Live Bait Theatre’s annual New Works Festival kicks off this week with workshops, readings, and performances, running through to March 28.
But this year’s festival will be a swan song of sorts for the longstanding theatre company. Live Bait and Performers’ Theatre have announced a merger to create a new theatre company for the Tantramar region.
CHMA dropped by the Performers’ Theatre space on Fairfield Road to meet Ryan Slashinki, a local performing arts teacher who is taking on the role of managing director for the new theatre company during the transition.
Slashinsky is heading up a transition team which also includes Live Bait artistic director Ron Kelly Spurles who is continuing in that role for another year. The founding director of Performers’ Theatre, Steven Puddle, had previously stepped back from the helm of the community theatre group.
Slashinsky says the time was right for the merger. In recent years both companies were populated by the same people, says Slashinski, which meant “we were finding that we were burning out people that wanted to work in the theater.” While Live Bait is a professional company with a 35-year history, the productions coming from Performers’ had grown to become “of similar quality,” says Slashinski. “Over the past 15 years, Performers’ has kind of grown up… So the time was right, to just get together and make one big happy theatre family for the people of Tantramar.”
The newly formed group is in search of a name, and has offered two subscriptions to the inaugural season to anyone who submits that winning name suggestion at performerstheatre.com or livebaittheatre.com.
