadian talent.

I had heard great things about Blackwatch, so Thursday night, I bought a ticket. The theatre was Varsity arena, which was very warm and we sat in plastic chairs which were very uncomfortable. As the show progressed, it felt like I was experiencing war! I now truly believe that my discomofort added to the experience. Being part Scottish, made it easy for me to understand the accents, and by the end of the play, I could not hold back my tears. It was nearly embarrassing. I have never been so moved in my 30 years of theatre going.
I fully understand that because of the language, it would have been very difficult for a mainstream Arts promoter like Mirvish productions to mount such a play. Hmmm… maybe the $1 of my taxes that went to this festival was worth it?
Friday night, I went to see the Mark Morris dancers, since they received rave reviews. I am not a dance fan, but I went for my partner. The show was an experience I will not forget. Again I am not a dancer, or claim to know antything about dance, but to watch this group of dancers all perform with such grace, and being in perfect sync with the other dancers and the music, it was easy for me to recognize that this the the creme de la creme.
Again, I was amazed to find out that the Mark Morris dancers had not been in Canada for more than 20 years. I began to think, well, maybe we really need this festival, and perhaps my thinking was a bit narrow minded to consider that if something cannot survive without being subsidized by the government, then it should not exist. I truly feel, Luminato enriched my life.

So, in conclusion, yes, Luminato did receive a lot of money, but by the end of the festival, I actually did not begrudge them a penny of the money the government gave them. By going to events, I also learned that this is not their only source of funding! Although Luminato has not sold out to their sponsors like some other festivals, it receives major funding from major corporations and private donors. The sponsors and donors were duly thanked, but Luminato is what I remember, not that L’Oreal was the major sponsor. Bravo Luminato, maybe the goverment has actually wisely spent my tax dollars? Seems to good to be true…. and yes, I can see Mike is doing his best to ruin my 10 days of fun, so it probably won’t last.

You comments send me in a number of directions:

1 Luminato did their damnedest not to publicize their arts worker tickets available at TO TIX. Almost all of us only found out about them after the good folks at TAPA started sending emails 1/2 way through the festival.

2 I’m not against international festivals as a rule. Just giving this much money, to this festival, at this time, in this place. I’m glad you brought up World Stage. They already do this very well.

3 I’m also glad you brought up Australian Festivals. I had the opportunity to have a couple of pints at the Crooked Star with Kristy Edmunds, Artistic Director of The Melbourne International Arts Festival when she was here this winter, through the Harbourfront/Theatre Centre Pitch-Fest. Mostly she asked about how our local artists were finding the resources to make new work and where we were going to get our new audiences from? I had no answers for her.

4 If the trade off is a vibrant, and functioning theatre community, but you have to save up $50 to see a Mirvish show, I am so alright with that.

And if we leave it to the commercial sector to bring us that work, will we even be able to see it? I had a storyteller friend who desperately wanted to see NN but had a serious cash flow situation. Thankfully I got comps so she could go. Otherwise she would have missed it.

The only reason that NN even made it here was because Mirvish had the subscription season to support it. But they’ll only take a risk like that maybe once per season. After the small houses for Sweeney and for NN, will they take that risk again? It’ll be up to Spring Awakening, I think – a show they only programmed because of the DanCap threat. But then again, musicals are an easier sell. Also notice what DanCap’s 2009 season has in it. Or really, just notice how freakin’ safe it is.

I was able to get $20 rush tickets for both Black Watch and Midsummers. For Midsummers I was 10 rows back, dead centre. Didn’t miss anything. Would those tickets have been available for a commercial run? Nicholas Nickleby would tell us no.

So no, I don’t think we can trust the commercial sector to bring us these shows.

I’ve seen arts festivals do two other things. One is bring in international artists to work with local artists. World Stage used to do this. If Luminato brought in Peter Brook to work with us, who wouldn’t be jumping at the chance?

The other is commission large-scale work, which is what Luminato says they’re going to do with a lot of that money they got. This is where the Australian companies have really benefited from their festivals.

Yes, there is a great benefit to creating work and we absolutely need more resources to do it. I don’t dispute that, and some of that money definitely should have come down to us. But I just can’t buy into your idea that we shouldn’t have an arts festival.

Part of what I’m seeing, and it does disturb me, is that more and more film is being used as a point of reference and inspiration for what is on our stages. I’m not saying that is bad of itself, but if we’re not balancing that with seeing innovative theatre work as well, then are we doing theatre anymore?

You got to train in the US and Russia. That’s great. I desperately want to train in London. But I have no idea how to get the cash to do it. So for me, things like Luminato are what I have to grow in a way that doing a Summerworks show last year didn’t give me.

I completely agree with you that we need a better infrastructure to create work. I would love to see what we could do as a community if we felt we had no restrictions. But I don’t believe in an either/or. I want both.