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Passe Muraille No Longer Sans Argent

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2007_07_20PasseMuraille.jpg
In a bold move on Tuesday night, city council voted in favour purchasing 16 Ryerson Avenue, the historic building which currently houses Theatre Passe Muraille. As part of the deal, Passe Muraille will lease the space from the city, ensuring that it is able to remain open indefinitely. The well-respected alternative theatre (the first of its kind in the city) has been experiencing financial difficulties of late, so this new deal allows it to retire its significant deficit and focus on producing new works. Although the company itself will no longer own the building, all day-to-day running of the theatre will be left to the company and kept free from City Hall meddling.
Theatre Passe Muraille (which means “theatre without walls”), which was created as an offshoot of the notorious Rochdale College experiment, is perhaps best-known as the birthplace of international hits The Drawer Boy and The Drowsy Chaperone. It was recently satirized in the television show Slings and Arrows, which featured a financially-troubled independent Toronto theatre called Theatre Sans Argent. In its upcoming season, The Drawer Boy, one of the theatre’s greatest successes ever, returns to Passe Muraille.
Photo by gbalogh from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Comments

  • guest

    Good thing the City has money to buy buildings just as they threaten to mothball Sheppard Subway and close down routes for TTC passengers. That is just what the TTC needs to cut never mind all the other the sky is falling crap we are yet to hear from city hall without the latest tax grab. Great a independent theatre is allowed to continue to run but I thought we (The City) were broke, guess not it seems, they can approve the purchase of a building even when there is no money?????? Just pocket change to the Bozos at city hall I assume.

  • guest

    This above post is tiresome. Just because the City is broke doesnt mean that it can stop spending money.It still has obligations. Its just so easy to pick on something cultural. The real bozos are at Queens Park where all our tax revenue seems to reside these days.
    That said, I should point out that the birthplace of The Drowsy Chaperone is in fact the Fringe Theatre Festival where it was first seen by the public. Before that it had been a private show as a wedding gift of sorts.
    And lasty, even though I support the buying of TPM to save it, it is well known in the theatre community that TPM has been a rudderless ship of mismanagement for the last few years. The reason it is in debt is the lack of bums in seats due to to poor programming and bad staging. There are new people in charge and the City’s help will free them to return TMP to the position it once held. TPM, break a leg.

  • Johnnie Walker

    Let’s keep the bitching about TTC to the bitching about the TTC post.
    Also, I knew someone was gonna call me on that Drowsy Chaperone thing, but in my defense, Passe Muraille was the place where the first professional production of the piece was produced, so I think that counts. Or at least it counts enough.
    As for Passe Muraille’s deficit, I’m pretty sure they’ve also experienced some funding difficulties recently. But, Andy McKim is a fantastic, talented guy, so let’s all hope his upcoming tenure as Artistic Director is as successful as it should be.

  • Adam CF

    The Star printed my letter to the editor today in response to another letter published earlier in the week with a similar tone to Guest 1. Here’s what I wrote:
    “Stephen Thiele misses the forest for the trees when he decries the City of Toronto’s purchase of Theatre Passe Muraille for $1.2 million. It is, in fact, an unfailingly wise investment. The price the city will pay for the theatre is below market rate. This means that, in the event that the theatre does go under, the city would own a piece of land that it could sell off for significantly more than it paid. Further, because of the way the deal is structured, the city won’t be on the hook for the cost of operating the theatre.
    Thiele and his Toronto Party must also be unaware of the benefit that small theatre companies bring to Toronto. It’s the small theatres that ensure the success of the industry heavyweights. By nurturing talent in all areas of production, small arts organizations are at the heart of Toronto’s culture sector. Without the lesser-known companies, one of Toronto’s most important economic engines would burn out.
    By any measure, this is a sound economic decision.”

  • guest

    outrageous. if people are not supporting the theatre through attendance, what makes the city think they want to buy the building to support the theatre?

  • JessicaJC

    Hello peoples
    Just a brief note on the purchase of this building. The money used is really coming from the purchase of Heritage Toronto (please see article by City Council member and columnist in Toronto, John Spears starhttp://www.thestar.com/printArticle/233024).
    So the City is actually not sacrificing anything, it is simply investing money it has MADE in the same CATEGORY of property expansion. IT IS ALSO NOT SAVING THE DAY in the least. I do not believe that the purchase of Passe Muraille has to do with a genuine concern for the state of theatre in this city, but more a concern for the acquisition of historical property.
    Also, even if everyone is angry about the current disregard of TTC about the needs of the average citizen due to an incredible show of dense and persistent solipsism, this does not mean that somehow the arts community should pay for the damage done to a few days of your weekend during the TTC strike.

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