On Feb. 12, The Record began its special series on the local theatre scene.
In the first two parts, Julie MacLellan talked to four local groups about their ability to survive - and thrive - in a challenging theatre market, looking at the dreams that began the companies and the ingredients that have been helping to make them a success.
In the third and final part, we take a closer look at the new ideas theatre companies are using to help forge ahead - and their visions for a bright new future.
Enter the innovators
If there's one certainty for local theatre groups, it's that the same-old, same-old will never be sufficient.
For City Stage New West, the willingness to embrace new ideas has been part of its operations from the very first.
The company was never in the musical theatre business, yet a musical - Stump City Stories - has become its biggest focus. It took on the challenge of bringing Stump City Stories to life after an arts council member suggested it would be a good tribute for the city's 150th anniversary celebrations in 2009.
The company commissioned George Ryan, the musical director at Holy Trinity Cathedral, to write a musical based on the history of New Westminster and B.C. It has been staged in concert form and for the students at New Westminster Secondary School.
Now that project has become near and dear to the heart of artistic director Renee Bucciarelli.
"I love this project," she said with a smile. "From when we started it, I've loved it."
With Stump City Stories, the company also embarked on finding new ways to finance its work.
In 2013, it launched a crowd-source funding campaign on Kickstarter to bring in $3,000 towards the cost of producing a professional cast recording.
Bucciarelli laughingly admitted it was "desperation" that led her to the crowd-sourcing funding site (which her husband is quite fond of, often backing small projects he finds there).
"It was really a question of, 'Now what doors do we knock on?'" she said with a wry smile.
With help from a friend of her daughter's who is a film editor, they got a promotional video put together and got the campaign underway - ending just before Christmas.
"We did make our Kickstarter goal," Bucciarelli said, but she added that it was a time-consuming project. "It was very arduous to do it."
But she's quick to say it was also a joy - in no small part because she was able to find so many local supporters who pitched in to back the company's efforts, both by taking part in a promotional video talking about what Stump City Stories meant to them, and then by donating their money.
"New West is such a cool place," she said with a smile.
The company has also looked for ways to partner with other groups - for instance, with the just-completed Freud's Last Session, which was staged in partnership with the Couch Trip Collective.
For its cast recording of Stump City Stories, the group has also reached out to Royal City Musical Theatre to recruit some of its chorus members to sing on the tracks.
Partnerships are also big for Patrick Street Productions, the New Westminster-based theatre company that stages professional productions of lesser-known musicals on the Vancouver stage.
It partnered with Persephone Theatre in Saskatoon to mount its previous productions of The Full Monty and The Light in the Piazza. This year, its Floyd Collins will be produced in Barrie, Ont. in partnership with Talk is Free Theatre.
"It brings our work to an entirely new market," said Peter Jorgensen, the company's co-artistic producer alongside his wife, Katey Wright.
And they've recently started development on a new project with Touchstone Theatre, a stage musical of the satirical Terry Fallis novel The Best Laid Plans.
Piece by piece, they're working towards an even bigger and brighter future.
"We're starting to have to long-range plan," he said, adding the 2015/16 season is now on their radar - and their calendars. "It just keeps kind of pulling you along."
Enter the future
Yes, they're all making a success of their missions. But ask any one of these local theatre groups, and they all still have dreams for the future.
Not surprisingly, some of the dreams for the future are of a practical sort.
Like, say, earning money.
Jorgensen noted that while he and Wright have been able to pay themselves as artists for their work with Patrick Street, they've yet to be able to pay themselves as producers - which means they're donating a lot of their own time to making the company happen. Both also have freelance careers as performers and, in Jorgensen's case, as a director - Wright jokes they have about five full-time jobs between the two of them.
Which means that their search for meaningful, original musical theatre with deeper value is all the more important.
"There's nothing in the world wrong with straight-up entertainment value," Wright said. "But if we are going to put that much of ourselves out there, it needs to be for something that has something to say."
"We keep going because it's important for our artistic souls," Jorgensen said, "because it's important to do the kind of work you want to do, the way you want to do it."
He said they'd love to be able to achieve some big things in the future.
One idea they've tossed around is to have a permanent company of actors. Another is having their own facility that could combine rehearsal and office space - since finding rehearsal space is one of the city's huge challenges.
"There's lots of dreams for the company," he says. "I would enjoy it being my full-time job and being able to produce three or four shows a year. ... We're not short on dreams and ideas. Finding the means to execute those ideas requires patience."
The story is similar for City Stage New West.
Bucciarelli, as artistic director, earns no salary for her work. She's a longtime theatre professional and continues her professional career as an actor, director and teacher while volunteering her time for City Stage.
In a perfect world, she says, the company could afford a general manager to take care of many of the administrative jobs that currently fall under her purview.
She notes that the company has spent its first five or so years doing what theatre companies do: building its base, finding its audience. Now it's looking to bolster its foundation so it can move forward with more and bigger projects.
Bucciarelli points out that people don't always understand the costs involved in staging professional productions.
"To do professional theatre is very expensive," she said. "It can take a year to raise that money."
The company would like to put on a full-scale production of Stump City Stories - but fully staged musicals don't come cheap.
Last year the company laid the groundwork by drawing up a prospectus to help get support from corporations. This year the board wants to spend the year ahead focusing on fundraising.
"This is an arc to the growth of organizations," Bucciarelli says. "We have a very strong track record, and we're shifting into something bigger."
At the same time, she says, they're not losing sight of the fact that their mission is to serve the community.
"It's how we look at what we do, as a service to the community," she said.
Finding ways to offer more educational programming and to reach out to the youngest members of the community is part of her vision for the future.
"I do think it's how you create a really strong community organization that kids can grow up with and continue to support," she said.
For the Vagabond Players, the city's longtime community theatre company, president Elizabeth Elwood's dreams are of a world where more people can share the workload.
The group is planning an open house in the spring to let people tour its headquarters, the Bernie Legge Theatre in Queen's Park, and see how much work has been done on it. Elwood is hoping that the event will help bring more people on board to help out.
"Every talent is needed," she noted, whether it's makeup or set construction, sewing costumes or writing press releases. "Every kind of skill is needed in theatre."
"All those talented people in the community who are looking for something to do - we want them!" she said with a smile.
For Royal City Musical Theatre, meanwhile, the future is a time of change.
"With every organization you go through a period where you're constantly reinventing yourself," said John Davies, president of the board.
That's where they're at right now, he said, with several new board members having recently joined the organization and bringing new perspectives to the table. They're looking at ways to expand the donor and sponsor base and at the same time to offer up new artistic ideas.
"The challenge is to satisfy the longtime supporters of Royal City Musical Theatre ... and at the same time be able to introduce something fresh," Davies said. "You don't want to constantly be doing the same thing that everyone else is doing."
Part of the group's reinvention, by necessity, is figuring out what's going to happen after next year. Its 2015 musical will take place on the Massey Theatre stage, as usual. But after that the Massey will be closed, and demolished, as part of the New Westminster Secondary School reconstruction project. It's projected to take about two-and-a-half years for its replacement to be built - which means RCMT will be without a large theatre in the meantime.
The company is already on board with the city's new Anvil Centre, which is set to open this year and which will have a mid-size, "black box"-style theatre that can be configured in a number of ways.
Davies said RCMT will be working with the Massey team to figure out how the new, 350-seat theatre can be used for new productions. One of its missions over the coming years is to expand its programming beyond the current annual spring musical, so that people are aware of the company's investment in the community and what it's doing in terms of developing young talent.
And Chelsea McPeake, who does administration for the company, noted the change is a chance to try out different things that might not work on the Massey stage - and to draw in a new audience that might be willing to travel to New West by SkyTrain, since the Anvil Centre is right by New Westminster station.
"It is exciting," she said. "It's only opportunities."
And, of course, every one of the groups would like people to do the simplest job of all: Buy tickets for their productions and show support for the work being done right here in the Royal City.
"It's an amazing thing that we're trying to do," Bucciarelli said. Then she smiled and corrected herself, "That we are doing."
Amen to that.
