Cast of A Midsummer Night's Dream 2023 at Dream in High Park, Canadian Stage. Set and costume design by Jackie Chau; lighting design by Logan Raju Cracknell. Photo: Dahlia Katz
Performing Arts
2023 Booster Fund
2023

We are pleased to share the 18 organizations that collectively received over $365,000 in funding through the 2023 Booster Fund.

Metcalf launched the Booster Fund as an experimental initiative in 2022. Our goal was to expand upon our long-standing efforts to support individual leadership and skills development training within the performing arts sector. Responding to the increased financial precarity and limited opportunities for professional growth the sector was experiencing because of the pandemic, the 2022 Booster Fund invited Toronto-based organizations who were working in this space to request additional financial resources to either increase the remuneration of participants and/or the number of participants in their existing programming. For the first edition, we focused exclusively on programs that were geared to racialized individuals.

For the 2023 Booster Fund, we expanded the categories of eligible requests to go beyond leadership and skills development training programs to include projects or activities in other aspects of the organization’s operations, and we continued to emphasize projects or activities that focused on racialized individuals but not exclusively so. As with the first edition, the 2023 Booster Fund was dedicated to boosting existing projects and activities.

 

Anandam Dancetheatre 

Anandam is a contemporary dance company informed by South Asian dance forms.

Funds will boost an artist training/professional development program and an ensemble rehearsal period for a new work commissioned for the Royal Ontario Museum.

b current Performing Arts

b current is a Toronto-based theatre company engaged in developing new works by diverse artists rooted in the cultural, social, and political experiences of the Canadian and international Black and Brown Diaspora.

Funds will boost fees for participants in the bcHUB, an artist residency dedicated to nurturing cultural expression and fostering artistic innovation.

Buddies in Bad Times Theatre

Buddies in Bad Times Theatre is Toronto’s leading destination for artistically rigorous alternative theatre and a world leader in developing queer voices and stories for the stage.

Funds will support an expanded roster of artists in the 45th edition of the Rhubarb Festival, Canada’s longest-running festival of new work.

Canadian Stage

Canadian Stage is one of Canada’s leading nonprofit contemporary performance companies, producing and showcasing new, innovative art forms from Canada and around the world.

Funds will empower a new generation of young actors with additional classical training to excel in open-air Shakespeare performances at Dream in High Park.

Jumblies Theatre

Jumblies makes art in everyday and extraordinary places with, for, and about the people and stories found there.

Funds will boost time and remuneration to the artistic and production team for a series of four multi-disciplinary arts events that conclude a multi-year community arts project.

The Musical Stage Company

The Musical Stage Company is the largest and leading charitable musical theatre company in Canada.

Funds will increase artist/access worker fees for three creative teams engaged in the Canadian Festival of New Musicals.

Nightswimming

Nightswimming is an award-winning Toronto-based dramaturgical company with a national mandate focused on theatrical creation, performance, and research through commissioning and developing new Canadian plays, musical works, and dance.

Funds will increase artists fees for participants in its Pure Research initiative.

Nightwood Theatre

Nightwood is Canada’s preeminent feminist theatre, cultivating, creating, and producing extraordinary theatre by women and gender-expansive artists.

Funds will increase the number of facilitated workshops and double the honorariums for participants in their innovator program.

Nova Dance

Nova Dance a contemporary dance company that brings new ideas to dance, reinventing the possibilities of the art.

Funds will increase participant honoraria and event support at a Six Nations residency and increase fees for participants at a week-long Theatre Centre residency.

Pratibha Arts

Pratibha Arts serves to enhance and advance the cultural fabric of Ontario and Canada through the production, education, and performance of arts, often featuring influences from South Asian cultures.

Funds will support additional dancers and rehearsal hours in its creation period for Paratopia.

Soundstreams Canada

Soundstreams is a global leader in the presentation of innovative, carefully curated, and immersive musical experiences.

Funds will support four projects and boost fees for composers, performers, and mentors to emerging artists.

SummerWorks

SummerWorks is a leader, collaborator, and community builder at the forefront of contemporary performance.

Funds will be dedicated to the 2024 Summer Festival by increasing fees for artists and by presenting additional emerging marginalized and/or racialized artists or companies within the programming.

Tapestry Opera

Tapestry is the only Canadian company solely dedicated to creating and performing original Canadian opera.

Funds will support increased professional development activities for participants in the Women in Musical Leadership program.

The Theatre Centre

The Theatre Centre is a nationally recognized live-arts incubator and community hub, offering a home for creative, cultural, and social interactions to invent the future.

Funds will increase the artists fees for participants in their residency program.

Toronto Fringe

The Toronto Fringe is a grassroots, charitable organization that runs the Toronto Fringe Festival, the Next Stage Theatre Festival, and various year-round programs that benefit youth, emerging artists, BIPOC artists, artists with disabilities, and the performing arts community at large.

Funds will boost their Theatre Entrepreneur Network and Training (TENT) program by offering increased honorariums to the participants, more facilitation and workshops, more mental health support, additional opportunities to connect throughout the year, and a chance to continue the learning in a more practical way.

Toronto Summer Music (TSM)

TSM is a festival and an academy that enriches lives through the shared appreciation of music.

Funds will support improved housing, increased mentor fees, and amplified project documentation for participants in their professional training academy.

Volcano

Volcano is a Toronto-based performance company that creates work experimentally, collaboratively, and with an eye to transcending borders of all kinds — international, artistic, and cultural.

Funds will support a more extensive remount period in Toronto with international artists for their production of Treemonisha.

Young People’s Theatre (YPT)

YPT is Canada’s largest and oldest professional theatre for young people.

Funds will boost training opportunities for emerging designers through assistant design contracts and mentorship with senior designers.