From plays by phone to Zoom performances: How Canadian theatres are staying connected

This Is The Reset is a series of panel conversations that look to the future of Canadian art disciplines as we move past everything that has been 2020. Short versions of the panels aired as part of the final season of CBC Arts: Exhibitionists. 

Canada's theatres, for the most part, have been without audiences since the spring. It's not that people aren't consuming theatre and art, but they are not sitting in the seats of Vancouver's Boca del Lupa or Toronto's Factory Theatre.

Although the Stratford Festival may have cancelled its season, it and other major theatre institutions in Canada have offered archival footage of past performances to audiences. But Canada's smaller and medium-sized festivals don't have the luxury of high-production values and vast archives. Instead, they've had to scramble to keep theatres running and ensure artists are paid.

Toronto's Factory Theatre is one of the few theatres that went forward with their season. The theatre's artistic director Nina Lee Aquino has dubbed it their "COVID season," but its official name is The Satellite Season.

There are three major projects, including a live Zoom play, an audio series with five episodes ("Five world premieres," Aquino says) and a live-streamed multi-camera stage production. All the shows are and will continue to be free of charge — something Aquino says is possible in part because of solid corporate sponsors. 

On this season of CBC Arts: Exhibitionists, we assembled panels of experts, artists and critics to look at what needs to change in their industries in a segment called This Is The Reset. And in this extended version of the panel, moderator and theatre critic Glenn Sumi sits down with Aquino, playwright Nick Green and experimental theatre maven Sherry Yoon to look at what how theatres and playwrights move forward in a time when the stage and its audience can no longer share a space. 

Earlier this year, Green founded the Social Distancing Festival, "a TV guide of exquisite art" that lists tons of virtual and digital offerings from artists across the country.

Now, he's working on a Zoom musical about loneliness. 

"Initially, the plan was to create a musical that was meant to be staged in a theatre, sort of about loneliness, all set during the commercial breaks of a screening party of a reality TV dating show," Green says. "But as we went into Zoom rehearsals for this process, we started finding really unique and cool opportunities for this story to be told over Zoom. So recently, we've pivoted and actually now set the show on a Zoom call."

Vancouver's experimental theatre, Boca Del Lupa, has been stretching the boundaries of what theatre can be for years, and bringing eager audiences (sometimes of just one or two people) with them. 

Their works are geared toward bringing theatre to people who might not be able to buy a ticket, artistic director Sherry Yoon explains. A recent project, Red Phone, invites participants to be both actor and audience. They step into a phone booth and, on a teleprompter, participants read a script from a playwright into a red phone.

"During the phone call, you find out who you are, who the other person is, what your relationship is and what the circumstances are — all through the written dialogue," says Yoon. "We've had about 27 conversations commissioned now, some translated into French and Spanish."

The phones have toured across Canada, and Yoon said it's not meant to replace theatre, but instead to double down on the intimacy, connection and humanness of theatre all while subverting expectations. 

"I think the biggest lesson is that there isn't any formula or straight-ahead way in finding an idea and running with it," says Yoon. "My approach is to centre the audience's experience and bring along excellent artists who have a similar sensibility and vision for what the project is."

Watch the full panel above, and watch the entire final season of CBC Arts: Exhibitionists on CBC Gem.