"Theatre without walls," built on collective creation rather than a single playwright
Theatre Passe Muraille
Founded in 1968, Theatre Passe Muraille pioneered a collective creation process for Canadian theatre, developing shows through group improvisation and research rather than a single author's script.
.jpg)
Advertisement
Theatre Passe Muraille, whose name translates roughly to "theatre without walls," was founded in Toronto in 1968 as an experimental alternative to conventional playwright-driven theatre. The company became a pioneer of collective creation, a process where a group of performers and a director develop a show together through improvisation, research and workshopping rather than staging a script written in advance by a single playwright.
A defining Canadian theatrical method
The company's 1973 production The Farm Show, developed by living and working alongside farmers in rural Ontario before creating a show based on their experiences, became one of the most influential works in Canadian theatre history and a widely cited example of the collective creation model at its most successful. Theatre Passe Muraille's approach influenced a generation of Canadian theatre companies and remains associated specifically with the collective creation method it helped pioneer and popularize.
Advertisement
Sources
Continue reading
Northern Dancer
Bred at E.P. Taylor's Windfields Farm north of Toronto and considered too small to sell, Northern Dancer won…
TIFF Bell Lightbox
Toronto International Film Festival's permanent home opened in 2010 on land donated by director Ivan Reitman…
John Graves Simcoe
Upper Canada's first Lieutenant Governor founded York in 1793 as a defensible, temporary capital, choosing…
The Beaches
What started as Ashbridge family farmland became a lakeside cottage colony, then a boardwalk neighbourhood —…