The Festivities still took place without a great cultural offer, but the start of the school year in January is going to put it back until more thirsty and all of a sudden, often at the same late hour. The usual routine, what. So what’s wrong with the arts and culture calendar?
Find the mistake. Performance halls in Quebec almost all closed during the Holidays when potential audiences had time like never before to visit them. The same venues are now back in service all at once, or alike, creating a glut of offerings as work, study and over-busy, exhausting life begin again.
The passage from emptiness to overflow forces us to question the ups and downs of the cultural calendar, too often reproducing programming habits inherited from the XXe century.
What’s good for professional sports teams — the Canadiens played against the Panthers, Hurricanes and Lightning around New Year’s Day — isn’t good for dance, theater or music companies?
Is it still normal that only museums and cinemas continue their regular activities during the Holidays when some audiences ask for nothing better than to be entertained and educated at the theater or at the opera?
Is it still desirable that so many cultural sectors still submit to the sacrosanct and orgiastic cultural returns, a big one in September and a small one in January? French publishers launched 490 novels at once in a few weeks around September 2022…
“The calendar of literature, arts and culture is a very interesting subject,” says Olivier Champagne-Poirier, assistant professor at the University of Sherbrooke, specialist in the development of audiences for culture. “In surveys, people who don’t go to cultural venues often say they wait until retirement to do so because it doesn’t fit into their own schedule. Closing certain places of culture when the schools are closed seems problematic to me, especially when we see that the cultural practices established at an early age promote a flourishing cultural life. »
Being closed when opening?
There are counter-examples to follow. In fact, the management of the venues that offer or prepare them were the only ones to respond to interview requests from the To have to on the cultural calendar…
La Maison Théâtre (the TNM for young people, in Montreal) is offering around fifteen shows this year, two of which have just been released recently: Warning: flimsy until December 21, and then Archipelago from January 27 to 8. The usual routine, what, and who works.
“It’s a very important period, the children are on leave and the families are looking for activities,” says the director general of the Maison Théâtre, Isabelle Boisclair. Often, grandparents offer the theater to their grandchildren. For us, it’s also the time to receive people who only go out during the holiday season. »
La Tohu de Montréal has also maintained its activities for the past few weeks, this time with Airplay by the New York duo Accrobuffos who hosted the big circus tent. And it was full.
“We’ve been doing this since 2004. Afterwards, Cirque du Soleil arrived in the arena and there’s always Nutcrackerwe get along, so there are a little more show offers in Montreal now, but it’s still very, very few, ”observes Stéphane Lavoie, general manager and director of programming at Tohu.
Mr. Lavoie was contacted in Paris, where he spent a month scouting for shows for his venue, but also for the Montreal completely circus festival. The programming for the very end of 2022 was therefore maintained for the millions of Parisians, tourists and himself, while here, Montrealers and visitors have relatively little to consume during this period.
“I’ve seen shows at 5 p.m., 9 p.m.,” he said. The private rooms roll, the Comédie-Française never stops. There were plenty of shows on New Years Day. It’s Paris, what. In major tourist cities, such as New York or London, the offer never falters. »
The dark hours
The issue of performance hours is linked to that of the days of the programming calendar. Teleworking changes mobility habits. Like other presenters, La Tohu moves certain evening performances earlier (from 8 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.) and offers shows in the afternoon on weekends. The Grand Théâtre de Québec presented two short song shows this fall at 6 p.m. in the new Studio Telus. Every other Sunday morning, the Croissants-music series also offers free shows in all genres (jazz, classical, pop, trad, etc.).
The Grand Theater also partially operated between Christmas and New Year’s Day. The show Cuckoo Pass-Partout was offered in matinees twice a day on December 26 and 27 (then at the Jean-Duceppe theater the following two days), and two concerts by Damien Robitaille on December 28 and 29, always to full houses. On January 2, rebelote with a classical concert, Tribute to Viennawhich attracted more than 1,000 people.
“It’s a niche that we want to exploit more, but we have to do it with caution: a lot of people are on vacation and have just spent a lot of money,” says Christian Noël, director of programming at the Grand Théâtre de Québec. . “You almost have to announce these showsthere in September to sell tickets. »
The Periscope Theater closed for the holidays and resumed performances Tuesday evening. Why this break? “We thought about changing our habits, but the lack of resources and habits make us say that it’s not worth the effort,” says the director of Periscope. He and the other directors talk about the need for rest for technicians in a sector also hit by the shortage of manpower. In addition, theaters need the halls to rehearse the next shows. “If we want to release a show in January, it must be repeated in December, explains Mme Clear wood. In the summer, we rent our halls to festivals to ensure our own-source revenue. »
Crisis, which crisis ?
Almost every cultural sector is grappling in one way or another with an attendance crisis that the pandemic has exacerbated. Directors questioned admit a decline of 10 to 20% in ticket sales compared to 2019.
Le Périscope, which already offers around ten shows a year, is developing a “small summer program” for the month of August 2023 on an outdoor site around its building with the aim of developing new audiences. Mr. Guay adds that he has started working with other broadcasters in Quebec (le Diamant, la Bordée, Premier Acte, le Trident) to get out of the logic of the massive cultural return. The consultation table has already met twice and is aiming for concrete results as of September.
“We share our calendars, we want to better distribute the dates and avoid traffic jams during the year, he says. We no longer want to organize all the premieres at the same time. We also want to develop common strategies, for example to jointly promote the start of the new school year in September. »
Assistant Professor Champagne-Poirier recalls that it is difficult to separate the structural effects (linked for example to digitization) from the temporary effects (linked to the pandemic). Still, the venues must try to reverse the drop in attendance.
“There is an opportunity to renew ourselves, to rethink the way of transmitting cultural content, says the specialist. We have to ask ourselves what to keep, what to change to support the democratization of culture. Because beyond the attendance figures, most cultural organizations are part of a goal of democratization. »