THEATRE FEATURE: 2010 TORONTO STAGE ARTIST OF THE YEAR:
ROSS PETTY
26 Dec'10

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency

When talk turns to art and artists, it is often too easy to get hung up on the high points — and ignore the people who slug it out in the trenches year after year, all but ignored by the cultural mavens who think that art has to have an almost medicinal taste before it is worthwhile. Which is why, perhaps, Ross Petty's contribution to Toronto's cultural life has gone unheralded for as long as it has.

Almost a quarter century ago, Petty took the age-old British stage tradition of the Christmas panto and started shaping it to appeal to a modern-day Toronto audience. All these years later, his annual Christmas rewrites of age-old children's stories — PETER PAN, CINDERELLA, ALADDIN, and SNOW WHITE, to name but a few — have become staples in Toronto's Christmas season.

Petty has brought everyone from figure skaters and pro wrestlers to TV personalities and ballet stars to his panto stage. Best of all, he has taught a few generations of Toronto kids that theatres are a place to go if you're looking for a good time, which is a good thing for them to know. And it is why, this year, as Petty is being booed yet again on the stage of the Elgin theatre as the villain all of Toronto loves to hate at Christmas, we are naming him the performing artist of the year — just in time for him to start work on his silver-anniversary season.