November 15, 2024

For 45 years, Nightwood has been committed to supporting and elevating the voices of women and gender expansive artists, leading to great change in the landscape of theatre in Canada. Our production history speaks to our desire to engage with artists and audiences through thought-provoking theatre, accomplished through deeply collaborative partnerships and programs. 

We’re writing this post today because we’ve heard from artists in the community that have questions around our Innovators program, which last ran from September 2023 to April 2024, as well as the introduction of our new Shadow Residencies. 

There is a misunderstanding that we cancelled the Nightwood Innovators’ final cabaret, known as Fempocalypse. To be clear, Nightwood did not cancel Fempocalypse – there was no event date or venue selected, no call for submissions had gone out, no artists were engaged, and no works had been curated or programmed. We know that there was disappointment within the cohort, but as outlined below it was ultimately their decision not to proceed with the event after being presented with a number of viable alternatives. We, too, were disappointed that our final Fempocalypse didn’t come to fruition.

Historically, Fempocalypse involved the Innovator participants curating a cabaret and donating the net proceeds to a charity of the cohort’s choice that aligned with Nightwood’s mandate. The 2023-2024 Innovators cohort felt very strongly that they wanted to support an American charity that provides urgent humanitarian relief in Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan. We shared with the cohort that as a registered Canadian charity we are not permitted to drift beyond our charitable purpose or donate funds to an American NGO. We offered the cohort three potential pathways forward, as well as an openness to consider any feedback or any alternative proposals from them. Firstly, we suggested alternative charities aligned with Nightwood’s mandate that had similar operational reach in those countries, including the United Nations Population Fund (the UN agency aimed at improving reproductive and maternal health worldwide) and UNICEF Canada. Secondly, we offered to provide them with the event’s production budget that they could put towards each of their own individual professional development, or as a third option, towards producing their own event separate from Nightwood that would honour their original aim. 

We want to make it clear that the participants in the cohort were given the opportunity to come to a decision together as a collective. Ultimately, the cohort made the choice to not proceed with an event. They chose to receive the funds as individuals and we disbursed the budget amongst them as requested. After the cohort made their decision, the Innovators program continued as scheduled.

In August 2024, we publicly announced our exciting Shadow Residencies program that would build upon the success of our Innovators program. Since the Innovators started in 2016-2017, we have welcomed 113 women and gender expansive individuals to attend professional development workshops and learn about producing. To this day, many of these individuals continue on at Nightwood and have had various roles and contracts over the years. The shift to Shadow Residencies was not connected to the events surrounding Fempocalypse 2024. For the past few years, we’ve been discussing how to better address the financial and artistic needs of emerging arts workers based on feedback from participants and facilitators, and how to provide deeper experiences with a significant boost in compensation for artists. What emerged is the Shadow Residencies, a new vision with a shifted focus, expectations and outcomes, which we believe better serves the needs of our artistic community.

These recent years have been emotionally demanding, and very challenging for the world and our communities. As an organization that aims to hold space for numerous identities, perspectives and positionalities, we wish this could be a time of dialogue and compassionate thoughtfulness, engendering peace, artistry and innovative thinking around change. As a small feminist organization, we feel strongly that our politics must live within the artistic content itself and that our platform is most valuable to uplift and propel the current and next generations of women and gender expansive artists and arts workers. We recognize that this feels frustrating for some members of our community, and we have welcomed a conversation with anyone that has reached out seeking further conversations. 

Throughout the company’s existence, Nightwood has supported hundreds of artists that have spoken out on a variety of vital, complex issues, including sensitive works that have touched on and centred Palestinian experiences. We fully support all artists, arts workers and our staff in their freedom of expression and advocacy in the world as individuals. Artists continue to come to us as they know we seek to propel bold, socially relevant ideas for the stage. Nightwood’s mission and mandate guide all of our actions, which our supportive donors and funders explicitly expect us to deliver on – funders do not dictate Nightwood’s artistic programming decisions. 

As our programs and programming evolve, we continue to find opportunities for individuals from this past year’s Innovators program as well as from the last many years. They are all extraordinary artists and arts workers.

As a company, we are proud of the work we do and the work we’ve contributed to the ecology of our sector. We welcome you to be in touch. 

Respectfully,
Andrea and Naz