When the Future of Art, and of Our World, is Reflected in Cultural Metissage - Conversations with artist Amir Ali Alibhai, anthropologist Pierre Anctil, and philosopher and communicator Aïda Kamar
	Outside Influence - Encounters with students at the school (Abdu Bedward, Jessica Chang), and visiting professors (Judit Csanadi, Alexandre Marine and Sipho Ndlela)
	Theatre for the New World - Portrait of a culturally diverse theatre scene in Toronto with Nina Aquino, Sally Jones, Elyne Quan, Alyson Sealy-Smith, Jovanny Sy and Marcus Youssef.
	Shining On - Observations by Sandra Oh (Acting, 1993)
	Anita Unveiled - Observations by Anita Majumdar (Acting, 2004)

Anita Majumdar in Anosh Irani’s Bombay Black, directed by Brian Quirt, presented by Cahoots Theatre Projects at the Toronto’s Theatre Centre in January 2006. © John Lauener

Creating Together

Our society is growing rapidly thanks to immigration. A large number of newcomers belong to visible minorities, which made up 6% of the population in 1986 and which will represent 20% of Canadians in 2017. Believing that art does not let itself be confined by boundaries, the team behind nts magazine looked at theatre creation as a stage for fostering productive intercultural relations, for both artists and audiences.

Interculturality enhances two-way exchanges between cultures. It presupposes on-going relationships where society’s institutions receive and accept new contributions that will transform them. There is therefore a progressive evolution towards a new state of society and a new state of culture. While an intercultural approach promotes at once social inclusion and cohesion, it also enables new sensibilities, creativities, and talents to be highlighted and expressed through original artistic activities that are the result of true diversity. As a collective and living art form, today’s theatre must be especially open to the influences and contributions of creators and audience-members of all ethnocultural origins.

But what is really happening? Do the artists, creators, and designers who are either immigrants or who belong to visible minorities have access to our theatre training, creation, production, and presentation institutions? And if so, how do these institutions contribute to their evolution? How, in theatre, is the creative cohabitation and collaboration between artists from here and abroad experienced? Is it utopian to believe in the coming of shared cultural journeys? Is a plural, open theatre not healthier than a practice which seeks only to perpetuate itself by shifting its focus inward?

We candidly put together this issue based on the following premise: interculturality can be at once a springboard for artistic creation and an engine for transforming our way of teaching, doing, and presenting theatre. We called upon our curiosity, openness, and determination to explore these new, uncharted territories, with the avowed hope of really advancing theatre practice. Pre-conceived ideas and prejudices would have been as unwelcome here as those tired, politically correct discourses which undermine the quest for true intercultural exchanges. We would like to think that we have not offered up commonplace arguments in this magazine!

Many contributors (philosophers, anthropologists, artists, professors, and students) collaborated to make this issue a “must-read.” Inspired by their personal backgrounds and journeys, they share in its pages their dream for a better reality. We salute them and thank them for every step which will lead us to the theatre of tomorrow.

The nts magazine team

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