Rising Tide Theatre: Communication and Paradigm

• Published in: Canadian Theatre Review
• Main Author: Turner, Mark David
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) 2009
• Subjects: Visual Arts and Performing Arts; Newfoundland
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/ctr.140.004; https://ctr.utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/ctr.140.004

Founded in 1978 by Donna Butt and David Ross, Rising Tide Theatre has come to serve as one of the bedrocks of a contemporary Newfoundland and Labrador theatrical tradition. Unlike many of its counterparts, Rising Tide has embedded itself in the province as a cultural institution, responsible for developing and sustaining an infrastructure upon which multiple generations of theatre artists, musician s and an entire community (Trinity) have come to rely. The distinction here is an important one, particularly within the context of this issue of CTR, as, in order to come to some understanding of the company’s communication paradigm, we need to acknowledge and account for the manner in which it has historically come to envision its operations and mandate as something larger than a theatre company – as a locally rooted cultural institution. Ultimately, this mandate and the communication paradigm that arose from it have been shaped in equal parts by the locations of theatrical performance and by audience perceptions of those locations, as they have been by Donna Butt’s goal of helping to establish a professional Newfoundland and Labrador theatrical tradition.