Put Down Your Phone and Head to The Theatre
The art form is an antidote to our polarized, distracted culture
The ability to sit still and pay attention to one thing for an extended period of time is a vanishingly rare achievement in the age of algorithmic distractions. The screen-centric isolation of COVID, and its rocky aftermath, did nothing to help matters. An ancient art form offers an antidote, a place to heal our brains and connect with ourselves and others. For a growing number of Canadians, the theatre has become one of the last, best places to slow down and reap the rewards of giving our unbroken attention to a story well told. Despite the doomy headlines and generative AI boogeymen, my artform is undergoing a quiet resurgence all across the country. As the artistic director of Crow’s Theatre in Toronto, I’ve seen it firsthand.
There’s no denying that many theatre organizations are grappling with rising costs and audience hesitancy, scrambling to rebuild momentum lost to the pandemic. But for every struggling company, there are stories of record-breaking seasons and sold-out runs. At Crow’s Theatre, we’ve more than quadrupled our audience over the past three seasons, and we broke box-office records last fall. Elsewhere in Toronto, Soulpepper Theatre and Canadian Stage both reported that half of their single-ticket buyers were new patrons in 2023 and 2024 respectively. Smaller companies, like Coal Mine Theatre are experiencing one sell-out show after another, while Mirvish Productions, the country’s largest commercial theatre producer, has had two consecutive years of record-breaking attendance.
The financials are impressive, too: Canadian live theatre generated roughly $625 million in revenue in 2023, remarkably close to the country’s total film box office revenue of $897 million, a gap narrower than many might expect. Additionally, the entire English-language film industry in Canada earned just $10.6 million in ticket sales last year, compared to the Stratford Festival, which brought in $31.4 million in 2023 all on its own. Along with live music, orchestras, opera, and dance, theatre continues to be an economic force, supporting 78,000 jobs and contributing $3.6 billion to Canada’s GDP.
These numbers speak to an appetite for one of theatre’s exclusive offers: the opportunity to fully immerse oneself in another’s perspective without the option to scroll away. I’ve seen this magic at work in my own family. My kids, Rowan (who’s 18) and Leo (who’s 12), often attend shows with me and, during the performances, I notice their breathing slows, their focus sharpens and their restless energy fades. Afterward, our talks are much richer. One performance at Young People’s Theatre, in particular, left an outsized impression on Leo. Truth, the story of an enslaved heroine struggling to find freedom before the American Civil War, affected him in ways no classroom lecture ever has. He came home wrestling with questions about our species’ capacity both for cruelty and heroism; he didn’t just learn about history, he felt it.
Science supports Leo’s reaction. Studies by researchers at Cambridge and Stanford University showed that seeing plays increases empathy and pro-social behaviour long after curtain call. (For example, it prompts attendees to donate money to charitable causes highlighted within a play’s storyline.) Unlike the echo chambers of social media, theatre invites us to consider views that challenge our own, offering nuance where so much of the modern discourse offers binary thinking.
Consider The Assembly, a play I directed for Montreal’s Porte Parole theatre company in Calgary, which explores Canada’s energy transition. The performance re-created a real dinner-party debate between four people—all oil executives and climate activists—who hold deeply polarized views on the issue. The audience was just as diverse, and by the end, the tension in the room was palpable. Yet something remarkable happened: instead of leaving in anger, people left in conversation. For some audience members, it was the first time they were invited to engage with the other side.
Despite its cultural significance and economic contributions, theatre often takes a back seat to its flashier counterparts, film and television. Canadian film enjoys robust tax credits; theatre, meanwhile, continues to run on thin margins. At Crow’s Theatre, our budget has tripled since 2017, yet our public funding remains stagnant. Along with other arts leaders, I’ve been advocating for a live performance tax credit, modeled on Canada’s incentives for film production. A 25 per cent rebate on production labour costs would create jobs, ensure affordability for audiences and foster innovation within the industry. Similar tools are already in place in many markets, like the U.K. France and many U.S. states. Why not here?
With the right investment, Canadian theatre could thrive in ways previously unimaginable, feeding our obvious need for collective connection. Toronto could reestablish itself as a global theatre hub, rivalling Broadway and London’s West End. Global phenomena like Come From Away have demonstrated the universal appeal of Canadian stories. At Crow’s, we’ve just staged two more: a commercial transfer of Fifteen Dogs (based on a novel by the Toronto-based writer André Alexis), as well as a just-completed three-month revival of The Master Plan, a biting satire about Toronto’s failed ‘smart city’ project with Google.
Some say that theatre is an elite pastime; I’d argue its reach is much broader. One in four Canadians attend the theatre each year, whether at community theatres, small-town performing arts centres or larger regional institutions. Fringe festivals in cities such as Edmonton, Winnipeg and Halifax bring daring, experimental works to life. Everywhere, everyday Canadians are abandoning Netflix to sit with their neighbours, in small-town churches, high school gyms, in parks and in the dark, to enjoy tales of human foolishness, bravery, cruelty and resilience in real time, leaving their hearts more open and their certainties unsettled.
As John Karastamatis, Mirvish Productions’ director of marketing and sales, often points out, you can’t order a theatre experience to your couch. Unlike TV binges or food delivery, live theatre requires going out and showing up for a shared experience. Sitting in the dark, borrowing the attention of the audience, our own attention is sharpened. The theatre gives us the space to listen deeply, not just to others, but to ourselves. That’s exactly why I’m so optimistic about its future, and why Canadians are falling in love with it all over again.
By Chris Abraham, artistic director of Crow’s Theatre
