In the current social and political climate, writing about the challenges facing live theatre can feel almost trivial. Trivial when compared to Alberta’s provincial government trouncing the rights of teachers and trans people. Trivial when compared to Canada’s perilously long healthcare wait times, with some patients even dying before they receive care. Trivial when compared to the state of downtown in almost any community, where one will find numerous people unhoused and lacking support for mental illness and substance dependency. Trivial when compared to Alberta separatists campaigning to break up the country for reasons that really don’t make sense to me. Trivial when compared to an autocratic US president who erodes civil liberties in his own country and menaces the sovereignty of others’. Against this grim state of affairs—and it could always get worse—one could be forgiven for shrugging off the troubles tormenting live theatre.
But it’s because civic life is under strain that it remains essential to support what historian Timothy Snyder refers to as civil society, the private sphere, detached from government and business, that addresses the concerns of the community and expresses its unique view of life. The arts, and live theatre more specifically, are undoubtedly a cornerstone of civil society because they enable freedom of expression and association.
Political philosopher and survivor of the Nazi regime Hannah Arendt said totalitarian movements rely on a fragmented society in which individuals are detached from communal affairs and focused solely on apathetic self-interest. She wrote that any activity done for its own sake, like “chess for the sake of chess” and “art for the sake of art,” helps create ordinary social relationships that are a barrier to totalitarianism. (True, Hitler and Stalin poured money into the arts, but this was not art for the sake of art.) And live theatre is a hazard to authoritarianism because it enables regular people to participate in public dialogue, and stimulates new ways of thinking. A 2023 meta-analysis by the European Commission found a statistically significant correlation between participation in cultural activities (either as artist or as audience) and indicators of a healthy democracy in both European and non-European countries. Supporting cultural activities such as live theatre is an investment in the well-being of society. At a time of rapid and aggressive democratic backsliding in Canada’s closest neighbour, strengthening our own democracy is essential.
It’s for these reasons that the state of live theatre in Alberta matters. And while theatre artists continue to produce interesting shows and there is a lot to celebrate, growing challenges impede their important work.
Live theatre is a hazard to authoritarianism.
While studying drama at the University of Lethbridge in the early 2000s, I took a course that required students to regularly travel to Calgary to see plays. For those of us who had grown up in and around Lethbridge—where our only options for such experience included a community theatre, the University’s drama department and one professional company—Calgary’s scene was positively vibrant and vigorous. We marvelled at the gorgeous architecture of the Max Bell and Martha Cohen theatres. We saw classics like Hay Fever at Theatre Calgary and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at Alberta Theatre Projects (ATP), as well as smaller independent shows such as Job: The Hip-Hop Musical by a duo from Montreal. Based on everything I’d seen during that course, I was very excited about what was happening in the city just three hours north of my hometown.
But when I graduated with my drama degree in 2005, several of my professors encouraged me to move to Edmonton, where, they said, the theatre performances per capita was one of the highest in Canada. So I packed up and headed for Edmonton—and I wasn’t disappointed. It was just as lively and active a scene as Calgary’s, but with smaller, funkier companies such as Theatre Network, Northern Light Theatre, Shadow Theatre, Workshop West and Theatre Yes. So much was going on, I could often see several shows in a month. On top of that, near the end of summer the massive Fringe Festival took over the Old Strathcona neighbourhood where I lived. For a young man from Lethbridge experiencing all of this for the first time, it was a thrilling period.
After a few years I moved to Calgary for my graduate studies and started seeing the city’s latest offerings. There were still the big players, sure, but I also discovered a bounty of smaller companies such as Lunchbox Theatre, Downstage Theatre, Sage Theatre, Urban Curvz, Verb Theatre, Ground Zero Theatre and Theatre Junction. These small to medium-sized companies were putting on more daring, innovative shows with decent audience turnout. Once again, I found it all very inspiring. The future of theatre seemed bright, promising and full of possibility.
Maybe my early optimism was naive or misguided. A cursory glance at theatre history in Alberta quickly reveals several community and professional theatre companies that shut down due to financial difficulties. Still, seeing Calgary’s small to medium-sized companies struggle in real time is disheartening.
Both Urban Curvz and Ground Zero Theatre had ceased operations long before the pandemic. Theatre Junction, due to a toxic conflict between the artistic director and the rest of the company, closed up shop and moved to Montreal. Since 2018, Sage Theatre’s seasons have been sporadic, sometimes putting on one or two shows per year, sometimes none at all. Verb Theatre has been producing fewer shows since the pandemic and is hosting more staged readings and productions from outside Alberta. Lunchbox Theatre has gone from producing six shows per season to four. Downstage Theatre continues to offer a full lineup, though they too have pivoted to hosting more plays by other companies. Only Ghost River Theatre continues staging its yearly program of devised performance, in which plays are created collaboratively by an ensemble rather than from a pre-existing script. Calgary’s ecosystem for small to medium-sized companies no longer looks as promising as it once did.
But things are different in Edmonton. Shadow Theatre, Northern Light Theatre and Workshop West all seem to be humming along, producing their regular lineup of three to four shows per season. Theatre Network is an outlier, having pivoted entirely to hosting productions by other companies for its 2025/2026 season. And Theatre Yes is pausing to develop a major adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm for 2027.
So why the disparity between the theatre scenes of Alberta’s two major cities? Why do many small to medium-sized companies in Calgary appear to be stagnant or struggling while most in Edmonton are largely holding steady?
Theatre history in Calgary and Edmonton follows similar but diverging trajectories. Both cities benefited from the presence of philanthropists who donated millions of dollars to help establish and expand the bigger companies. But the scale of philanthropy in Calgary has clearly been larger. For example, in the early 1980s Harry and Martha Cohen helped raise substantial private donations for the construction of the Calgary Centre for the Performing Arts (now the Werklund Centre), which opened in 1985 at a cost of $102-million. Such an amount would today have been worth roughly $275-million when adjusted for inflation. Calgary’s theatre community also enjoyed the support of several oil and gas companies headquartered in the city who were willing and able to generously sponsor the arts. All this abundance has mainly benefited Calgary’s largest theatre companies, namely Theatre Calgary, ATP and Vertigo Theatre, though Lunchbox also enjoyed some regular sponsorships from oil and gas companies. (Interestingly, while energy companies were once big sponsors of the arts in Calgary, their contributions to even the large theatre companies have evaporated. That sponsorship gap has since been filled by companies in finance, real estate, law, construction, utilities and property development.)
Meanwhile, Edmonton certainly had its share of wealthy philanthropists and sponsors, but the magnitude just doesn’t compare to Calgary, and the overwhelming majority of that money has gone to supporting The Citadel and other large arts organizations.
On the other hand, for many years, Edmonton’s theatre companies have had their own advantage in terms of government funding. In 2019 the Conference Board of Canada (now called Signal49 Research) published a report about Calgary’s creative industries and their economic impact. The study found Edmonton’s arts sector benefited from nearly the highest per capita government funding in Canada, second only to Vancouver. By comparison, Calgary was among the lowest recipients of government arts funding in Canada, receiving less than half of what Edmonton got per capita. My own research backs this up. The funding reports for the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the respective municipal arts councils show that for the last five years Edmonton’s small to medium-sized companies continue to receive more grants from every level of government, and those grants are of a larger dollar value. The exception here is Theatre Yes, which lost its artist-driven Canada Council funding with the change in leadership in 2019. Otherwise, the contrast between the two cities is striking.
This can have a real impact in terms of how companies can operate. In Calgary, Verb Theatre’s artistic director, Kathryn Smith, said the lack of organizational funding from the Canada Council limits the company’s ability to hire more staff. And without a larger team that could bolster the company’s marketing and audience development, “we don’t have a way to keep us top of mind for the average theatre-goer.”
What was even more surprising to me was that Edmonton’s small to medium-sized companies also enjoy more donations, grants from private foundations and even sponsorships. Using the Canada Revenue Agency’s charity tracking website, I itemized the revenue from private gifts for a sample of theatre companies in each city. Edmonton’s all enjoy a steady stream of grassroots donations, sponsorships and private foundation contributions, while similar-sized companies in Calgary on average receive less in these sorts of private gifts.
It would help if governments provided more money to their funding agencies so that grants could keep up with inflation.
It’s difficult to know why this particular imbalance exists. Having been founded in the ’70s, ’80s and early ’90s, the companies in Edmonton possibly benefit from a more established presence in the city, while the small to mid-sized companies in Calgary are relatively younger and less familiar to prospective donors and sponsors. Founded in 1975, Lunchbox Theatre is the exception, and of the Calgary companies I surveyed it receives the most in donations, sponsorships and foundation grants.
But even Edmonton’s relatively new Theatre Yes, which only became a registered charity in 2023, seems to receive decent private contributions. Co-artistic director Max Rubin, originally from Liverpool, says, “People are so generous. And it’s another difference I’ve noticed between here and the UK. There is such a culture of generosity and philanthropy among people here that would never happen in the UK.”
Calgary does still have a bountiful culture of philanthropy. In 2024 the Werklund family donated $75-million towards the radical transformation of the Werklund Centre and the construction of a new major arts facility. But while this illustrates the civic-mindedness among the city’s philanthropists, it also demonstrates how donations to the arts in Calgary usually go big, overwhelmingly benefiting the larger cultural organizations while mostly overlooking the small to medium-sized players. Whatever the reason, Edmonton’s more modest theatre companies seem to have tapped into the culture of grassroots-level giving, while some of Calgary’s smaller companies struggle to make similar inroads.
I then looked at ticket sales. Again using the Canada Revenue Agency’s charity tracking website, I found that my sample of small to medium-sized companies in Edmonton have all bounced back from the pandemic slump and are enjoying good ticket sales. In fact, since Workshop West adopted a pay-what-you-will ticket policy, managing director Martin Galba says the company’s audience attendance has increased by 73 per cent. Shadow Theatre’s ticket sales aren’t quite as robust as they were before the pandemic, but incoming artistic director Lana Michelle Hughes says the company is lucky to have “a really solid, dedicated and enthusiastic fan base” that has helped their box office revenue remain fairly strong.
But my survey of the ticket sales for my cross-section of Calgary’s small to medium-sized companies was more of a mixed bag. Downstage and Ghost River theatres’ numbers seem to have recovered, but Lunchbox is middling and Verb and Sage are really struggling. Lunchbox Theatre artistic director Bronwyn Steinberg attributes the lukewarm audience turnout to the way the pandemic changed people’s entertainment habits. With so many viewing options at home, audiences are seeing less theatre overall. “People are more careful about where they spend their time and money,” Steinberg says. “If you’re spending less time and energy and money on theatre, you’re less likely to go to the smaller companies.”
The larger companies have a long history of producing crowd-pleasers. A quick survey of their recent seasons reveals an ongoing lineup of well-known classics (Blithe Spirit), established international hits (Sleuth), adaptations of familiar works (The Wizard of Oz) and musicals (Come from Away). Not that there’s anything wrong with these sorts of shows. On the contrary, the big companies in Calgary are doing great work and are an important part of the cultural fabric of the city. But their programming and the resulting audience turnout demonstrate how the average person is more likely to leave their home and go see a play—if that play promises something predictable and familiar. That audience member is less likely to venture out for something unknown, however. Steinberg says, “I think for us at Lunchbox, because we really are focused on new Canadian work, it’s an extra challenge, because people don’t recognize the title,” and are therefore somewhat reluctant to take a chance on it.
While smaller companies in Edmonton have only The Citadel to compete with for theatre-goers, Calgary’s smaller companies must contend with three larger theatre companies, all of which produce more-familiar shows and thus attract a greater share of the audience’s reduced theatre budget.
Since the pandemic, theatre companies in both Edmonton and Calgary have struggled with increased costs due to inflation. Production budgets have risen, particularly around artist fees and materials for sets and costumes, while audiences have less disposable income for non-essentials such as theatre. Some companies that don’t own or have a long-term lease on rehearsal or performance space also contend with increasing rental costs for venues.
At the same time, companies in both cities are also struggling with stagnant government granting, which some artistic directors told me hasn’t increased for upwards of 10 years. The static funding coupled with growing expenses essentially amounts to a revenue reduction, which usually results in companies cutting staff or accepting meagre salaries.
The provincial government has committed to increasing Alberta Foundation for the Arts funding to $38.1-million in 2026, up from $34.6-million in 2025. Meanwhile, a report by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce states that federal support for the arts, as a percentage of total expenditures, continues to decline.
None of the artistic directors I spoke to blamed the funding agencies for the flat funding. Nor did they necessarily blame the governments who allocate money to the arts. Rising costs are affecting all major public priorities, such as defence, healthcare, education, housing, public safety and so on. In fact, some of the artistic directors felt that, despite the stagnant government contributions, arts funding in Canada remains relatively well supported. Downstage Theatre artistic director Clare Preuss has extensive family living in Switzerland, where she thought the arts funding would far exceed Canada’s, but on the contrary, Switzerland doesn’t have it nearly as good. Similarly, UK-born Theatre Yes co-artistic directors Max Rubin and Ruth Alexander insist the level of arts support in Canada is unheard of in their home country. Rubin says, “Edmonton is a funding haven. We’ve worked all over the world and I have never worked in such a generously funded ecosystem.”
Still, there’s no doubt increased government backing would help. Former Workshop West artistic director Heather Inglis says governments can meaningfully sponsor the arts without sacrificing other priorities such as healthcare. The budgets of most arts funding agencies are barely a rounding error compared to overall public spending, and even modest top-ups can go a long way toward stabilizing smaller companies. “The choice to not increase arts funding is always a political choice, because it’s not material in most budgets.”
And it would help if theatre audiences would be willing to take a chance on something new and unfamiliar.
If one chooses to devote their career to live theatre, one has to accept from the beginning that there will be challenges. In a way, what’s happening now is nothing new. Yes, some changes would help. It would help if governments provided more money to their funding agencies so that grants could keep up with inflation—and it would help if Calgary’s public funding per capita could match Edmonton’s. It would help if philanthropists in both cities but especially in Calgary would support not just the big theatre companies but the small to medium-sized ones as well. And it would help if audiences would be willing to take a chance on something new and unfamiliar.
But all of the artistic directors I spoke with remained sanguine and even cheerful. Clare Preuss of Downstage was emphatic that Calgary’s theatre scene has a lot to celebrate. Bronwyn Steinberg says that despite the company having to reduce staff and the number of shows it mounts each season, Lunchbox is now on a more sustainable path and its smaller team is less stressed and actually better paid. Kathryn Smith of Verb Theatre, whose company is struggling more than most, says, “I still think what a gift it is to be in the time we’re in and to get to make art for a community that I love and to make experiences for people to come and see.”
The resilience of such arts leaders is a gift to our civil society. With the global rise in authoritarianism, if art for the sake of art helps create healthier democratic systems, then we all have a stake in their long-term success.
Andrew Torry is a playwright and curriculum developer in Calgary. His plays include The Miracle Queen and Badger.
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