Barrie’s boundary-pushing professional theatre company approaches a milestone season with the same restless curiosity that launched it.
Arkady Spivak has never seemed like a man inclined to stand still.
The always dashing, sharply dressed and quick-witted artistic producer of Barrie’s Talk Is Free Theatre is preparing for a milestone few Canadian regional companies reach with their original appetite intact: a 25-year celebration of an Equity professional theatre company that has built its reputation on risk, reinvention and the refusal to be easily categorized.
For audiences in Barrie, Toronto and beyond, TIFT has long offered the kind of theatre more often associated with major urban centres: work that can provoke, puzzle, move and unsettle in equal measure. For Spivak, that response is not incidental. It is the point.
When TIFT’s mission was formed more than 25 years ago, its aim was to produce “a range of cutting-edge theatre works such as those that are typically only found in major urban centres, and to connect them with as wide an array of people as possible, especially with new, non-urban audiences.”
That founding idea, Spivak says, remains very much alive. The company’s work continues to begin with what he describes as a life-or-death artistic affinity with a particular piece at a particular moment — the feeling that a production is not simply desirable, but necessary.
“We’ve generally avoided the trap that many not-for-profit mandates fall into, where they define themselves by a particular type of theatre — classical, new Canadian or work aimed at a specific demographic,” he says.
For TIFT, the mission has never been about specializing in one style. Its vision is specific without being restrictive. It is also rooted in a belief that artists bring more than performance to the table. They solve problems, imagine possibilities and bring people together — skills Spivak believes belong everywhere.
The company’s 25-year mark gives Spivak reason to look back, but not to linger. He is proudest, he says, that TIFT has developed a distinctive operating model that reflects the kind of work it makes. The goal is to remain deeply relevant to as many people as possible while staying clear about its core audience: those who simply cannot live without the work TIFT does.
“I think it’s important that we constantly reinvent ourselves and never institutionalize for the sake of existing,” Spivak says.
That sense of forward motion extends to future partnerships with local communities and collaborators in the Barrie area. Spivak speaks of pursuing that work “actively and aggressively,” a phrase that suits a company that has rarely waited for permission to redefine what a regional theatre can do.
Even the company’s name has the kind of theatrical mystery Spivak seems happy to preserve. When asked again about the meaning behind Talk Is Free, he responded with characteristic mischief that the original name was going to be Hitler Kaput Theatre Company. Through the convolutions of the plot, it eventually became Talk Is Free Theatre.
He offered only a little more. TIFT could be read as a verb — to prepare, to get ready — or as anything else one wishes to read into it. There is also, he admits, an inside joke behind the name, though he believes it would die the moment it was explained in print. Better, perhaps, to keep it alive.
I still intend to get the real meaning one day.
One of TIFT’s most intriguing recent accomplishments is touring.
For Spivak, taking a show overseas after a Barrie and Toronto run gives a production a second, third and even fourth life. The work continues to evolve as artists revisit it in new places, strengthening both the production and the ensemble behind it. TIFT is not interested in taking theatre only where everyone has already seen it. The company is interested in creating conversations that otherwise might not happen.
There is also a diplomatic dimension to touring: the chance to showcase Canadian stories and artists abroad. Spivak hopes audiences may someday join future tours alongside actors and creative teams. He sees something invigorating in experiencing a production within another culture, watching how audiences respond differently and turning theatre into a shared journey rather than simply a performance.
From a financial perspective, touring also brings resources back home. It allows TIFT to invest more in ambitious work in Barrie rather than relying solely on local fundraising — one way a regional theatre can think globally while remaining firmly rooted in its own community.
The company’s website, www.tift.ca, offers a look at the artists who have been part of TIFT’s first 25 years. Spivak attributes one remarkable element of that history to the extraordinary number of “one-person institutions” connected to the company. This element is more of their secret and deliberate successes in producing artists rather than shows.
This year’s selection of plays carries the theme “Fuck the System.” Directors for the upcoming season have been announced, with casts and venues expected within the next 90 days.
As our conversation wound down, I asked Spivak what he hopes audiences will remember about the upcoming celebration and slate of plays.
“We want people to embrace their uniqueness without fear,” he says. “That’s true for every artist we work with, and equally true for every audience member who joins us. Our productions simply create the space where that can happen.”
To learn more about the upcoming 2026-27 season, visit: https://www.tift.ca/shows/26-27-season
To learn more about the purchase of 4 season passes for Barrie and Toronto productions: www.tift.ca/ticket-passes
