The Fourth Wall - Fall 2024
Intro from Elizabeth
Scenes from the Nanaimo Indian Hospital
Photo credit: HA Photography
I actually began work on this newsletter in mid-February, shortly after two incredible and important performances in our Spotlight and Discovery Series. On Wednesday, January 30th, we presented Scenes from the Nanaimo Indian Hospital in a partnership with VIU’s arc, an applied theatre and language reawakening project on our Discovery Series. One week later, we co-presented Hervé KOUBI: What the Day Owes to the Night with Crimson Coast Dance Society as part of our Spotlight Series.
As someone who is relatively new to Nanaimo, Dr. Laura Cranmer’s Scenes from the Nanaimo Indian Hospital provided me with an opportunity to better understand the history of this city and the land I now call home. I witnessed the importance of having mental health support workers on-site to assist our community with experiences at the show. I witnessed expressions of grief and gratitude to Dr. Cranmer and the cast from people who appreciated the space to face difficult memories and the opportunity to hear their stories told.
Contributions from our donors allow The Port Theatre Society to deliver on our mission to develop and present transformative performance experiences like this and provide necessary access support. We included ASL interpretation for both performances of Scenes from the Nanaimo Indian Hospital, and provided additional support and cultural training for our staff and volunteers about trauma-informed care and applying reconciliation from an audience service perspective. We had many of our volunteers express gratitude for the extra direction they were given.
At the post-show chat of Hervé KOUBI’s performance, we had the opportunity to hear firsthand how the choreographer explored his family’s rich Algerian heritage and grew his dance company into a meaningful expression of bringing folks from different backgrounds together. I heard audience members after the show describing deep, unidentifiable emotional responses to the dancers that resulted in being brought to tears. For me, the show highlighted how grateful and lucky I am to work in a place where emotionally gripping experiences like this are the norm.
One of the best feelings in the world when working at a nonprofit organization is seeing your organization’s spaces and activities reach new members of the community. It is a reflection that the work we do is affecting more people in important ways and including more voices in important conversations. The strong attendance at both showings of Scenes from the Nanaimo Indian Hospital and Hervé KOUBI was an indication that these are voices and stories that people in our community want to hear.
With the first ticketed show of our 2024/2025 Spotlight season behind us, we want to continue to facilitate the telling of beautiful and important stories through artwork from incredible and diverse groups of people. I look forward to sharing our entire season of shows with you, and to keeping you updated through this new publication.
Updates to our Donor Program
Thanks for donating to The Port Theatre Society!
This is something you may have heard once or twice since making your donation. The reality is that we are grateful for your donation year-round. We’d like to show our gratitude by saying thank you in each one of our Spotlight and Discovery show programmes for this season.
This recognition is going to be based on the programme name that was indicated to us at the time of your donation. If having your name in a programme is not something you want, or if you’d like to change your recognition name, please let us know as soon as possible. Our first show was this week, so the earlier we know to make the change, the better!
Keep an eye out for communications regarding donations and our donor programs, as these changes will be made incrementally throughout this year and the next. We are so happy to be able to communicate with you more often and keep you in the loop of what’s happening around the Port!
Featured Donor!
Wendy Smitka of Lantzville has been a donor to The Port Theatre Society since 1994. I asked her, “Why do you give to The Port Theatre Society?” Here’s what she said:
“The Port Theatre has been enriching my life for almost 30 years. With great sight lines, and excellent acoustics, our family has been able to enjoy live music, dance, and theatre without traveling to the mainland. I’ve seen my father blow his horn with the Nanaimo Concert Band, my daughter dance with Kirkwood Academy, and my son receive his degree from Vancouver Island University. The Port Theatre provides a professional venue to host professionals and a home for members of our community to shine.”
What’s Happening with Theatre Angels?
School buses wait outside the Port Theatre
Photo credit: The Port Theatre Society
If you were an avid Theatre Angels donor, then you probably know that we stopped accepting these donations during the pandemic. You may have been left wondering why we would pause such an important program that gives back to our community.
The reality is we didn’t really stop the program – we have been offering tickets to our community partners and service organizations throughout this turbulent period at no cost. We stopped accepting donations into the Theatre Angels fund because your generosity outpaced our ability to give. We received feedback from our partners that the tickets that we offered were not always able to be used. This was for a variety of reasons, but the biggest takeaway was that often the cost of a ticket was not the only barrier to enjoying the art on our stage.
We made the choice to take some time to re-think our Theatre Angels program and determine ways in which we could make the program more genuinely accessible. We had to re-think what “access” meant – more than being a financial barrier solved by free tickets, accessing the theatre comes with transportation challenges, scheduling concerns, logistics support and coordination, and physical access to our spaces. In order to truly serve our community, we have to consider all these barriers and more.
We’re still working on defining this program and what can be accessed by whom. In the meantime, we’re assessing each situation on a case-by-case basis – for example, for the Discovery performances of Scenes from the Nanaimo Indian Hospital, many community tickets were given to survivors and members of the Snuneymuxw First Nation and other nearby Nations. This was a deliberate effort to ensure access to those who may have direct connection with the subject matter. As a result, we saw many new patrons that we had never seen before at the Port Theatre, validating the efforts to bring people into our spaces.
Theatre Angels will continue while we work to develop and define its new terms, but the heart and soul of the program will remain the same – we believe that anyone should be able to access and experience the performing arts.
Update on the Studio Theatre
An architect’s rendering of the Port Theatre’s Studio Theatre project
Rendering by HCMA
Some of you reading this have been with us for a while and you’ll know that there has always been a need of an additional performance venue in our region. In the original architectural plans, a second, smaller black-box style theatre was included, off the side of the building towards Museum Way. This space was removed from the plans when it was clear the budget would not allow for it, and we’ve been dreaming of it ever since.
A few years ago, we got close. Many donors made incredibly generous contributions toward having a second space constructed including a $100,000 gift from Betty St. Jean, a $100,000 gift from Herb & Joan Welch, and a $50,000 gift from J.P.R. Jerry & Jessie McGill. We had the city on board, we had the province on board… and then it fell apart.
We were unsuccessful in receiving federal support to fund the construction. Then came the pandemic. Since, construction costs (with everything else) have soared. Since 2023, government programs and spending on large scale capital projects has taken a backseat at all levels of government and the number of options is not the same as it once was. The individual contributions to the studio theatre project have been held in a trust ever since to be used towards a second space.
With these challenges identified, we have not given up on meeting the community’s need for additional performance spaces. Instead, we are exploring other ways we might be able to fulfil our goal, such as acquiring a space that already exists in the community and bringing it in under the Port Theatre umbrella, or finding ways to collaborate on a city building project that is already in the works to include a theatre space.
Ultimately, this dream for a second space is something we are still immensely excited about and still have plans to move towards. A second space is not only something that is necessary for rehearsals and more intimate theatre presentations, but it’s also something we hope can be a more versatile space than a traditional theatre setup to serve our greater artistic community. This space would allow us to support even more community initiatives and host a wider range of events.
We are going to keep working at it and we look forward to the time when we can share more about our progress.
Recent Outreach
Diyet and the Love Soldiers at Qwam Qwum Stuwixwulh School
Photo credit: Mya Wilson-Rhodes
The Port Theatre Society regularly participates in outreach activities as a registered charity and many of our community members are unaware of these initiatives. We usually define this as the activities that we do to serve our community beyond selling tickets to shows and taking care of our building. Sometimes this means coordinating artists to go out into the community, such as when Diyet went to the Qwam Qwum Stuwixwulh School to work with and perform for the students. Her outreach into the school led some of the children to bring their parents to the public evening performance – a show they wouldn’t have known about otherwise.
In June, The Port Theatre Society presented Tree: A World in Itself from the Quebec-based theatre company, Motus. Two of the shows were designed for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), intellectual disabilities and/or reduced mobility. The third was adapted for children under the age of three. Tickets to these shows were available at no cost to families, thanks to a generous gift from the Rotary Club of Lantzville. We partnered with the NCDC to use their network to find families who would benefit from the experience. A show that is this involved being offered at no cost to families can only be achieved with the support of our donors. At all three performances, parents expressed how grateful they were to have an opportunity to share a moment with their children in an environment that was specifically designed to be accommodating.
The Rotary Club of Lantzville’s gift also supported The Libravian, a story-telling show for school-age children in partnership with the Vancouver Island Regional Library Harbourfront Branch. We invited students from nearby schools to see the show at the library, and then had a second performance in the afternoon that was open to the public.
Throughout the season, The Port Theatre Society initiates community partnerships with local organizations to help spread the word about our shows and activities. In return, we acknowledge them as an official Community Partner and share with our network information about the local group, invite them to host a table in our lobby during a performance, as well as attend the performance. We’re excited about some of our first Community Partners this season such as Nanaimo Foodshare, a charitable not-for-profit that works to increase food security by empowering our community with better access, resources, skills, and knowledge.
As this is the first issue of The Fourth Wall, I’d love to hear from you! If you have any feedback about this newsletter, please reach out to me through donations@porttheatre.com. The next issue will be in Spring 2025!
