Perth-Wellington MPP Matthew Rae was at the Stratford-Perth Museum Wednesday evening to celebrate a nearly $50,000 Ontario Trillium Foundation grant that helped the museum with operating expenses related to its new Player’s Backstage outdoor theater and Cooperative’s Performance indoor theater this year.
A much-needed boost in the form of a nearly $50,000 Ontario Trillium Foundation grant helped the Stratford-Perth Museum bring back visitors with a series of live performances at the museum’s new outdoor and indoor theater spaces following the lifting of pandemic restrictions earlier this year.
On Wednesday, Perth-Wellington MPP Matthew Rae joined museum general manager John Kastner to celebrate the $49,900 grant awarded to the museum through the Ontario Trillium Foundation’s Community Building Fund. Meant to support museum operations this year, nearly half the grant went toward offsetting operational expenses related to the museum’s new Player’s Backstage outdoor theater and its indoor Cooperator’s Performance Theatre, while the rest helped the museum improve its website and internet bandwidth and support other 2022 operating expenses.
“It was one of those unique grants that was really two-fold,” Kastner said. “It helped us operate the Player’s and Cooperators theatres, but also it helped us because it covered things like lights and heat as we sort of came out of COVID. It was really sort of the inaugural season (for the theater spaces). We finished them in 2021, but because we were closed until August … this year was really the first inaugural full season.”
With 30 live performances, including Stratford Summer Music concerts and the presentation of beloved Stratford actor Rod Beattie’s complete works of Walt Wingfield, Kastner said the two theater spaces really served to win back visitors and locals alike after the museum was shuttered for the better part of two seasons.
“One of the first conditions for COVID was you can’t allow full audiences inside, but we’re going to allow full audiences outside. So we were able to do 225 people here, outside, without any restrictions and the outdoor theater and this grant in particular enabled us to do that,” Kastner said. “Now that most of the restrictions are gone, we’ve got an audience, we’ve got programming and we’ve got a series of events and so on (for people to come back to). That grant, when we were sort of limping along, enabled us to keep limping until the point that things cleared up.”
With the momentum from this season, Kastner expects to bring Beattie back to perform his one-man Wingfield plays next year, and he expects the museum will again partner with Stratford Summer Music for more live outdoor concerts.
Since pandemic restrictions have lifted, Kastner said the indoor theater can also serve as a great space for events, activities and school field trips, especially as the weather cools.
“It’s important to support the Stratford-Perth Museum specifically because they do great work highlighting our great culture and rich history inside and outside now,” Rae said Wednesday. “The Community Building Fund was there to help with the operating side. There were other provincial and federal grants to help with the capital for both theater spaces, but this was there again to help our arts community in Stratford and Perth County and encourage participation in that.”