Highland Arts Theatre director reflects on centre’s first 10 years in Sydney
A Cape Breton theatre celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2024 said the past decade hasn’t been easy, but things rarely are in the arts community.
The Highland Arts Theatre lives in the former St. Andrew’s Church in downtown Sydney, N.S. When the church was decommissioned in 2013, a group purchased and transformed the building into a centre for arts and culture. The venue presents plays, dance and musical acts, and films.
The HAT, as it’s called locally, officially reopened in June 2014 with an original musical comedy: The Wakowski Brothers.
The writer and director for that show intended for their involvement to be a one-and-done opportunity, but the success of the show and support from the community changed their mind.
“It’s only possible because the community has embraced us so wholeheartedly and come and supported and shown up to things that they never heard of and they didn’t know they were going to like,” said Wesley Colford, artistic director for the HAT. “Honestly, for so many of those years, we’ve been just racing to keep up with the demand.”
Colford said a highlight from the infancy of the theatre were hoping to sell 1,000 ticket packages in the first couple of years. After year one, 1,500 were sold, and Colford said they knew the theatre scene was alive in Cape Breton.
Heading into 2020, Colford said there was huge momentum behind the theatre and all of the programming, but that came to a halt in March.
The COVID-19 pandemic shut the theatre down for several months, and even when they were allowed to reopen, rules only allowed sparse crowds and physical distancing.
Colford said to go from the high of a stellar year in 2019 to crashing down in 2020 was difficult for the business.
“The thing about theatre is it’s always struggling,” they said. “Even when we’re having the most successful year. It’s never easy.”
That’s when the theatre introduced its radical access program. It allowed patrons to fund the theatre on a monthly basis and, in turn, get access to mainstage plays and performances for free.
Once the program reached its financial goal in 2020, anyone could attend an event for free. Colford said making theatre accessible is a key goal for HAT and the organization wants everyone living in the CBRM to be able to see its shows.
“Everything about this being our 10th anniversary feels so aligned with taking both the best things that worked pre-pandemic and taking all of the radical access lessons we’ve learned and the ways that we’ve improved the quality of the productions,” they said.
Wrapping up 2023, Colford said inflation and the high cost for supplies made this a difficult year even though crowds were back to normal levels.
“I’d say 2023 was in some ways harder than some of the pandemic years,” Colford said. “With everything being as expensive as it is, obviously it’s, you know, it feels like it’s three times the work for a quarter of the output.”
The HAT will have new and returning productions hitting the mainstage starting in January. Colford said the theatre will have more announcements in the coming weeks about other events taking place during 2024.
