Talk Is Free Theatre: Avant-Garde Theatre Outside Major Cities

The Canada Council supports the activities of Barrie-based Talk Is Free Theatre, which creates innovative theatre productions and radical reinterpretations of great classics.

Theatre in motion

Talk Is Free Theatre (TIFT) focusses on the literary classics as much as it does on caustic contemporary works. And as part of their 2017-18 season, they brought their productions to audiences across Canada and abroad. With their piece The Curious Voyage, they invited audiences to travel with them from Barrie, Ontario—where the show began—to London, England—for the show’s conclusion. They also toured Darrell Dennis’s Tales of an Urban Indian, staged on a moving bus, across Canada—and accepted an invitation to bring the piece to the Yirramboi Festival in Melbourne, Australia.

Avant-garde theatre for audiences outside major cities

TIFT’s mission is also to mount shows outside large cities that are as bold and innovative as their urban equivalents. The company contributes to the development of audiences in Barrie that are demanding and that have a taste for avant-garde theatre. New writing, radical retellings of the classics, and reinterpretations of works from their repertoire—nothing can stop TIFT!