Canadians live in a culture of subscription. We constantly dole out incredible amounts of money for season tickets to watch our favourite local sports teams not make the playoffs… again. We subscribe to ideologies, to political theories. We subscribe, if we are slightly left, to the Toronto Star; if we are slightly right, to the National Post; if we are slightly dumb, to the Toronto Sun. It is as if we strive toward assurance, the idea that there will always be something there for us, something to look forward to, a constant, an alignment with a certain faction (or in the case of Leafs fans, a cult). Subscription means security, and it has for decades in the big business of the Canadian theatre.

With the forging of the Regional theatre system in the mid-twentieth century, Canadians were introduced to the opportunity of purchasing season tickets for theatres staging touring productions of the hit shows from Broadway and London’s West End. This made good business sense for the producers and gave the Canadian people the illusion of culture - not their own, but one borrowed which they frankly seemed to he content to submit to. The desire for a true Canadian theatre was not present yet, not until Bill Glassco and the formation of the Tarragon Theatre some years later. The subscription model still remains the sole financial security of many of the country’s most respected artistic institutions, who rely upon renewed subscriptions for access to working capital to stage their productions.

It is when these productions do not meet the demands of the subscriber base that situations begin to become dangerous. When Peter Hinton took over as Artistic Director of English Programming at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, one of his first major decisions was to produce an entire season of exclusively Canadian plays. No Broadway hits, no West End wonders, just the voices of our nation. The NAC saw a loss of 2000 subscribers that season, outraged at the new mandate of their comfortable and non-confrontational ‘cultural centre’. How can Canadian theatre artists be expected to find the inspiration to produce new work when greeted with such an openly hostile environment?

Thankfully this subscriber base is literally dying off, and opportunities for new and exciting work should be readily available. However without the working capital of the return-subscribers, theatres all across the country are in a panic about finances, cash flow, and how to reach the ‘new audience’. Many of their recent efforts have been, in my opinion, patronizing of our generation, trying to look ‘hip-hop’ or ‘cool’ but coming off phony. Theatres are actually less willing to try new experimental work in the face of this financial crisis, believing that staging old standards that do not challenge the mind will bring the audience in and keep the dollars rolling. What they do not seem to realize is that, as the old adage goes, ‘every problem is in fact an opportunity in disguise’. This is the time to find that Canadian voice that has eluded us for so long. Now is the time to stretch our artistic boundaries, to share our experience. The audience will follow, if we can only present to them something real and true and unique; if we can tell their stories, all of our stories.

There is an episode in the second season of the Canadian television show Slings and Arrows (remarkably an under-watched show about theatre – who would have thought?) in which the box office is flooded by young people trying to get rush tickets to a struggling performance. This is fiction, but as it often is, not far from the truth. The youth of today are truly the MTV generation. They Facebook, they text, they ‘tweet’. They use credit cards to buy clothing they can’t afford all day on Yonge St. They are impulsive, and will not buy a subscription to an entire season of shows when they do not even know what they will be eating for dinner the same night. They will walk around downtown on an evening, and say to each other, “You know what? Let’s go see a show. It starts in ten minutes.” This happens. I’ve seen it. It is in lowering ticket prices, inviting the young people in, speaking to them in a way which TV and movies cannot that this ‘new audience’ will be found. In a culture where everything must seemingly be immediate, I like to believe that there is a place for the necessary immediacy of the theatrical event.

Planning ahead is a thing of the past. The theatre community in this country needs to open its eyes to the possibilities of living in fear, in uncertainty. After all, isn’t that what most great art is about? I understand that you can’t create art without money. A teacher of mine once said, “it’s all well and good to be a starving artist, but you can’t do Gratowski on an empty stomach.” He also said, “being a starving artist is very romantic, until you are one.” I want to make art, first and foremost, and if I make money at it I will not feel guilty. But at what point do we start caring about the money at the expense of the art? The Canadian people need to ask themselves where they will draw the line between art and commodification. Art is not a product; it is a cultural event, an exploration of a people, a time, a place. The audience is out there. They are waiting to be beckoned. You just need to use the right finger.