The 2023/24 season of
Crow’s Theatre started off with a bang with the electrifying new play by acclaimed Canadian playwright Michael Healey, known for the plays Drawer Boy and Proud. This time Crow’s Theatre commissioned Healey to write about the political and economic debacle that Waterfront Toronto triggered as it tried to develop a parcel of land that it owned into an environmentally friendly, self-sustaining “smart” community that would be a “climate-change game changer” and hopefully a model for future development. To achieve this goal, the organization foolhardily partnered with Google’s urban planning division Sidewalk Labs and chaos ensued, ultimately leading to failure of the project dubbed "
Sidewalk Toronto". Healey based his play
Master Plan on the book “
Sideways – The City Google Couldn’t Buy” by Josh O’Kane, investigative journalist for the Globe and Mail.
Waterfront Toronto’s team was led by CEO Will Fleissig, VP of Strategic Policy and Innovation Kristina Verner and Chief Development Officer Meg Davis (daughter of former Ontario Premier Bill Davis as comically referenced repeatedly throughout the play). On the Sidewalk Labs team was its force-of-nature CEO Dan Doctoroff and designer Cal Malagaam, a fictious character who represented a composite of all the earnest designers who truly believed they were helping to fight climate change and save the planet.
It was clear from the start that the partnership was doomed to fail since the goals and objectives of the two sides were so radically different. Sidewalk Labs was in it purely for profit while Waterfront Toronto dreamed of a green utopia. Waterfront Toronto only owned a small parcel of the Toronto Portlands and only had jurisdiction to allow development on this property. Doctoroff knew this going in but assumed that he could bully his way into securing access to take over the entire Portlands in order to have a project of large enough scale to reach his profitability goals. He thought that he could get his way as long as he found the right palms to grease. He did not understand that Toronto’s political landscape is mired by layers of bureaucracy and that there was no one person, not even the mayor, who had total power. The extent of this bureaucracy was humorously illustrated by the character in the play whose main role was “Tree”. Also acting as the narrator who added exposition and background facts, this character described the amount of debate it took to determine whether a single resident’s petition to remove a tree from his property would be granted. If this small matter was not easily resolved, how would a project of the magnitude and complexity of Sidewalk Toronto have a chance?
The negotiations to finalize the proposal determining the terms of this partnership were supposed to take several weeks but dragged on for over 18 months between 2018-2020. In addition to the impasse over the scope of land involved in the project, there were also issues with the amount of control Sidewalk Labs wanted, including being the sole developers (without going to tender), retaining all intellectual property produced, and getting a cut of the tax levied in the area. There was also a serious public concern about personal privacy if the project went forward with the fear that Google would retain and resell any data that it collected. The integrity of Sidewalk Labs and Doctoroff specifically was constantly questioned as he repeatedly leaked information to the press, counter to his agreement with Waterfront Toronto that only they would interact with the media.
Healey’s quick, animated dialogue made what could have been a dull topic interesting. But what really elevated the show was the amazing staging created by artistic director Chris Abraham which illustrated in real time the potential ramifications of having Google gain control within our city. The stage was set up “in the round” with four rows of stadium seating lining each wall of the theatre. Hung from above in the middle of the stage were projection screens that seemed to film the audience. We sat in the third row, so we were only shown from below our waists while the people in the first two rows were in full view. As the play started, instead of the usual land acknowledgement and requests to turn off your phones, an animated avatar appeared to let us know that our body movements and facial expressions were being tracked to get immediate feedback on our reactions to the play, and that we should leave our phones on for easier data collection. A QR code was then displayed allowing you to “opt out” of the data collection process. When scanned from your phone, a screen popped up indicating “Just kidding, we are not harvesting your data. Enjoy the show!” The screens were then used throughout the play to identify characters since each actor played multiple parts in addition to their main roles. These included various board members of Waterfront Toronto, Mayor Tory, other city councillors, environmentalists, protesters and more. The screen was also used to display informational details or establish timelines. At the end of the play, we got a post-mortem of what happened to each character, similar to what we see in the end credits of a movie
Another strange part of the set involved a slightly raised platform a few inches above the stage floor that had cut-out sections and inserted pot lights aimed towards the ceiling. The stadium seats were positioned on top of this platform so people entering the theatre had to step off it and cross the stage to get to their seats. This became a bit of a hazard as several people tripped on the lip of the platform and one man actually fell flat on his face before the ushers and even some of the actors stood guard to warn people of the step down. The reason for this unusual platform became clear in the middle of the play when Sidewalk Labs bragged to the Toronto Fire Chief about their “smart sidewalk” design that would eliminate sidewalk curbs and instead could be dynamically reconfigured, using lights to delineate the width of the sidewalks versus the roads in order to “better control traffic flow”. This was received with incredulity as any Torontonian knows how ineffective barrierless road markings are in preventing cars from driving on bike lanes, let alone being reliant on lights in the ground which would be covered by snow for parts of the year.
These days it seems to be a trend in live theatre to provide
a bit of pre-show dramatics to reward those in the audience who arrived
early. Before the show, the table
centre-stage where most of the action would take place, was covered with wooden
structures that seemed to represent potential buildings that would be part of Sidewalk
Toronto. Piece by piece, each building
block was removed by an usher and taken off stage until the table was
bare. In the meantime, members of the
cast roamed around raised platform area, interacting with the audience and
asking what they knew about this project that was the topic of the play. In the second act, a few pieces of the blocks
reappeared as discussions progressed.
But towards the end of the play, they were flipped over and used as
chairs by Verner and Davis. Whether
intentional or not, to me this visually signified that the project was doomed,
and the end was near.
Although providing a bit of information overload, albeit in a clever manner, Master Plan did a great job of explaining the frustrating time spent by both Waterfront Toronto and Google in a tussle that wasted a lot of money and provided no results. Even sadder is the lost opportunity of fulfilling a lofty and worthwhile goal since the land in question still sits barren and unoccupied many years later.
