Jovanni Sy, Artistic Director of Cahoots Theatre, talks about all that Cahoots Theatre has to celebrate including their upcoming new home at the Green Arts Barn, formerly the TTC streetcar repair barns.

For those of us in the arts, reflection is something of a luxury. We work so hard dealing with the next deadline, the imminent crisis, that we rarely have time to stop and look back.

As I celebrated my third anniversary at Cahoots, I indulged myself and started to think on what we have accomplished in recent years. There's no shortage of highlights. Since 2004, Cahoots has: won four Dora Mavor Moore Awards; been invited to the Magnetic North Festival with The Adventures of Ali & Ali and the Axes of Evil; made our international debut with Lift Off Hong Kong; created Crossing Gibraltar, a theatre training program for refugee youth.

Next year, we launch our Coast-to-Coast Season. We will remount Bombay Black at the Arts Club Theatre in Vancouver. We will also join a prestigious co-production of Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland's a capella opera Fear of Flight in St. John's.

Yet with all that's happened and all that's to come, one project has me more excited than the rest combined. In 2008, Cahoots will be moving into a brand new studio in the Green Arts Barns. After twenty-two years, Cahoots will finally have its own home. More importantly, we will be able to share our space with a host of artists.

Having a home can mean the world to an artist. I speak from personal experience.

Fifteen years ago, I made my professional acting debut at the Tarragon Theatre Extra Space. I was supposed to be at Tarragon for two weeks. Through rather good fortune, I ended up staying there for more than five months.

What I didn't appreciate at that time was that I had been given an extraordinary gift. The chance to come to one space, to connect with one location every day for five months changed me forever. Back then, Tarragon was four things for me.

First, it was my classroom. As a young actor, I was in the company of some of Canada's most distinguished artists. From them, I learned the discipline required to succeed in my craft. I discovered that I was part of a tradition that spanned centuries and continents.

Second, that space was my sandbox. It was a place where I was free to play and to explore, and where it was safe to try new things and to fail and to learn from my failures.

Third, it was a greenhouse. I saw time and again how an actor from one show would talk with a musician from another show and a new idea would sprout up. I witnessed first-hand how creativity thrives when you have a critical mass of artistic minds. All you need is a gathering place.

Last, and perhaps most important, it was my home, a place where I belonged. I don't think you can overstate how important this is, especially to the culturally diverse artists we work with at Cahoots who are so often defined as outsiders. In our own space at the Green Arts Barns, we will define the mainstream. In our new home, all will be welcome.

Cahoots Theatre in The Sheep And The Whale photo by Guy Bertrand

Our new studio will be far more than brick and mortar, glass and steel. It will be a classroom, a sandbox, a greenhouse, and a home. Without the nurturing effect of a home early in my career, I doubt I'd be where I am today. This is why I want Cahoots' new studio to be a place where young artists from diverse cultures feel like they belong, where they feel a sense of continuity, where they feel safe to stumble and dare and dream. - Jovanni Sy

Cahoots Theatre is committed to work that expresses the diversity of Toronto's society and a belief that cultures do not exist in isolation. TAC has been supporting Cahoots Theatre since 1987.

The Green Arts Barns is an arts and environmental convergence centre being built for the local community. This project is being lead by Artscape, a non-profit enterprise that builds creative communities.