I’m not one for end-of-year lists of accomplishments, but 2023 was a year of unprecedented growth for Same Boat Theatre.

Following up on last year’s milestone of producing my new play Whale Fall, which won the 2022 Hamilton Fringe’s Critic’s Pick Award, the start of ’23 saw our company learning that we’d been accepted into the Vancouver Fringe Festival. Ironically, when we talked of potentially touring the piece, Vancouver topped the list of potential cities. After all, no city is as connected to the orca as Vancouver and, within the play, the character of Becca starts her journey looking West over the shores of the Georgia Straight.

Though we applied for grants, we knew the only way to get out West for the September festival was to raise the funds beforehand. And the only way to do that was crowdfunding. Adding up the costs and per diems to send all four of us out there totalled roughly $10K, a tall order for any crowdfunding campaign. But thanks to the ingenuity and community ties of director Aaron Joel Craig, the company put together a terrific Kickstarter campaign with great rewards for backers alongside a winning story for why we needed the funds.

After almost thirty days of pushing the campaign on social media, and with help from friends in the community, we were all astonished when we achieved our goal! So many backers stepped up and supported the project. And it happened just in time for Aaron to take Stephanie and Ray and myself back into rehearsal to hammer out a new draft before leaving for the West coast. While this had all been happening, we got some more good news about Whale Fall. The play earned the Special Merit Award from Theatre BC’s Canadian Playwriting Contest. So, by the end of the summer, we were ready for Vancouver.

I’ve written before about our tour, and you can follow our company’s Instagram posts alongside the posts of Aaron, Stephanie and Ray to get a sense of how epic it was. But it really can’t be said enough how this leg of the tour brought the company together, and enriched our work on the play. Being part of the environment where this story takes place, and having the chance to actually see whales with our own eyes, was just magical.

We followed up Vancouver with a return to the HCA and the place that started it all. With sell-out crowds and glowing reviews from audiences, we were primed to finish the tour at Toronto’s Red Sandcastle Theatre in the city’s East End. The transition to this smaller space meant a chance to explore the more intimate moments of the show and it was a treat to present the piece to Toronto audiences. Indeed, everyone who saw the show connected with the themes of grief, hope and awareness of our changing world. And if they shed a tear along the way then, as Aaron said, “we’ve done our job”.

In an article for Beyond James, I wrote about why it’s important for artists to bring their material on the road. Touring builds up a piece of performance while also testing the resilience of the artists involved. The fact that Same Boat Theatre is planning a new season for this year and next is, perhaps, a testament to why artists need to continue to take chances on their work. Certainly, that was the case with this play which started out as a love letter to my daughter.

As the company approaches our tenth anniversary, we’ve had a chance to look back on more than just the year 2023. With a history of new play development at the forefront of our work together, Same Boat is looking forward to 2024 and beyond with an eye towards bigger horizons. From growing our company, to establishing partnerships and producing established plays, Same Boat Theatre is taking the lessons we learned from this past year so we can move forward in the New Year to bring dynamic theatre to Hamilton.

We hope you’ll join us.

Happy New Year!