Performing arts training is also resuming with the back-to-school season at the end of summer after two extremely trying pandemic years. However, no drop in significant clientele has been reported in certain major theatre, dance or music schools. The challenges seem elsewhere, for example in openness to diversity and the adaptation of training to labor markets.
“The health crisis is receding, and the issues are now all around us”, explains Fanny Pagé, new director general of the National Theater School of Canada (ENTC), one of the most prestigious arts and technical training institutions. from the scene. “You have to ask yourself how to adapt to the challenges of society and the cultural sector. She lists the shortage of manpower, the reception of a clientele from cultural or indigenous communities, but also the revival of shows and the renewal of audiences.
The ENTC, founded in 1960, remains bilingual, bicultural, very Canadian / canadian. It offers four programs in each of the official languages and a ninth bilingual.
The new general manager, with a degree in literature, worked at Cirque du Soleil for two decades, going from assistant to the founder, Guy Laliberté, to operations management, recruitment and the production of two shows (Michael JacksonOne Las Vegas and Luzia for the tour).
The press release announcing his appointment a few days ago emphasized the recruiting challenge. The ENTC receives about fifty students per cohort. It has 72 students in English at the moment and 73 in French, figures that have stabilized for years.
Applications are still flowing the most in interpretation, program “übercontingenté”. Fewer candidates are showing up for playwriting training, and some provinces and territories remain underrepresented throughout the School.
“We have a slight drop in enrollment over the last two or three years, but it’s very small,” says the director. It is not alarming. Is it because of the pandemic? Maybe. The pandemic has not helped certain trades associated with precariousness, and we would like all the programs to be popular, that’s for sure. »
A feeling of anxiety
Surveys of other performing arts schools report similar findings. The theater option at Lionel-Groulx college reports a slight drop in registrations for interpretation auditions (“but the quality of the candidates is still present”) and “few registrations” for the musical theater component. The stage production program, on the other hand, recorded “a great increase in registrations”.
“The student population arrives with a greater sense of anxiety,” summarizes Julie Loyer, from the college’s communications department, by email. It’s not only at the level of performance, but it is generalized. Despite this, the cohort that has just entered seems more serene than that of last year. »
She recalls that the students of the last two years were obligatorily masked and had to maintain a physical distance. Some also admitted to feeling less physically capable, which affects their performance, especially in dance class.
Fanny Pagé arrived in the operations department at the ENTC in January 2021, in the midst of a pandemic. “The hallways were empty because the students stayed here as little as possible to avoid contact,” she says in her office in the former Art Deco-style Quebec juvenile court on rue Saint-Denis in Montreal. The ENTC also owns the Monument-National on Boulevard Saint-Laurent.
The student population arrives with a greater sense of anxiety. It’s not only at the level of performance, but it is generalized.
The Conservatoires du Québec can provide data for 2021, but not yet for the school year that is beginning. In total, music lessons had fewer students last year (770) than in 2019 (843), the last pre-pandemic year. In theatre, there are slightly more (79 compared to 74 registered). UQAM observes constant stability in its bachelor’s degrees in the two artistic disciplines.
Training at the ENTC is basically the equivalent of a demanding university baccalaureate. The ENTC intends to maintain its long and patient studies, even if the temptation seems strong to meet the urgent needs of the labor market by compressing certain programs.
The director recalls that, in certain technical training courses, the placement rate is 100%. “Our students are placed before they finish studying. If we could train more, we would take more. Solid programs form our DNA, but we could consider changes, for example for short resourcing of our graduates. We wonder. »
Diversity poses a particular challenge. The renewal of audiences will not happen without the massive contribution of young artists from the communities who will be able to allow the population to recognize themselves on the boards.
A recent survey revealed that half of the students at the National Theater School of Canada claim to be of European origin (actually call themselves “Caucasian” according to the dated term used in the survey). They are 28 Anglophones and 15 Francophones to declare themselves representatives of diversity. A good proportion (one in three of Francos, one in ten of Anglos) simply refused to answer the identity question.
Last year, the School set up a three-day discovery course for high school students from cultural communities to introduce them to the board trades. Another Anglophone program called New Pathways receives a student from an Aboriginal community. Admissions juries also reflect diversity. “We have to manage to represent the Canadian wealth around us,” sums up the director.