Jackie Latendresse
Jackie Latendresse is an alumnus of the University of Waterloo where she obtained her H.B.A. in Dance with a minor in Fine Arts. She founded Free Flow Dance Theatre in 1995 and has been the artistic director ever since. The Company relocated to Toronto in the winter of 1996 and has since found a home base in Saskatoon. (17 years) Jackie has been choreographing and producing her own shows since 1993 when she presented her first full evening of dance works at Abstract Machines that Recognise Certain Languages. She has since created a large volume of work and her repertoire includes 20 full-length works (20 min+) and numerous shorter works, Her work has been presented all over Canada at many venues ranging from traditional theatres to schools to parks and back alleys. The company has toured extensively with the Canadian Fringe Festival Circuit and is invited to present work regularly throughout Saskatchewan. She has received various awards including the Special Merit award for outreach with the LGBTQ community from Out Saskatoon 2011, been named Champion of the arts by the Star Phoenix in 2017, was awarded a Saskatoon Foundation for the Arts Artist award 2018 and most recently she received the 2021 Saskatoon YWCA Woman of Distinction award for arts and culture.
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Transcript
Honest question, what is with the disposable nature of plays in the Canadian theatre world? You know, I can only think of a couple of plays, one in recent memory, that have had a life outside of their initial performance. On average, we produce a play once on one of our major stages, say for example in Toronto, Theatre Pasmorae, Tarragon or Factory, and then for the most part that play is then disposed of and forgotten and never really heard from again. And we’ve been doing that pretty much since the 1960s when the Canadian theatre scene really began in earnest.
Every so often a play like Kim’s Convenience comes along that is so undeniably good that it gets a life after its production, but for the most part it seems that in Canada we produce a play, it runs for a few weeks and then when it’s over, it’s gone and we never hear from it again. But for American and British plays, those will often tour or get a Canadian production or be performed by community theatre groups, but aside from Kim’s or The Drowsy Chaperone or Come From Away, when was the last time a Canadian play has gotten a production outside of Canada? Now I remember a number of years ago, Howard Sherman, who was then the head of the American Theatre Wing, posted that he found it curious that he knew plays from Britain and of course plays from America, but he could not name any shows from Canada. Of course a lot of Canadians helped out and named their favourites, but at the time even he found it odd that he couldn’t name a single Canadian play.
Why do you think this is? What is it that prevents the plays that we create here from going on to be performed in the US or Britain or elsewhere? But what’s even more concerning to me is the fact that we rarely see them produced at home. So often a play is produced and like I said it runs a few weeks and it closes and it doesn’t get to breathe, to grow and it certainly doesn’t get to become a hit the way shows from elsewhere get to. And I do understand that part of that is logistics.
In Toronto we have only so many theatres dedicated to producing new work and there’s only so much time that could be dedicated to a given play in each season. And because of that a production can only run a few weeks. But that keeps us from having a show that gets to be a big hit.
Because if a show does well there’s really no mechanism in place that lets a show go on to another life. Nothing that lets a show get picked up to continue on under another theatre’s umbrella and run for longer or anything like that. I guess for me the sad thing is that Canadian theatre will never be able to get worldwide acclaim or even respect unless we find a way to give a play life after its first production.
Not that a play has to travel to Britain or the US to be successful but at the very least should we not have some path to further productions in Canada to give our shows the same shot at being remembered that shows in Britain and the US seem to? Why don’t we value the theatre we make here enough to give more of our plays a future? Don’t our homegrown playwrights and actors and directors deserve that? Don’t they deserve better than just being disposable? Agree or disagree? I would love to hear your opinion. Let’s get to the episode. But first I’m your host Phil Rickaby.
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For a monthly subscription of just five dollars I will take you behind the scenes on the podcast, do regular Q&A sessions and even present regular exclusive interactive conversations just for subscribers. Remember you can find Stageworthy on Twitter and Instagram at stageworthypod and you can find the website with the archive of all the episodes at stageworthypodcast.com. If you want to find me you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at philrickaby and as I mentioned my website is philrickaby.com. My guest this week is Saskatoon based dancer and choreographer Jackie Jackie Latendresse. She is the founder of Free Flow Dance Theatre which has been producing work since 1993.
She is a longtime Burning Man attendee and is the regional contact for Saskatchewan. She’s received numerous awards for her work in dance and most recently received the 2021 Saskatoon YWCA Woman of Distinction Award for Arts and Culture. She also happens to be one of my oldest friends.
It doesn’t take long after meeting Jackie to realize that she is someone who just gets stuff done. When she sees a need she steps up and makes it happen. Recently she saw a need and developed a one-of-a-kind bodyworker program to lengthen and strengthen the careers of dancers.
Here’s our conversation. So I was thinking today that we met a very long time ago. I was 16 which is very long time ago and I mean we met at the the Young People’s Theatre summer drama day camp and you as a dancer I mean you knew then that you were primarily going to be a dancer correct? Yes I did.
It was an interesting time when you’re a teenager and I was growing up in a small town so I got a chance to go to the big city and and be there during the summer for that program. It was a definitely a lot of fun. I remember dying my hair pink and my parents were completely shocked when they came to pick me up in Toronto.
But I always wanted to be a dancer. I don’t know if you remember that but yeah bright strawberry shortcake pink it was a lot of fun. Oh I remember that absolutely I do.
But as somebody who was primarily wanting to be a dancer do you recall when dance first became a thing for you? Well I took lessons from a young age of course that’s usually the way that most people get introduced but I started taking it seriously as a teenager. My teacher was she was very supportive and brought me to a lot of different types of camps. We went to Chicago one summer to study at Gus Giordano School of Dance and I was introduced to contemporary dance there for the very first time.
I took my very first Graham class and my very first Limon class there and fell in love with it. And I mean you went to you studied dance at the University of Waterloo and I remember I remember visiting you there and I remember you founded a free flow dance theatre there or at least just after you graduated and you did a before you moved the company to Toronto and then eventually to Saskatoon. Yes so I got my start at the University of Waterloo dance department which is no longer unfortunately it has since been disbanded but it was a fantastic program.
It was highly academic as well as a lot of fabulous dance training opportunities. I specialized and focused in contemporary dance with a focus on choreography and was one of the first students in the dance program there to create a choreography focused stream of study. A little bit a little bit of uniqueness there.
I’ve never been afraid to try to find my own pathway and yes I formed free flow dance theatre in 1995. I had dabbled in choreography prior to my graduation and had a somewhat informal group of dancers working with me and founded a small collective called the choreographers collective in Kitchener-Waterloo. We were producing a lot of really edgy independent shows trying to find our feet as artists and trying to develop our own personal styles.
It was a it was a really fun time where we produced shows at nightclubs we did underground theatre and we were not afraid to step in and create contemporary dance pieces for fashion shows and all kinds of interesting ways to get started within the field. Eventually I moved from Kitchener-Waterloo to Toronto bringing most of the company members with me and of course adding new dancers as we met them in Toronto. You had a great little a great space there with like a full studio and and like lots of space and you ran classes out of that great space and all that sort of stuff.
We did. I also remember that you I also remember that you had this gift for finding people who would not have described themselves as dancers convincing them that they could be a dancer and putting them in shows. Yes definitely that was the time of the warehouse and in Toronto in the in the mid to late 90s it really was warehouse culture.
A lot of dancers and artists were work living and working in warehouse spaces including myself. I remember running into you in the bank machine on Queen Street and that’s how we reconnected. Oh shit yes.
You turned around and I started screaming and jumped on you I think. It was quite funny. I think that’s exactly how it happened.
And that was the neighborhood that I was living in and you were actually just a few blocks from me. So a lot of artists obviously were living in that neighborhood during that time period. I was working with actors, dancers, musicians, poets, all kinds of people who just were interested in moving who had the desire to move but perhaps hadn’t had a lot of training.
They were welcome as well and we combined all of these different types of people into really interesting innovative shows. I found it fun to find raw talent out at a nightclub or a dance party and convince the people that they should you know give the stage a try. A lot of those folks did end up becoming you know very active either in the dance or theatre or performance art fields.
Yeah now what eventually I mean you’ve been in Saskatoon for quite some time so what took you from Toronto to Saskatoon? I had been doing the Cross Canada Fringe Festival for a number of years with the dance company and had made a lot of different friends within the theatre community and I moved to England for a short period of time where I was living and working and when I returned I was floating around in Toronto trying to figure out where I wanted to live, what I wanted to do, staying at various warehouse spaces and producing little small theatrical events when I was offered some space to create the Works in Progress dance series in Saskatoon and I had previously been there on the Fringe Festival and had taught some workshops for some of their community programming there so I was thrilled when they suggested that I start this Works in Progress series featuring new contemporary work by independent artists there and decided to take the chance take a leap of faith and just move to Saskatoon and I have not regretted the decision. What is it about Saskatoon that has that has really sort of fed you and fed your work? Yeah well I had a lot of support when I first arrived. People were helping me find interesting jobs and making connections with different artists.
I landed a teaching job at the University of Saskatchewan for quite some time until the program was cut unfortunately. It was a great program actually but it’s no longer in existence and while I was there I started establishing myself as an artist recognized by Saskatchewan Arts Board funding and really just I felt very grassroots when I was there when I first landed. People extended hands and the use of their spaces for me to experiment in and work on new pieces of choreography and the scene was very small so it was really like reinventing the dance company when I first started there.
Years later I considered leaving the province because it is a small dance community there and I was finding myself frustrated with the lack of opportunities for dance and the difficulty to secure funding but luckily I was approached by the Saskatchewan Arts Board and they talked to me and gave me a whole bunch of options and opportunities and things and ideas that I could potentially utilize for funding in the future and that was very convincing and I decided to stay. Since then I have purchased an old church and I have converted it into a dance space for adults and our free flow company is based out of that space along with all kinds of other fun adult movement based classes ranging from everything from clown to mime to ballet to burlesque to belly dance to ballroom and beyond. So I’ve really enjoyed making my mark there and getting my toe in the door and helping be part of the growing scene in dance and performing arts in Saskatoon.
Do you feel like when you took over that church and started building that space and made it into what it is now that that was sort of when your roots in Saskatchewan really sort of like sunk in? Definitely, definitely. It’s very expensive to purchase and run a large building in most places in Canada so fortunately I was able to afford to do that in Saskatoon and to really feel like I had a home, a home base for myself as an independent artist but also for my company and my company dancers and since then the company has grown exponentially and we have dancers coming from across Canada to perform with us and to join the company and people are very excited about the work that we’re doing in the Prairie Provinces. I’ve just had an unlimited success so far despite the pandemic.
We were supposed to celebrate our 25th anniversary in 2020 so the majority of that got cancelled but we feel like this year things are actually going to start happening again. Fortunately for us we’re very flexible and small company and I love performance art and the theatrical end of dance so we moved outside and we created a lot of participatory and immersive experiences for people that were unusual and I would say my background as a Burning Man regional contact probably helped a little bit where we’re just used to working with what you have and making your own fun and coming up with creative problem solving. We were able to come up with some really fun activities during the pandemic so far.
I was definitely going to ask about how about the Burning Man connection and how it affected because the things that you were just sort of lightly describing there I was like well that definitely sounds like a Burning Man influence there. With Burning Man as somebody who’s you’ve been going to Burning Man for a long time what was your first what first drew you to Burning Man and what’s kept you going back? Well it took me a number of years to actually get there. I had wanted to go for a while and a friend of mine kept poking me and saying hey you really need to do this so I would look it up and research it and think yes that’s exactly where I need to be and then I would be busy doing the Fringe Festival circuit during the summer and unavailable.
One year I decided I was not going to do the Fringe Festival circuit and I called my friend I said yep I’m gonna come to Burning Man this year this is great but then they cut the program that I was teaching at the University of Saskatchewan so I thought well maybe I maybe I can’t afford to do this this year perhaps I should go another year and I sent my regrets so I don’t think I can make it here’s what happened and then my birthday arrived and a card came in the mail it said happy birthday see you there and inside the card there was a ticket to Burning Man so I thought I guess I’m going to Burning Man this and that was how I got there
the first year it was a transformative experience as it is for many people I felt like I’d finally found the place where I fit in and found my family outside of my family and it was artistically renewing and I feel like every single time that I have gone I come back with my artistic and creative batteries fully charged ready to go for another year there are so many talented and inspiring human beings that seem to find their way to that wonderful thing in the desert and every time I come home feeling invigorated and refreshed and exhausted but also refreshed so yeah it’s definitely a creative haven for me it’s a safe space for me to experiment my style I’ve done several performances there and created personas and characters that I’ve brought back I’ve test run a few technological elements glow in the dark things etc and it’s been a ton of fun and that’s really what we need as artists is to be able to have some fun with our peers and come away from those experiences just wanting to do more and to do it better I also love the participatory things that I think we sometimes
yeah you know I was thinking one of the things that often I think we as artists forget when we’re caught up in doing our work is that we can do our work in play you know if you go to something like Burning Man you can it sounds like you’re playing a lot more and experimenting without the weight of having to produce and having to have it be something you can take a few more risks because you’re just playing and then you can take that that sense of play and come home and do something kind of exciting with it
that’s very true it’s such a playground it’s an adult playground it is really a place for freedom and experimentation in terms of creativity and out of the box thinking it’s not a lot of rules and people are living in that sort of immediate now so there’s no expectations I love the participatory nature of Burning Man and the people who attend people are willing to get up there and improvise with you take a workshop in something they’ve never tried before and generally just that sense of camaraderie that you have when you camp with people under trying circumstances sometimes it’s really hot or dusty sometimes you’ve stayed up way too late and and it’s just uh it’s an extreme experience it’s not for everybody and it’s definitely not for the faint of heart but I do think it’s for creative souls
um now you you you you you you mentioned the the the church that you sort of you took over and turned into the home base for for uh for for a free flow dance and for all of your work um that’s when you got it it was a church it wasn’t a theatre you had to renovate that right
correct it was a functioning church when I went to see it when I purchased it it came with all of the pews and an altar and we definitely had to do a lot of renovations within that building and we’re still working on it it’s a it’s a work in progress every year it gets better uh just before the pandemic we put on new windows and siding and a brand new roof beautiful red metal roof so we are easy to spot everywhere from everywhere in the neighborhood with our beautiful roof and our matching red door uh so yeah it’s it’s been a joy also I’ve learned how to do things like plumbing and drywalling and various other things around the house uh that I never imagined I would be doing but you’re that that work is I mean obviously like you know you take it were you how how soon after you purchased it were you was free flow uh performing in it
oh yes we turned it over quite quickly we had a number of people help from the community lots of friends and and neighbors came over to lend a hand we had to remove a lot of old flooring to reveal all of the original hardwood which was underneath and so I would say probably within two months of the purchase we had well a soft opening and we per free flow performed at it along with some of our friends singers and dancers
we had a an amazing um guerrilla arts performance by a uh a group that was um they were from South America and they were visiting Saskatoon and we had met them down at the farmer’s market and invited them to our to our opening and they all showed up in costume and did a like just came in the door playing instruments and did a whole performance it was amazing uh way to celebrate this new dance space and inject energy into the space that was so positive right from day one I’ve I’ve it’s been a joy working in that building
well I mean it’s great for an artist to have a home base right it’s great for an artist to have a place that’s theirs it’s such a rarity for somebody to be able to have that space that’s theirs to work in um in in a lot of ways that’s got to be really artistically floor of uh freeing because you don’t have to worry about renting a space or where am I going to perform that’s a question that doesn’t necessarily isn’t something that you have to consider so now you can just concentrate on the creation rather than just the the where and the how
right yes yes for sure and I’ve built a suite in the basement so I can wake up at three in the morning inspired and get out of bed and go into the studio and work if I desire which is kind of awesome and I feel like the security of having owning real estate especially during the pandemic but the security of owning real estate as an artist really gives me a bit of future security for myself a bit of a retirement plan when I am ready to retire as an artist I have this beautiful space that I can use as as a foundation for my retirement so because as self-employed people we often don’t have a lot of things planned for our futures um this is me sort of putting that out there for the young aspiring people start your TFSA now and but as independently uh independent people we need to think about our futures and we need to be planning something for ourselves when we retire
speaking of of of planning for for retirement and and and getting older um I want to know more I want to know something about the the the body worker program that you’ve developed um that’s to lengthen the careers of dancers so obviously I think I think everybody understands that that traditionally a dancer’s uh dance life is relatively slow uh short um but you you’ve developed this this program uh tell me about about the creation of that and and and and and more
yes the body worker program is a very unique program we’re one of the few uh places in Canada that offer it to our contracted artists it is designed to prolong the dancers careers and to mitigate uh injuries risk of injuries and to keep the dancers bodies healthy and in shape so we have uh several different types of body worker therapists that work with our company and provide services uh free of charge on a monthly basis to our artists including things like physiotherapy massage therapy um fascial work and more and we have found that by being able to provide monthly preventative and maintenance services like this to our dancers that we have almost completely I don’t think we’ve had one major new injury since we started the program and we have not had to cancel or um cancel performances or higher understudies due to injuries since we began the program so it really works and our dancers I wish I had this when I was younger our dancers are so appreciative of these services um
I mean obviously the desire of any artist is to keep being able to perform um what was the process of coming up with this program and developing it did you did you consult with people like well how how did you develop the program
I was attending the Healthy Dancer Canada conference when they when it took place in Saskatoon listening to all these fantastic discussions on dancers and health care and as I sat in the audience I began formulating this program thinking why doesn’t anyone do this this is a this would be a great thing everyone should do do the offer this type of thing and then by the end of the conference weekend I thought why don’t I do this and so instead of asking why someone else doesn’t do it and I’ve always been a bit of a self-starter in terms of programming so I thought huh I’ll maybe just talk to some of my current dancers and find out if they would like this type of thing to be offered and
consulting with our dancers they jumped on board they were immediately on board with this and they helped uh get the program started including including um suggestions from the dancers and the board members we were able to uh form the outline of what the services would be and we were able to find therapists from a variety of different backgrounds to participate in the pilot project the first year which was highly successful and it’s kind of just grown from there
that’s that’s incredible you know one of the things that I think I I’ve always I’ve always thought is is amazing about you as a as a as a creator is you’re a doer and so you whenever you see something uh that needs to be done I think you’re more more often than not likely to think oh well why don’t I just do that I mean you created your own dance company and you then you know you you you you’ve done what you need to do to to keep the company going and all of that sort of stuff so I think uh the a lot of times I sometimes artists will wait for the gatekeeper to hand the thing over but sometimes it’s it’s really helpful and important to say why don’t I just do this right you can figure it out you start you figure out what the next steps are you ask around and and that’s that’s just uh you know why wait for somebody else to do it if you might be able to figure it out on your own
agreed and I feel like that is the start of all great collaborations someone needs to get it started and someone needs to inspire others to get on board and someone needs to bring in the skill sets that are needed in order for it to succeed that way everyone who’s a participant feels invested in the programming they feel that they are part of the development part of it and it’s meaningful to them if we are handed things it often doesn’t seem quite as meaningful I think there’s a sense of pride that people feel to be involved in a project in a program and helping that develop and in turn it brings a sense of loyalty to the programs and also it enhances people’s willingness to work hard because they feel like they have contributed directly to the success
I I used to as a younger artist think that um I used to get a little angry about how I I was oh I’m always a catalyst I’m never a star but then you know as an older artist now I I actually love to be a catalyst I think it’s partly my job here on this planet is to be a catalyst and to be able to start things and enable people to get involved in them and continue them and grow them and to grow themselves as artists and I celebrate that now as a as a special skill that I feel fortunate to have
we certainly need our catalysts in the performing arts in the arts in general like nothing would happen without the catalysts so um that’s that’s really important and you know I’ve found as far as like the difference between you know it’s great when somebody wants you to do their work it’s great when somebody says we have this part for you we’d like you to do it or this role for you we’d like you to do it and uh that’s great and who doesn’t want that but there’s something about that thing that you’ve had a hand in creating it means more to you when you’ve done that yes um is that part of your choreo choreographic uh way of working do you do you work with the dancers do they input like how does that how does choreography work when uh Jackie Jackie Latendresse is is choreographing choreographing
yeah I am a very interactive choreographer I like to ask for my dancers feedback I like to develop the movement vocabulary in collaboration with the dancers depending upon which type of piece I’m working on when I’m doing site specific work it’s always a collaborative effort because I think it’s very important for the artist to feel comfortable in the environment that they’re in and it’s very different working in a back alley than it is working on a very perfect immaculate stage so I always work with the artists and ask for their input and and their help with the development of the work oftentimes I’m a concept generator and I like to have a whole bunch of different folks brainstorming alongside of me to see you know how can we get at the good stuff and again it’s a little bit of a sense of play because you do have to kind of go through a lot of this generating of whatever stuff so the good the bad and the ugly to get at the good stuff and that goes for theatre that goes for dance that goes for most uh performance performing arts um
and it’s the fun part it’s the part where you get to feel like like a kid again you get to feel excited as as the ideas come in you get to work with other people and their ideas as well as your own so I always feel like I’m always learning I’m always learning something from these newer younger dancers that are coming into the company they bring a completely different sensibility with them than I had when I was training at university and it’s refreshing and it’s interesting and it’s always motivating
so I like to keep that open we we do the back alley project which is always collaborative um we do uh we offer mentor mentoring to all of our younger emerging performers as well throughout the year which is inspiring to me as an artist and helps with my continued development as an artist and we have been working outside so much during the pandemic that it it’s become just part of the process to be in a constant state of listening to each other and asking each other and discussing with each other in order to get to a spot where the work is going to be at its best and then you throw in things like snow and wind and rain and it gets interesting
yeah the that sense of play that you describe is is like I think like I was saying earlier is is sometimes we can get so caught up in the idea of of the importance of what we’re doing or you know who’s watching and that sort of thing that we forget to play and to be able to to play with other people
I mean why why else do we do this if not for the the the playing with other people it’s definitely joyful and we need to find moments of joy for ourselves as artists also be able to bring that energy to our audience and our participants because we we’ve had a a couple of really rough years and people really need art now more than ever and they need the magic and the joy that we can bring as artists who are enamored with our craft and who are uh you know willing to dive in and and fully offer authentic experiences to people
yeah I think there’s there’s there’s a little bit of a I know that what I’m sort of sensing around in in the world that that I’m in is a lot of that uncertainty that leads to fear um you know there’s been so many times when artists have been about to present a production or about to to to do a show and then they have to cancel it um or they have to postpone it and then do we have to cancel it will we ever get to do this again um and it’s very stressful and it’s very difficult it sounds like you found a great way to keep things going and still have your audience there instead of just relying on the digital production was it just a no-brainer for you to just go outside and dance outside was that just naturally there was no thought you didn’t you didn’t consider anything else he just immediately thought we can do this outside
pretty much because we had been doing our back alley antics program for you know 15 years already which is outside it’s one of our most successful programs we’ve done a few different versions of it we’ve worked in sculpture gardens and that was the first instinct that we had we also didn’t have a lot of the technical equipment needed to do online services uh right at the beginning of the pandemic so fortunately we were able to secure some funding and special special grants to to invest in some of those items now so we are much more technically savvy than we were but really we worked with people we worked with with you know real live humans and we wanted to see how we could continue to do that in a safe way that was still artistically viable and relevant to what was happening with the with ourselves and and also um of course you know following the guidelines for health and safety with the pandemic so it provided it provided a lot of challenges and i i love stepping up to a challenge i i found it um interesting to see how many new tricks i could learn in you know two years
it’s a challenge if we ever stop caring about those things and learning about how to become new versions of ourselves as artists then we’re we’re losing something really important so
yeah i mean we had we’ve had so much fun we we’ve created all kinds of crazy events including lots of outdoor winter things in Saskatchewan dealing with snow and everybody’s wearing snow boots and snow suits and you know we’ve done glow in the dark stuff out in the forest and we’ve done
we did a program called the explorer which was part photo safari part walking tour and part travelling dance show uh where the audience was invited to try to bring their cameras and try to get a picture of this elusive mysterious creature in the bush and they come across various people along the way uh and various dance uh scenarios and you know we just we we have to keep working in a way that that makes our lives feel fulfilled in order to be able to bring fulfilling work to the viewers
and i often use the word participant rather than than viewer because we really think of a lot of our our audiences as people who are part of the show especially the outdoor shows they’re walking with us they’re talking they’re bringing their cameras they’re deciding where to stand and sit uh they’re you know um we did in our glow in the dark show some people you know wore their uh headlamps and their glow sticks and it was great fun and people really felt like they were part of a event and were still provided with like a really fantastic artistic and creative performance
as far as you know you mentioned that it took you a little while to start doing stuff online and digital stuff um what was that because one of the things that you know everybody a lot of people that i’ve spoken to um they’ve had to learn a lot in the last years if they’re going to do things online um as far as uh the learning curve for you what what kind of stuff did you pick up that you that you never thought you would have to touch before
oh my the learning curve was quite steep i was not very technically able prior to the pandemic i would say i’m i’m a lot better now than i was but that you know it was necessary to learn the skills uh i i was familiar with zoom because we actually did use zoom um for our um monthly meetings and and whatnot for burning so i was already kind of familiar with that platform i had never run it before um but i you know i actually the the saskatoon library were doing a covet 19 archive and i thought it would be really interesting for them uh to to just see what um the stage management notes would be to run a zoom performance so i decided i was going to document one of our performances and wrote down all of the technical notes and how basically the tech sheets on how to run a zoom dance show and uh submitted it to them for their archive i think there’s just even the behind the scenes in stuff is really cool and really interesting and
i had no idea uh how many people wanted to see what we were doing until we brought our work online we had our audience expanded exponentially and we had people tuning in from you know all around all across canada and around the world for our international dance week online program you know people from spain and and africa and um all over the u.s mexico south america we had folks tuning in from brazil from france and it was really cool to know that people wanted to see what we were doing um and that they were able to
and part of that experience also led to us doing our our first international gig and it was online and it was for we were invited to perform for as the featured finale event for a week-long uh contemporary theatre residency that was being produced in mexico so uh as they graduated they had a little event and a little little graduation party and event and then they were treated to a live stream performance of my work pods how cool is that i never would have been able to do that prior to the pandemic
yeah yeah i think there’s there’s something about that that idea of expanding the audience is is something that i think uh is is worth pursuing some form of digital connection or digital performance in the post-pandemic times once we’re out of this thing oh because there’s so many times when there are things that happen in other parts of even just canada that we can’t see but if there was a digital ticket and a live stream performance we there are shows that i would have loved to see that are happening in different places around canada and imagine being able to open up our performances to other places in the world and share that and see what they’re doing i think that is is something that in our rush to get back into physical spaces we shouldn’t forget about the benefits of the live stream
oh yes and the live stream also it it is amazing for accessibility so it the barriers for for attendance and participation drop immediately when you have digital content so folks who can’t perhaps make have physical disability in in the theatre is not accessible they can attend the performance you can integrate asl you can integrate written and visual interpretation of the work there’s so many different ways to make work inclusive using digital formats and online and of course there’s always that sort of geography barrier you know bringing art to people who are in rural areas who don’t necessarily have time to go to an urban area or the means or they don’t know and they’re able to participate they could take a workshop they could take a class they could view a performance they could be part of a creative process or a talking circle uh that this just wasn’t happening before
so i i really feel super strongly about continuing myself continuing to offer online options especially for our professional development programs like the brain body connection and our community workshop programs because it does open it just opens the door to many more people being able to come into the room
absolutely and in a world where sometimes in the arts we we have that that hand-wringing discussion about where the audience is um anything we can do to make the make it easier for the audience to find us is is is something that will pay off later
right you know another accessibility option is the fact that in some cases you know there’s there’s financial accessibility as well like maybe people sometimes tickets are over are outpriced or or even if if somebody is working and then now they have to figure out how are they going to get downtown to see the show and for dinner and that sort of thing watch it on your computer and now you’re still able to participate it opens up so many things and i think that um again uh rushing to get back to in person is great but we do have to keep in mind that that there is something to be gained from sharing online
for sure and because of our online experiences we actually implemented a brand new um method of of of ticketing into all of our shows including our including our in-person live shows we offer we have a program that is the free low income ticket program and we have a corporate sponsor that picked that up uh they loved one of the shows that we were doing so much our enchanted night forest glow in the dark show that they’ve come on board and purchased 100 tickets for next year’s season for for low income applicants
and we’ve also added a tiered ticketing system that’s on the honour system it’s self-identifying and we explain that the higher priced tickets um are tiered so that they will supplement the cost of lower price tickets and we talk about um community uh supporting each other through community and we allow people to select the ticket price that most is most suitable to their current income and it’s been great during the pandemic we’ve we haven’t had um uh any trouble um generating the the ticket sales numbers that we need in order to keep the company going and we’ve actually um been able to discover a few potential you know regular patrons and things like that because folks are really happy to know uh that their ticket price is actually helping to support someone else to come see this show who wouldn’t necessarily be able to attend
yeah you know i i think about i have a co-worker who lives in berlin and when they talk about theatre because they say they go to the theatre quite quite a bit and in germany and in much of the eu uh the theatre and live the performing arts the arts in general are highly subsidized the government sees it as a necessity and gives money and so there are plenty of affordable tickets to shows because the companies the ticket prices are subsidized by government uh funding and other other aspects and so it is it is very uncommon for people to think of theatre as something they can’t afford because everybody can’t afford it because there’s so many of these affordable tickets and i think the idea of of having somebody like a corporation step up to to help do that if if we’re not you know because we have a different funding model here that’s an amazing thing and to have somebody step up to do that is is is is amazing and i wish there was more of that in our in our canadian performing arts scene
oh it’s such a beautiful thing it diversifies your audience immediately when you implement this type of ticketing ranging from free free tickets to subsidized tickets to higher higher tiered tickets i can’t say enough that you know there will be some people who will abuse the system there’s that always happens but i think the majority of people if you are very transparent about what the costs of your tickets are and why they are you know these prices and what that means to the organization and to the other people who are attending that people really appreciate hearing that and they stand behind it and they support it so having this having corporate sponsorship is wonderful and also just having the support of your community we don’t live in a society where everywhere you know if there’s equitable pay for everyone and people who are in the situation where financially they can afford a higher price ticket being able to see that that ticket provides someone else who may not be able to attend the ability to come is quite satisfying i think and it’s a great model it’s it’s a it’s a wonderful new addition to our ticketing platform
absolutely absolutely it sounds amazing jackie thank you so much for for talking with me today it’s always such a joy to connect with you again and i hope to to to see you guys performing uh out of the church as soon as possible
thank you it’s great to connect with you again let’s make sure it doesn’t take quite so long next time
