Barrie-based Discuss Is Free Theatre is a regional theatre not like some other, each due to its site-specific/immersive repertoire, and the truth that it excursions the world to locations the place different corporations worry to tread.
Amongst its travels, the 20+-year-old TIFT has introduced 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 non-public dwelling in Parkdale, whereas the latter is about in an east finish industrial storage.
The spring present, Darrell Dennis’ Tales of an City Indian, is carried out on a transferring bus. (Tickets right here.)
The brainchild behind the formidable and adventurous TIFT is the corporate’s intriguing inventive 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 time pupil 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 move to Toronto in a few years to start his personal producing tasks.
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, steered the concept and agreed to grow to be his chairman of the board.
Our (very)long-ranging Zoom dialog lined Spivak’s life and occasions, the founding of TIFT, his philosophy of theatre, and naturally, the Toronto exhibits.
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 fascinating issues taking place in Barrie early on in your existence.
We’re funded as a regional theatre, however we didn’t need to fall into that construction, you recognize, doing 5 performs a season with the final one being a musical. Every little thing we do is all the time new. No two seasons are ever the identical.
We’ve all the time been a hundred-seater kind of operation. That’s what was distinctive about us. We didn’t must fill quite a lot of seats, so we may do cutting-edge work as a regional exercise. It was fully artistically liberating, typically even crossing the road.
I used to be requested not too long ago on a Toronto Russian TV interview, how would I describe our programming. I used to be aggravated with them for all types of causes, so I wanted to do one thing punchy. I stated, properly, think about a string in your underwear. You stretch it so far as you possibly can, but when it breaks, you’ve gone too far. That’s our programming.
And that basically is what it’s like.
How did TIFT develop a popularity for site-specific performs?
In our early years, we got, typically donated, typically we rented, a number of venues, after which they acquired demolished. By necessity, we came upon site-specific work as a result of we needed to discover performing areas, and you would have audiences of assorted sizes.
In truth, for our total 2025-2026 season, we’re solely doing site-specific work. We’re not utilizing a standard theatre as soon as. We’re doing discovered areas in Barrie, simply as we’re doing in Toronto.
As Peter Brook stated, 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 could be created anyplace.
Website-specific is theatre at its purest stage.
How do you truly select repertoire?
We’re identified for a sure work aesthetic, which is that this mischievous pushing the boundary, poking a needle, that type of stuff. However then, we [have] additionally completed 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 dwelling, so if somebody had an thought for us, we’d inform them to put in writing it at dwelling and get again to us.
After which there are the ensemble collaborations the place you construct one thing collectively.
After I have a look at an unique play for consideration, I ask, is there any pleasure in it? I’ve to be sure that the chance is transformative. After which it’s deciding which artists must be concerned. So, the challenge is admittedly 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 need to be sure that there may be an inventive motive for placing on the play.
I need to hear concerning the touring as a result of I perceive that it’s fairly intensive.
We go on the highway, not as a result of we didn’t get sufficient audiences in Barrie, or we’re attempting to interrupt down obstacles. 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 people 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 some other place as a result of Barrie individuals have already seen it.
Our touring factor, usually talking, goes to locations the place different corporations don’t go, like Surinam or Fiji, nations that basically 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 prefer to discover.
Equally, due to site-specific work, we tour markets in Canada that greater corporations can’t do, like Iqaluit and Dawson Metropolis. And what finally ends up taking place is we normally affiliate with an rising theatre firm.
Alternatively, we’ll take one thing greater like our Sweeney Todd manufacturing, the place the viewers follows the actors round, to a serious capital like Buenos Aires, as a result of this type of immersive work or grassroots musical doesn’t fairly exist there.
Generally 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, type of amassing individuals who love a loopy theatre journey.
And occasionally, 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 essential that we set up a model of some type by a spot like Toronto. It’s type of like a vaccination. Do you want a COVID vaccine, however you’ll be good to get it anyway.
However, you recognize, 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 corporations can’t?
The Performs Coming to Toronto
Let’s speak about 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 an enormous supporter of our theatre, trepidatiously however with optimism, reached out and stated, properly, they’re truly away in Mexico for the entire of January, and we may 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 quite a lot of my individuals in it, and I used to be completely blown away by it. Adam Meisner is a superb 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 put in writing a play. And this was a kind 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 system, as a form of fantasizing about future life.
What I really like about that is the entire thought of legacy, of historical past. It’s a glance at this time from an imagined future, and it actually talks about how we’re desirous to be remembered by displaying us a society of how individuals have developed, not how know-how has developed.
The play is about in a single room of the home. The viewers doesn’t transfer.
These futuristic people have found the one surviving home in-built 1999 by Millennials and have established it as a museum. They then attempt to determine what issues have been like again then, not not like after 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 alternative 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 larger actor in him.
Once you’re a handsome man, you’re not taken very severely. You’re simply used in your attractiveness, and I needed to uglify him for his personal profit. He considered Cock and particularly requested for Dylan Trowbridge to direct it. Dylan checked out it very severely as a result of he would by no means say sure to something except he finds the rationale to do it, and he stated 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. Effectively, 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 advisable to me by Mario Crudo, who was the previous inventive 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’ve any final ideas?
That is essentially the most great factor about what we do. It’s form of, I prefer to say, polarizes us into concord. I believe an incredible murals has a capability to talk individually to everybody within the viewers versus a normal mass.
I believe that’s what makes a very good 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 varied cultural teams and universities, significantly on the function 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 Faculty for the Arts.
