'We're all here together': Montreal English theatre shows its resilience with award ceremony

Every year, the Montreal English Theatre Awards gathers the city's tight-knit community to celebrate its accomplishments and, in many ways, its resilience. 

For lighting designer Tim Rodrigues, it almost feels like attending a large class reunion. 

"There are a lot of friendships in the community, but to see everybody it's usually very celebratory," he said, looking forward to the 12th annual METAs ceremony taking place at Le Gesù theatre this evening.

"We're all here together. We're still doing the thing."

In a city that churns out new talent year after year and whose performing arts sector is still reeling from the pandemic, getting consistent work in theatre here — about two or three shows a year — has been a blessing for Rodrigues, he says.

He's been at it for the better part of 18 years, raking up several accolades on the way. Tonight, he's up for a double nomination and will present a couple of awards as well.

Despite his success, Rodrigues, like many of his peers, still has to supplement his income with other work.

He says most theatre production companies have had to reduce their seasons, especially the independent ones that have the additional hurdle of having to rent out performance spaces. 

Just this summer, they temporary lost a critical home for English theatre: MainLine Theatre was forced to close due to flooding and its roof caving in. Coming out of the pandemic, the Centaur Theatre has only been able to offer the smaller of its two theatre spaces as it undergoes major renovations. 

That production company was putting on five shows annually before the pandemic and it's been slowly building itself up to that number again. This year its season is four-shows strong.

"But we have to rebuild the audience. A lot of our audience is older and so through the pandemic many of them were unable to continue coming out," said Centaur Theatre artistic and executive director Eda Holmes. 

She hopes a new "pay your age" model will help entice more people under 25 years old to come out to the shows.

Centaur is up for an award along with two other companies for their production of Thy Woman's Weeds by Toronto-based playwright Erin Shields.

Orlando Lopez, the Chair of the METAs committee, has also heard of theatre companies not garnering as many subscriptions as before and wonders if it's a symptom of all the entertainment options people have at their disposal.