The 21st annual SummerWorks Theatre Festival came to a close last week, and it was one of the most successful years in the festival’s history. Its 2011 lineup was met with critical acclaim: the Summer Music series saw a 25% increase in attendance and about 20,000 people came out to experience the type of cutting-edge, groundbreaking theatre that has made SummerWorks a staple of the Toronto art scene.
At one point, however, the future of this year’s festival hung in the balance. Six weeks before SummerWorks was slated to launch its 2011 season, Heritage Canada informed the festival that it would not receive funding from the federal government. SummerWorks has been given around $48,000 in federal funding for the past five years, and without that grant, festival organizers were forced to put out a call for private donations.
Thanks to an outpouring of support from patrons of the festival, SummerWorks received most of its budget shortfall and made up the difference by raising ticket prices from $10 to $15. But while it managed to pull through this year, the abrupt end to their partnership with Heritage Canada casts an uncertain light on the festival’s future and highlights the complex relationship between political institutions and the artists that rely on them for support.
The exact reason for the federal government’s decision to cut SummerWorks’ funding is unclear, but there has been much speculation that the loss of the festival’s grant is connected to the controversy surrounding Homegrown, a play by Catherine Frid that was featured in the SummerWorks’ 2010 lineup. The play dramatized Frid’s friendship with Shareef Abdelhaleem, a member of the Toronto 18, and was lambasted by one Toronto newspaper for offering “a positive portrayal” of a terrorist.
Theatre critics from the Toronto Star to the National Post negated this interpretation of Homegrown, but the PMO, and eventually Stephen Harper himself, castigated SummerWorks for using public money to “fund plays that glorify terrorism.” And when the 2011 season rolled around, Heritage Canada reportedly decided to use the festival’s grant to fund other arts projects. To many members of the artist community, this seems like a rather suspicious coincidence, and there has been much discussion as to whether the government’s decision to withhold funding was motivated by political ideology.
Michael Rubenfeld, the Artistic Producer of SummerWorks, told The Varsity that in spite of the distinct possibility that they lost federal funding because of the Homegrown controversy, the festival did not take a more conservative stance when deciding on the lineup for its 2011 season.
“As long as [SummerWorks] exists, we’ll never ever self-censor,” he said. “The festival exists to take risks, to provide a home for groundbreaking, edgy work… If we started to censor … it would lose all currency. It would be better for the festival to die.”
But Rubenfeld admits that without funding from the federal government, it will be difficult for SummerWorks to continue to offer independent playwrights the type of high quality support that has made the festival an integral part of Canada’s theatre community.
“The festival can survive [without federal funding], but there’s a difference between survival and maintaining the cultural relevance that it does,” he said. “We could find some private sponsorship, but we certainly can’t rely on patron donations. It’s an unreliable source of revenue.”
While Rubenfeld is not willing to allow this funding predicament to compromise SummerWorks’ artistic vision, it seems plausible that concern among artists over the loss of the festival’s grant might create an oddly paradoxical relationship between the government and the artist community.
Many arts initiatives rely on the government for financial support, and competition for government funding is steep. Whatever the real reason behind Heritage Canada’s decision to cut SummerWorks’ grant, could the perception that the festival lost its funding because of controversial content prompt some artists to rethink how they express themselves? Could the promise of funds that are meant to vitalize the arts scene actually have a stifling effect on the artist community?
Rubenfeld, for one, thinks that “the possibility for polarization always exists” and believes that some artists may very well respond to the decision to withhold SummerWorks’ grant by subduing the political message in their art. He is confident, however, that the funding incident will galvanize an equal number of artists to become more courageous with their work.
“I think that in many cases … the work will become bolder,” he said. “The bolder the work, the riskier the work, the more relevant the work becomes and the more valuable the work is.”
SummerWorks is currently accepting donations for its 2012 season. For more information, visit http://www.summerworks.ca/2011/donate.php.
