Staging Difference Symposium

September 25 to 28, 2009 PUENTE’s Artistic Director traveled to Kitchener, Ontario to attend the symposium “Staging Difference: Issues of Canadian intercultural theatre”, This was one of the events programmed for the IMPACT 09 Festival, organized by MTSpace Theatre. The Symposium consisted of four sessions: ”Funding”, “Creation”, “Collaboration” and “Dissemination”. Lina was invited to be a panellist in “Creation”.

 Lina shares some thoughts about this symposium:

“This Symposium was successful and useful, and my participation in it was meaningful for PUENTE Theatre and I hope, for the other participants as well.

As one of the panellists in the “Creation” session I could share PUENTE’s experience in developing strategies to respond to the needs of our public, attract immigrants and minorities to our productions, produce a more inclusive theatre, and counteract the dominant theatrical model which does not serve the culturally diverse population. It was very interesting to listen to the other panellists experiences, and compare, learn and be inspired by them.

Here are some specific points made that caught my attention:

1-Participants expressed their opinion that text and star based plays presented in traditional theatre spaces after 3 weeks rehearsal have become a model that does not serve diversity.
2-The demands that Actor’s Equity makes on theatre companies in many instances does not serve diversity. This is a discussion that has been going on for a long time and needs to be resolved.
3-The funding the government provides for the arts belongs to all of us. Some of the bigger companies spend lavishly and wastefully in their productions. In times of economic restraint these funds should be shared more equitably.
4- Collaborations should be made between “equals”, not, as in some cases happens, between a small, diversity focused group and a bigger, established company which behaves as if doing a favour, a concession to the smaller company.

I attended all the sessions of the symposium as well as two other meetings on national and international touring which happened after the Symposium had ended. Each one of the meetings provided me with useful insights. It was reassuring and inspiring to be amongst peers, people who are doing similar work to mine, face similar challenges and accomplish so much in different ways. I was struck by the high level of most interventions and discussions. I was also very impressed by the quality of the productions I could attend to, specially by the presentation of “The last 15 seconds” by MT Space, a play that for me, exemplified the standards of artistic perfection and originality that we’re trying to achieve.

Some concrete results of this trip are the collaborations planned with MT Space (Kitchener ON), Onelight Theatre (Halifax NS) and Teesri Duniya (Montreal QUE):

In January 2010 PUENTE has invited Majdi Bou-Matar, director of MT Space, to visit Victoria and conduct a workshop with PUENTE actors. The results of this workshop will be presented during our yearly and popular Worldplay series of staged readings. Similar visits and exchanges are planned for August 2010 with Shahin Sayadi (One Light Theatre) and Rahul Varma (Teesri Duniya). These directors are well known, exciting creators, with many years of experience presenting theatre that is innovative, challenging, beautiful and engaging. Their productions celebrate and represent Canada’s cultural diversity.

These visits will raise PUENTE’s profile in the community, provide training for our performers, bring new energy and inspiration to our group and confirm to our public the value of diversity in the arts.”

For more info on the Conference see http://www.mtspace.ca/impact09/impact09.html