Great. I'm happy to do so.
Thank you very much for inviting me here today.
Thank you, Minister Moore, and thank you to Paul Calandra, who I met with a couple of weeks ago. It was as a result of that meeting that the invitation was extended to me today to come before you. So thank you very much.
I'm going to talk a little bit about the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, just share with you a little bit of what we're about, and then talk about how major cultural organizations can be showcased in Canada at 150 in 2017, and then wrap up with some discussion about how we might partner as arts organizations in the celebrations.
For the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, it's a very exciting time right now. We're going into our 2012 season, which is our 60th season, so we've had a bit of experience with anniversary celebrations--back in 2002 with our 50th and this coming year with our 60th. We mount 14 productions each year, and we run from April to November.
We have quite a wide range of productions. We're well-known for our Shakespeares, things like Henry V and Cymbeline, which we're producing this year. We're also well-known for our contemporary classics, things like The Importance of Being Earnest. We had a production of Earnest that went to Broadway earlier this year and its star won a Tony.
We're also well-known for doing blockbuster musicals, things like Jesus Christ Superstar, which at this very moment is being driven to San Diego. It's going to open at La Jolla Playhouse very shortly and then go to Broadway in the spring of 2012.
We also commission and produce new plays. A notable example is one we did by Timothy Findley in 2000 called Elizabeth Rex. That same play is actually being produced by the Chicago Shakespeare Theater right now, with the same actor who starred in it at Stratford in 2000, Diane D'Aquila. She's doing it in Chicago.
The festival brings in about 500,000 people to Stratford and region each year. We employ about 1,000 people. This includes everyone from actors and directors and designers, to people who make props and wigs, to people who are administrators, educators, and marketers. It's a full range; it's almost like a little village at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. We generate about $140 million in economic activity and about $76 million in taxes for all three levels of government.
In addition to the plays, we also train our actors. We run a conservatory for classical theatre training, which is very generously funded by the Department of Heritage. We also have 60 years of archival material and artifacts from the festival housed at Stratford. It's the biggest archives dedicated to a single institution in the country.
We're members of FAME, Festivals and Major Events Canada. It's a relatively new organization of major events across the country. I'd like to just spend a little bit of time reflecting on how we can really stand on the shoulders of these great organizations, which are national in scope but also bring international attention.
These are some thoughts that I think are based on reflections from some of the anniversary celebrations that have gone by, things like the Olympics, Expo 67 and Expo 86, and even some of the things that have happened at Stratford. They are some thoughts I have around what sort of focal points we should think about.
The first one is on technology. There's a conference in Stratford each year called Canada 3.0. They declared a moon shot, and that was to see that Canada be a digital nation by 2017. I think there's a real opportunity to grasp that moon shot and to look to cultural institutions to become engaged in technology and digital media. I think there would be opportunities to film our productions in 3D technology in order to be able to broadcast those, not just here in Canada but around the world, and to share them on line as well. So there are lots of opportunities around technology.
I think this is an opportunity to digitize and catalogue our archival collections. Stratford alone has 60 years of costumes, props, and artifacts that we would love to share with the rest of the country and with the rest of the world, and technology facilitates that.
Finally, I think there would be opportunities for engaging the public using technology through contests. I have some ideas about this that we can talk about during the question period, because I want to get on to some of these other great thoughts.
I'd also like to think about a four-season.... I think one of the things that defines Canada is that we have four distinct seasons. You could think about having a celebration in the west coast in the winter, in the midwest in the spring, autumn in central Canada, and summer on the east coast, and really keep the celebrations going four seasons of the year and across the country, so that we're not just looking at one geographic region and one time of the year.
Just on that point about getting across the country, I think the notion of passports has been talked about before. We reminisce about 1967 and the passports that had been used around the site at Expo 67, but there may be an opportunity to issue passports to Canadians to encourage them and give them some incentive to travel to these various events that are happening across the country in 2017.
There's an opportunity to showcase the great work of these major arts festivals. I know because I work at the Stratford Festival; I've worked here for 20 years. I love it because I love the transformative experience of going to the theatre. When I go to the theatre it challenges my attitude about things. It entertains me, which is very nice, but it has a deeper experience for me, and I find it a very transformational, refreshing, inspiring experience. I think it's great that 500,000 people experience that at Stratford each year, but I'd love to see more people have the opportunity to experience this fine art and this transformational experience at Stratford and other organizations.
Our thought here is to put together a festival of events that might have a theatre, a dance, a music, and a comedy component that would be packaged and toured from coast to coast within Canada. Another thought is to take that same festival of events under the banner of Canada 2017 on an international tour and go to some of the international festivals, like Edinburgh, Hong Kong, and Australia in 2016, and really say we're coming, and come and visit us in 2017.
There are a lot of opportunities to partner with cultural organizations. Stratford is thinking about doing some special programming in 2017, commissioning some plays that would touch on some of the major events that have happened in Canada over the last 150 years, and taking that to many platforms. We're talking to a major national broadcaster about commissioning scripts that would be available for television, for web, and for stage production.
The festival and places like the festival have amazing marketing reach. We could certainly be branding Canada 2017, Canada 150, in all of our marketing materials. Stratford alone spends $3 million to $4 million a year, and we reach across Canada and into the United States.
Another important thing is that we have an educational network. As many arts organizations do, we reach 70,000 kids each year. We work with teachers and students, and there's a real opportunity to take our outreach activities into schools. We do it electronically and digitally. We bring students to us. There's an opportunity to use that network to help educate the country about the culture of Canada over the last 150 years.
There's an opportunity for exploiting the talent of the cultural organizations and getting them involved in the planning of Canada 150. I'm so pleased to be here today to have the opportunity to share some ideas, but I'd like to think about having leaders from our major arts organizations involved in the planning and operational activities as well.
Finally, I'd like to say that in looking at what Governor General David Johnston said about his vision for Canada 2017—he talked about a nation that is smarter and more caring, with a focus on families and children, on learning and innovation, and philanthropy and volunteerism—I think the arts is a real lightning rod for that ambition and that vision.
I look to the example of the Olympics in London in 2012. The Olympics are happening, but they've also come up with a really innovative focus on Shakespeare for the year. I visited a number of the cultural organizations and they're all doing something to celebrate Shakespeare in 2012, from art galleries to public installations to theatres. They're inviting other countries to come and showcase how they produce Shakespeare. It's a really big idea that has fused the nation and really given a celebration of culture alongside the sports. I think there might be something to learn there as we look at Canada 150.
Thank you very much.