Barrie-based Discuss Is Free Theatre is a regional theatre in contrast to every other, each due to its site-specific/immersive repertoire, and the truth that it excursions the world to locations the place different firms worry to tread.
Amongst its travels, the 20+-year-old TIFT has offered productions in Toronto, establishing its model within the Large Smoke, because it have been. This January finds the corporate coming south of the 401 as soon as once more, bringing two performs this month, and one other within the spring.
The Toronto performs are Adam Meisner’s For Each Resting and Breeding (Jan. 15 to 31) and Mike Bartlett’s Cock (Jan. 19 to 31), however right here’s the kicker: the primary play takes place in a personal residence in Parkdale, whereas the latter is ready in an east finish industrial storage.
The spring present, Darrell Dennis’ Tales of an City Indian, is carried out on a shifting bus. (Tickets right here.)
The brainchild behind the bold and adventurous TIFT is the corporate’s intriguing creative producer, Arkady Spivak, who’s simply turning 50.
The Russian-born Spivak grew up in a theatrical household in Moscow earlier than immigrating to Canada when was 15. He ended up in Barrie working as a summer season scholar for Gryphon Theatre in 2000. When the theatre requested Spivak to remain on, he dropped out of York and accepted the place, his final recreation plan being to go to Toronto in a few years to start his personal producing initiatives.
Spivak ended up creating Discuss Is Free Theatre in Barrie in 2002 when a neighborhood businessman, who believed that the humanities mattered in small communities, urged the concept and agreed to change into his chairman of the board.
Our (very)long-ranging Zoom dialog coated Spivak’s life and occasions, the founding of TIFT, his philosophy of theatre, and naturally, the Toronto reveals.
What follows are excerpts from that dialog.
TIFT and Uncommon Repertoire
How did you determine on TIFT’S very, shall I say, un-regional theatre repertoire? I started to listen to about attention-grabbing issues taking place in Barrie early on in your existence.
We’re funded as a regional theatre, however we didn’t wish to fall into that construction, , doing 5 performs a season with the final one being a musical. All the pieces we do is all the time new. No two seasons are ever the identical.
We’ve all the time been a hundred-seater sort of operation. That’s what was distinctive about us. We didn’t must fill numerous seats, so we might do cutting-edge work as a regional exercise. It was fully artistically liberating, generally even crossing the road.
I used to be requested lately on a Toronto Russian TV interview, how would I describe our programming. I used to be aggravated with them for all kinds of causes, so I wanted to do one thing punchy. I mentioned, properly, think about a string in your underwear. You stretch it so far as you may, but when it breaks, you’ve gone too far. That’s our programming.
And that actually is what it’s like.
How did TIFT develop a fame for site-specific performs?
In our early years, we got, generally donated, generally we rented, a number of venues, after which they received demolished. By necessity, we found site-specific work as a result of we needed to discover performing areas, and you may have audiences of varied sizes.
In reality, for our total 2025-2026 season, we’re solely doing site-specific work. We aren’t utilizing a conventional theatre as soon as. We’re doing discovered areas in Barrie, simply as we’re doing in Toronto.
As Peter Brook mentioned, it was one thing like, it takes one viewers member and one artist to be engaged in storytelling. You don’t want the rest. I additionally imagine that theatre will be created wherever.
Website-specific is theatre at its purest degree.
How do you truly select repertoire?
We’re recognized for a sure work aesthetic, which is that this mischievous pushing the boundary, poking a needle, that form of stuff. However then, we [have] additionally achieved a Sondheim musical and the classics. Beneath all of this, although, is that we’re essentially an artist’s theatre, significantly an actor’s theatre.
We used to do solely work that was already created or orphaned by different theatres. We by no means commissioned new work, however that modified throughout the pandemic, particularly as a result of individuals have been writing at residence, so if somebody had an thought for us, we’d inform them to jot down it at residence and get again to us.
After which there are the ensemble collaborations the place you construct one thing collectively.
Once I have a look at an unique play for consideration, I ask, is there any pleasure in it? I’ve to make it possible for the chance is transformative. After which it’s deciding which artists must be concerned. So, the challenge is absolutely tied to particular artists. On the finish of the day, that’s an important deciding issue as a result of I don’t must do new performs except any individual needs to do them. Why would I torture the viewers?
And so, I simply wish to make it possible for there may be a creative motive for placing on the play.
I wish to hear concerning the touring as a result of I perceive that it’s fairly in depth.
We go on the highway, not as a result of we didn’t get sufficient audiences in Barrie, or we’re making an attempt to interrupt down boundaries. We tour for various sorts of motive altogether, though I ought to add that I like touring, shamelessly, I’ve to admit.
We all know when a present is alive and when the present shouldn’t be, and those who have a life, we put apart and are available again to it in a 12 months or two. We’ll re-rehearse it, after which take it someplace else as a result of Barrie individuals have already seen it.
Our touring factor, typically talking, goes to locations the place different firms don’t go, like Surinam or Fiji, nations that actually don’t have a theatre scene. As a result of we do site-specific work, we don’t want conventional theatre venues, so we will carry out there. They’re additionally new strategic markets that we wish to discover.
Equally, due to site-specific work, we tour markets in Canada that greater firms can’t do, like Iqaluit and Dawson Metropolis. And what finally ends up taking place is we often affiliate with an rising theatre firm.
However, we’ll take one thing greater like our Sweeney Todd manufacturing, the place the viewers follows the actors round, to a significant capital like Buenos Aires, as a result of this sort of immersive work or grassroots musical doesn’t fairly exist there.
Typically presenters and programmers will attain out to us as a result of they’re within the work we do. I additionally meet lots of people at worldwide theatre conferences, so that you construct up a listing of contacts. After which there’s the web. I work out the vibe, form of accumulating individuals who love a loopy theatre journey.
And every now and then, we’ll come to Toronto.
Once you go to Suriname, you’re not going to draw hype or presenters or programmers or colleagues or nationwide and worldwide media. So, it’s actually necessary that we set up a model of some kind by a spot like Toronto. It’s form of like a vaccination. Do you want a COVID vaccine, however you’ll be good to get it anyway.
However, , with all of this, we solely did one fast challenge within the States. Folks say, why don’t you go to the States? I’m like, what am I going to supply to the States that they don’t have already? Or what am I going to supply to the States that different Canadian theatre firms can’t?
The Performs Coming to Toronto
Let’s discuss For Resting and Breeding.
For Resting and Breeding is a Canadian play, which we didn’t develop, however which we love. We did it in Barrie in 2018 and took it to Australia in 2020, after which to Chile and Argentina. Earlier than Toronto, we’re doing a brief stint in Windsor. After Toronto, we go straight to Japan.
For the play, we would have liked to discover a home in Toronto for our web site, so I blatantly placed on Fb that I used to be in search of a residential home to do a present. Robert Sirman, who’s a giant supporter of our theatre, trepidatiously however with optimism, reached out and mentioned, properly, they’re truly away in Mexico for the entire of January, and we might have the home. That was a tremendous supply.
I found For Resting and Breeding once I went to a play studying in 2017 as a result of it had numerous my individuals in it, and I used to be completely blown away by it. Adam Meisner is a good new playwright out of Ottawa. I believe he lives in Toronto now.
I simply like it when individuals write performs as a result of they’ve one thing to say, not as a result of they have been requested to jot down a play. And this was a type of circumstances.
Adam created a future genderless society that has nothing to do with gender politics or gender research, none of that. The play simply makes use of gender as a plot machine, as a form of fantasizing about future life.
What I like about that is the entire thought of legacy, of historical past. It’s a glance at the moment from an imagined future, and it actually talks about how we’re eager to be remembered by exhibiting us a society of how individuals have developed, not how know-how has developed.
The play is ready in a single room of the home. The viewers doesn’t transfer.
These futuristic people have found the one surviving home inbuilt 1999 by Millennials and have established it as a museum. They then strive to determine what issues have been like again then, not in contrast to once we work on a Shakespeare play and picture what issues have been like 400 years in the past in his time.
I believe it sounds pleasant. How did you discover Mike Bartlett’s play Cock?
Michael Torontow is our longtime colleague in so many various capacities. I gave him a strict order that he wanted to discover a play, ideally a comedy, as a result of he’s predominantly often called an exquisite musical theatre performer, however I’ve sensed there’s a higher actor in him.
Once you’re a handsome man, you’re not taken very significantly. You’re simply used on your attractiveness, and I wished to uglify him for his personal profit. He considered Cock and particularly requested for Dylan Trowbridge to direct it. Dylan checked out it very significantly as a result of he would by no means say sure to something except he finds the rationale to do it, and he mentioned sure, after which we put collectively the remainder of the corporate.
Cock is a couple of homosexual man who has been in a relationship for seven years, however who falls in love with a girl — and all of the chaos that ensues.
I made a decision that I used to be not giving them a theatre as a result of it says within the script that it requires no set and no props. Properly, we’re an organization that does site-specific work, so we carried out it within the warehouse basement in our storage locker in Barrie. In Toronto, it’s in an industrial storage. We want one thing the place a brawl can happen.
The final play is Darryl Dennis’ Tales of an City Indian.
That’s coming in Could. It was really useful to me by Mario Crudo, who was the previous creative director of Magnus Theatre in Thunder Bay.
That present was programmed within the theatre, however then we misplaced the venue on the final minute, so I simply put it on a bus out of despair as a result of tickets have been already bought.
Final fall we celebrated our 750th efficiency of the play, and Nolan Moberly is our eighth actor. It’s a darkish comedy a couple of man who grew up on each a reservation and in a metropolis, and the actor performs all of the characters in his life.
What about your private life?
Let’s simply say that I’m married to the theatre.
Do you could have any final ideas?
That is essentially the most great factor about what we do. It’s form of, I wish to say, polarizes us into concord. I believe an important murals has a capability to talk individually to everybody within the viewers versus a basic mass.
I believe that’s what makes play.
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Paula Citron is a Toronto-based freelance arts journalist and broadcaster who hosts her personal web site, paulacitron.ca. For over 25 years, she was senior dance author for The Globe and Mail, affiliate editor of Opera Canada journal, arts reviewer for Classical 96.3 FM, and dance previews contributor to Toronto Life journal. She has been a visitor lecturer for numerous cultural teams and universities, significantly on the position of the critic/reviewer, and has been a panellist on COC podcasts. Earlier than assuming a full-time journalism profession, Ms. Citron was a member of the drama division of the Claude Watson College for the Arts.
