Barrie-based Discuss Is Free Theatre is a regional theatre in contrast to every other, each due to its site-specific/immersive repertoire, and the truth that it excursions the world to locations the place different firms worry to tread.
Amongst its travels, the 20+-year-old TIFT has offered productions in Toronto, establishing its model within the Massive Smoke, because it have been. This January finds the corporate coming south of the 401 as soon as once more, bringing two performs this month, and one other within the spring.
The Toronto performs are Adam Meisner’s For Each Resting and Breeding (Jan. 15 to 31) and Mike Bartlett’s Cock (Jan. 19 to 31), however right here’s the kicker: the primary play takes place in a personal residence in Parkdale, whereas the latter is about in an east finish industrial storage.
The spring present, Darrell Dennis’ Tales of an City Indian, is carried out on a transferring bus. (Tickets right here.)
The brainchild behind the bold and adventurous TIFT is the corporate’s intriguing creative producer, Arkady Spivak, who’s simply turning 50.
The Russian-born Spivak grew up in a theatrical household in Moscow earlier than immigrating to Canada when was 15. He ended up in Barrie working as a summer season pupil for Gryphon Theatre in 2000. When the theatre requested Spivak to remain on, he dropped out of York and accepted the place, his final recreation plan being to move to Toronto in a few years to start his personal producing initiatives.
Spivak ended up creating Discuss Is Free Theatre in Barrie in 2002 when an area businessman, who believed that the humanities mattered in small communities, prompt the concept and agreed to turn out to be his chairman of the board.
Our (very)long-ranging Zoom dialog coated Spivak’s life and instances, the founding of TIFT, his philosophy of theatre, and naturally, the Toronto exhibits.
What follows are excerpts from that dialog.
TIFT and Uncommon Repertoire
How did you resolve on TIFT’S very, shall I say, un-regional theatre repertoire? I started to listen to about fascinating issues taking place in Barrie early on in your existence.
We’re funded as a regional theatre, however we didn’t need to fall into that construction, you realize, doing 5 performs a season with the final one being a musical. All the pieces we do is all the time new. No two seasons are ever the identical.
We’ve all the time been a hundred-seater sort of operation. That’s what was distinctive about us. We didn’t must fill lots of seats, so we may do cutting-edge work as a regional exercise. It was utterly artistically liberating, generally even crossing the road.
I used to be requested just lately on a Toronto Russian TV interview, how would I describe our programming. I used to be aggravated with them for all types of causes, so I wanted to do one thing punchy. I stated, nicely, think about a string in your underwear. You stretch it so far as you possibly can, but when it breaks, you’ve gone too far. That’s our programming.
And that basically is what it’s like.
How did TIFT develop a fame for site-specific performs?
In our early years, we got, generally donated, generally we rented, a number of venues, after which they bought demolished. By necessity, we chanced on site-specific work as a result of we needed to discover performing areas, and you possibly can have audiences of assorted sizes.
In truth, for our complete 2025-2026 season, we’re solely doing site-specific work. We’re not utilizing a standard theatre as soon as. We’re doing discovered areas in Barrie, simply as we’re doing in Toronto.
As Peter Brook stated, it was one thing like, it takes one viewers member and one artist to be engaged in storytelling. You don’t want anything. I additionally imagine that theatre could be created wherever.
Web site-specific is theatre at its purest degree.
How do you truly select repertoire?
We’re recognized for a sure work aesthetic, which is that this mischievous pushing the boundary, poking a needle, that type of stuff. However then, we [have] additionally performed a Sondheim musical and the classics. Beneath all of this, although, is that we’re basically an artist’s theatre, notably an actor’s theatre.
We used to do solely work that was already created or orphaned by different theatres. We by no means commissioned new work, however that modified throughout the pandemic, particularly as a result of folks have been writing at residence, so if somebody had an thought for us, we’d inform them to put in writing it at residence and get again to us.
After which there are the ensemble collaborations the place you construct one thing collectively.
Once I have a look at an authentic play for consideration, I ask, is there any pleasure in it? I’ve to guarantee that the chance is transformative. After which it’s deciding which artists ought to be concerned. So, the challenge is admittedly tied to particular artists. On the finish of the day, that’s an important deciding issue as a result of I don’t must do new performs until someone desires to do them. Why would I torture the viewers?
And so, I simply need to guarantee that there may be an inventive motive for placing on the play.
I need to hear in regards to the touring as a result of I perceive that it’s fairly intensive.
We go on the street, not as a result of we didn’t get sufficient audiences in Barrie, or we’re making an attempt to interrupt down boundaries. We tour for various sorts of motive altogether, though I ought to add that I am keen on touring, shamelessly, I’ve to admit.
We all know when a present is alive and when the present isn’t, and those who have a life, we put apart and are available again to it in a yr or two. We’ll re-rehearse it, after which take it some other place as a result of Barrie folks have already seen it.
Our touring factor, usually talking, goes to locations the place different firms don’t go, like Surinam or Fiji, nations that basically don’t have a theatre scene. As a result of we do site-specific work, we don’t want conventional theatre venues, so we are able to carry out there. They’re additionally new strategic markets that we wish to discover.
Equally, due to site-specific work, we tour markets in Canada that larger firms can’t do, like Iqaluit and Dawson Metropolis. And what finally ends up taking place is we often affiliate with an rising theatre firm.
Then again, we’ll take one thing larger like our Sweeney Todd manufacturing, the place the viewers follows the actors round, to a significant capital like Buenos Aires, as a result of this type of immersive work or grassroots musical doesn’t fairly exist there.
Generally presenters and programmers will attain out to us as a result of they’re within the work we do. I additionally meet lots of people at worldwide theatre conferences, so that you construct up an inventory of contacts. After which there’s the web. I determine the vibe, type of gathering individuals who love a loopy theatre journey.
And every now and then, we’ll come to Toronto.
Whenever you go to Suriname, you’re not going to draw hype or presenters or programmers or colleagues or nationwide and worldwide media. So, it’s actually necessary that we set up a model of some type by way of a spot like Toronto. It’s type of like a vaccination. Do you want a COVID vaccine, however you’ll be sensible to get it anyway.
However, you realize, with all of this, we solely did one fast challenge within the States. Folks say, why don’t you go to the States? I’m like, what am I going to supply to the States that they don’t have already? Or what am I going to supply to the States that different Canadian theatre firms can’t?
The Performs Coming to Toronto
Let’s discuss For Resting and Breeding.
For Resting and Breeding is a Canadian play, which we didn’t develop, however which we love. We did it in Barrie in 2018 and took it to Australia in 2020, after which to Chile and Argentina. Earlier than Toronto, we’re doing a brief stint in Windsor. After Toronto, we go straight to Japan.
For the play, we wanted to discover a home in Toronto for our website, so I blatantly placed on Fb that I used to be on the lookout for a residential home to do a present. Robert Sirman, who’s an enormous supporter of our theatre, trepidatiously however with optimism, reached out and stated, nicely, they’re truly away in Mexico for the entire of January, and we may have the home. That was a tremendous supply.
I found For Resting and Breeding once I went to a play studying in 2017 as a result of it had lots of my folks in it, and I used to be completely blown away by it. Adam Meisner is a good new playwright out of Ottawa. I believe he lives in Toronto now.
I simply like it when folks write performs as a result of they’ve one thing to say, not as a result of they have been requested to put in writing a play. And this was a type of circumstances.
Adam created a future genderless society that has nothing to do with gender politics or gender research, none of that. The play simply makes use of gender as a plot gadget, as a type of fantasizing about future life.
What I like about that is the entire thought of legacy, of historical past. It’s a glance at the moment from an imagined future, and it actually talks about how we’re desirous to be remembered by displaying us a society of how folks have advanced, not how know-how has advanced.
The play is about in a single room of the home. The viewers doesn’t transfer.
These futuristic people have found the one surviving home in-built 1999 by Millennials and have established it as a museum. They then strive to determine what issues have been like again then, not in contrast to once we work on a Shakespeare play and picture what issues have been like 400 years in the past in his time.
I believe it sounds pleasant. How did you discover Mike Bartlett’s play Cock?
Michael Torontow is our longtime colleague in so many various capacities. I gave him a strict order that he wanted to discover a play, ideally a comedy, as a result of he’s predominantly often called an exquisite musical theatre performer, however I’ve sensed there’s a better actor in him.
Whenever you’re a handsome man, you’re not taken very severely. You’re simply used on your beauty, and I wished to uglify him for his personal profit. He considered Cock and particularly requested for Dylan Trowbridge to direct it. Dylan checked out it very severely as a result of he would by no means say sure to something until he finds the explanation to do it, and he stated sure, after which we put collectively the remainder of the corporate.
Cock is a couple of homosexual man who has been in a relationship for seven years, however who falls in love with a girl — and all of the chaos that ensues.
I made a decision that I used to be not giving them a theatre as a result of it says within the script that it requires no set and no props. Effectively, we’re an organization that does site-specific work, so we carried out it within the warehouse basement in our storage locker in Barrie. In Toronto, it’s in an industrial storage. We want one thing the place a brawl can happen.
The final play is Darryl Dennis’ Tales of an City Indian.
That’s coming in Could. It was advisable to me by Mario Crudo, who was the previous creative director of Magnus Theatre in Thunder Bay.
That present was programmed within the theatre, however then we misplaced the venue on the final minute, so I simply put it on a bus out of despair as a result of tickets have been already bought.
Final fall we celebrated our 750th efficiency of the play, and Nolan Moberly is our eighth actor. It’s a darkish comedy a couple of man who grew up on each a reservation and in a metropolis, and the actor performs all of the characters in his life.
What about your private life?
Let’s simply say that I’m married to the theatre.
Do you may have any final ideas?
That is essentially the most great factor about what we do. It’s type of, I wish to say, polarizes us into concord. I believe an important murals has a capability to talk individually to everybody within the viewers versus a basic mass.
I believe that’s what makes a very good play.
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Paula Citron is a Toronto-based freelance arts journalist and broadcaster who hosts her personal web site, paulacitron.ca. For over 25 years, she was senior dance author for The Globe and Mail, affiliate editor of Opera Canada journal, arts reviewer for Classical 96.3 FM, and dance previews contributor to Toronto Life journal. She has been a visitor lecturer for varied cultural teams and universities, notably on the position of the critic/reviewer, and has been a panellist on COC podcasts. Earlier than assuming a full-time journalism profession, Ms. Citron was a member of the drama division of the Claude Watson Faculty for the Arts.