From left to right: Chris Abraham, artistic director of Crow’s Theatre; Weyni Mengesha (seated), departing artistic director of Soulpepper Theatre; Gideon Arthurs, executive director of Soulpepper Theatre; Sherrie Johnson, executive director of Crow’s Theatre, on March 20.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Two of Toronto’s largest not-for-profit theatres have announced a partnership that will see the companies expand their respective audiences, collaborate on large-scale co-productions and offer a leg up to independent theatre collectives in need of performance space and marketing support.
While the three-year pilot project between Crow’s Theatre and Soulpepper Theatre Company doesn’t yet have a pithy name (Crowpepper? Soulcrow’s?), the move hopes to provoke seismic change in Toronto’s theatre landscape. Leaders at both theatres believe the alliance will result in longer runs of shows that feature larger casts and healthier budgets; they also say the union will be a net positive for their associated indie theatre companies, who will benefit from access to the larger institutions’ performance spaces and communications resources.
Subscribers of both theatres, as well, will have access to reciprocal discounts and perks across town.
“The real goal of this project is to build audiences for theatre in Toronto,” said Gideon Arthurs, executive director of Soulpepper. “The context for making art in this city has changed radically over the last five years.”
“We know, at both companies, that more equals more,” he continued. “More art, more opportunities for artists, more stability so they can grow their crafts. More collaboration means that every dollar we spend gets more mileage. It’s very much a ‘one plus one equals lots’ mentality – we’re putting on shows together that we couldn’t do on our own, and we’re connecting with audiences we couldn’t reach on our own.”
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The partnership may not come as a shock to eagle-eyed theatre fans in Toronto – Crow’s and Soulpepper recently worked together on a high-profile remount of The Master Plan, a Crow’s production that played to more than 10,000 attendees at Soulpepper at the end of 2024. The theatres are collaborating, too, alongside Musical Stage Company and TO Live, on A Strange Loop, due to begin previews at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts on April 22.
“We learned a lot from our collaboration on The Master Plan‚” said Sherrie Johnson, executive director of Crow’s Theatre. “Each year, we’re taking our learnings and becoming more efficient, improving our systems so that moves between Crow’s and Soulpepper are nearly seamless.”
“It’ll take us a little time to fully adjust,” she continued, laughing. “But the idea is that working together at scale is going to be super easy at some point.”
With the announcement of the partnership comes a full season’s worth of programming from both theatres, as well as changes coming to Crow’s space on Dundas Street East – the theatre will convert the Nada Ristich Studio-Gallery into a third performance space, partially owing to a $7-million fundraising campaign that’s now reached 80 per cent of its goal.
“The gallery was always intended as a performance space,” said Johnson. “But we became so busy that we had nowhere to rehearse, so it became a rehearsal hall. It’s never empty.
“Our neighbour very graciously offered us some free space for administrative use,” she continued. “And it came up that it was available to purchase, so we bought it for a good price. Now we’re able to renovate that into rehearsal space, and the Nada Ristich will become our third performance space for cabaret-type programming.” Musical programming, she added, will be a core component of the partnership between Crow’s and Soulpepper.
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“There’s a need for that sort of cabaret space in the city,” said Chris Abraham, artistic director of Crow’s. “We need a space for indie shows that do well to come back and do a week or two of a remount. That’s what this space will be – we experimented with that sort of short-term programming with Monks this year, which went really well.”
Indeed, there exists a cinematic universe, in Toronto theatre, of collectives, companies and performers who, in the last five years, have worked in association with Crow’s and/or Soulpepper. Last year, Soulpepper re-positioned itself as a central hub for a number of local companies, including Musical Stage Company, Obsidian Theatre, Bad Hats Theatre and the Toronto Fringe Festival; Crow’s, meanwhile, has collaborated with dozens of partners since the COVID pandemic, including Stratford’s Here For Now Theatre, Ottawa’s National Arts Centre, Hamilton’s Theatre Aquarius and Toronto’s Mirvish Productions.
Leaders at Crow’s and Soulpepper hope their partnership will give their associated artists access to audiences across Toronto, rather than just from one theatre’s subscription base.
“One of the great frustrations of the last few years has been the instability of this industry, and our inability to provide smaller companies with the opportunities and resources that they need to thrive,” said Arthurs.
“We have a risk of not being able to provide enough opportunities for artists to sustain themselves in this scene. There’s a real imperative to create those opportunities so that artists stick around – and so that audiences get to continue enjoying that breadth of great work.”
According to Abraham, this merger doesn’t just represent streamlined budgets and more proactive programming: It’s a strategic move that helps to make the case for theatre as an essential part of Canadian culture. Hand-in-hand, Crow’s and Soulpepper plan to advocate for the importance of the arts to funders, donors and legislators, hopefully resulting in a more robust industry for artists and audiences alike.
“A bigger community is important for both our companies being able to survive and thrive over the next 10 years,” he said. “It’s not just audience growth – it’s philanthropy and making arguments to government.”
“We all realized, quite dramatically, that theatre wasn’t considered essential, when we had to close down,” said outgoing Soulpepper artistic director Weyni Mengesha. “So we started asking ourselves: ‘How do we become essential?’ This is the end result of that – it’s the right time. We’re ready. Let’s make a big splash.”
The partnership between Crow’s and Soulpepper will include four co-productions in its first year: The Welkin, penned by playwright and screenwriter Lucy Kirkwood and directed by Mengesha; Octet, a musical by Dave Malloy (Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812) and directed by Crow’s artistic director Abraham, produced in partnership with Musical Stage Company; Narnia, written and directed by Bad Hats Theatre artistic director Fiona Sauder and co-produced by Bad Hats Theatre; and Summer and Smoke by Tennessee Williams, directed by Crow’s associate artistic director Paolo Santalucia.
Also at Crow’s next season will be the world premiere of The Veil, a Guild Theatre Festival production inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, written by Keith Barker and Thomas Morgan Jones and directed by Helen Juvonen; The Christmas Market, written by Kanika Ambrose, directed by Philip Akin and produced by b current in association with Crow’s and Studio 180; as well as the world premiere of Michael Healey’s previously-announced Rogers v Rogers. Later in the season comes Pu Songling, a Theatre Smith-Gilmour production; American Baby, a Here For Now production in association with Crow’s Theatre, House and Body and b current; Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary, a world premiere by Erin Shields and directed by Ellen McDougall; The Division, a Project Humanity production written and directed by Andrew Kushnir; and Primary Trust, a co-production with London’s Grand Theatre of Eboni Booth’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama.
Soulpepper’s season will feature a similarly diverse range of programming, including Old Times by Harold Pinter; a remount of Gilgamesh, which made its debut at Soulpepper in 2023 as King Gilgamesh and the Man of the Wild; The Comeuppance, written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and directed by Frank Cox-O’Connell; Christina Anderson’s How to Catch Creation, directed by Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu in a co-production with Obsidian Theatre and Nightwood Theatre; Copperbelt, a co-production with the National Arts Centre by Natasha Mumba and directed by NAC artistic director Nina Lee Aquino; Witch, written by Jen Silverman and directed by Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster; Medusa, written by Erin Shields and directed by Outside the March artistic director Mitchell Cushman; Tiger Bride, written by Hailey Gillis and Andrew Penner; Happy Days, written by Samuel Beckett and directed by Jackie Maxwell; and a number of concerts as part of the theatre company’s music series.
