Resident acting company returns to the National Arts Centre
The National Arts Centre in Ottawa used to have resident companies for opera, French theatre, and English theatre, in addition to the NAC Orchestra. Massive funding cuts that began in about 1982, in response to budget deficits, scuttled everything but the orchestra — and the orchestra suffered severely. The English and French theatre departments became “presenting” houses (meaning that they merely brought in productions from elsewhere, instead of producing their own), and all in-house production of opera was stopped (If you’ve not been in Ottawa long enough to remember, you may not know that the NAC used to produce an annual summer opera festival. Its funding was cut because it was seen as elitist and uninteresting to Joe Q Public.) It was hoped that all of these reductions would only last for a few years, as a means of grappling with cuts that took the NAC budget from $21 million to $7 million.
The English acting company, in that period, was home to some names that may be familiar to Canadian theatre-goers: Benedict Campbell, Neil Munro, Joan Orenstein, Jackie Maxwell, Richard Greenblatt, Diane D’Aquila, Paul Gross, and countless others. Artistic director John Wood had a vision of a national theatre that would “reflect the country”, and he left the National Arts Centre when his ability to produce theatre was removed.
There has been a gradual return to ‘production’ at the NAC English Theatre over the last dozen or so years, but it is only now, in the Centre’s 40th anniversary year, that a resident English theatre acting company has been re-established. Artistic director Peter Hinton has fought passionately to bring an acting company back to the building, and has won out: eighteen actors from across Canada are currently resident at the National Arts Centre, working in repertory style on productions of A Christmas Carol and Mother Courage in a 4.5-month span that will also take Mother Courage to the Manitoba Theatre Centre.
What a budget cut was able to kill with one sweep has taken more than a quarter of a century to rebuild.
The acting company is now a full month into rehearsal, and is getting ready to take Christmas Carol to the stage in just a few weeks. The acting company is made up of eighteen artists from every corner of the country, and proudly reflects our national diversity. The excitement in every corner of the National Arts Centre in palpable, and the company can’t wait to share its work with Ottawa audiences. The sincere hope is that the resident acting company will once again become an important part of National Arts Centre programming!
Tags: Kris Joseph, NAC, Theatre
