PTE gets $100-K donation from theatre co-founder

Colin Jackson gave the Prairie Theatre Exchange audience reason to cheer before the show began Wednesday when he announced a $100,000 donation to the downtown arts organization, located since 1989 in Portage Place mall.

Jackson, who in 1973 co-founded Manitoba Theatre Workshop, the organization’s predecessor, said that he was spurred to make the sizable contribution when he first heard the company had hired its newest artistic director, Ann Hodges.

That hiring caused “a wave of joy” amongst the older generation of PTE’s boosters, said Jackson, flanked by Hodges and managing director Katie Inverarity on the set of season-opening production Liars at a Funeral, a comedy written by Sophia Fabiilli.

The energetic Jackson, who lives in Calgary and for whom PTE’s studio theatre is named, reflected on the organization’s opening acts in the former Grain Exchange Building.

“When this organization started 53 years ago, we actually were a bunch of kids going, ‘Hey, let’s put on a show,’ and the way the community responded was remarkable. We didn’t know it was remarkable — we thought it was normal. But it was remarkable in retrospect,” Jackson said.

“The city allowed us use of the building at 160 Princess Street for $1 a year, with no credit or credibility. People helped.”

Jackson fondly recalled the generosity of the community in contributing to an untested project.

“We had to build risers if we were going to build a stage, and the head of a major construction company arranged for old concrete forms and four-by-eight sheets of plywood … to fall off the truck,” he said, adding that other community members volunteered whichever skills they had at their disposal, including sewing the seat cushions and typing the organization’s promotional material on clean, professional letterhead. “No soup stains.

“People gave us wood, they gave us talent, they gave us cushions — they gave us credibility. That was Winnipeg, and it still is Winnipeg. So yay you.”

Along with Jackson’s donation, a fundraising campaign has been launched at PTE wherein any donation over $25 will be matched through the end of December or until an amount of $50,000 has been reached.

The company, a registered charity, announced Wednesday that an anonymous donor has already given $20,000 to the company.

ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca