Everybody's Theatre Company

Everybody’s Theatre Company (ETC)

Dale Colleen Hamilton:

ETC Founder, Playwright, Director & Theatre Producer

Dale has been writing, producing and directing community-engaged plays for almost thirty years. She has had fourteen of her plays produced either by other Canadian professional companies or has produced them through Everybody's Theatre Company (ETC), of which she is the Artistic Director.

In 1990 Dale wrote and produced a two-year, 120-cast member, all-inclusive Collaborative Community Play in Eramosa Township ("The Spirit of Shivaree"). This promenade-style production, staged in the ruins of a limestone mill near Rockwood, was co-produced by England’s Colway Theatre Trust (now Claque Theatre), renowned for their pioneering work in community-based arts. Following Dale’s apprenticeship in England, Colway’s Artistic Director Jon Oram came to Canada to direct “Shivaree”. It played to sell-out audiences and was considered highly successful both artistically and sociologically, having had a strong influence on community spirit and politics. The Globe & Mail called it “nothing short of astounding.”

In 1993 Dale and Jon Oram were commissioned to co-write and co-direct a similar community play ("Many Hands") for the Blyth Festival Theatre and surrounding community. The venue was the Hubbard Rutabaga Factory, on the outskirts of Blyth, which was transformed into a promenade-style performance space. The audience was led through the village to the venue, with “life station” tableaus along the way, including the graveyard.

Dale has also co-written and co-directed theatre with Native people in both British Columbia and Ontario, including Potlatch Theatre & Film Society in Victoria, B.C. and, in the 1970's, with Theatre Max (“Whitedog/Cats Dance”) at the Whitedog Reserve in northwestern Ontario.

She was also commissioned to write an adaptation of Brecht’s “The Good Woman of Setzuan” which became “The Good Woman of Saskatchewan”, produced by Caravan Farm Theatre and directed by Nick Hutchinson, former English language director of the National Theatre School.

She has observed, participated in and consulted on several other Collaborative Community Play Projects in Ontario, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, England and Denmark. Dale's approach to theatre centres on community building, self-esteem building and community regeneration and is the subject of several academic papers, a published thesis and two video documentaries, "Dignity & Grace", which aired on TV Ontario and Vision TV and "Ed & Gracie Tie the Knot".

Her theatrical productions have received extensive media attention, including interviews with The Globe & Mail, The Toronto Star and CBC Radio's Morningside. Her work has won several awards over the years, including a major national writing award from the Foundation for The Advancement of Canadian Letters. Fellow recipients in 1988 included Michael Ondaatje and Farley Mowat. Dale is regularly asked to speak about community building through the arts at universities, government ministries and conferences, including the Arkleton Trust for Rural Research in Scotland and the 2003 Community Development Society conference at Cornell University in New York State. She has also created theatre with elementary and high school students through the Ontario Arts Council’s Artists in Education Program.

As an international consulting partner in Lateral Strategies, Dale has facilitated or co-facilitated community development and capacity building workshops, trainings, presentations and consultancies in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Regina, New York City, Cornell University, Wisconsin, Virginia, Australia, England, Scotland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Kenya, South Africa, Brazil and Slovenia. In 2008, Lateral Strategies was hired by the United Nations (UNICEF) to assist in evaluating youth engagement projects in over 150 countries. The goal of Lateral Strategies is to help communities and individuals re-initiate their creative capacity for communication, advocacy, collaboration and celebration. Lateral Strategies is based in Toronto and New York City.

Dale was one of six playwrights from across Canada chosen to attend The Third International Women Playwrights Conference in Adelaide, South Australia in July of 1994 and was funded by the Canada Council to make a presentation at the 4th such conference in Galway, Ireland in 1997.

In 1998 Dale was awarded an Artists & Communities grant through a funding “consortium” comprised of the Laidlaw Foundation, the Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council and the Toronto Arts Council to coordinate and write a Collaborative Community Play about rural amalgamation called "All Over the Map". This production took the audience on a school bus tour of two recently amalgamated rural townships, using a wedding analogy, with theatrical and musical moments en route.

In 1998 and 1999, Dale produced, dramaturged and co-directed two forum-style community plays focussing on at-risk youth in Kitchener-Waterloo. These projects, funded by Human Resources Development Canada's Youth Service Canada program, involved hiring 17 youth full time for two six-month periods, the result being the development of their employability in the arts and the production of a play based on their life experiences and issues. The first play, “Out of Order”, was performed in a vacant mall space formerly occupied by Eaton’s in downtown Kitchener and the second play, “Poverty: The Musical” began at City Hall and took the audience on a theatrical hike through the back alleys of Kitchener, offering a glimpse of street life from a young person’s perspective.

From 1999 - 2002, Dale was employed by the Region of Waterloo’s Community Safety and Crime Prevention Council as a Safe & Sound Neighbourhood Facilitator, using the arts as a tool for crime prevention. In September 2001, Dale wrote, produced and directed a promenade and forum-style community play called “Inside Out” in a hockey arena in an at-risk neighbourhood in Kitchener, as part of her role as a crime prevention neighbourhood facilitator.

In 2004 Dale wrote and produced “The Gifts of Time”, a collaborative community play involving over 100 local cast members and an international professional team. It was staged in a pedestrian mall in Guelph, Ontario in partnership with the Guelph Multicultural Centre and funded by the Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council, the Laidlaw Foundation, the Harbinger Foundation, the Musagetes Foundation and the City of Guelph.

From 2006-2008, Dale co-developed and co-wrote an original script with Robert Winslow, Artistic Director of 4th Line Theatre near Peterborough. This play, called “The Last Green Hill”, was a futuristic look at the impact of rampant urban development on the township of Cavan and was produced in their 2008 season, to wide acclaim. Robert and Dale engaged the local community in the script development process for over a year, hosting several “community soundings”, readings of the draft script and play development workshops.

In 2009, Dale was invited by Dan Friedman, Artistic Director of Castillo Theatre in New York City, to submit a script for consideration. Dale wrote a one-act play called “Blacksheep Bush”, which imagined that President George Bush had a rebellious secret love-child-daughter who managed to change the Whitehouse forever. It received a staged reading at Castillo Theatre on 42nd Street in NY in 2010.

Dale was invited by Sid Bruyn and Festival at The Fort to join Rick Salutin in writing several scenes for a pilot project called “Great Voices: The War of 1812”, produced in September 2009 and building towards a full-scale site-specific production at Fort York in 2012, the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812.

After a two-year contract as a Community Development Manager through the Toronto United Way’s Action for Neighbourhood Change Program, Dale produced “A Whole New Picture: The Mount Dennis Theatrical Hike”. A workshop production was staged in the fall of 2009 and a full production in 2010. It was produced by ETC, written by Dale & co-directed with Joan Kivanda, with music by Obie Kelly & Josh Priess and buffoon coaching by Lisa Marie Di Liberto. Funding was received from the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts.

“The Rivertowne Carbon Busters”, funded by the City of Toronto’s Live Green Program in 2011, was an outdoor theatre troupe made up of Rivertowne youth and focusing on the topic of carbon neutrality. Rivertowne is Canada’s first deliberate mixed income neighbourhood, including Toronto Community Housing units, condominiums and private homes. The play was written and directed by Dale and co-produced by ETC and The Ralph Thornton Community Centre.

Between 2012-2015, Dale returned to Rivertowne and, with funding from the Canada Council, the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council and the Metcalf Foundation, produced and wrote “In Another’s Shoes: The Rivertowne Walking Play”. The premise of this play was that very different people in the neighbourhood (eg: a police officer and a youth), switched lives temporarily and walked in another person’s shoes. The workshop production involved over 40 residents of this mixed-income at-risk neighbourhood. When it became impossible to undertake a full production due to budgetary and safety issues, a puppet-play adaptation was staged in 2015.

The Research and Development phase of “Digging Deeper: The Highland Mega-Quarry Community Play” was completed by Dale in 2012, in collaboration with residents affected by a proposal from an American hedge fund to develop the biggest quarry in North America on prime agricultural land. Plans were being made to begin the production phase when the mega-quarry project was abandoned by the hedge fund due to the intensity of the protests, of which the community play project was one component.

“Democracy Drama”, funded by the Ontario Arts Council’s Artists in Education program, took a performance-based approach to teaching Ontario’s fifth grade public school civics curriculum. Dale collaborated with students to develop an original script and production about the importance of civic engagement and teaching the students about all three levels of government in an engaging and creative way.

With funding from the Ontario Arts Council, Dale developed the curriculum for a non-urban community arts training program called STARACT (Small Town, Aboriginal & Rural Arts in Community Trainings), which uses larger-than-life customized versions of the board game Snakes & Ladders as the training delivery tool. To date, Dale has used this training model in Slovenia, Vancouver, Toronto, Guelph and Eden Mills.

In 2017, Dale was awarded an Ontario Arts Council grant to co-create a play called Cowgirls and Indians about First Nations/Colonizer relations with her young-adult First Nations (Snunymuxw) son (Kieran Rice) and daughter (Teeka Rice) and in collaboration with a Coast Salish elder and her Coast Salish (Cowichan) in-laws. Dale, Kieran and Teeka performed a reading of excerpts from this work-in-progress at the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival in 2018. They are presently seeking producers in Toronto and Vancouver.

Dale has written a novel, "The Township of Paradox", which is loosely based on her life in community-engaged theatre and social activism. It is available for (private distribution only) by contacting Dale.

In 2019, Dale and her son Kieran received a Canada Council for the Arts grant to develop and create a theatrical walk on her 16 acres in Eden Mills, with a focus on environmental education, seen through an Indigenous lens. This will be a collaborative process with residents of Eden Mills and the surrounding countryside, including local Indigenous residents. The working title is Walk This Way.

With funding from the Laidlaw Foundation in 2004, Dale created a website called “Dramatic Action: Community-Engaged Theatre in Canada and Beyond”, with writings by Dale and other community-engaged theatre practitioners in Canada, the US and Africa. This article will be available soon in ETC's forthcoming online archives.

Awards & Grants

Canada Council travel grant, 2024
Canada Council for the Arts, Artists & Communities Collaboration Fund grants: 2003, 2006, 2008, 2018.
Ontario Arts Council, Artists in the Community/Workplace, Artists in Schools & Literature Office: 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2014 and 2017.
Laidlaw Foundation grants: 1989, 1991, 1995, 1998, 2002, 2004.
Harbinger Foundation and Musagetes Foundation grant, 2004.
Siminovitch Prize in Theatre (nominee), 2004 & 2007.
Ontario Arts Council & Laidlaw Foundation, Artists & Communities Pilot Project grant (only four chosen throughout Canada), 1998.
Five Youth Service Canada Grants from Human Resources Development Canada, 1998-2001.
Jury member, Ontario Arts Council Artists in the Community/Workplace, 1997 & 2000.
Jury member, Canada Council for the Arts, Explorations Program, 1994.
Chosen by the Playwrights Union of Canada as one of 6 women playwrights to attend the International Women Playwrights Conference in Adelaide, South Australia, in 1994 and Galway Ireland in 1997.
Neighbour of The Year, Eramosa Community News, 1990.
Canada Council Exploration Grant, 1989.
Professional Development Grant, Ontario Arts Council Theatre Section, 1987.