As you approach the Club Saw patio from the grungy parking lot on Rideau over to Nicholas Street, the first things that strike you are the light and the noise. Christmas lights hung in the ceiling of the tent on the left give a luminescent glow to the scene and the roaring noise you’ve heard since the Rideau Centre is just people.

Not music.

Not machinery.

Just people.

Talking.

About theatre.

Now in its third year, the Compass Points Student and Emerging Artist Symposium found its home this year in downtown Ottawa, along with its parent festival and conference, Magnetic North. Spread over venues ranging from the monolithic National Arts Centre to the elegant Great Canadian Theatre Company to the rough and grungy Arts Court to the historic University of Ottawa Academic Hall, the festival strives to bring together Canadian theatre professionals for a dialogue regarding our struggling art form. From artistic principles to funding issues to good business practices, there was truly something for every theatre practitioner and so much for us emerging artists to take away from the week-long experience that I was so fortunate to attend.

Panels, forums and Q&A’s raised engaging discussions and debates from articulate and knowledgeable individuals, as the question that seemed to loom over the entire festival had to do with the changing audience. The old model of subscription-based seasons is ended, or at least changing as many suggested and it has become imperative for companies to broaden their horizons in reaching out to a new, younger audience and an audience that has never experienced theatre before. This, of course, presents its own problems, as a company’s current audience could reject the changing nature of the work and cancel their subscriptions, resulting in a drop in revenue affecting the season’s start-up money and cash-flow. An example is the National Arts Centre, who lost 2,000 subscribers when they produced for the first time a season of all-Canadian plays. I struggle with this because it is the National Arts Centre. What chance do we have when audiences refuse to see the work of their own nation? But I digress; there are at least ten articles for you to look forward to that sprung from Compass Points (you lucky readers…)

Of course this was just the starting point for the thousand-and-one debates that were nurtured into maturity under the lights of the festival bar at Club Saw located in the Arts Court; that, to me, is where the festival lived. The midnight rantings of beer-filled artists posing problems and suggesting solutions and agreeing to disagree is where the future of theatre lies, and the passion and the yearning and the earnest with which those conversations were conducted charged me as an emerging artist to make my own way in this most unforgiving of endeavours. I saw nine shows in seven days with varied success and for the first I said to myself, “I can do this” and actually believed it.

Nights on that patio with emerging artists from across the country were some of the greatest of my life. And I saw the future of Canadian theatre, both the good and the bad, the Living and the Deadly (as Peter Brook would put it) in the fifty some-odd students and emerging artists of Compass Points, all with our own ideas to bring to the table and our own convictions to communicate and our own careers to launch. Some ideas may have been better than others, as were the shows and the panels and the workshops, but the fact that so many passionate people can be brought together annually means that the theatre has a future in our country. We need to solve some problems, yes. But the dedication is there, and as long as there are young people with vigour and energy and experienced professionals willing to foster these emerging artists, the theatre will never die.

More to come regarding subscription, audience, touring, site specific theatre and bringing theatre to those who have none. Stay Tuned!