Summerworks Sees Funding Cut

Now obviously Globe and Mail is looking directly at the connection of Summerworks' presentation of Homegrown last year as the direct reason Summerworks lost its funding.  For those not in the know last year Summerworks, a curated festival for many artistic directors across the country presented Catherine Frid's play Homegrown.  Homegrown is a play about a woman's relationship (the playwrights actually) with the convicted terrorist Shareef Abdelhaleem, one of the so-called “Toronto 18”. Whether that's truly the reason or not...well




Obviously the Heritage fund, not being IDIOTS, has not cited a specific reason for cutting what has been a 5 year sustainable partnership of funding with Summerworks.  Instead, a mere 40 days before the festival, Artistic Director Michael Rubenfeld has been notified they will not be receiving money that the arts organization was counting on to help artists make their way to Toronto to present their work.  Is this about censorship?  The artists will immediately say it is, and who can blame them.  Proponents of cuts will say there is no grounded evidence, and that the artists are merely clamoring about what they perceive as an equal loss of funding.  I swear, if I hear the words, "tightening the belts" again, I might scream.  The truth is that the real person that loses out isn't the artist.  Sure we lose out a little bit. But who truly loses out is the audience.  The audience who misses the experience, who lost the moment, who never gets the opportunity or the chance to have the story.  Made all the more tragic because the audience is never aware that they missed it now...it just becomes well and truly gone without that funding money to support those shows.


I want to be clear because there is always a common misconception that arts funding money just goes to artists to line their pockets with cash, we all make thousands of dollars under the table, are paid in cash, laundered money blah blah blah.

For our show?  ONE?  We have 9 artists traveling.  Four actors, a director, a stage manager/designer, a sound designer, and two technicians.  That's what is involved with putting on a 5 star show.  We need to freight two pieces of large scale packed goods because it's too much to take on a plane.  While in Toronto we need to acquire 4 scenic elements, find a place to billet us (not a hotel, we can't afford a hotel) for the two and a half weeks we are there.  We need to take a bus, not a taxi, a bus, every day to the theatre.  Eating and sleeping costs in a strange city aside, just to present our work, with no thought of ticket sales is prohibitively expensive to travel to Toronto to do the show.  Just to present it.  But we will present it.

We will present it because that's what artists do.  We need to show our work.  ONE is a moving, dynamic piece of theatre, love and loss, beauty and tragic regret.  It's an epic undertaking by Philistine across the memory of her love to find George.  We are presenting it because it moves people, because years later people still message us that they remember the scenes they saw, the moments they felt, the music they heard, and the beautiful acting of our cast.

It's awfully one dimensional to perceive art, and artists as trying to glorify terrorism.  Glorify values not inherent to oneself.  Art is about expanding the breadth of culture within society.  We are about creating experiences, and giving them back to our own audience, I believe keenly the heart of all good art presents  kernel of truth as a gift, a gift that says "Hey, have you ever thought about?"  I wish Mr. Harper had taken Mr. Rubenfeld's invitation to see the show and judge it for himself.  To my knowledge he never did.  An experience lost, a moment in time gone.

Below is the article from the globe and Mail, and links to donate both to Summerworks, and to ONE directly.  Thanks for your consideration.

Globe and Mail Article on the Cut
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/theatre/ottawa-cancels-funding-for-toronto-theatre-festival-that-presented-terrorist-play/article2077044/

Help send a Charitable Donation Directly to Summerworks
http://www.canadahelps.org/CharityProfilePage.aspx?CharityID=s94345

Help us, ONE, Specifically by donating here
http://www.indiegogo.com/ONE-3