The Canadian press are reporting that
the Stratford Shakespeare Festival will finish its 2012 season with a significant deficit. Numbers aren't yet available for the other big festival (the Niagara-on-the-Lake Shaw Festival), but
they were in a similar position at the end of 2011.
Neither festival is in immediate financial jeopardy (Stratford in particular is sitting on a $56m endowment), but it worries me that nobody seems to know what they're
doing.
This summer, Stratford programmed
14 plays, of which only 4 were Shakespeares. Many of the productions are complimentary (
MacHomer, Christopher Plummer's
A Word Or Two, etc.), but then you get to
You're A Good Man Charlie Brown, and it all comes to a screeching halt.
How exactly do you market a Shakespeare festival that incorporates
Charlie Brown? "Come for
Cymbeline and
Elektra, stay for the kiddy musical?" (The answer: you don't. The rumour mill suggests
Charlie Brown sold so poorly that the balcony was closed less than a month into the six-month run. Ouch.)
These festivals increasingly feel like two seasons wrapped into one, with very little crossover. On the one hand, the Shakespeare and the English-language canon; on the other, contemporary musicals, seemingly out of the blue. (Next Season:
Othello,
Blithe Spirit,
Merchant of Venice, and...
The Who's Tommy? What, like, seriously?)