Providence University College has traditionally been a hub of creative and artistic talent in southeastern Manitoba. Now, with the seeming eradication of the theatre department, that image has been put in question.
“Our reaction is of complete disappointment,” says Cindi Rempel Patrick, Executive Director of the Steinbach Arts Council. “It certainly weakens the theatre culture with opportunities in our region.”
The program itself isn’t the only thing that’s up in the air. The countless costumes, props, and set pieces that have been built and collected over the years are also no more.
“You can only imagine how sorrowful it was for me to watch all that stuff leave,” says Val Hiebert, a professor at Providence who ran the theatre program for many years. “Pretty much every prop was a part of a story that I helped to tell and every costume was crafted for an actor that I knew and directed, so that was hard to see all that stuff leave. There’s no doubt about that.”
Providence was a rare artistic oasis in the region, with ten theatre majors last year alone. Now, the school is spending $2.1 million to turn the old theatre classroom into business classrooms and science laboratories.
Gordon Giesbrecht, the Chair of the Providence Board of Governors, recently told reporters that they are renovating an older, unused part of the facility—specifically, the old dining hall.
What Giesbrecht didn’t say, and which he probably was not asked, is that after it was a dining hall, it housed a successful theatre program for five years. The planned science labs will be where the theatre stage props and other institutional storage were located, and the business classrooms and offices will be exactly where the theatre teaching and rehearsal space was.
The actions and comments of board members seems to have not only distanced the theatre program from Providence’s future, but from its past as well.
“I was very disappointed to learn of the cancellation of the theatre program at Providence,” says Cora Fast, a 21-year-old theatre major graduating from Providence this April with a Bachelor of Arts. “I also was disappointed with the way the entire situation was handled, as I was not even given the courtesy of being notified of the cancellation of the program. I found out through word of mouth and the fact that all mentions of the theatre program had been removed from the website.”
“I think it’s a huge loss to arts in southeastern Manitoba,” says Hiebert. “We trained a lot of good theatre artists who contributed back into the community in this area. And I think that’s a real loss.”
The theatre program also worked in conjunction to help produce the full-length play at Providence every year. The 2016 production has been cancelled, despite the fact that several current and former students stepped up and offered to run the play.
“[We] were railroaded by a lack of support due to lack of funding,” says Fast.
The play itself operated on the same shoestring budget for many years, with no increase ever offered, not even to adjust for inflation. The play stayed alive like this for over 12 years.
Providence maintains that the play itself is simply on hiatus and will return again next year. “Providence has always had a strong theatre program, and in a year of transition we chose not to rush into a production that would not meet the high standards we have set for ourselves and our audiences,” says Jerrad Peters, the Creative Content Specialist from the Marketing and Communications Department. “Theatre will continue to have a significant role at Providence in the future.”
But what role, exactly, has been left unclarified.
“If Prov decides to bring back the program, or even just the full-length [play], they are going to be starting from the ground up as they have eliminated almost all evidence of the theatre program from the campus,” says Fast. “And depending on how long they wait, they will not have the passionate and driven theatre students they currently have to get it going again, so I cannot guarantee their success.”
Fast says the annual production garnered a significant amount of attention for the school. “It was a good way to get young people interested and in the doors of the school.” She notes that the theatre program is what got her interested in Providence.
The play itself brought between 1,000 and 1,500 people to campus every year, the second biggest public event, next only to graduation exercises.
“I’d have people coming in from the city to watch our shows who were just amazed by how professional [the shows] were,” says Hiebert.
Fast says that the disappearance of the theatre program does more than just eliminate theatre. “It eliminates the opportunity for students to come together and try new things together.”
“Less creativity does not make a stronger community,” says Rempel Patrick. “We hope they plan to reinstate that department—it is a surprise, as they are known for their focus on the arts, and it has certainly been compromised in this way.”
