Toronto’s Volcano Theatre recently announced the appointment of Joel Klein as the company’s first ever Director of Touring and Global Collaboration, effective August 1, 2024. It’s the kind of title and position that most Canadian theatre companies would have no place for, and that global vision is part of what sets Volcano apart.
Joel’s job will be to oversee and manage Volcano’s national and international touring endeavours, of which there are currently several.
One of the projects Klein will be responsible for is Volcano’s new Standard of Care model. It’s the result of an extensive review of their operations that took place during the pandemic, along the lies established by the We See You, White American Theater (WSYWAT) alliance of arts workers and their Principles for Building Anti-Racist Theatre Systems.
It’s particularly important when the nature of Volcano’s projects are taken into account — performance projects that involve touring Black and racialized companies into spaces where the majority of the audience will be White. How artists are treated and supported during the process is crucial. The policies, which include what is called an Asymmetrical Co-production agreement, were created over an extended time period of consultation and collaborative work between diverse arts workers and other stakeholders.
The new expansion has also included the hiring of Managing Director Andrew Adridge, and installing three new board members: Rose Genele, a strategic growth consultant; Melissa Chetty, a senior manager, whose CV includes working with The National Ballet of Canada and in the Ontario Public sector; and Adam Davids, a Toronto-based US entertainment lawyer.
Ross Manson, Founding Artistic Director, and Andrew Adridge, Managing Director, Volcano Theatre
LvT spoke with Ross Manson, Founding Artistic Director, and Andrew Adridge, Managing Director, Volcano, about the new appointments and directions for Volcano as the company expands.
Current projects include Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha, which, despite being composed in 1911, premiered at Luminato Festival 2023 in Toronto. Treemonisha is set for its international premiere at the Harris Theatre, in Chicago, on May 2, 2025.
Other productions in various stages of development or on tour include:
- The Book of Life (a Canada/Rwanda collaboration that has already played major festivals on three continents);
- I Have a Drum (a new concert/theatre collaboration between Rwanda, Uganda and Canada, co-commissioned by the Edinburgh International Festival, ArtsEmerson in Boston, and UGA Presents in Athens, Georgia, and featuring Ingoma Nshya, the Women Drummers of Rwanda);
- Inuktitut Waiting for Godot (the first-ever translation of Beckett’s masterpiece into Inuktitut);
- The Agreements (a video game/classical song cycle, exploring how to live ethically in our current planetary predicament).
As Manson puts it, the company’s expansion is another step in the right direction. “I think the best way to describe that mandate is to create those little things that grow that increase the health of the world.”
It’s not that any one project will change the world; it’s that each one can be part of a tide that’s moving in a specific direction. He cites Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass and its analogy of planting seeds. “I think that’s a fantastic analogy of what I want to do with Volcano.”
Equity in Theatre
As Andrew Adridge points out, Volcano has been working in the area of inter-cultural performance for years with the growing realization that the principles they value need to be part of theatre’s infrastructure across the board.
In taking groundbreaking works like Treemonisha and the Inuktitut Waiting for Godot and their creators on the road, the impact has to be considered. “[It’s about] ensuring that people are taken care of,” he says of the new Standard of Care model. “That’s sort of the spirit of what we’re looking at.” It’s a commitment to the artists, as he explains it.
The new standards were the result of a painstaking process. “Countless months of consultation,” Andrew adds. It’s about upholding the company’s principles of equity at all levels, and adding action to policies on paper.
“Andrew really hit it when he said, it’s putting it on paper,” Manson notes. “Nobody’s done the work of making equity contractual,” he remarks of the theatre world.
The Asymmetrical Coproduction Agreement is designed to accommodate productions between the global south and global north. “We’re working with two shows in Rwanda,” Ross notes.
He recalls approaching productions that are touring in the African continent and abroad. His initial assumption was to allocate the roles based on the amount of money that had been invested, as is the practice in Western society. He realized, however, that the model failed to take the actual importance of each party into account; he was reminded that financial contributions weren’t the only kind, or necessarily the most important.
“How do we make sure everyone is respected in an equal way?” he wonders.
Taking Treemonisha to Chicago
Treemonisha has undergone few changes from the production that premiered at Luminato. “It’s almost exactly the same show,” Ross says. The touring company is only two people fewer than the Toronto show, with one new song and a few minor modifications.
The scope of the production is more than could be reasonably expected of a smallish company like Volcano. “Which is frankly insane for us,” Manson says. The production was pitched to Harris Theatre by Volcano’s previous GM. “They just saw it on video.”
The Chicago company, however, recognized the production’s importance. “Luckily, they’re a well endowed theatre,” he adds. The production involves a 40-person touring company.
Rwanda & Beyond
Volcano’s two projects in Rwanda arose because of The Africa Trilogy, a trio of plays by playwrights from three continents that premiered at Luminato in 2010. Manson and others from the production took a trip to East Africa, where Rwanda was one of the stops. There, he happened to meet Odile Gakire “Kiki” Katese, the leader of Ingoma Nshya, The Women Drummers of Rwanda. Years later, The Book of Life was created as a collaboration, incorporating letters written by survivors and perpetrators of Rwanda’s genocide.
The Book of Life was acclaimed at the 2022 Edinburgh International Festival, and went on to performances at the 2023 SpoletoUSA Festival, The Ubumuntu Festival in Kigali, and in six cities in the USA. Manson reports that it’s also been recently picked up by a company in Brazil.
I Have A Drum is a new show that will showcase Ingoma Nshya in a drum-driven concert format with a theatrical side that will talk about the ensemble, and how they formed despite a centuries old stigma against women drummers.
“It’s been a very productive artistic [collaboration],” he says.
Toronto Connections
“As much as the international appeal is exciting to me,” Andrew notes, he also points out the imortant of keeping connected to Toronto and local audiences. “How can we have a sense of community here in Toronto?” he asks.
As a vocalist, Andrew Adridge performed in Treemonisha, and he points out that many Toronto artists have worked with Volcano over the years. He also notes the fact that many of the audience members for Scott Joplin’s opera premiere at Luminato were also new to opera itself.
“I want to know how to connect with those folks,” Andrew adds.
Performing the work of marginalized artists and voices is a big first step, but continuing support means going beyond the premiere, and beyond Volcano Theatre. He mentions elements like competitions and other means where new repertoire can be more firmly established by repeated performances.
“I want to be able to build a name for Volcano that’s synonymous with this kind of work,” Adridge says.
As Ross points out, Treemonisha is important when you consider that the Met Opera only performed its first Black authored work in 2022.
“Opera has this chance to redefine itself,” Manson says. For Volcano, keeping up the momentum is part of the work. “It’s thrilling because there’s growth. It’s almost a ‘be careful what you wish for’ scenario. Every single show that we put together is a bit too big for us, but people want us to do it all,” he says. The kind of growth Volcano is now experiencing, with multiple projects on the go, is new.
“That was unthinkable for us just a few years ago, literally four continents of touring with four projects,” Ross says.
“It’s a bit daunting but also thrilling.”
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