Accession - UAA-1996-049

Nexus Theatre was founded as a lunch-hour theatre for downtown Edmonton in the autumn of 1982. The group had originated as a co-operative called Tuesday Players, led mainly by David Russell and Linda Pollard. Their initial productions had been the first Edmonton Fringe Festival that summer. The first year, the group continued to operate as a co-operative. When Russell left to work on his MFA in Directing, Ben Henderson became the first artistic director, in 1983. Henderson, who had just finished his own MFA in Directing, had been a member of the co-op. Many other members joined the original board of directors. Nexus produced its earliest shows out of the Centennial Library Theatre and the Art Gallery theatre. Evening dinner theatre performances were also staged at Sid's Restaurant. By 1983, Nexus moved into its own space, downstairs at McCauley Plaza. The space was donated by Alberta Government Telephones (AGT), and provided Nexus with offices and rehearsal/performance space. The space was small – seating some eighty people. Under Henderson, Nexus performed original works, commissioned by the theatre. John Milton Branton, from the Factory Theatre Lab, succeeded Henderson as artistic director in 1987. Branton wanted even more emphasis on new and locally developed shows, finding comedies and musicals the most popular. However, he also mixed original shows with more established pieces, and continued to build on the tradition of a Christmas show begun under Henderson. To get more production into the schedule, Branton initiated a Sunday Brunch series to go with the regular weekday lunch shows and the Friday and Saturday evening performances. By 1991, when Branton resigned and Earl Klein succeeded as artistic director, the theatre was already showing signs of strain. The limited space and limited show time of some fifty minutes had always limited the box-office, making Nexus Theatre even more dependent on grants and fundraising than most. Other demographic shifts undermined the potential audience, as many corporations in the area shifted to a 30-minute lunch break, and commercial activity in the mall began to decline. Nexus lost its Canada Council funding at this time, based on perceived shortcoming in the program and vision of the theatre, in spite of Klein's proclamation that Nexus had a mandate to hold the one-act play in trust. Klein resigned in 1993, leaving Nexus dormant for the time being. During this dormant period, AGT withdrew sponsorship of the McCauley Plaza space, evidently rethinking the nature of the mall in light of shifting Corporate body needs and of the mall's clientele. Sean Quigley stepped in as artistic director, with Elizabeth Allison as artistic administrator. Nexus tried to work out from under its mounting debt load, and a growing list of creditors, paying off nearly $60,000 in accumulated debts. Nexus was, however, unable to convince AGT to resume sponsorship of the theatre space. The theatre's position became even more precarious when The Albert Foundation for the Arts withdrew its grant, citing problems with the reporting of funding over the previous two years. After the dormant period in production during which the financial and space problems absorbed the company's energies, Quigley tried to put together a season in 1994-95, rehearsing and performing in rented spaces – another expense the company could not afford. Nexus was able to perform only Sexual Perversity in Chicago, at the Roxy in the Autumn of 1994, before having to fold in January of 1995. The dramatic legacy of Nexus includes over fifty original productions.