Tim Porter Makes Theatre Work Outside the Big City
About This Episode:
In this episode of Stageworthy, host Phil Rickaby sits down with Tim Porter, founding Artistic Director of Tweed & Company Theatre, to talk about what it means to build a sustainable professional theatre company outside of major urban centres.
This Episode Explores:
- Founding Tweed & Company and building a company from the ground up
- Why regional and rural theatre matters in Canada
- Audience relationships outside major urban centres
- Sustainability, scale, and expectations in Canadian theatre
- The difference between serving a community and chasing prestige
- And much more!
Guest: 🎭 Tim Porter:
Tim is a performer, writer, and director from Tweed Ontario. As Tweed & Company’s founding Artistic Director, he’s written/directed several full Canadian musicals and directed/performed in countless others. Acting credits include: Nine seasons with Drayton Entertainment performing in countless shows including Buddy the Elf in ELF!, George in the Drowsy Chaperone, six pantos as the Buttons track, Les Mis, Man of La Mancha, Marathon of Hope, Kinky Boots, Singing in the Rain, and many more.; multiple North American tours as Rooney Doodle in CBC’s ‘The Doodlebops’; the original Canadian Productions of ‘Evil Dead: The Musical’ and ‘Cannibal: The Musical’. Tim is also a King Charles the 3rd Coronation Medal recipient, two time Premier’s Award of Ontario nominee and Terry Doyle Memorial Award recipient (Drayton Entertainment). He is honoured to produce quality theatre for Hastings County and Eastern Ontario.
Connect with Tim and Tweed & Company:
🌐 Website: http://www.tweedandcompany.com
📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tweedandcompany/
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Transcript
[Phil Rickaby]
Hello, welcome to Stageworthy. I’m Phil Rickaby, the host and producer of this podcast. Stageworthy is Canada’s theatre podcast and on Stageworthy I talk to people who make theatre in Canada, including actors, directors, playwrights, producers, stage managers.
If they make theatre, I talk to them. Some of them you will have heard of and the rest I really think you should get to know. I’m going to get into today’s guest in just a little bit.
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Those ratings and reviews help new people to find the show. And since this is Stageworthy’s 10th year, I would love to be able to grow this podcast. And one way that you can help me do that is by leaving a rating and review.
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And if you want to support the show and help me to make it, just go to patreon.com/Stageworthy and become a patron of this show. And I’m going to tell you about that, like I said at the end of the episode when I tell you who next week’s guest is. This week, my guest is Tim Porter.
Tim is the founding artistic director of Tweed and Company Theatre. And they are based in Tweed, Ontario. And I’m really looking forward to this conversation.
Because I love discovering new theatre companies. I love discovering new artists that I don’t know. And I hope you enjoy it too.
So here is my conversation with Tim Porter from Tweed and Company Theatre. Well, Tim Porter, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it.
I guess we know one of the things we should start with is you’re the founding artistic director of Tweed and Company. Why don’t you start by telling me about Tweed and Company? Sure.
[Tim Porter]
Yeah, so I founded the company in 2009. I noticed a lack of opportunities for artists outside of a lot of the major professional theatres. I also, at the time, Theatre Ontario produced a map of regional theatres in Ontario, little red dots.
And there was just this huge gaping void from Peterborough to Ottawa, basically, with a couple exceptions. So I founded the company. Our original goal was the creation and production of as much Canadian musical theatre as possible.
And then we’ve evolved numerous times since 2009. So in 2017, we became a registered charitable organization. In 2022, we assumed operations of our venues, which we now operate the Marvel Arts Centre in Tweed and the Bancroft Village Playhouse in Bancroft, and also built an outdoor stage in 2023.
So the company has continued to change and adapt and grow. We’ve been lucky to grow every year, year over year, since we founded in 2009. And now it’s evolved to be much more than original Canadian musical theatre and being a wealth of Broadway musicals and concerts and comedy and everything.
[Phil Rickaby]
Filling a large, empty space on the theatre map in Ontario is definitely an important thing. You grew up in Tweed. Am I right about that?
[Tim Porter]
Ah, that’s right. Yeah.
[Phil Rickaby]
I spent 10 years of my early years in Belleville. So that’s about 35 minutes away from Tweed. That’s where I am now, Phil.
Oh, hey. But I think people, if you’re in the city, you probably don’t think about the importance of the regional venues outside of Toronto. Why was it important to you to bring theatre to that space, aside from just filling a space on the map?
[Tim Porter]
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s incredibly important. Accessibility from an accessibility perspective and from a financial perspective is still one of our priorities. There’s a huge demographic in this area that, for a number of reasons, whether it is financial, circumstantial, whatever, do not go to the city very often or are not able to go to a major centre to afford a Broadway musical or just don’t have the opportunity that people would have in the city.
As we all know, theatre is transformative. It’s often the thing pushing the social conversation. And when it isn’t immediately available in a community, that community, in my opinion, suffers.
So that was important to me growing up in Tweed and not having access to live entertainment, arts and culture until I was a bit older. It’s a very personal connection. But I do feel that everyone across the province and across the country should have the same access and opportunity to not just the theatre, like the productions.
Professional theatre is the biggest part of our mandate and the biggest part of our organization. But the community hubs and the access to the musicians that we bring in and, you know, literally everything, it does so much for quality of life in our community to have spaces like these venues. But also, like we said, the theatre itself and professional theatre in particular is so important to the cultural conversation.
Yeah.
[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, you also, Tweed & Company also does ASL interpreted performances, which is something, I mean, more theatres should do it. Now, historically, that area, Belleville in particular, was one of the homes, it was the school for the Deaf, where my father taught for many years back when it was a residential school for the Deaf and really one of the birthplaces of Deaf culture. Is that historical reason, like the reason why it’s so important to do ASL interpreted performances?
[Tim Porter]
It’s part of the reason we continue, for sure. We have a good audience base at this point that uses those services, because I think that’s always the fear or one of the holdbacks in people offering more accessibility measures is the uptake and how many people are actually going to benefit from them and whether it’s money that’s not going to waste necessarily, but, you know, not being utilized to the best of its potential. So we, our first ASL interpreted show was, I think, 2016, 17, somewhere around there.
And since then, we have had pretty much at least once a year, one of our major productions be ASL interpreted and have grown a fairly considerable Deaf audience who are so appreciative that there is an opportunity for them to come and see a show. And like, again, that’s something that we have that is hard to find even in the city. It’s people travel from far afield to come to our productions, specifically because there’s ASL interpretation.
And it’s not just Cassie standing off to the side and interpreting. She’s actively incorporated into the production. She’s typically playing a character in the show and doing the choreography.
And typically there’s at least one or two numbers where there’s ASL incorporated directly into the choreography. It’s so beautiful. Sorry.
So roundabout answer. Yes. Sir James Whitney and the Deaf community in Belleville in particular is a large part of why we can and do continue to present.
[Phil Rickaby]
I don’t think you should apologize for getting really passionate about that fact because I think it is important because like you said, it’s not something that you often find in the city. It is not a regular occurrence. I, in my memory as a very old man, have only a few recollections of ASL interpreted performances.
There was one performance in the eighties when Cats was at the Elgin Theatre back in that original Toronto production. And then I have this vague recollection of that happening in one of the iterations of that original production of Godspell back in the seventies, where there was an ASL interpreted production. And at one point, you know, they learned to sign at least one song at the end of the show or in the show.
But I can’t think of many other productions that do that outside of, say, the Fringe and some other theatres make a habit of doing that. Certainly not on the large stages, the largest stages in the city.
[Tim Porter]
Yeah. And I think a lot of companies are doing the, when we do this too with our relaxed performance, you know, every show can be a relaxed performance. We have one during the run.
And I think the trend is to do one or two shows where it’s like this performance will be the ASL interpreted or captioned or whatever the circumstance. And then that means that an entire community of people has one day that hopefully their schedules line up and they can get there and they’re not sick and whatever. So, yeah, it’s important to us that we have at least one or two offerings a year where people are not so restricted by schedule or anything like that.
The opportunity is just there. And it is gorgeous. Like it only amplifies production.
So it’s like, what’s the what’s the loss?
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Do you have a favourite moment in one of the ASL performances that you can you can talk about?
[Tim Porter]
That’s a good question. So, you know what, there’s I got a funny one today. Because we so we were also recently what we still are a part of an accessibility initiative through the Quite Arts Council that they got a ton of money from Canada Council and have been trying to make live entertainment arts and culture in the Bay of Quite region and Hastings County as accessible as possible.
So we’re one of the leading collaborators on that initiative. And we did a special performance of Hook where we tried to get as many things as possible. It was exceptionally difficult.
And a lot of the technical components, the captioning things fell through at the last minute. But we did have a whole group of people that needed certain accessibility measures come and enjoy the show from all over a lot of people that had not been to our productions before. And I got feedback today from the Quite Arts Council that at one point in the show, unbeknownst to us, Cassie in a particularly like it’s supposed to be a funny, bad singing moment.
Cassie was signing. It’s a good thing I’m deaf. And so the deaf community was like, we were so appreciative that there were jokes like not not just were we getting all the comedy that was in the show, but there was like an extra layer specifically for them.
And in that show as well, there was a moment where in that for Tinkerbell instead of clapping and saying we do believe in fairies that we used ASL applause, where again, they said it was very meaningful that there were like actual deaf culture references incorporated into the show. But really, I mean, every time we do it, it’s beautiful. Anne of Green Gables, they did all of Open the Window with ASL, like the whole cast learned the various refrains, Open the Window Sweep out the Cobwebs.
And it was fully incorporated into the choreography. That was a really beautiful number. There’s a million.
[Phil Rickaby]
You mentioned the changes in Tweeting Company over the years. And you’ve been the founding artistic director. You’ve been the artistic director the whole way through?
Yeah. Yeah. How has your role changed in those years from then till now?
[Tim Porter]
A lot. Yeah. When we started, I was the artistic director because I was directing the shows.
And I mean, I was doing most of the admin at that point as well. But probably in our second or third year, Emily Mewett, who’s now my co-executive director, came on board. Emily is a stage manager with SoulPepper and YPT and a number of other companies.
And then we both moved home during the pandemic and both became full time when the company took over the venues. But early on in that next phase as well, we decided that the model that we wanted to pursue was the co-executive director model. There is so much benefit.
And I’m shocked every arts organization in the country is not doing it. A number are now. But to having two heads at the top of the organization, being able to bounce ideas back and forth with each other, not having to take sole responsibility for any decision, basically.
But also we stop each other from making so many stupid mistakes that a single company head, I think, would just naturally fall into. But that’s probably the biggest thing is that I haven’t actually directed a show now in three years because the administrative burden in operating the venues and the company continuing to grow has become so monumental that they’re it’s a dime. So that’s probably the biggest change.
When we started, it was also so part time and I was still acting regularly and we would just do one or two shows a year when our schedules would allow. So yeah, that’s been another. It’s been a big shift of now I’m mostly behind a computer, but I do.
There’s lots of things I love about that as well. And I wouldn’t change anything that we’ve done yet.
[Phil Rickaby]
It’s interesting that the co-leadership model, you know, we see it in the Toronto Fringe, we see it at a few other places. Sometimes I wonder, and this is not a question, this is a statement. In some cases where that hasn’t happened, I think there are some artistic directors that don’t like the thought of giving up their power, of being the leader.
And that’s, you know, they see it as a loss of, I guess, their individual ownership over whatever. But I think you’re right that it does give so much to the people who are co-leading. I haven’t heard anybody who’s in a co-leadership position complain about it in all the time of doing this show.
[Tim Porter]
Yeah, for sure. I think there is still like a weird hierarchy that exists in Canadian theatre in particular that I don’t think is actually serving anyone. And if people were more willing to let that go, because I mean, again, pretty much from the get-go, we’re not a collective, we’re not a cooperative, but we might as well be if the best offer wins.
And that, you know, that’s our admin team, that’s our productions, our creative teams, our casts. It’s important to us that everybody feels like they have a voice inside of our organization. And we have no desire to hold to that.
I want people to be nervous around me or, you know, or feel like they’re sucking up to me to get a job next season or whatever the thing is. It’s just a gig.
[Phil Rickaby]
People don’t do their best work when they are afraid or when they are sucking up or any of those things. When there’s a terrible power dynamic like that, nobody’s doing their best work.
[Tim Porter]
A hundred percent. Agreed.
[Phil Rickaby]
Now, like you mentioned, you were in Toronto until the pandemic, working, acting, and doing all of that stuff. And I want to get into some of the work that you’ve done a little later on. But, you know, pandemic happens and you leave Toronto and move back to Tweed, back to the Hastings County.
What was that decision like for you?
[Tim Porter]
It wasn’t really a decision. It is like, you know, it’s fascinating to think about if times were different. Both Emily and I thought this was the end goal.
And we knew that eventually we would be hopefully running a much bigger organization in this area than what we were at the time. It is now bigger than we would have imagined, I think. And keep trying.
But yeah, so I was doing kinky boots at Drayton when the pandemic hit and we all thought it was just two weeks. We all thought we were taking a two-week holiday. So I came home and the further along we got, the more apparent it was that it was going to be a long haul.
But then the Tweed and Area Arts Council was a volunteer-led organization that owned the Maru Arts Centre in Tweed, our building. They were really struggling to keep up, especially given pandemic closures. But even prior to that, they were all volunteer-led and older citizens.
So they came to us in 2021 and said, you know, what do you think about us giving you the building, like taking over? And so we had at that point decided we were going to produce a show in 2022, or potentially a season, but we knew we were going to do Ride the Cyclone. And so I had called the venue in Bancroft because we had toured to there before.
And the woman that returned my call said, well, actually, we’re not really sure what we’re going to do because Hospice, who had a very similar circumstance, it was a volunteer-led organization running the theatre, which again, we all know, it’s a full-time gig. Running a venue, it’s not for the fainthearted. You need a staff person, basically.
It’s almost impossible to do otherwise. So yeah, so she said they’ve given up their lease and we’re not really sure what we’re going to do with the building. And I said, well, we might be able to help you with that.
And literally within like one or two day window, we were taking over both buildings. We’re starting the conversation for taking over both buildings. And we knew at that point that there was no going back, that it was put 100% into it or don’t do it.
So yeah, it wasn’t really a choice to leave the city. It just all kind of happened. But I’m a pretty firm believer in everything happens for a reason and fate and all of that.
[Phil Rickaby]
As all of that was happening, as these opportunities were coming up, as you thought at the beginning, you were going to be going back to Drayton and continuing the thing. And then one venue opens up and a second venue opens up. What’s going through your head in that moment?
Are you excited, scared? What is that like?
[Tim Porter]
Yeah, I think mostly excited again. So I started my career. I didn’t get into this until I was 16.
I thought I was going to build houses, which I still do sometimes per time. So that’s fun. But yeah, I had no exposure to theatre until I was in high school and then started working with Caroline Smith when she was running the Stirling Festival Theatre.
So Caroline Smith was with Alex Moustakis, his associate artistic director at Drayton. And then Jackie Moustakis, Alex’s wife, had said, there’s this great little theatre in my hometown of Stirling, you should go look at it. So Caroline left Drayton to found the Stirling Festival Theatre.
And it was the Drayton East, which we often talk about now. And so I had started in Caroline Smith’s company in Stirling when I was 16. And that was my exposure.
Someone who struck out on their own, started their own company, was able to create their own work, write their own shows. There was something so appealing about that whole model. And I think because that was my way in, that was kind of always the goal for me.
I knew that I wanted to be an artistic director. I knew that I wanted to be able to write and create my own work. I liked the idea of running the company.
So even when I was acting and performing, it was always the end goal. Yeah. And again, like pandemic, as we know, it just, there wasn’t even really the opportunity to be retrospective or think like, what if, what if we were like, where we got the venues even, we were one of the first companies to reopen.
So it was still like, if I wanted to be an actor still, is there going to be an industry? Is there going to be work to go back to? So this was like, okay, well, we can control our future in this way, at least that we plow ahead and see what happens.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. You mentioned not having access to theatre when you’re growing up, you did grow up on a farm. I did, yeah.
And so what made you want to join the Stirling Festival Theatre? What brought you into that space?
[Tim Porter]
My high school was doing a musical. I’m a, I’m a family of four. There’s four kids in my family.
And we are, we’re Irish twins. We’re all only a year apart, Irish Catholic family. So we were all in high school at the same time.
And my sister loved musicals. So she was doing the highest musical and they didn’t have enough guys. So she was like, you’re auditioning for this thing.
And I was like, I don’t want to do that. That’s stupid. I don’t care.
But then of course did and got a part and just like fell in love with it as, as we do. And how do you not? And so then did start to like, get involved in the drama department at the school.
And we were lucky to have a phenomenal drama teacher, Wendy Hay, who is like, to this day, one of the best actresses I’ve known. She’s phenomenal. And who kind of said like, you, you should do this.
You have a, you have the opportunity to do this. And then, so yeah, then on a whim with a friend, went to an audition for a young company production of the Sword in the Stone at the theatre. And did this insane, I did like Beauty and the Beast in five minutes.
I didn’t know what a monologue was. And I just remember at the end, Caroline, like just stopped and went, where the hell have you been? She’s so sweet.
It’s like still meaningful to a teenager. And yeah. And so then from that point forward, I liked, I did most of my friendship credits in Sterling while I was at school and had amazing experiences there.
And we were working with like, sure. We’d kind of stolen her model in a lot of ways as well with our young company opportunities, but we were doing like, we were the kids in Annapurna Gables as local kids, but it was, you know, an all-star cast of like Terry Doyle was our Matthew and Lorraine Forman was our Marilla, like these, you know, world-class heavy hitter actors that we were learning from and getting to be on stage with every day.
It was a very formative experience and it would have been hard to walk away from after, after those experiences. Sure.
[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, that is always a great opportunity for, for any young actors, especially, you know, kids, teenagers, being able to, to act with professionals and to like get treated like professionals, I think is a really great thing. Did you go to theatre school after On Your Way? Yeah.
[Tim Porter]
I went to St. Lawrence in Brockville, first graduate class.
[Phil Rickaby]
What was, what would I actually always say, what was that musical that you were sort of bullied into doing in high school?
[Tim Porter]
The Leader of the Pack, which God is a terrible musical.
[Phil Rickaby]
That’s just a fifties jukebox musical, isn’t it?
[Tim Porter]
Yeah. It’s the Ellie Greenwich story who like wrote a bunch of those hits. Yeah.
It’s not a good show.
[Phil Rickaby]
No, but I mean, so many, so many of the shows that we ended up doing in high school are not great shows. They’re the shows that we are able to do in high school and, you know, you take the opportunity. Now, when you, in your professional actor’s life, you’ve done many things.
You mentioned doing Kinky Boots, you’ve done Singing in the Rain. One thing that I noticed in, in, in your, your bio was about doing Evil Dead, the musical. And you said the original Canadian production.
Was that the first full production or was that the early production at the Transact Club in Toronto?
[Tim Porter]
No, the first full production. So after it had already gone to New York, it came back and sat at the Diesel Playhouse for those two years. So I, I took over in the second year of run.
So I did the show for eight months at the Diesel, which like, God, what a shame that that venue doesn’t exist anymore. Just like the perfect space.
[Phil Rickaby]
I could say that about so many of the venues in this city that we’ve lost over time, especially accelerated over, you know, in the pandemic years. And since that, Evil Dead is a show that is, it’s one of the more high energy shows I think that’s out there because it doesn’t really stop. What would, and also, you know, notoriously covers some of the audience in, in blood from like the spray nozzles.
What’s it like to do that show that’s kind of built to be a cult musical?
[Tim Porter]
Oh, it was, it’s a blast. It was so fun. And that group of people, like it was, that was my first big show out of college.
And they, I mean, a lot of those guys are still around, still working, but everybody was a comedian. So I think they weren’t music theatre people first, that it was just like a last riot every day, you know, highs and lows, but we really had the best time. And like to be launched out of college into an experience like that, where, you know, the mayor was there twice.
We met Jimmy Fallon. We met Bruce Campbell. Like, it was just like, so cool.
But still this like really indie fun for her to see musical. Yeah. People lost their minds.
Yeah. I’ve never done a show before or since where the audience has that reaction.
[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, I remember I did go to see it. I don’t remember. I don’t know if you were in the cast when I saw it, but I do know there was something about it that felt like that original London production of the Rocky horror show in the way that people were like clamoring for it.
And the way that people obviously had been there multiple times.
[Tim Porter]
Yeah.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.
[Tim Porter]
Yeah. Yeah. There really is something so special about it.
There’s something really cool. And this is happening more and more with the like, it’s not immersive, but it almost is because like you said, you’re getting sprayed with blood. You the audience, I think, felt very free to naturally react to what they were experiencing on stage, which like in Canada, especially we’re so polite.
And that happens so rarely that the audience is just there to like drink and have a good time and know what they’re seeing is ridiculous and fun. And they’re allowed to be stupid and crazy.
[Phil Rickaby]
And yeah, there were, I think, I think it does help to be able to serve drinks during the show or to have people sitting at a table with, with some drinks. It does always help to loosen people up. I do.
I’ve, I’ve been, I’ve, there’ve been a couple of productions, not of that show, but of the Rocky horror show where they’ve had like notices for their regular patrons, letting them know, like, listen, if people’s shouting, that’s part of the show. Don’t worry about that. It’s, you know, but we, it’s good to see productions where people suddenly become free to, to be rowdy instead of polite in the theatre, which is like you said, it’s so rare in, in, in the shows that we are in a lot of the theatres in Canada.
Is that something that you’re able to bring on the experience on that show and the other shows that you’ve done? Is that something that you’re able to bring to Tweed and company in the shows that you choose and the shows that you produce?
[Tim Porter]
Yeah, for sure. I mean, there’s a lot of, a lot of the decisions now are just inevitably are about bums in seats, which obviously every theatre in the country is dealing with that. But I do think because I had the, the background that I did and often came in through the entertainment perspective or a lot of the shows I was involved in were, I will say this, I’ve never considered myself a serious dramatic actor.
I’m doing the Pantos and the Evil Deads and that’s where I wanted to be. And I, that side of an audience is what I lost. And so for sure, like my, my career and my background has informed our decisions, but it’s also, I’d be glad to, to Tweed and company being a very joyful place most of the time and to having a very diverse programming slate, typically to what’s on offer at other venues around the province.
So even though we are doing more commercial work now, unless we’re still focused, we’re still do a lot of original stuff, but less than we had when we started, we’re still doing different things that are very different and have been successful doing that. So that is very exciting.
[Phil Rickaby]
I think that, that, you know, theatres like Drayton, like the Drayton series of theatres. And, and of course what you’re saying about, about Tweed and company, you have to do stuff that’s sort of crowd pleasing stuff. You do stuff, the entertainment aspect, whereas in some of the theatres in larger cities, they seem to feel like the audience.
In my experience, they sometimes feel like the audience is sort of like an annoyance that they need to deal with. Like we just want to do our art and the audience can come if they want. And if you suggest that maybe you should entertain people, they get a little upset, but the theatres like Drayton and yourself, you need the audience to want to come.
And so that you have to do stuff that they want to see, and you could do a lot of highbrow stuff, but you also have to do the stuff that, that the audience, you know, has a desire to see. When you’re making decisions about the season that you’re going to put together, what are you balancing? What, how are you choosing the shows?
What goes into the creation of a season?
[Tim Porter]
Yeah, I mean, you’re right. It’s exactly that. It’s, it is finding the balance of having at least one or two shows that we know are going to pay for the other ones.
If it’s a, you know, if it’s a season where we’re taking some more risks. For us, it’s still fairly early days to running these venues, right? So like Rocky Horror, we did Rocky Horror last year and we were like, we had no idea.
We’re like, we’re going to either get run out of town or we’re going to have a runaway success or like, who knows? Like we knew that we’d have a good production, but we just did not know what the community response would be. And there were people that after we programmed the show, came up to us and said, you’re crazy.
Like, what are you doing? It’s never going to fly here. And then we could have run each venue for a month, probably.
Like it was, it sold out faster than 90% of our shows and was just like a resounding success. No complaints, et cetera. But yeah, it is, it’s often just trying to balance making sure that we know we have something that’s going to bring people in the door and then can, from there can use that to sell the tickets to the other productions, which obviously is not a new model or a new concept, but it works.
[Phil Rickaby]
I want to ask you a little bit about that, that, that Rocky Horror. Did you feel like the audience was like, were they people from Hastings County? Were people coming from far and wide?
Were they, like, where was that audience that, that, that came and sold that out?
[Tim Porter]
They were skewed local. I think because we were in September or October, we were in October. So most of our cottage traffic has gone home.
We obviously had some people come into the city who are just like you are coming from the city that are huge fans of the show and just wanted to come and see it. But I would say most of the audience was local. Most of the audience was people who had lived in Toronto and moved out here in their old age.
And we’re like, well, I saw it at the floor street cinema or whatever the heck, you know, where it was in the seventies in Toronto. So it’s like a nostalgia piece now, which is really cool and fun, but did also bring out a younger crowd too. We had a ton of people dressed up, which again, we had no idea what the, what the situation would be in our community.
But I mean, also it was like, we are very lucky with the people that come and work with us. And I think it’s because it’s a nice place to work and it’s a fun place to work. We put out good shows, but the cast was like insane.
It was like, the show was so good. So yeah. So I do, I think we can run a lot longer, but it’s so hard to say.
[Phil Rickaby]
Well, it’s hard to know. And sometimes you don’t have the freedom to, to extend because there are other shows or other bookings. There’s all kinds of stuff.
So you don’t always have that opportunity, but I’m not surprised that that show did well. I think it, I think it does well every time somebody has a, there’s a, it’s, it’s like the, it’s the, the wholesome show for freaks now. I think nobody’s shocked by anything in that show.
I think that people just come and see it because it is, I’ve seen that stage show like four, four times and every, every production is different, but it is one of the best shows for just like the best time you’ll ever have on in like just in a musical.
[Tim Porter]
Yeah. It’s people just singing great and loud and being silly and it’s so fast paced.
[Phil Rickaby]
But you have a bunch of like, I’m looking at, at, at your, your season. There’s a few, I could see, I think I see the shows that are, are sort of like to, to help sell other shows, but you’ve got a, I know that you’ve got the 25th annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, which is, which is huge. And of course Fiddler on the Roof, which is like, you can never go wrong with that.
So then of course the Panto aside from those, those big shows, what are the shows that you, aside from those that you’re kind of excited for people to see?
[Tim Porter]
Putnam is a big show in the city and it’s a big show in recognizable show in our industry. No one in our audience knows it. So that was actually like the risky show for us.
Fiddler will help to sell Putnam in this season and Putnam once people see it and see how funny it is and see, you know, and see how beautiful that music is. All of those things it word of mouth will sell the show. But yeah, it’s funny to being in a rural environment and those considerations where like a million dollar quartet is another prime example.
When we first did million dollar quartet in 2024, the audience is like, what’s that? Like, we don’t know or care what that is. And we really had to like actively promote the fact that it was these four megaliths of, you know, pop music.
There are some other things. There’s things that I can’t talk about. We have a show in development that I’m very excited about with some other prominent groups and individuals.
We also have a super active young company program at this point. We’re doing two of our summer camps in Tweed. We do a month-long camp for the kids where they produce the full show.
So we did Frozen Junior last year. It was like over subscribed 30 some odd kids. So we’re doing two shows this year and they’re always so cute and so exciting.
And it’s awesome that like over the two venues, we probably have close to a hundred kids engaged in our young company programs, which like that is it’s so exciting to see the interest and engagement level.
[Phil Rickaby]
At what point did you implement the young company?
[Tim Porter]
We started in 2023. So we knew it’s how we started. It’s an important thing to all of us.
And again, being in a rural environment, the opportunities don’t exist. The high school in Bancroft hasn’t done a school musical or play in like 10 years, probably. They lost their music department last year, although I think it’s coming back.
They haven’t had a drama department in four or five years, although again, I think it is coming back. So yeah, it’s really, we’ve, we’ve been speaking with a number of other venues about starting a high school project because they’re, you know, yeah, there’s, they’re, it’s, it’s so important. And even, okay.
I like very often say, I don’t necessarily encourage this as a career choice. I just, I’m, I’m never going to those kids and be like, you know, it would be a great idea for your financial future. But if it is that, if there are those kids that are so passionate about it and that are going to go to a college program and have not had a single opportunity, whereas the kids in the cities have had 10 years of professional classes and, and opportunity and, you know, programs, camps, services, then it is like that it’s the same thing that we were talking about from accessibility.
There shouldn’t be, because of living in a rural environment, you shouldn’t be denied the opportunities that are available in other places in the province.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Even if you don’t choose to pursue theatre professionally, like, and, and, you know, we all agree, it is not a way to make a living for a lot of people, but you do get so much from it, right? Like you meet so many people, you open, you open up to so much just like being participating in the arts gives you a new perspective on everything.
So it’s great to have that opportunity for kids who otherwise maybe wouldn’t have it because their school doesn’t have a program.
[Tim Porter]
Yes. 1000%. Like we all know the, like appreciative of the choir, but the self-esteem public speaking that, you know, confidence that in one of the discoveries we didn’t expect as we’re exploring this high school project is the, the lack of opportunity for co-op programs in skilled trades, electrical programming that are all things that once you’re in the door of the theatre, those are all opportunities to get your foot in on those things that just don’t, you know, the opportunity doesn’t
[Phil Rickaby]
exist in the area, but they’re all things that the theatre needs, right?
[Tim Porter]
Yes. More than actors.
[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s a sad truth about the industry, but I actually wanted to talk to you again about musicals and original musicals, because that’s one of the things that tweeting company has been doing almost from its beginning. What’s the importance of, of creating new Canadian musicals for you?
[Tim Porter]
Seeing our stories on stage, first and foremost, things that resonate with us and the national identity is always such a foregone conversation in our industry and what is a Canadian musical, all those things. But yeah, I think there’s also, I came up with so many, so many people with great creative voices and just weren’t being given the opportunity to showcase what they were doing or what they were thinking just from a cultural zeitgeist perspective of the excitement around a major Canadian musical when it’s being produced in Canada. Did you see Brentwood?
Did you, did you see that show when Sheridan was doing it?
[Phil Rickaby]
I did not get to, I didn’t get to, you know. Four times. I was obsessed.
[Tim Porter]
And like, of course, we don’t come from away. I saw that come from away workshop at Sheridan College before it was a thing. And I went to Michael Rubinoff after that presentation and I said, if you’re still looking for investors, I’m like, there’s such a, he’s like, we’re full.
There is such a different excitement and electricity in the room when it’s something that is entirely homegrown. And again, it’s like, you know, we could do Rent or Chicago in Bancroft and we probably will, but the audience isn’t going to give a shit in the same way that they care about come from away and they care about, like we, our show, Hastings, the musical was one of the biggest things we’ve ever done. And it’s the thing that in almost 20 years of producing, people still come up to us and talk about, like it’s the most meaningful to them because it has meaning, direct meaning to them.
Yeah. No one like people will say, oh yeah, Mamma Mia was fun, but they’ll tell me specific moments in Hastings, the musical that they cared about and that moved them.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. You were talking about those early, that early production, that early workshop of, of come from away. And there are those shows where that electricity of their first anything I’m reminded of, you were talking about evil, dead, the musical.
And I remember it’s first run at the transat club in Toronto when it was, nobody knew if it was going to do anything. And then there were lineups around the block to go and see it. And there was the infamous blackout performance where they performed it in the parking lot because the electricity went out.
Like these are electric things and they’re like, they come from away. These are things that sort of really sort of give you like a sense of like, oh, this, this is something, this is something special.
[Tim Porter]
Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent.
And I mean, hopefully in the future too, we’re working towards a, cause obviously like there’s a big part of the conversation for the actual creating work for Canadian creatives and wanting to support Canadian and all those things. But it’s, it’s a funny part of the conversation right now. It’s maybe slightly unrelated to what we’re talking about, but that all every single show, basically, unless it’s with marquee is still licensed through the States.
Hopefully we get to a point where our industry is self-sustaining. That’d be also have, I would, it’d be great. If we had a Broadway across Canada, that was actually a Canadian producing company.
It would be great if we had a Canadian licensing house. Do you want to hear an insane thing? You might know, but the, the government of Ontario this year, I forget what, it’s like a supply and demand policy thing that all of the schools, they were like, oh, you can’t license a show if it comes from the States.
And it was like, well, every single show, unless you’re going to do Dear Rita or say, you know what I mean? Like something that is actually just entirely Canadian. Every show, even if it’s a Canadian show is licensed through an American licensing company.
So the schools have had to find like creative, we had countless emails over this year being like, can you try and help us license a musical? So I think most of them have found a workaround at this point, but it’s like, it is a shame that, you know, we’re still shipping scripts across the border and paying crazy duties. Even if it’s a show that was created here in Canada, it’s all creative, Canadian creatives, all that stuff.
[Phil Rickaby]
That is absolutely insane. That is absolutely insane. It’s also the fact that like, you know, this decree has been made and in some ways, I understand.
I understand. I get it. I get why that was done.
But also, like there was no support, no plan for like what to do.
[Tim Porter]
Like, are you, are you, is, and there is no, I’m like, it’s not like you can choose suppliers of your musical licensing. No, I read through an American organization here.
[Phil Rickaby]
I’m thinking of what everybody’s and no shame to this show, but I don’t think that the high school students are interested in doing the ecstasy of Rita Joe or like the farm show or any of these, any of these shows. Like this is, this is not the shows that are going to like get the kids to get particularly exciting, excited. They maybe, maybe they should, but like, I don’t know that, that is, that is absolutely insane.
Is there, I mean, when you’re, when you’re doing like the, the work that you do with, with the young company and, and things like that, are you, are you like, you’re not faced with that? So is that like an opportunity?
[Tim Porter]
Yeah, probably. I mean, yeah, there’s a lot of freedoms that, that we have in the way that we’re producing in general. But yes, being, being unhindered by government decrees and being outside the school system.
Although if we proceed with the high school project, we’ll likely be in partnership with our school board so we can offer a credit of some kind. But yeah, even, you know, operating on the fringes of, we’re getting into sticky territory now, but on the, we’re a packed affiliate as opposed to a CTA full members. We use the equity dot policy because it allows us a lot of freedoms that we wouldn’t exist, be able to exist without, namely putting local talent into our productions and a higher contingency of kids or our local teenagers, young company kids.
Yeah. So there’s a lot of, I mean, the industry as a whole, especially post pandemic probably needs a bit of a close look at a lot of our policies and practices to allow us to be sustainable well into the future. But yes, there’s a lot of things that we are doing on the fringe that have allowed us to be as successful as we are.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. I think there’s a lot of, a lot of things that, that, that we should be examining that I don’t think we are. And I think some of the theatres, some of the more established theatres are going to pay a price for the decisions that they’re, that they’re currently making.
And that’s a bigger conversation. I don’t want to draw you into that because I have my own thoughts on that, which are probably going to get me into trouble. But I’m curious, you know, just going back to those musicals, are those things that for you live at Tweed and Company at one of those theatres, or have you ever thought about expanding their reach and taking them outside of Hastings County?
[Tim Porter]
Well, in 2022, we had a seven venue tour booked for Hastings and Muse, I’m sorry, 2020. And yeah, we all know what happened there. We have talked about it many times since, and we will bring it back, but obviously taking over the venue says a bit of priority and Hastings has fallen to the background.
We have also dabbled a bit, we did our show Stockyard Hertz at the Fringe in 2015. It was well received, but didn’t go anywhere past that necessarily. I think there’s definitely a future for a lot of our stuff.
But I also think more and more we will become just another, not just another, but another incubator for other voices. We had a big hand in Ursa, a folk musical. We just worked with Bad Hats last year to tour their Alice in Wonderland, and Ursa kind of took the lead on presenting that tour.
So yeah, I think more and more, Tweed and Bancroft will become known as a safe place to create and further new Canadian work. And we will continue to work on stuff in-house, and we’ll also continue probably to travel our shows a little further afield. But there’s just so much.
Even this year, like we’ve said, we’ve been throwing mud at the wall for the last four years to see what sticks, and everything has stuck. And now we’re at the point where we’re like, okay, we’re going to pull it back a little bit and reassess and see what we’re actually going to have the capacity for long term.
[Phil Rickaby]
Well, it’s interesting because you have available to you two venues essentially, which is, I don’t think there’s many theatre companies that have that as an option for them. Port Hope’s Capital Theatre has been able to become a destination for shows, and they’re bringing people from Toronto, and they’re doing some great stuff there, and I think creating some great stuff. And if they can do it there, the Tweed and Company, as you’re sort of growing into both of these theatres, it sounds like you could be doing that and are doing it, but at a larger scale.
[Tim Porter]
Yeah, for sure. And I think we will continue to grow. Love or hate, Drayton Entertainment, I love them personally.
The economy of scale model, and we’ve seen it with Lighthouse in Cordova and taking over Showboat as well, and that is happening more and more. I think just with the way the economy is, is the way everything’s going to I think we’re all just going to have to work together more, and I see no downside, to be honest. And we do collaborate with Rob and with Bread at Thousand Islands a decent amount and still work with Drayton quite a bit.
But yeah, I think the more we’re all sharing resources and expertise and artists and all of those things, the healthier our industry will be.
[Phil Rickaby]
I think that’s the most important thing. I think that sharing resources is the way the industry moves forward. I think that, and I’ve always said, I stole this from the French artist that Montreal Fringe once gave a talk and said there’s audience enough for everyone.
And I fully believe that because when people go to see your show, they come to see my show and vice versa. And it just spreads like a just like rolls out and everybody goes to see everybody’s show. I think that sharing audience, sharing resources is the way forward.
I am curious, just sort of in closing, about the importance of a theatre-like tweeting company to the region and to the people that you serve. Why is it important and what does it give to Tweed?
[Tim Porter]
Yeah, like the things that we already talked about, for sure, just from a quality of life perspective is so meaningful. We hear from our audience all the time. We’re also huge proponents of tourism and economic development.
If you talk to the restaurants in Bancroft or the stores downtown, whatever, they all say the same thing. They’re like, we might not have survived the last four years. We’re about to play house.
Bancroft is thriving and we can take at least a small part of that credit, but I think an actual pretty decent part of that credit. Small towns across Ontario are struggling, especially post-pandemic, and to have a stakeholder like these theatres in those communities to bring people in. We were up 53% tourist attendance last year with almost 20,000 patrons over the course of the season.
So it’s literally like a $3 million injection of funds into these towns from one business. So yeah, that side of things is obviously insanely important, plus the quality of life. Both communities had a ton of people move during the pandemic from the city, and all the time people were saying the thing we did not expect when we moved here was to have the same level of entertainment that we had in the city.
But really, we have concerts almost every weekend. We have shows that run for two or three weeks in the summer with the same artists that you’re paying prices to go to. Our big joke is you’re going to pay more for parking at the Mervis Theatre than you’re going to pay for your whole weekend in Bancroft.
[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, that kind of financial injection into a town is actually pretty massive. And I don’t think that many people in certain government, in the halls of government and things like that are really considering that that’s the thing, that the arts, that a theatre can do that and be a draw for tourism.
[Tim Porter]
A hundred percent. We as a newer company, most of our funding has been tourism and economic development funding, which great, keep it coming. But obviously the arts councils are exceptionally underfunded.
Ontario Arts Council hasn’t added an operating organization in the last three intakes, which is very difficult for us. But there’s no money. There’s no money.
They don’t have any money. No one has any money. And you’re absolutely right.
An investment in the arts is not just an investment in arts and culture. It’s an investment in those communities. It’s an investment in tourism, in economic development, all rolled into one.
The Ontario Arts Council did a study a couple of years ago that showed facts and figures that an arts and culture tourist spends approximately three times as much as most other sports and recreation tourists say. It’s often a more affluent tourist. They’re going to stay overnight.
They’re going to have dinner at the restaurant before the show. They’re going to actively engage in the community. So yes, if any of our MPPs, and you know, our MPPs and MPs have actually risen this far, but if anybody’s listening from the government, yes, more money in arts and culture is not just money in arts and culture.
It is.
[Phil Rickaby]
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Tim, thank you so much for joining me.
I really appreciate it. I really enjoyed this conversation and I’m super thrilled to have learned about Tweet & Company.
[Tim Porter]
Thanks, Phil. My pleasure. Thank you for having me.
[Phil Rickaby]
Thank you for listening to this week’s episode of Stageworthy or watching on YouTube if you happen to be there. Before I get into who my guest is next week, let’s talk for a second about my Patreon. Because I can’t do this show without the people who’ve chosen to become patrons on Patreon.
Even though this podcast is available to you as a listener or viewer on YouTube for free, it costs money to be able to make a podcast like this. And since I don’t run any ads or have sponsorships, everything up until relatively recently in the 10 years of running this podcast has come out of my pocket. And I don’t mind that this is a labor of love, but there was a period of time where I had to stop doing this podcast because I could no longer afford to do it.
As we all know, the cost of living went up pretty significantly within the last year and it became a little bit too much for me to be able to continue to pay for all the things I needed to pay for to do this podcast. But like I said, when I restarted this podcast, I felt called to do this. I missed talking with people.
I missed the connection to the community. I missed being able to talk about theatre every week. And so I asked if people would be willing to back me on Patreon to help me to be able to afford the costs of doing this show.
And there are costs. You have to pay for a website. You have to pay for hosting for the audio files and distribution of those audio files.
You need audio editing software, and I’m using video editing software as well. You need to have and doing images for the shows. And I need to make sure that there are social posts and things like that.
So things cost money. And I recently added transcripts back. I’m currently going back through some of the backlog of past episodes to make sure that as many as possible have transcripts in them.
And the thing is that all of these things cost money. So if you value this podcast, if you enjoy this podcast, please consider becoming a patron on Patreon, Patreons, patrons get patrons get early access to episodes, we’ll have dynamic conversations about issues that I want to cover. And the more people who join the Patreon, the more I can offer the patrons.
So if that’s something that interests you, if you want to help me to make this show, if you want to be one of the people that helps me make this show, just go to patreon.com/stageworthy and become a patron. My guest next week is Dienye Waboso Amajor.
I really enjoyed getting to talk to Dee and you will enjoy that too. Next week on Stagworthy
