Last week I attended Mammalian Diving Reflex’s Promises to a Divided City at The Theatre Centre and was blown away. Performed by teenagers who live on the periphery of Toronto, it theatricalized and and implicated audiences in what has become clear through several iterations of the Hulchanski report: That the cool, downtown part of the city, the ‘creative class’ part, is becoming a playground for the rich surrounded by an army of working poor as the middle class is hollowed out.
This edition seems appropriate in this context, as three artists discuss their decisions to leave urban centres while continuing their artistic practice. For each, the decision was rooted in the hope of maintaining a decent life for themselves AND creating theatre. Moving out of a big city became the obvious solution.
Michael Wheeler
Editor-in-Chief: #CdnCult Times
