Bernice Afriyie | Arts Editor
Featured illustration: Young people are drawn towards Netflix as opposed to theatre productions. | Arif Kudus
Have you watched the latest Netflix-produced television series or caught up with the latest episodes of your favourite cable television series? It seems like nowadays the cultural medium of conversation is television. Even if you yourself do not watch Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad, you’re aware of these shows’ existence and the buzz around them. Unfortunately, the same hype doesn’t apply to theatre productions.
We must first look at Canadian and Torontonian theatre. Canadian theatre predates the introduction of European theatre in the 1500s, linked to rich Aboriginal traditions, rituals and performances. Shirley Cheechoo, Tomson Highway and Drew Hayden Taylor are a few Canadian playwrights who worked to establish an Aboriginal theatre tradition in Canada that allowed Aboriginal people to tell their own stories and speak to their own marginalization.
Canadian theatre also has roots in French and British theatre. Many of the early plays were performed by soldiers and tradesmen in both English and French and were occupied with the same tropes and themes as European theatre.
Theatre is still a large part of many small-town communities. Community theatre outside of Toronto attracts participants and spectators of all ages. However, in large cities like Toronto where the dominant age group that consumes theatre is slowly dying out, there’s a disconnect between youth and modern theatre, and an even larger divide between young people and their involvement in theatre.
Many cultural arts centres such as the Harbourfront Centre and Soulpepper in Toronto have initiatives to get young people involved in the performing arts from a young age, but with little success.
Part of this issue, as fourth-year English student and theatre enthusiast Jamie Mariano concedes, is that many youth aren’t aware of the variety of theatre that Toronto has to offer.
“I try my best to keep up with theatre by actively searching for it, following the right accounts and reading the right articles. But social media nowadays is so ‘in your face’ that if it’s not listed as a trending topic or shared by a number of people on your feed, then is it even there?
“That’s why I think young people gravitate more towards Netflix because right now, that’s the trend. That’s in our feeds. That’s our culture.”
There are endless online forums, chats and fan pages of television series to engage in the fans’ worlds of their favourite series. The experience comes to us now. Stories can be instantly shared and consumed on the web, blending into our dominant method of instant communication with one another.
Though the medium shift from Netflix to theatre is a large one, Netflix essentially offers viewers the same experience as theatre shows: a sense of community. Youths, like the generations before them who avidly went to productions, still want to feel like they belong to larger group of people that share similar interests. The only difference is that we want to feel that connection in isolation, through chat forums, discussions and vlogs instead of in person by talking to other theatre goers or engaging in Q&A sessions. We still want quality staging, acting and stories, but aren’t willing to make the trip or pay the price for it.
As Mariano mentions, accessibility is a significant boundary for young people who want to attend performances but cannot financially afford to, whereas it’s possible for numerous people to share a single Netflix account for a starting price of $8 a month.
Theatre houses, especially smaller ones that cover their costume, stage, props and other expenses, cannot afford to have consistently low-ticketed seats. The opposite is true of bigger companies like Mirvish Productions that owns several major houses in Toronto who can afford to charge high prices for their big ticket productions.
Many theatre houses offer discounted student and youth prices for their shows. If a house has unsold seats, which is usually the case with smaller houses, they may open them up for rush purchase, meaning said tickets may be available for purchase for a price as low as $5.
There is more to the modern theatre dilemma than price. As mentioned earlier, as is the case with many colonized countries, Canadian theatre was influenced by European conventions. The standard reproductions of Shakespeare and Sophocles that may have gripped audiences a century ago don’t have the same influence as they do today. Part of the immersive theatrical experience is feeling personally invested to the story you are being told, which is hard to do in a streamline production of a Henrik Ibsen play in a diverse city like Toronto. Netflix arguably falls prey to the same issues, but the difference is that it’s easier and more convenient to access alternative views. There are alternative theatre houses in Toronto like Obsidian Theatre and Buddies in Bad Times Theatre that offer spectators a variety of perspectives.
Toronto theatre has just as much and more to offer than television does. Though theatre may not have the same presence in popular culture as other forms of entertainment, that doesn’t undermine its importance as a social commentator and art form.
