Calgary’s long-running Shakespeare in the park program, Shakespeare by the Bow, has been cancelled for the 2024 season.
Theatre Calgary, which has run the summer program of outdoor theatre since 2012, said that the financial costs associated with putting on a summer of theatre have made Shakespeare by the Bow untenable.
“Even when we reduced our footprint and move to Shakespeare on the Go as the model, it is almost $200,000 in expenses. And donations and sponsorship only managed to cover somewhere in the range of 25-ish per cent of that,” Maya Choldin, executive director of Theatre Calgary, told LWC.
“For us to preserve our main mission and goal to serve as many Calgarians as possible with our main stage season productions, we couldn’t in all honesty, continue underwriting that for in this coming season. In order to make sure that we are not financially in a bad situation in our future, we need to do the responsible thing now to make sure our core stakeholders of our season ticket buyers were served by having the best shows that we can do on our main stage.”
Choldin said that the issue was one of financial resources, and not interest, in making the hard decision to cancel this year’s performances.
“We only have so much to spend, and we really want to spend it wisely. We want to make sure that we’re doing the things that it’ll have the biggest impact, and we feel like we have an opportunity to build a relationship with another organization to take this on,” she said.
“There’s just going to need to be a break. While we solidify that.”
Talks are in place already to find partners for future year’s performances
She said that Theatre Calgary is already in preliminary talks, confidently enough so to talk about them, to work with another organization on providing the Shakespeare by the Bow programming in future years.
“We don’t own Shakespeare, we don’t own the idea of Shakespeare in the park, but what we do own is infrastructure. That’s the part of the relationship that we would like to share with a partner,” Choldin said.
“We’re not going to hold on to it at the detriment of another person doing a similar program, which we would share in both knowledge and physical property that we have. Because we do think that it’s an incredible opportunity for Calgarians to experience theatre and art outside in the perfect Calgary summers that we have, which not everyone can say they have.”
She said that the goal right now as the program is on hiatus to solidify that formal relationship.
Theatre Calgary’s goal to find a new partner for the long-running series of productions is not without precedence.
The company took over the performance programming from Mount Royal University in 2012, after MRU’s drama department which began a Shakespeare in the park program to connect student artists with professionals in the industry, came to a formal close.
Choldin said that the mission to work with emerging artists at Theatre Calgary hadn’t changed, and that realistically the impact by the ending of this season’s performances would not have a major impact on giving emerging artists roles.
“We still have a commitment to Calgary artists, and that includes emerging artists. Those opportunities are not limited to Shakespeare on the Go, which last year was between six and eight roles in that show. But in a season, I have 70-plus roles, and in no way can we limit that to only mid-career and established Calgary performers,” she said.
“There’s always a place for emerging artists in our regular roster, and there is a number of opportunities for them to access through casting processes or our mentorship program. There’s a significant commitment that we have made to nurturing and continuing along on artists’ journey through their career, and I think that you can see that in art, you can see that in who’s on our stage, and who’s working on our projects.”
