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High stakes drama

After a whirlwind month that shook the boundary-pushing festival to its roots, SummerWorks starts August 4 as planned, thanks to an outpouring of theatregoer generosity.

Festival organizers were stunned in late June when Heritage Canada, after a five year partnership, suddenly pulled $48,000 worth of funding for the 2011 season, 20 per cent of SummerWorks’ budget.

The government may deny it, but some in the arts community can’t help thinking the cut was politically motivated, and worry that theatre groups will start avoiding touchy content to keep the money flowing. And the emergency fundraising that rescued SummerWorks 2011? Could it boomerang and become the new norm, with the feds leaving the arts field to tapped-out donors?

Certainly, the shadow of last year’s disturbing events hangs in the ether. That’s when a rep in the PM’s office, and later Stephen Harper himself, asserted that the festival was using public money to glorify terrorism. Those comments referred to Catherine Frid’s 2010 play, Homegrown, about one of the Toronto 18.

But SummerWorks, a juried festival, is known not only for its edginess but for its high quality and ability to seed productions that go on to success elsewhere. Works from past seasons like Montparnasse (about artists and their models in 1920s Paris) and If We Were Birds (about women victims of war) have gone on to Dora nominations.

The fact that supporters threw in a third of the lost grant’s value in July (a ticket price increase from $10 to $15 will make up the rest of the shortfall in the fest’s $300,000 budget) demonstrates the strength of audience loyalty. But artistic producer Michael Rubenfeld knows this won’t be so easy to reproduce next year if the company is in crisis again.

“There’s donor fatigue and then there’s staff fatigue,” says Rubenfeld, who makes about $20,000 a year. Without any money for a development staffer, the job of drumming up cash has fallen into his lap and that of the fest’s general manager.

“As the festival continues to grow, its value has increased in the minds of presenters across this country and internationally. It seems like tax dollars were at work doing what they were supposed to,” he says, adding that he’s hopeful the grant will be re-instated next year.

At Heritage Canada, communications manager Jillian Lum will say only that “last year the Department of Canadian Heritage received over 10,000 funding requests for local events. The total demand far exceeds available funding, and therefore choices must be made. This year we are proud to support new projects in Toronto like Canada’s Walk of Fame.”

This is far from impressive for NDP Heritage critic Tyrone Benskin, formerly artistic director of Montreal’s Black Theatre Workshop. “The Walk of Fame [which celebrates those at the top of their field] is wonderful, but it’s getting there that’s the issue,” he says.

While Benskin won’t speculate on whether ideology fuelled the SummerWorks pullback, he does call for vigilance on all Tory arts decisions and warns that with the government in cutting mode, more festivals will be out of pocket.

“The Conservatives showed their cards with Harper’s statement about how real Canadians don’t care about the arts,” he says. “We heard recently from Jim Flaherty and Tony Clement that arts organizations shouldn’t feel entitled to grants. I don’t know any arts organization that feels entitled to funding. That shows you how much they understand the arts community.”

Some find it hard to separate the government’s 2010 comments from the pulling of the grant, especially considering SummerWorks’ stature. “For many it seems like one coincidence too many,” says Jini Stolk, executive director of Creative Trust, which helps arts groups improve their business and financial skills.

Arts organizations “will rethink, if not what they do, certainly how they express what they do,” she tells NOW. “The [loss of the grant] is not going to stop artists from expressing themselves, but it could have a constraining effect. Obviously, the community is very concerned at what really looks like political interference in the free expression of ideas.”

While she’s not keen to comment on the reason the festival lost its federal funding, Toronto Arts Council exec director Claire Hopkinson says she’s thankful for the discussion that’s resulted.

“Censorship is by far the worst scenario in a free-speech society,” she says, noting that when government grants are handed out directly rather than through an arm’s-length agency such as the Arts Council, the appearance of censorship can be hard to shake. “This whole relationship between art and politicians is so filled with nuances.”

And so it is. On the subject of his opposition to Queers Against Israeli Apartheid’s participation in the Pride parade, Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti recently ruminated that the city shouldn’t be in the business of funding arts events with a political message.

As if on cue, SummerWorks – which gets $30,000 in annual operating support from the Toronto Arts Council – is tackling one of the biggest thorns in the city’s side in recent years: last year’s G20 summit, demonstrations and police overkill. In the highly anticipated play You Should Have Stayed Home, writer Tommy Taylor depicts his experience as a detainee in the squalid makeshift prison where hundreds of protesters were held.

It’s sure to outrage the police force and its staunchest supporters at City Hall.

But considering the festival’s raison d’être, promoting plays that are courageous in content or style, SummerWorks wouldn’t have it any other way. “To make a shift would completely go against the festival’s reasons for existing,” Rubenfeld says. “It would make no sense.”

The question: Have the recent cuts to arts spending influenced what you create?

“I can’t be afraid of what happens doing this show, especially after this past year when I spoke out [about being detained during the G20] regardless of consequences. If you only create art that the government has scared you into creating, the result is fear art.”

TOMMY TAYLOR, playwright/performer, You Should Have Stayed Home

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“Part of me is terrified that a show I’ve worked on for two years might be shut down because someone considers offensive what I find worth exploring onstage.”

KEVIN MICHAEL SHEA, playwright, Hero & Leander

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“Government subsidies for farming, mining and forestry are accepted as necessary. But grants for the arts are often viewed as handouts. The arts offer the opportunity for dialogue and debate. I don’t know which possibility is more alarming: that the PMO understands this or that it doesn’t.”

PHILIP McKEE, co-creator, Brothers

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“I’m seeing a political trend against community. The root of community is empathy – the ability to care about someone unlike ourselves. I’m starting to see my career in terms of building empathy, of creating work that celebrates differing points of view.”

CHRISTOPHER STANTON, playwright/director, Elora Gorge

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“I want to be able to answer like an economist – to speak in clear, scientific jargon, tracing the intricate pattern of lines that lead from the creation of a piece of art to the scores of market benefits it produces down the line. I’ve put it on my list of things to do. In the meantime, it’s business as usual in the rehearsal hall.”

CLAIRE CALNAN, co-director, Combat

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“The cuts haven’t threatened what I feel I can create, but they threaten to rob me of an audience my work can speak to. Without a festival like SummerWorks, I, like other emerging artists, would be left without a voice.”

MUMBI TINDYEBWA OTU, co-creator and director, dancing to a white boy song

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“As things become bleaker both financially and politically, we find a strange freedom and euphoria in forging ahead. Knowing that things won’t change tomorrow allows us to focus more deeply on what we really want to make, no compromises. The harder it gets, the more you want to make art for art’s sake.”

KARIN RANDOJA, co-consulting director, Origami Airplane

Quotes compiled by Jon Kaplan

news@nowtoronto.com

See SummerWorks previews.

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