SHAKESPEARE BY THE SEA
"My first visit to Point Pleasant Park, I saw the Cambridge Battery and then the Fort Ogilvie and thought, ‘Wow, these are great places. I wonder if anything is going on here.’ And nothing was. But then I found out that it was more difficult than I thought. In fact, prior to me, which is 25 years this year, people had tried to get something going but they couldn’t. I was just lucky in hitting that one little opening where the Point Pleasant advisory committee had power, real power."
—Elizabeth Murphy, co-founder
HALIFAX POP EXPLOSION
"We made it preposterous—it wasn’t like. ‘Oh, there are a couple of cool bands.’ It was, ‘That’s Stereolab, you idiot.’ A lot of people are incredibly nostalgic about this period of time and myself, having been in the middle of it, I’m far less nostalgic. But when I’m around people who were there, you realize you had an impact. The community we were trying to grow and invest in really appreciated it." —Peter Rowan, co-founder
EASTERN FRONT THEATRE
"I had been part of the founding of Ship’s Company Theatre, which had a mandate to develop work from Atlantic Canada. That was great, but it seemed like it was overdue that a company with that mandate would be in the city. Every other city in Canada seemed to have that at the time, but for one reason or another we didn’t." —Mary Vingoe, co-founder
"When you start a theatre company you’re just doing a project together. Our first show was a one-person show [*The Occupation of Melissa Rose*]. We booked a tour of Nova Scotia with that show. I met a lot of people on the phone. I got excited about the creative possibilities in producing, in being a producer. It wasn’t all just paper and bookwork and learning how to do accounting—it was meeting people, talking about the arts in communities."
—Gay Hauser, general manager, 1992-2001
