Myriam Steinberg, who runs In The House Festival at her home in East Vancouver June 4, 2013.John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail
Vancouver's In the House festival, which staged performances in people's homes and backyards, is bowing out – at least for now. Myriam Steinberg, who has been running the festival out of her home for more than a decade, says she's "burnt out" and simply can't continue.
"It's always the funding issue and that Catch-22 of not having the staff to do the fundraising and then having to do it myself, which means that I'm doing absolutely everything. So I just burned out completely," she told The Globe and Mail.
On Monday afternoon, she sent out at an e-mail that the festival would not take place this year or in the foreseeable future.
"I was bawling when I was writing that newsletter. Just, like, bawling," she said. She made the decision last September, she says, but it took her until Sunday to write the words and Monday to hit send. "It is the hardest breakup I've ever experienced," she said.
The quirky little festival was co-founded in 2003 with musician Daniel Maté. After a year off in 2004, Ms. Steinberg brought it back in 2005 and continued to run it until last year, staging all kinds of arts events – music, stilt-walking, storytelling, puppets – in intimate environments.
In addition to the annual spring festival, Ms. Steinberg organized a performance series, haunted houses and dinner theatre events in some 100 separate venues over the years – including her own little bungalow in the Commercial Drive neighbourhood.
Last year, hard costs for the festival totalled about $60,000. Ms. Steinberg budgeted $86,000 so she could "pay everyone equitably." She herself drew a minimal salary. "Basically living on a shoestring the entire time," she said.
The money came from ticket sales, some corporate and private sponsorships and government grants. Knowing she was not going to be able to put on the festival this year, Ms. Steinberg did not seek funding from the province or city. She is planning to request permission from Heritage Canada so she can use the grant she received for the festival from Ottawa – $8,000 – to throw a wake for the festival.
She is planning a garage sale in June to sell props and other accumulated gear, and she is also selling off the remaining T-shirts in her inventory.
She writes in her newsletter that handing off the festival to someone else to run wouldn't work because she would want "the absolute right person" to manage it – and hasn't been able to find that person. Nor does she have the energy to train and mentor someone, she adds.
But in the future, if the circumstances were right, she says she would consider remounting it.
"First on my list is healing," she said. "And once I kind of have regrouped and have everything together, I would love it to continue, for sure. … If in a year or two there's a combination of me feeling properly rested and the actual proper funding is in, then I think that would be pretty rad if it came back."
Marsha Lederman