PTE staff past and present reflect on 50 years of theatre

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This article was published 26/11/2022 (1421 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Nine people walked into the Cherry Karpyshin Theatre at Prairie Theatre Exchange Friday morning to pose for a picture, including the woman the room was named for.

The former general manager was surrounded by former artistic directors Colin Jackson — who was the first and also one of the organization’s co-founders — Gordon McCall, Michael Springate, Allen MacInnis and Robert Metcalfe, alongside another former general manager, Tracey Loewen. Current artistic director Thomas Morgan Jones and general manager Lisa Li smiled alongside their predecessors.

Has this group ever been in the same room? “Until this week, probably not,” MacInnis said.

They had a lot to talk about. The past, the present, the future. The productions that struck a chord and the ones that landed with a thud. The meaning of theatre. The meaning of life. Their kids and grandkids.

But most of all, they talked about the thread that connected them: a theatre company that started in an Exchange District building on the verge of condemnation.

“It was an enclosed space with a low ceiling and a post in the middle that I always imagined held up the whole building. We had to incorporate it in every show,” says McCall, who succeeded Jackson as AD. “It was wider than it was deep, and yet that was part of the charm of the place.”

“Colin, what did you say last night?” chimed in Metcalfe, who was AD from 2003 to 2018.

“City workers refused to go into it, because it was too dingy and scary,” Jackson said.

“So who would go in?” asked McCall. “Theatre artists.”

Loewen, who left PTE in 2021, said a word that has defined the organization has always been “yes”: there’s a certain buy-in that anyone engaging with PTE must make, she says.

It was in that space where PTE found its footing, working on productions of local and national playwrights such as Wendy Lill, Sandra Birdsell, Alan Williams, Morris Panych, Ted Galay and Kelly Rebar. Under the leadership of AD Kim McCaw, PTE introduced subscriptions. In 1983, 200 were sold. By 1985, that number topped 3,500.

In 1989, having outgrown the facilities on Princess, PTE moved to Portage Place, the then-new mall in downtown Winnipeg. Thirty-five years later, it remains one of the more vital components of the city’s downtown arts scene.

Jones, who became AD in 2018, says something that separates PTE from other places he’s worked is that the audience has a clear stake in the company’s success. MacInnis echoed that notion: after a production of Great Expectations didn’t live up to its title, a longtime subscriber let him know. MacInnis learned to appreciate that the audience members were more than seat-fillers; they helped shape the theatre’s output.

Springate (1992-1995) spoke with great reverence for his time with the company, highlighted by an adaptation of Margaret Laurence’s The Stone Angel, starring Shirley Douglas as Hagar Shipley. “We were told it couldn’t be done,” Springate says. But they did it. They said yes when it would have been simpler to say no.

When Springate says, “My period of time here changed my life,” everyone around the boardroom table nods.

In theatre, change can be good, Metcalfe says, as is some sense of uncertainty. “There’s nothing more anti-art than certainty,” he says.

If the last few years can attest to anything, it’s that performing arts always face uncertainty, which in PTE’s case spurred creative solutions as the pandemic raged. The company produced its first full-length filmed productions, plus digital presentations of shorter works, to stay connected with its audience as it was forced to stay home.

As the theatre industry continues to deal with the instability of the pandemic, companies like PTE must respond to the changing world, Metcalfe added.

Li and Jones say the company is ready to take that on as PTE enters its next 50 years.

“I imagine that we’ve always been responsive to the world in the moment,” Li says. “Theatre is meant to be responsive and urgent and talk about what’s happening. As long as we keep our integrity, keep our focus, I am of the belief that it will work out.

“Maybe that sounds a bit Pollyanna, but there is an unknown in theatre,” Li adds. “We sign up for that. If you want to have certainty, you can do something else. So we throw spaghetti, penne or linguini at the wall and see what sticks.

“But you’re doing it with all the knowledge of the last 50 years, and you make your best guess, and hope it works out.”

“We have to listen, we have to notice, and we have to act,” says Jones.

They have to keep saying yes.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com