The Road Ahead

July 8, 2020

As we hit mid-summer of this global pandemic year, we would like our artists, stage managers, technical theatre workers, volunteers, donors, board members, staff and audiences to know we are looking forward to parsing what is happening in the world through our art-making and training initiatives.

What this means in the short to medium term is:

  1. Volcano has offered our professional Conservatory for free this July – acknowledging the dire financial straits a lot of theatre-makers are currently in. This has proven popular – it’s booked solid - so we are exploring offering a second free edition of the Conservatory later in the summer.

  2. Volcano is postponing its major live performance collaborative projects into a safer future (Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha, The Book of Life and the Inuktitut translation of Waiting for Godot). We are in contact with each of those teams about our planning. We are determined to proceed with each of these important projects. Stay tuned for details.

  3. All new-work development for the next year to 18 months will be digital, or a hybrid of digital/analogue. Some of this is already underway, and some is still being conceptualized. We are embracing digital tools and platforms to continue Volcano’s long-standing mission to experiment with form and technology.

This new work is possible thanks to the seriously generous support of: the Canada Council for the Arts; the Ontario Arts Council; the Toronto Arts Council; the Metcalf Foundation; the Hal Jackman Foundation (through the Toronto Arts Foundation); and via incredible contributions from BMO Financial Group, RBC Foundation, and TD Bank – all of which have recognized the importance of keeping the arts sector working in the face of this pandemic.

We wish to thank all of these funders and supporters for their life-saving support. We also wish to thank our donors, our audiences and our co-conspirators who have all invested so much in keeping Volcano active.

We know many arts workers have seen their paid work evaporate since March, so, as we stabilise the company after the near-devastating financial effects of COVID-19, we are now determined to mobilise funds towards paid work for artists. This means that over the next 12 – 18 months we will be commissioning a series of 5-10 short works in addition to 2-3 longer works, all slated for distribution. 

Additionally, Volcano’s company and board makeup will be shifting through a combination of new hires, mentorship and outreach initiatives. This comes as we embark on an internal anti-racism process to address unconscious racism in our organization. This organization-specific anti-racism work continues and extends our years-long exploration of the ways we, as a company with white leadership, ethically collaborate with Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour communities in our art-making. 

The constraints of this time are daunting. They may prove distracting, disruptive, and potentially destructive for much of our practice as a sector. But they may also spur us to find new ways to create and collaborate, and to find paths forward that deliver anti-racist and pro-environmental justice.

Be well everyone. The way we will deal with this upheaval is through imagining a better story for ourselves – a revolutionary story. Artists have always been - and continue to be - central to this process.