How do you move on from almost 30 years of creating theatre as a small ensemble company?

When six of us moved on from Theatre&Company, we realized we were not finished creating together and in 2004 we formed Lost & Found Theatre. And now, 72 productions later, including 6 premieres of plays by regional playwrights developed by the company, the time has come to move on again.

Company members have come and gone over the years for many reasons: relocating east and west to create work in Cape Breton and Edmonton and Toronto; or following a new vision for their lives outside of theatre; or finding work that financially would allow them to raise a family. Eventually attrition brought us to where we are now: myself as artistic director supported by a loyal board of directors. Lost & Found Theatre has run its course and served its purpose.

So – how to move on? We pass the torch. We pay it forward. We reach out to our extended theatre family, specifically to Green Light Arts, a small, energetic Kitchener-based company founded in 2014.

The resonance between our two companies is strong. Lost & Found produces work that stimulates artists and audiences to explore together the challenging and redemptive aspects of human relationships. Green Light Arts produces work that engages and inspires and fosters conversation to encourage audiences toward positive social change. Both companies have a history of collaboration with other regional groups and individual artists. While our programming choices are not necessarily similar, the heart that moves each company is.

Lost & Found could have opted to simply wind up operations entirely, but then – all would be ... lost. In this way, we have found the opportunity to continue to build up the regional theatre community by contributing our strengths to an emerging company.

So what does this look like? Lost & Found Theatre has a couple of projects that were sidelined by the pandemic that will be completed in the next year or so. The collaboration with the Irish Real Life Festival to present a theatrical offering will continue for at least a few more years, and you may well see future iterations of A Lost & Found Christmas. Beyond that, programming will be the purview of Green Light’s artistic team. Lost & Found’s assets will be assumed by Green Light Arts. We hope that you, our patrons and most valuable asset, will consider getting to know Green Light Arts and their work and becoming their champions as you were ours.

It has been a great joy and privilege to serve this community over these many years. It is hard to let go and tears have been and will be shed for a while yet, but the spirit lives on in the work of a new generation of dynamic and creative artists like Matt and Carin at Green Light Arts. I encourage you, if you are not already familiar with their work, to become for them what you have been for Lost & Found -- loyal, supportive, and challenging. The community of artist and audience will continue.

Without you, it isn’t theatre.