'This has been a many-months decision, and not an easy one,' says Mel Hague.Dahlia Katz/Supplied
Mel Hague, artistic director of Toronto’s Factory Theatre since 2022, announced on Monday that she will be stepping down from her role effective immediately.
Factory, long one of this country’s top producers of new Canadian plays, has had a tumultuous few years. In 2024, board chair Len Racioppo responded to industry chatter about the future of the company, sharing that Factory’s heritage building at 125 Bathurst St. has significant issues – specifically its aging heating and cooling systems – which have complicated possible redevelopment of the space.
The company also posted a $441,489 deficit in 2023, which after a year of scaled-back programming was converted into a modest $3,697 surplus in 2024.
That same year, in September, Factory filed a lawsuit against the Blyth Festival, alleging the festival had breached its agreement to present a co-production of Marie Beath Badian’s The Waltz. The Blyth Festival filed a countersuit a month later. (Hague and managing director Mark Aikman declined to comment on the current state of the lawsuit.)
In her 3½ years at Factory, Hague, 38, says she’s done her best to ensure the company can continue to champion new Canadian work, if at a smaller scale than before the pandemic. Factory has programmed a number of smaller collectives and artists into its seasons, and the downstairs studio space, once a bowling alley, has become a regular rental site for indie theatre companies.
The Globe and Mail sat down with Hague for an exclusive exit interview to discuss her departure – and the unseen work Factory’s team has done behind the scenes to keep the theatre afloat.
When did you decide to step down?
I think I knew over the summer. I was looking at my whole career – not just my time at Factory – and thinking about myself as an artist, what I need for myself.
Leadership is an act of service. It’s a really all-encompassing act, to be in a role like this. I’ve been working at theatre companies for about 15 years, and while there’s something wonderful about having that coveted e-mail address, there’s also a weight to having to represent yourself through the lens of a theatre company. I’ve sort of wondered who I am without that.
This has been a many-months decision, and not an easy one. We have the best staff in the city. I am 100 per cent certain of that. It’s been a joy to come to work every day, and to work with this team. That’s the hard part of leaving.
Do you have a sense of what you’ll do next?
I’ve been working since I was 14, and the longest time I’ve had off was about a month. I’ve never left a job without knowing exactly what was coming next. I’m trying not to prejudge it yet.
Can you talk about some of your reasoning for stepping down?
It’s really a personal decision – I want to experience myself as an independent artist.
And, I won’t lie, it’s been challenging at times. But there is no theatre company right now that’s not dealing with many challenges. Try running a restaurant today, then tell me about “changing audience behaviours.” Factory is a very specific space with a 55-year history, in a building that’s 150 years old. Of course there have been challenging days, but then again, that’s why I’m so proud of the team here: Even on the hard days, I was never scared to come to work. Not once.
'Theatre is a dessert. It’s something joyful. It’s a treat. It gives the world life and colour and beauty,' says Mel Hague.Dahlia Katz/Supplied
Why did you want to work at Factory Theatre?
Part of it was getting the band back together with Mark – he was in his role when I applied for the job, and we worked at Buddies in Bad Times together for many, many years. That was part of the attraction for me, a partner I would work with collaboratively.
Factory stands alongside institutions such as Theatre Passe Muraille and Tarragon Theatre, historically. It was the result of this time where massive amounts of Canadian resources were put into cultural institutions … I thought about that a lot, as I was sitting in this chair, the inheritances of these generations of Canadian artists. Today, we create things in concert with the generations that came before, pushing against ideas of what Canadian identity really is.
I love the tensions of that history. I love the silliness, the selfishness, the navel-gazing. I also love the comedy, and the incredible creativity that has come out of Canada in the last 50 years. Today is a really weird and wild time to try to create Canadian art.
Factory’s producing model changed under your tenure, with shorter runs of smaller-scale shows – can you talk a little about why?
Theatre, like everything else, has been affected by increased costs. If you look at any theatre company right now, there are a lot more collaborations and co-productions happening. We realized we needed to do more of that – I also realized that when you have eight months of programming, that leaves a lot of dark time for audiences to forget about you as a venue. So that change came from both a need for more co-productions and a need for more frequent programming.
Part of ensuring audiences have a good time comes down to the health of this building. How have the needs of 125 Bathurst informed your time here?
The building is a beast. It is a challenge and it is an incredible asset, not just for Factory, but for an entire ecology of independent artists who now rely on spaces that once could exist just doing our own programming. It’s not just a financial imperative, but an ecological imperative, that we exist to support the independent artistic community with this space. That’s really important to me.
Even so, we’re very close to nature here at Factory Theatre. There are no raccoons right now, but we do keep a sign in the admin office saying how long we’ve gone since a raccoon encounter. We’re at well over 100 days – they’re less of an issue than they used to be, though they sometimes eat our garbage.
But on the audience side, we’ve seen our bar sales go up tremendously from the work we did on making our lobby cozy. I’ve been thinking about an audience’s full experience, from when they leave their home to when they get to the theatre. Things need to be clear and pretty and comfortable. That’s really important.
What did you hope your time at Factory would look like when you took the job? Has it measured up to that?
I started in 2022, when theatres had only barely reopened. We were all at half-capacity, masked performances only. So my hope at the time really was that I could produce plays with full-capacity audiences – a basic thing. It’s not that my time wasn’t what I expected, it’s that the topic changed: It’s always been about adapting.
Theatre is a dessert. It’s something joyful. It’s a treat. It gives the world life and colour and beauty. I’ve always tried to maintain that – and I noticed, when I took over, that people were really scared of each other. Theatre has been this excellent tool to make us less scared of each other, to make us more comfortable being in a room and giving over to an artistic piece of work. It’s a really beautiful way to participate in society. I still think that.
This interview has been edited and condensed.