by Bob Klanac
Put a bunch of fledgling writers and actors down in a city with nothing to do, add some stages and stir.
Such was London at the turn of the millennium.
Jeff Culbert, author of Theatre Boomtown: London, Ontario at the Turn of the Millennium (2002 to 2015), has some ideas about why and how it happened.
The launch of the new book as well as a celebration of the updating of the Theatre in London website takes place Thursday, July 16 at the AlvegoRoot Theatre.
To Culbert’s eyes, it all started with a confluence of almost simultaneous changes in London’s theatre community.
“In the early 2000s the Drama Workshop at Western closed down, and if you wanted to do theatre, you either looked at established groups like London Community Players or you started doing your own run,” he explains.
“There weren’t a lot of companies that just picked up original writers, so producing your own do-it-yourself theatre became the way things got done.”
“One person inspires another person, so you had people like Jason Rip and Jayson McDonald writing new plays. Those were the two leading the charges.”
“They wrote like crazy. They just had it in them, and that inspired a lot of people. And one thing feeds on another.”
That was part of it, according to Culbert. The other was space for these new plays and productions.
(Pictured: Jeff Culbert.)
“Phil Arnold created the Old Factory Theatre over on Ann Street, and there were a lot of people who had their first plays put on there because it was relatively cheap and simple. When I started and did my first shows, the Forest City Gallery was in the basement of Aeolian Hall.”
“Then the Arts Project had a space, and the McManus at the Grand Theatre became available to rent and were fairly reasonable in their pricing.”
“There had to be space and plays, and there has to be writers and actors, and somehow it started. And once the ball was rolling, it was really rolling.”
Culbert knew that festivals were another linchpin to encourage and sustain the fledgling theatre writers and performers.
“Festivals started popping up. You had The Fringe Festival around 2000, the London One Act Festival and Purple Shorts, which was up at Western where students were writing original plays.”
“And then there was the Playwright’s Cabaret at the Grand, which encouraged people to write 10-minute pieces. All that happened in the space of a few years.”
As Culbert put it, one thing led to another and the energy of the new scene started to inspire others to jump into the fray.
“It was contagious. I remember Jonathan D’Souza coming back to London. He saw what was happening and said, ‘ Wow: theatre seems to be what this town is about right now,’ so even though he was a music guy, he just jumped in and started writing.”
“He did a piece at the Fringe Festival, and nobody knew him in my circles, and he just blew everybody away. They all said, ‘Who the hell is that guy?’ But again, he just saw what was happening and said this is an art form that is taking off in London. And one thing feeds another thing.”
It was an inspiring time in London’s long theatre history, and Culbert was not only a part of that, but he also documented it in a few local publications regularly.
“Theatre Boom Town consists of columns that I wrote in those times: the first one for The Londoner was in 2002, and the last one for the London Yodeller was in 2015.”
“The focus of the book is what was coming out at that time, but also I would do a historic look back to somebody every once in a while like Richard Barry Harrison, who came from London, became the toast of Broadway, and was on the cover of Time Magazine. But mostly I was covering what was happening in live theatre in London.”
It was a thriving scene, but it had a narrative arc. Some performers moved on to different cities and some of the venues went dark.
“Covid, of course, sent everybody scattering, and some never recovered. The Fringe as we knew it is gone, The Playwrights Cabaret at the Grand is gone, the London One Act Festival is gone.”
As for where folks can grab a copy of Culbert’s book, it will be available as a print-on-demand title through Volumes or at the launch event, where you can get a copy of the book for an additional charge to the admission fee.
The July 16 event also celebrates 25 years of the Theatre in London website.
Started by Culbert in the early 2000s, it became more than he could handle with his other role in the burgeoning theatre scene, so he asked around for someone to take it over. Peter Janes put up his hand. An avid theatre fan and supporter, Janes had a solid tech background and saw a lot of potential in the site to support the growing theatre community in London.
“Jeff’s version of the site was entirely static. My idea was to put a database behind it so we’d have a record of the history of these things. But I also wanted to make it possible to do a calendar of upcoming things, so not just the past, but keeping the future stuff happening on it as well,” he explains.
“It’s been in the midst of an overhaul since 2008, but in the last six or seven years, I realized that it’s really outgrowing the platform that I got it on, and I want to put a proper database behind it.”
“None of that stuff should be visible to anybody who’s using the website, but if anything, it’ll get faster. Eventually, when I have to pass this on to somebody else, there will be a better basis for them to kind of continue working on it.”
Janes’ goals for the site overhaul were twofold.
Most importantly, it has to be a place to let people know what’s going on in London theatre. Janes himself uses it for that reason.
“It’s a site that I use to find out what things are going on. Otherwise, I wouldn’t know that Little Theatre Company is doing a production of something at the Wolf Performance Hall and Original Kids are doing something or AlvegoRoot Theatre has something coming up,” he admits.
“The secondary value of it is the continuum. It’s like the six degrees of Kevin Bacon. I don’t have all the stuff in yet, but eventually it will be able to tell you that, for example, Adam Holowitz adapted a play by James Reaney. One of his shows was on at Central, which was directed by this person who was in a show at London Community Players and through London Community Players back to the London Little Theatre, which goes back to Victor Garber or even Hume Cronyn at some point.”
“I want to have the entire casts and crews and everything, but it’s impossible to do all that, because a lot of that information doesn’t exist anymore.”
The site’s celebration at the July 16 event doesn’t mean Janes can rest anytime soon. “I’ve been updating it at least five days a week for 27 years!”
“I now have just shy of 3,000 productions on the website. Most of those are since about 2008. There’s so much research that remains. I even have events going back to the 1800s,” he says.
Tickets for the Theatre Boomtown and Theatre in London launch event can be purchased via this link.
By Bob Klanac
(Photo Credit: Paul Lambert.)
