Stratford Festival: Annual Report
Stratford, ON… The Stratford Festival held its annual meeting today, celebrating the successes of a season that featured a dozen beautiful productions, along with a host of events in the Meighen Forum, an array of digital programming available worldwide on Stratfest@Home, education opportunities for students, workshops for new commissions and advanced training for Canadian artists.
“The work of the Stratford Festival stretches far beyond the work seen on our stages,” says Artistic Director Antoni Cimolino: “Yet we are careful to ensure that everything we do has a positive impact on stage and for audiences. Even at this time, when finances are tight, we deeply understand the importance of developing the talent – and the theatregoers – who will ensure the Festival’s success as we look to our 100th anniversary and beyond. The support of our donors and of government is essential for this work and we are extremely grateful to them.”
The 2024 season attracted attendance of 430,000 people, with an additional 19,500 attending Forum events. A further 46,000 streamed productions on Stratfest@Home. Eight promising young actors participated in the Birmingham Conservatory, and six mid-career directors developed their talents through the Langham Directors Workshop.
“It was a strong season, with enthusiastic response from patrons and media from across Canada and around the world,” says Executive Director Anita Gaffney. “We attracted 430,000 people, a tremendous accomplishment at a challenging time in theatrical history. We presented a playbill that celebrated classics, musicals and exceptional new work.”
Ambitions were high for the season, as the Festival continued its post-2020 recovery. However, earned revenue of $39.3 million was 3% below the 2024 figure. Contributed revenue was $36 million, down 8.7% from 2023, when the bottom line was bolstered by the proceeds of a special relaunch campaign introduced in the wake of the pandemic crisis. Despite cutting expenses by 4%, the 2024 season ended with a deficit of $1.1 million, as attendance fell short of expectations.
“As we look at attendance in the performing arts in this post-pandemic world, we do so with a knowledge of just how bad things can be,” says Gaffney. “When we marked the fifth anniversary of pandemic closures last month, we were forced to take our minds back to 2020 when, poised to present our largest season in our 70-year history, we instead shut down for more than a year.
“The challenge of winning back audiences has been felt around the globe, and we know it is a challenge we must surmount. What drives us to attract people into our theatres is not just the very real need for ticket revenue, but more importantly the difference we can make for people, people who over the past few difficult years may have forgotten what it is to commune with others around a brilliant piece of entertainment, to laugh, to cry, to think, to consider another viewpoint, to feel empathy or anger or sheer joy. And to do it together.”
The artistic highlights in 2024 were many. Three brand new plays were produced: Get That Hope by Andrea Scott; The Diviners based on the novel by Margaret Laurence with text by Vern Thiessen with Yvette Nolan; and Salesman in China by Leanna Brodie and Jovanni Sy. Bright futures beyond Stratford are seen for all three titles.
Salesman in China, presented in Mandarin and English, was hailed as a remarkable accomplishment and celebrated by critics from Hong Kong to Toronto to New York. In January, it moved to the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, for a second successful run.
The two musicals, Something Rotten! and La Cage aux Folles, were extended by three weeks to meet demand. Something Rotten! was such a runaway hit that more than 8,000 people came to see it more than once, including a remarkable 75 who saw it seven times or more!
With a tremendous range of selection and depth of performance the season included such vastly different productions as Dion Boucicault’s broad early Victorian comedy London Assurance, Henrik Ibsen’s darkly comic and intensely moving drama Hedda Gabler, Edward Albee’s shocking allegorical drama The Goat or, Who is Sylvia? and the fantastical yet rarely produced Shakespearean romance Cymbeline.
Sales to school groups were up 14%, attracted by accomplished productions of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night, as well as Wendy and Peter Pan, adapted by Ella Hickson, and, of course, Something Rotten!, which appealed to students’ knowledge of both Shakespeare and musicals. In total, roughly 40,000 students from 500 schools attended performances. The nascent digital education program Classroom Connect provides Stratford Festival experiences for schools and students unable to attend in person or those wishing to supplement their visits with additional plays. Approximately 45,000 students worldwide and 40 universities, colleges and high schools are now making use of this offering.
The season reflected on the theme “A World Elsewhere” with The Meighen Forum offering about 200 events to enhance the playgoing experience, attracting attendance of 19,500. A wide variety of experiences were offered, from the musical comedy of the Wolves of Glendale to talks by celebrated authors, from events about trans families and same-sex parenting, to panels with international media. There was even a Broadway singalong that allowed non-performers a chance to shine.
Stratfest@Home, the Festival’s subscription streaming service, continued strong with content streamed more than 46,000 times by viewers in 90 countries. The 2024 production of Cymbeline moved from stage to streaming, as did the 2023 production of Wedding Band. New original content created included the musical series Never Doubt I Love, the award-winning short film The Understudy, and the second season of The Everyday Forum Podcast.
The 2025 season gets underway in two weeks, with the first performance of Annie on April 19. The season also features As You Like It, Sense and Sensibility, Dangerous Liaisons, Macbeth, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Anne of Green Gables, The Winter’s Tale, Forgiveness, Ransacking Troy and The Art of War. For tickets and more information visit www.stratfordfestival.ca or call the box office at 1.800.567.1600.
