Stageworthy Will End After 400 Episodes

After careful consideration, I have made the difficult decision to end Stageworthy after episode 400. Before I get into the why, I want to take a moment to celebrate the fact that by the time I hit 400 episodes, over the eight years of the podcast, I will have spoken to 859 Canadian theatre artists (give or take some repeat guests), sometimes one on one, sometimes in groups, but that’s an impressive number of people (if I do say so myself). 

When I started Stageworthy in 2016, I was inspired by theatre podcasts I had heard that covered the US theatre scene, and I wasn’t seeing much of that in Canada. There was also the sad fact that there wasn’t a lot of theatre coverage here, and Canadian theatre artists rarely got to be interviewed in any media. My goal with Stageworthy was to elevate the voices of Canadian theatre makers, to give theatre lovers a chance to hear from the artists they see on stage, and to help the artists get heard by their fellow creators across Canada. I wanted to share the talented artists we have in this country with the country.

I made a commitment when I started to put out an episode every week. And with the exception of a couple of times when I put the podcast on hiatus, I did that, as challenging as it sometimes was. And by February 13th, I will have done it four hundred times.

So why am I choosing to stop now? There are several reasons. For one thing, I’m tired. Eight years is a long time, and four hundred episodes is a lot. All while balancing a demanding full time job, my own writing and performing, as well as a personal life. I wanted Stageworthy to be as low impact as possible, so I rarely edit the conversations, and just tag on an intro and an outro. But even with that, there’s the time finding guests, booking the time with them, and doing the interview. That’s still a lot of time that I’m not getting paid for. And, while I am putting this effort into Stageworthy, I’m cutting into the time I could be spending working on my own projects. Also, over the eight years of doing the podcast, I was never able to fully cover the costs of the podcast, let alone pay myself for my time. And I can’t keep doing that.

There are things I did want to do with Stageworthy. I would love to have been able to explore theatre scenes across the country: to actually go and experience theatre around Canada, and talk to as many of the people who make it as I can. I thought of doing a series on the history of theatre in Canada, a look back to understand the present. There were other ideas too. But each of my ideas for special episodes or projects would take more time than I can give, and would require more money to do well.

So, I’m going to say goodbye to Stageworthy so that I can concentrate on my own creative work. I have loved getting to meet all the artists I have interviewed. Every one of them is an incredible artist, and I encourage you to go into the past episodes and get to know an artist whose name you don’t know. The archive will remain on the Stageworthy website, and on all the platforms you currently listen on.

Perhaps there will be an opportunity to do something with Stageworthy later on. Perhaps a pop-up podcast now and then. But this is the end of Stageworthy as a regular podcast.

If you have been a listener of Stageworthy, whether a regular listener or an occasional one, thank you from the bottom of my heart. It has been my genuine pleasure to present this podcast. Thank you for listening. And to each and every one of my guests, thank you for making the podcast something worth listening to.