Informalities

In this episode, we sit down with Nora Polley, who, at 54 years, is the longest serving employee of the Stratford Festival. Forty of those years were spent in stage management, and here Nora shares her wisdom, her thoughts on a new biography about her, and the ethical responsibilities of the stage manager in the rehearsal hall.

We sit down with Heather Davies to discuss her artistic directorship of the Ryga Festival, the current trajectory of her work (in a long and storied career) and the murky waters of incentivizing audience members and bolstering attendance. Hint: community is the answer.

We sit down with Dr. Jennifer Roberts-Smith to discuss her path to academia from the professional world. In the process we chat about the value of a university degree within the context of an artist's professional work.

We sit down with Liza Giffen, the director of the Stratford Festival archives to discuss her inspirations and the importance of the archive to the theatrical community at large.

Hosts, Shawn DeSouza-Coelho and Sukhpreet Sangha, chat with Lindsay Bowman-Mattews, a theatre enthusiast, about what excites her about theatre and how she decides what shows to see.

In this episode, we sit down with Jamie Kasiama and Brianna Seferiades to discuss their role as current/future members of the theatre ecology we all live and work in. What are students taught to expect? What can they contribute? Listen in for a take on these questions and more.

We sit down with Betty Anne Keller, the Chair of the Board of the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund to discuss the past, present, and future of the arts ecology of a mid-sized city like Kitchener-Waterloo.

In this episode, host Shawn DeSouza-Coelho summarizes a year's worth of Informalities, of conversations with the theatre artists that contribute to and work and live within our theatre ecology.

In this, our eleventh episode, we sit down with the ever humble theatre artist Jeff Ho to discuss his upcoming debut and the oft heard but rarely understood phrase "diversity in casting".

Host, Shawn DeSouza-Coelho, sits down with artists and co-owners of Brick & Mortar in Toronto, Vikki Velenosi and Kasey Dunn, to chat about the need for affordable theatre space from the perspective of two people providing it.