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Community Update

January 5, 2023

It has been a brilliant and also unusually busy season here at Prairie Theare Exchange.  Our goal each season is to release a community update at the top of the season and at the close of the season.  Here we are, in January, with our first update for the 2022-23 season.  We are aware that it is behind schedule while also gratefully embracing the opportunity to begin the New Year with news of how this 50th anniversary season has been going so far

RETURN TO THEATRE

This is a very unique season.  It is our first full season return to live performance.  And audiences are returning.  Our lobby and theatre have been alive and well, our rehearsal and studio spaces have been filled with artists from across the community, and it is a joy to share time and space together again.

As with much of the country, we are thrilled to welcome audiences back while also experiencing a much smaller size of audience than we are accustomed to.  Prior to the pandemic, we had over 2,700 subscribers.  We currently have 1414 subscribers.  While we expect this number to grow in the coming months, it is unlikely that we will exceed 1,500 subscriptions.  We are deeply grateful for those who have committed to a season of theatre again.  We are also keenly aware of the financial impact on our company given the 1,200 subscribers who have not returned.  We have also seen a modest reduction in single ticket sales across our first two live productions.  In all, this reality has painted a very different financial picture for PTE.

Moving into the future we are going to need to bring our understanding of this new financial reality to bear on our planning and our budgets.  We are as committed as ever to being a relevant and vibrant part of the Winnipeg theatre ecology, and will be focusing on creative solutions to budgeting.  In many ways, we see this moment as an exercise in imagination.  Restrictions, after all, can be freeing.  Now that we know them, we can dream inside them.

We share all this in an effort to be fully transparent, both about the significant financial impact of this moment in time and also about our optimism for the future.

This season has been thrilling so far.  It has also been full of challenges.  This is a moment where we celebrate the arts in-person.  We also recognize that our industry (and the arts workers who bring it to life) is vulnerable.  We are continuously listening, responding and listening again.  We make plans, while also trying not to become set in our ways.  We know that we need to be as nimble as we were in the height of the pandemic to keep our artists, audiences and artistic practice healthy, safe, and inspired.  We succeed, we fail, we change, and we continuously re-imagine what is and can be possible.  Much like the process of creating theatre, we are trying not to know everything, but rather to discover.  We are grateful for everyone who has helped us and is helping us along the way.  And we promise to do all we can to help Prairie Theatre Exchange see another 50 years of theatre and performing arts.

To contact us:

Thomas Morgan Jones, Artistic Director:  ad@pte.mb.ca

Lisa Li, Managing Director:  lisali@pte.mb.ca

Board of Directors:  board@pte.mb.ca