Bill attended his first Board meeting at Stratford in September (still 1968), and was hit, along with the Board, with an $8000.000 deficit.
Remember, it began as a six-week idea, a cultural experiment in a tent. The director Tyrone Guthrie got involved, thanks to a trans-Atlanitc phone call from Canadian theatre pioneer Dora Mavor Moore (1888-1979). A few actors lined up, working only for expenses—British stars Alec Guinness (1914-20009) and (American but a British star) Irene Worth (1916-2002), They gave the charming little effort panache—a lot of panache. It took off. By the time we arrived, the Festival had become a legend, even an icon, but it was still being run basically like a Sunday School recital. By this time it was also costing a lot to maintain and produce, but no one seemed to notice. Thus far, all the invoices had been stuck in a drawer somewhere and the ticket receipts in another drawer and at the end of the season (growing longer and more ambitious every year) they were tallied up and the bills were paid and out came a profit. Not this year. This year, no profit. There was an $800,000 deficit. That, of course, is over-simplification, but how to explain what happened over the summer when the spring budget had been tidy and balanced and the fall budget showed the Festival on the brink of bankruptcy? The Festival Theatre might not open its doors the following spring. (And where would we go?) Bill promised the Board that the Festival would be in the black by the next year. But the doors had to open.
How? He took his Board President to Toronto to meet with the manager of the Bank of Montreal, and they asked for an 800,000 dollar loan. I’m not good at money at all but I understand that in today’s dollars, that would be a lot of money. It was a lot of money then, and it was an outrageous request.
The BMO man asked what could they possibly offer as collateral,.
The theatre.
“And what would we do with that?”
Bill said, “Look at it this way: you’ll have the best-looking branch bank in south-western Ontario.”
He got the loan, and the Festival Theatre opened its doors to another fabulous season: The Alchemist, Hamlet, Measure for Measure, Tartuffe, The Satyricon, Hadrian VII.
This time with a budget and a watchful eye.