‘It’s an honour’: Lost & Found Theatre passes torch to Green Light Arts

It has been a quiet 15 months for theatre companies as the pandemic has nixed the possibility of in-person productions. 

It’s been so quiet that Green Light Arts co-founder Matt White wondered if they would ever be able to do theatre again. Now, as things are slowly starting to open back up, he says he sees a light at the end of the tunnel – a light that appears to be shining brightly on Green Light Arts.

In the midst of the silence, the Kitchener-based not-for-profit theatre company has been buzzing behind the scenes with an exciting new development: they will be carrying on the legacy of Lost & Found theatre.

On June 9, the two theatre companies were brought under the common management of Green Light Arts co-founders White and Carin Lowerison. 

“Coming together with Lost and Found, I think it’s coming at the right time for our company, and is kind of the logical next step for us,” White said. “Truthfully, not-for-profits take a lot of time to get off the ground, and were very much at that point where we were making steady paces in growing the organization when we were approached by Kathleen Sheehy.”

Sheehy, Lost & Found Theatre’s artistic director, told Green Light that after 17 years, the vision they had for the theatre had run its course. But rather than dissolve the company, she wanted to pay it forward.

She told White and Lowerison that she loved what they were doing and wanted to pass the torch to them, giving them control over the charitable entity and leftover assets that would help to provide them with even more of a foundation. 

“It’s kind of projected us into that next period of growth for the company, from a not-for-profit startup to a charity that is now more established,” Lowerison said. “I’m really excited to see what we’re going to be able to do with the force behind us now.”

Lowerison says this means Green Light Arts will be a theatre or performing arts organization with two arms: a non-profit arm and a charitable arm.

“So two corporations running side by side underneath a common management, and we will change the name of the charity from Lost & Found to Green Light Arts,” she said. 

But Lost & Found Theatre’s legacy will also be carried on through Green Light. There will be a bursary in Lost & Found’s name to support a highschool student pursuing acting in post-secondary. 

They also plan to have a dedicated history about the theatre on their website, as well as videos with artists talking about their experiences at the theatre “so that you’ll always have a sense of what has come before,” White said. 

Having grown up in Kitchener, White many of his earliest experiences were with Lost & Found Theatre, “so it’s quite an honour, in a lot of ways, to have Kathleen reach out to us,” he said.

However, Lowerison noted the community can expect to experience “the same kind of work that we’ve been delivering since 2014: work that is thought-provoking, inventive, bold, and a little feisty.”

“But it’s important to note that Lost & Found and Green Light Arts serve the same purposes on a fundamental level,” she said.

So while their “flavouring” might be a bit different, they are both “championing the arts, we’re both delivering theatrical productions, education, programming, and increasing the appreciation of the arts in Waterloo Region,” Lowerison said. 

While they have no shows scheduled for the public yet, Lowerison says they hope to soon, and have been “quietly and furiously working on things to get them ready for when things do open up.”

“I’m excited to deliver the kind of content that we have in mind to this whole new audience of patrons that we’re now interacting with because of this coming together,” she said. 

The pair met at university when they were studying theatre. 

“We became a couple, got married, each had performing careers,” Lowerison said. “So we started off as actors for about six years in Toronto, and we were a bit dissatisfied by the lack of agency that we had as performers; we wanted to dive into bigger roles within the industry.”

Eventually they transitioned into administration, producing, and teaching positions. But wanting away from the “hustle and bustle” of Toronto, they decided to use the skills they’d learned in their varied positions to create their own theatre company – one where they could have full control over their creative visions. 

They established Green Light Arts in 2014, and have since put out 20 productions. Five of those productions took place during their last production season before the pandemic. 

In terms of reopening and future plans, the pair couldn’t disclose much information, as everything is still so up in the air. But White did say they are hoping to have something they’re really excited about, “with people outside, before the fall.”

After that, they are aiming to have their next indoor production sometime in early 2022.