Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Attracting The Eyes and Capitalizing on The Wallets: The Problem with Toronto’s New Public Performance Space

2004; University of Toronto Press; Volume: 117; Linguagem: Inglês

10.3138/ctr.117.019

1920-941X

Natalie Harrower,

Theatre and Performance Studies

With the official opening of Yonge-Dundas Square last spring, the Toronto theatre and music communities gained a new outdoor performance venue, and the discount ticket seller TO TIX, a permanent home. The space itself is a curious addition to Toronto’s inner-city landscape. It’s a great, big, blank canvas of granite slabs, with a few concrete benches, a skinny canopy structure that is reminiscent of the Gardiner Expressway, and a double row of fountains that light up as the sky darkens. Surrounded as it is by concrete buildings and the honks and exhaust from a steady stream of cars, one might have hoped for a little green space. But one cannot argue that the square seems out of place; the design is urban grey and it blends visually into the urban grey that surrounds it. The granite slabs that line its surface are graphically reminiscent of the outdoor plazas of nearby skyscrapers, and the vertical lines of the pillars rhyme with the varying heights of the surrounding buildings. The square is formally compatible with its surroundings; the question is how well it will function under the hybrid identity assigned to it by the city. The city is marketing Yonge-Dundas Square as a public space, while at the same time encouraging it as a venue for private rental. Introducing twenty-four-hour surveillance, rental fees, and a plethora of advertising billboards charges the space with a political dimension and puts in doubt the idea that this is simply a new gathering space for public entertainments. Yonge-Dundas Square may at first appear as a genuine addition to Toronto’s public space, an exciting new performance venue to be shaped by citizen use, but it is also a commercial venture that aims to free itself from the city’s purse strings in three years’ time. Our role as active spectators obliges us to be conscious of the multiple, and sometimes conflicting, performative elements at play in this new venue.