EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S UPDATE By Craig Wrotniak
Dear Drama Educators,
We have just concluded an inspiring National STAR Fest season, with large STAR Festival gatherings taking place in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Niagara, Ottawa, and Corner Brook. Across the country, the performances, commitment, and creative energy of participating students were truly electric. It was deeply meaningful to see young people from school theatre programs all over Canada come together to perform, learn, connect, and be mentored by some of the country’s most talented professional artists and educators.
We are incredibly thankful for the middle- and high-school drama teachers, professional artists, post-secondary programs, sponsors, volunteers, alumni, and community leaders who helped make this year’s programming possible. TAEA continues to grow because of the people who believe in the value of educational theatre and who give their time, expertise, resources, and energy to support students and teachers. To everyone who participated in, led, sponsored, hosted, adjudicated, taught, volunteered, or supported one of our events this year – thank you.
This season also marked another important period of growth for our national community. We are excitedly anticipating a summer of bringing on board new staff, volunteers, sponsors, and partners, while continuing to develop additional festival and conference locations across Canada. We are also expanding our support network for post-secondary theatre programs, which will help strengthen the pathways between secondary-school theatre, professional training and the broader performing arts sector.
Registration for our National Theatre Education Conference will be opening soon, and we are looking forward to offering meaningful professional learning opportunities, regional networking, national conversations, and new ways for educators and artists to connect with one another.
On behalf of everyone at TAEA, Canada’s national non-profit for educational theatre, we wish you a restful and restorative summer break. Thank you for being part of this growing national community. We look forward to seeing you again in the fall.
Cheers – Craig Wrotniak
Executive Director – Theatrical Arts Education Association (TAEA)
Serving Teachers – Helping Students
A NARROW WAY THROUGH:
ADAPTING TO A CHANGING INDUSTRY
By Sean Meldrum
Canadian actor, screenwriter, teacher and sound designer,
Based in Toronto
At the recent Niagara National STAR Fest, I was part of a great number of discussions around the feasibility of theatre as a career. I heard from many students that their parents were urging them to go into a “safe” sector.
Indeed, the economic outlook of our country is bleak. Inflation is leaving wages in the dust. Canadians who feel as if they’ve been living in a recession for years are only now seeing news outlets catching up. With this turmoil in mind, it is appropriate that young people and their parents take a moment to ensure their path forward is as future-proof and economically resilient as possible.
However, while I hate to throw another wrench in the gears – here’s the wrench: none of us have any idea what a safe career will look like in ten years’ time. Ten years ago, the computer sciences were seen as the most promising industry to bank on. Now, unless they have diversified into the Artificial Intelligence sector, many Computer Science majors are being laid off, their roles lost to automation. Even sectors like law and medicine – historically thought of as “safe” careers – are finding that Large Language Models (LLMs) are able to fulfill the responsibilities of entry-level positions in their fields.
Part of what makes AI such an existential threat is the fact that its limits are currently unknown. The high valuation of AI stems in part from its promise of exponential progress and compounding returns. Ironically, this promise of AI’s eventual viability is one of the only things keeping global markets afloat.
When I was graduating from high school in 2011, anyone not entering a university program would have been dismissed by their classmates. Especially in a place like Aurora, Ontario, we were expected to go out and get a good, old-fashioned, white-collar job – the sort of jobs that are now disappearing by the day. Do you know whose job is not currently threatened by an LLM? My old friend Dylan, who started a roofing company, or Mallory, who founded her own luxury funeral service business, or… me, whose job is to perform live on stage and lead in-person workshops.
My point is that we make a plan and God laughs. Has there ever been a smart time to begin a career in the arts? Maybe ancient Greece? Maybe if you were kicking around the Globe Theatre about 425 years ago? And maybe… now?
One thing AI cannot currently threaten is live art. There are two barriers to entry in this case. Firstly, LLMs are currently trapped behind video screens, and the physical robotics capable of mimicking human nuance on a stage are decades away from being commercially viable for a regional theatre budget. Secondly, and more importantly, AI is not capable of creating or participating in art – at least not art as we know it today. Art occurs when an artifact of human expression is experienced by another living person: when an artist and an audience share a bond of empathy.
I cannot tell you what a safe career path looks like right now, but here’s what I do know: The world has never not been under some form of existential threat. From global conflicts to nuclear proliferation, from crashing economies to worldwide pandemics, the world is an unpredictable place. There is no crystal ball to tell us what the future holds. It is best to accept this. The first step in withstanding change is to accept it. No post-secondary degree will serve you as well as your own adaptability will: the ability to look ahead, pivot, to take risks and try new things, to innovate. These skills will take you further than any other.
Yes, most Canadian artists working in 2026 need a side hustle or a “joe-job” to keep afloat. This is not unique to Canadian artists in 2026; this has been the case for most artists throughout most of history. But if you have a story to tell, one that you feel will bring solace to those around you, I believe you have a responsibility to find a way to share that story with us.
There will always be a reason to be afraid – a reason not to chase your dream. Right now, some of those reasons involve AI and economic uncertainty. In ten years, who knows what they’ll be? If you want to be an artist, there is a way through for you. But it isn’t a degree or a specialization, it’s a mindset. The world is changing, just as it has since it started spinning. Spin with it. Change with it. And never stop.
REFLECTIONS ON EDITING THIS HERE THING YOU’RE READING RIGHT NOW
By John Lazarus,
Playwright, Retired Drama Professor
And Retiring Editor of “Theatrics”,
Vancouver, B.C.
A year and a half ago, I was offered a job adjudicating a high-school drama festival. I have often adjudicated festivals for high-school students and for adults, in B.C. and in Ontario. And at that particular moment, I was just moving back to Vancouver, after 25 years in Kingston, Ontario, and, although I was glad to be home again, I was also stressed and disoriented by this major uprooting. So I was grateful for this opportunity to take on some work of a familiar and enjoyable kind.
And that was how I met an unending fountain of enthusiasm in the form of a young man named Craig Wrotniak, founding Executive Director of this organization I’d never heard of before: the Theatrical Arts Education Association, or TAEA. Shortly after we began working together on the festival, Craig suggested that he might have another job for me. TAEA had a national newsletter, and would I like to be its editor? Again I said yes.
So I have now had the honour of being your humble editor for two years. It’s been both great fun and a serious challenge, but presently, at the age of 78, I’m becoming a little more protective of my time and conservative about my energies, so it’s time to hang up the visor, as it were. But first I have some parting observations about the newsletter, about TAEA, and about the fun we’ve had.
We’ve put out an issue every two months during the last two school years. Each issue has begun with an “Executive Director’s Update” by Craig, and has ended with ads from our great sponsors and my usual paragraph asking you to send us more stuff to publish. In between those beginnings and endings, we’ve had articles by teachers, university undergraduate and graduate students, outside experts, a couple of articles by yours truly – and, most interesting to me, pieces by high-school students themselves, describing their experiences as actors, playwrights, directors and designers.
The best part of this job has been the pleasure of reading this stuff. Craig sets the tone in his Executive Director’s Updates, with his outbursts of good news about how well TAEA is doing (and it is!). But that tone is shared by his fellow writers, especially the high-school students, who recount their experiences in invariably glowing terms, often crediting their theatre work with having changed their lives. At one point, in the course of writing an e-mail to a high-school drama teacher friend, after having edited yet one more lovingly-written account by a student about how her moments onstage and backstage had transformed her destiny, I added, “Don’t any of your students ever have any lousy experiences doing drama?” She wrote back, “Not much, I don’t think, and if they do, they don’t tell me about them.”
I have offered to help Craig find my replacement, and to show that person what the job involves; but in fact, my sending in this piece that you’re reading right now, along with the rest of the June issue, will mark my last official duty as Editor of this newsletter.
So I’m going to close by repeating something that I’ve said many times to high-school drama teachers, and have written in the pages of “Theatrics” at least once before: my great respect for you good people stems from the pleasure that I’ve had as a university prof, as a drama festival adjudicator, and as the editor of this newsletter, in all of which capacities I’ve had the opportunity to work with the products of your labours: bright, creative, challenging young artists who, even in the face of the stupidity, apathy and amorality of some of the world leaders of my own generation, still give me hope for the future. Thanks for the gig, and let’s stay in touch.
JUDITH BERLIN (1945 – 2026)
High-school drama teacher, actor, TheatreSports improviser and self-described “occasional writer and planet-hugger” Judith Berlin died on March 7 at Laurel Place Hospice, Surrey, B.C., at the age of 80, after living with cancer for several years. Judith was a busy actor in her youth, and taught drama at King George Secondary School in downtown Vancouver. She was active with the arts group the Western Front, and local improv fans will remember the energetic and always surprising inventions she came up with when performing with the Vancouver TheatreSports League. She will be missed.
UPCOMING EVENTS AND PROGRAMS
TAEA National Teaching Artists Directory
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Want to see your thoughts printed in “Theatrics Canada”? So do we! We need your expertise, so send us stuff! We welcome news of your school’s theatre work, advice on teaching and theatre (such as Dr. Tracy Trethewy’s piece in this issue), reviews and criticism of current work that might be of interest, essays, photos – we love photos – short plays, cartoons, Letters to the Editor – anything related to theatre and teaching. Send it to John Lazarus at theatricscanada@educationaltheatre.ca. Please make it up to 1,250 words long, and include name and position of author(s), the section of “Theatrics” you’re submitting to, and the name and location of your school. The copyright to all material remains with the author(s).
