Christopher Deacon on his time at the National Arts Centre and what comes next

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Christopher Deacon, former president and chief executive of the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, has moved on to the next chapter of his career.

In his seven-year tenure at the helm of the NAC, Deacon steered the institution through a number of stumbling blocks – most notably the pandemic, which left Canadian performing arts institutions shuttered for the better part of two years. Before that, he spent 22 years as the managing director of the NAC Orchestra, during which time he expanded the orchestra’s touring presence in both Canadian and international venues.

An advocate for better representation of Canada’s diversity in the performing arts, Deacon encouraged experimental outreach initiatives, including Black Out Nights – theatrical performances geared toward Black audiences and their families – and discounted tickets for Indigenous audiences. He also oversaw a number of high-profile leadership hires, including Nina Lee Aquino for English Theatre and Mani Soleymanlou for French Theatre.

The Globe and Mail sat down with Deacon on his last day of work to discuss his time at one of Canada’s leading performing arts institutions – and the short stories he plans to write in this next chapter.

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Your education at the University of Toronto trained you to be a composer, music theorist and pianist. How did that background inform your time as an administrator?

I believe it’s very helpful – important, even – that people running arts institutions have some kind of personal, visceral experience with the arts. I don’t think you have to be the retired principal ballerina or anything, although that can be wonderful, as we saw with Karen Kain at the National Ballet of Canada.

Running an arts organization is enormously challenging and fascinating, because there are so many pieces to it. But I think if you start with a love of the arts – and maybe an insider’s point of view – that it will really shape how you run things.

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As an institution, the National Arts Centre has to balance dual roles as a national and local resource. How did you navigate that tension in your time there?

It’s a fundamental challenge for the National Arts Centre – how are you relevant to a whole country? And if you’re putting shows on stages at the National Arts Centre, you’re going to rely on a very steady engagement from the local community.

One of the ways we’ve approached that is through initiatives that allow us to be ambitious, and reach for something better. The creation of Indigenous Theatre at the National Arts Centre – which, to be clear, happened before my time as president and CEO – was an example of that. But there’s now a national stage for Indigenous work. And theatre, specifically, is very collaborative – we had The Secret to Good Tea last year, an Indigenous piece of theatre that we co-produced with the Grand Theatre in London, Ont. If ever a company feels like a show is too big a chunk to bite off themselves, suddenly, there’s this well-resourced partner at the National Arts Centre that’s backing it, putting money into it, showing faith in it. That sort of thing is a big way that we’re relevant nationally.

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In a 2020 opinion piece for The Globe and Mail, you suggested that arts leaders ought to consider “better ways” to retain loyal audiences than the tried-and-true subscription model. Have your thoughts on that changed?

To be clear: Some companies have robust subscription bases, and that’s wonderful, and they should never let that go.

What’s more important, however, is the idea of belonging, and welcoming, and the relationship between audiences and their space. There was a study published called Culture Track, and one of its findings – which I thought was the headline of the study – was that the most clearly articulated objection amongst people who didn’t go to performing arts centres, or concert halls, or opera houses, was expressed in the phrase, “It’s not for people like me.”

So the question is, then: What kind of people feel unwelcome? Why isn’t this for them? There are a million ways to address that. When we renovated our building before the pandemic, we created a new relationship with the street. That new part of the building is all glass, it’s transparent: You can look inside and say, ‘Oh, there’s people like me in there.’ There’s a coffee shop near the front door, and free Wi-Fi throughout the public parts of the building, and the lobbies are open all day, not just when the show is on. A performing arts centre should look like the subway platform at Bloor and Yonge. It shouldn’t just be people with tuxedos and gloves.

I’ve also had the benefit and honour of recruiting select artistic leadership here. I’ve learned that when you hire artistic directors who bring an identity different from yours and mine, that relationship with the audience becomes more organic – suddenly, people are seeing all kinds of different cultures and stories represented on-stage.

The National Arts Centre made international headlines in 2022 when it adopted the practice of Black Out Nights, in which Black audiences are explicitly welcomed into a theatre to respond to culturally specific work. Can you talk a little about Is God Is, and the reaction to Black Out Nights in Ottawa?

The intention was to have a special invitation to members of the Black community to come see the show that night, with the idea that the experience would be different for them. Briefly, on the Ticketmaster website, there was the wrong text, which left people with an impression that you shouldn’t go that night if you’re not Black – that, of course, would be illegal.

But the point was a little more subtle than that. The Daily Mail and the New York Post ran stories about it, but quite a few Black members of our staff were there, and said that inside the room was an entirely different experience from other shows. Audience members were calling out to the actors – something was happening in that hall that was very different, and really interesting.

We’ve done lots of things like that now – Diwali celebrations, for instance, and things for the South Asian community with our show Trident Moon, and the Filipino community with Prison Dancer.

It’s an organic process, really: What’s the story you’re telling? What’s it about? What’s the audience we’d like to have in the room, and how do we make sure you get there?

Why is now the time to step down? What’s next for you?

I just turned 67. I have spent 44 years working for the not-for-profit performing arts, and I’ve loved every minute of it. But it’s time for me to move on. I also think that creative institutions like the National Arts Centre require leadership to be refreshed. Change is an essential thing.

I want to write short stories. And music, too, if I can figure out how to do that. It’s a creative move for me – I want to get back to that. I’ve secretly been writing short stories for a decade, and I wrote a book of them, so now I’m in the process of trying to convince people to read them. It’s a wonderful new adventure for me.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Christopher Deacon served as president and chief executive of the National Arts Centre for six years. He held the role for seven years.