Toronto’s Volcano Theatre has announced the appointment of Andrew Adridge as Managing Director. Adridge as selected for this newly created position with Volcano after an international search that stretched on for months.
Adridge accepted the position with a start date of June 3, 2024, to coincide with outgoing General Manager Ray Bramble.
The new position of Managing Director takes into account an expanded role that embodies the ambitions of the company and its vision for the directions it will take over the next few years. He’ll share leadership of the company with founding Artistic Director Ross Manson.
“I’m thrilled to join Volcano Theatre as their Managing Director,” Andrew Adridge says in a statement. “This new role underscores Volcano’s incredible growth over the years and cements the organization’s status as a major player in the national and global theatre sector. This organization is significantly accomplished internationally, actively centres impact and equity, produces brave and ambitious theatre, and is rooted in community; the chance to help guide this great company into the future is one I will relish and put all my passion and expertise into.”
Andrew Adridge
Andrew Adridge is a native of Scarborough, Ontario. He earned both a Bachelor’s degree in Performance in Voice, and a Master’s degree in Opera from the University of Toronto. He’s developed a career as both pioneering arts administrator and multidisciplinary artist, and was recently named to the CBC Hot 30 under 30 Classical Artist list.
He’s performed as an ensemble soloist in Toronto and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. As an administrator he’s worked with the Association for Opera in Canada, Tapestry Opera, Against the Grain Theatre, and the Toronto Consort.
Adridge is committed to the principles of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Justice, Access (EDIJA) in the arts and culture sector, and has also become known as a speaker, panelist and consultant on those issues.
Ross Manson, Founding Artistic Director comments, “Volcano is at a critical juncture in its nearly 30-year history, with large scale international collaborations being programmed on four continents. Andrew is the perfect match for the company, with his years-long association with us, first as a singer, then as one of the authors of our new EDIJA and equitable touring policies, and, eventually, as vice-chair of Volcano’s board — a position from which he stepped down in order to apply to co-lead the company. After an international search, Andrew was deemed the best fit.
“He has Executive level experience, and is attuned to the needs of the industry in Canada, and the opportunities open to a progressive company in making a better future (because that’s what we’re in the business of doing!). I know Andrew well, trust his vision, and am thrilled to have him become our first Managing Director.”
Volcano: The Future
Volcano’s landmark production of Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha was tapped by The New York Times as one of its top performances in the city’s classical music scene in 2023, and won the Toronto Broadway World award for Best Opera the same year. Treemonisha was recently nominated in six categories of the Dora Mavor Moore Awards, including Outstanding Production, Direction, Individual Performance, Ensemble Performance, Design and New Opera/Musical.
The production will receive its international premiere in the Harris Theatre in Chicago on May 2, 2025.
That’s just one of Volcano’s current activities;
- The Book of Life, a Canada/Rwanda collaboration that has already played major festivals across the globe;
- I Have a Drum, a new Rwanda/Uganda/Canada concert/theatre collaboration, co-commissioned by the Edinburgh International Festival and Boston’s ArtsEmerson in Boston, featuring Ingoma Nshya, Rwanda’s first-ever all-woman drumming troupe;
- Inuktitut Waiting for Godot, the first-ever translation of Beckett’s seminal work into Inuktitut;
- The Agreements, a video game/classical song cycle, delving into the idea of how to live ethically in this era of planetary fragility.
Congratulations to Andrew Adridge and Volcano Theatre, and godspeed to future ventures.
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