Eda Holmes is the Artistic and Executive Director of the Centaur Theatre in Montréal. She is the first female artistic director in the theatre’s history, marking a significant milestone for one of Montréal’s oldest English-language theatre.
Holmes previously served as Associate Artistic Director at the prestigious Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, and has a background in theatre education, having taught at the National Theatre School of Canada and Toronto Metropolitan University. Holmes was a professional dancer and has performed with companies such as the San Francisco Ballet and the Frankfurt Ballet.
The Centaur Theatre, located in the historic former stock exchange building in Old Montréal, remains a central institution in the city’s arts scene under her direction
Are you an artist? How did you become involved in arts management?
I was a ballet dancer. I started ballet very young; I danced from the time I was four years old, and I became a professional ballet dancer with the San Francisco Ballet when I was 17. I danced professionally in San Francisco, in Amsterdam with the Dutch National Ballet, and then with the Frankfurt Ballet until I was 32. I blew my knee out when I turned 30 and spent two years trying to rehab before realizing I was going to have to retire, and that I’d better start thinking about what to do next.
I had met a Canadian at that point, who I am now married to. When I retired, I initially thought I’d go to acting school, but I was 32, and most acting schools won’t take you at that age. I was sort of thinking, too, that it was time to get off the stage and do more, so I looked into a directing program. The National Theatre School of Canada (NTS) offered this really wonderful two-year directing program that I could do if I were a resident.
So you left ballet and went straight into theater. Was theater something that you were also passionate about? How did you decide to go from one to the other?
That’s a very good question. It was a combination of things. I’d always been interested in theatre. I’d studied it a bit when I was growing up. In Frankfurt, we did a lot of dance/theatre where I had actually started to speak on stage. Before that point, it occurred to me that I had been mute for most of my life as a ballet dancer. Once I had the chance to talk, I was curious about the storytelling process.
When I couldn’t use my body to express myself because of my injury, I became interested in the other forms of expression I could pursue. So storytelling and how language works became really interesting to me. That was the way I made the choice. Also, I’m bossy. I wanted to start having a chance to be responsible for things.
So, I did the NTS program, which was an amazing two-year conservatory with only four students. I came out of that making some of the longest-lasting artistic relationships that I’ve had throughout my career as a director. It really catapulted me into the Canadian theatre milieu. I started directing right out of school. First, I was doing a lot of new plays, and then I got really interested in classical plays, and I was looking for a place to try to figure that out.
I got involved with the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, a large theatre company that runs throughout the summer. It has a repertory company that has about 70 actors. While I was there, I was working with a woman—the artistic director—named Jackie Maxwell. I’d met her at theatre school, but at Niagara-on-the-Lake she really took me under her wing and gave me opportunities I never expected anyone to give me, to direct plays and to learn about the business. When her associate artistic director decided to retire, she invited me to take that position.
That was the beginning of my becoming a part of arts management. I was inside this $30 million company learning how everything worked operationally. I was much more focused on the art side, but this opportunity provided me with a window. There were two other people who had a lot of influence on me on the management side of the arts: Colleen Blake and Elaine Calder, the two executive directors at the Shaw Festival. They were both incredibly generous in sharing their insights into the budgeting process and the theatre’s overall management.
Jee Lillico and Jay Turvey in FLOYD COLLINS, directed by Eda Holmes, at Shaw Festival in 2004. Photo: David Cooper.
So when there was a posting for the Centaur Theatre, I decided I’d been the associate long enough. I thought, ‘If I’m gonna keep going, I need to put myself out there.’ I applied to the Centaur Theatre and got it.
The first season I worked here was 2017/2018, but I didn’t begin programming until the 2018-19 season and then the 2019-20 season, which took us right into the pandemic—right from the frying pan into the fire. That was really a challenging learning curve.
Montréal was particularly hard during the pandemic because we had two lockdowns. We came out of the lockdown in 2021, and then Omicron hit, so I had to cancel two seasons of shows where the tickets were sold, the sets were built, and the actors were in rehearsal.
Coming back from that has been particularly challenging. Our traditional English audience in Montréal is a loyal group—we’re 57 years old, and I have people who’ve been here all 57 years—but they’re not going to keep going for another 57. Because of Montréal’s language politics, their kids didn’t necessarily stay here. So we’re missing a vital transitional group: people aged 30 to 60. That’s the big particular challenge that’s unique to us here at Centaur and Montréal.
How are you working through that?
I work really hard to stay in contact with the whole community of theatregoers and artists. I’m really trying to build into the natural theatregoing audience that is bilingual, that is going to French theatre and doesn’t realize that what we’re doing at Centaur lives within the same context as the theatre they see in French. I’m trying to put Centaur into that landscape and not be considered a separate entity.
How receptive are the other theatre workers to this idea of building bridges, if at all?
They’ve reached out to me. When I was in theatre school in ’95, I was really excited by what I was seeing in the French theatres, and I was trying to reach out to French artists, and they wouldn’t talk to me. So I went to Ontario. When I came back to Montréal, I was kind of expecting it would be like that, but the first people who came to my office were from the French community, asking how we could work together. I’m just humbled by the generosity of the French theatre community here.
Anne-Marie Cadieux and Théodore Pellerin in Michel-Marc Bouchard’s EMBRASSE, directed by Eda Holmes, at Théâtre du Nouveau Monde in 2021. Photo by Yves Renaud.
When I was researching your background, I read that, with the Centaur Theatre, you’ve been focusing on diversity, inclusivity, and innovation, helping the theatre culture better reflect the multiculturalism of Montréal. I was curious if you could speak to that a little bit, and to your goals for inclusivity.
One of the things that I’ve always thought about theatre more than any other art form is that it really should reflect the people on the bus. Theatre should be accessible enough that anybody can come to it, and it should look like the people who can get there.
The theatre here had a long history of doing plays from the Italian community, for example, because there’s a huge Italian immigrant population in Montréal. But I was like, ‘Well, what about the Haitian community?’ ‘What about the Chinese community?’
I’ve been looking for ways to meet the artists from those communities and say, ‘ What do you want to do?’ In some cases, it’s also just bringing artists together. We did a piece at the end of the pandemic called Cyclorama, about the history of Montréal’s theatre communities in both languages.
We collaborated with the French theatre to make it. The creator is a French actor who worked with an actor from the Lebanese community. He was Francophone—he came as a child and spoke French and Arabic—but as he became an actor, he realized there was no place for him at that time in the French community. So he went to theatre school in English, ended up at the Stratford Festival, and worked in English, but longed to come back to Montréal. We cast him in a show at Centaur, and they got together, and the two of them represented the English and the French in Montréal. Through that show, that Lebanese/Canadian actor became recognized by the French community and now works in both languages.
It’s that kind of weaving of people’s history stories and the reality of Montréal. It’s an international, cosmopolitan city, and I think it’s the most beautiful representation of what Canada could be because there are two languages—many people speak more—and there are such rich stories available.
Kevin Raymond, Leni Parker and Yves Jacques in KISSES DEEP (English version of EMBRASSE), directed by Eda Holmes at Centaur Theatre, in 2025. Photo by Andrée Lanthier.
I find that really promising, especially in the US, where it feels like efforts at diversity and inclusion are being actively tamped down. What’s the community response been?
Positive, very positive. It’s interesting because the community response and the ability to sell tickets are two separate things, particularly post-pandemic. Because we’re trying to be the open door, it can be hard. The Chinese community will come out for a Chinese play, the Greek community for a Greek play, but it’s hard to drive home the idea that everybody should come to everything. The representation is there, but the audience’s appetite for that diversity is a conundrum that I haven’t solved yet.
But luckily, the thing that we have the unbelievable benefit and privilege of here in Canada that you don’t have in the States is state funding. We have both national and provincial funding that is extremely generous by comparison. We’re building a philanthropic community, but because of government funding, it’s sometimes harder to motivate them. But we’re starting to make it clear that this only exists if we’re willing to pay for it, because artists are workers, not passionate dabblers. Really clarifying that is a constant opportunity.
Since the pandemic, people around the world seem content and cozy at home. How do you get people back out?
Well, I think people will go out for something they’re already familiar with. It’s getting people to go out for things that they’re not. At a board meeting, a board member said, “If you go and see a movie that you don’t like, you don’t say, ‘well, I’m never going to the movies again.’ But if you see a play that you don’t like, or that makes you uncomfortable, you might never go to the theatre again.” I think it’s because of the personal human vulnerability of being in a room with people. It’s a collective experience.
So the challenge is to find ways to put things in a context where people will take the chance, and, like it or not, will come back again, or understand what the opportunity is. You have to do it at a high level of quality so that they can’t deny it.
You have worn both hats—you are an artist, and you’re in arts administration. What would you say to potential students reading this, especially the next generation of arts administrators, about skills they need to work on?
There’s a phrase in British tradition: “Fortune favors the brave.” I think bravery will be the key to the next generation—being able to recognize how to balance creating a reason for people to come to the institution with the need for art to evolve.
You see it on Broadway—only one new musical last season actually survived its run and is still going. Most new Broadway musicals shut down early; those odds are not great. But it was ever thus. At the end of the day, you have to find a way to pay artists. We need the artists to show us things we couldn’t think of ourselves and ways to look at the world that make it feel bigger. So, bravery.
And that’s not a skill you can learn in school. But there’s another phrase I always go back to: “Chance favors the prepared mind.” While you can’t train yourself to be brave, you can do all the work to understand the options. That’s where training is so fundamental—you can only have more tools in the toolbox when you are prepared. I’m amazed that we all drive cars and don’t know how to fix a tire.
Eda Holmes. Photo: Dahlia Katz.
Is there one thing—either personal or professional—that you’ve done within the past year that you’re really proud of?
There are a few things.
A few are great, too!
I did a show over the holidays that started as a co-production with Centre du Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui and Centaur, which I don’t think had ever occurred. We collaborated on a new play by a playwright from Quebec. They invited me to direct it in French, and then we were in rehearsals for the English production when Omicron hit, and we had to cancel. I finally managed to bring it back and put it on stage in English, and the sheer tenacity it took to make that happen makes me quite happy.
The other thing was that, during the pandemic, we took stock of our position as agents of change within the arts institution. For our institution, what became clear was that we had not really served the Indigenous voice at all.
In 2021, we launched our Indigenous artist residency program. The outcome of this residency was a really controversial piece. It was a fully Indigenous company, mostly from this region, and it was so moving to see it come to life. It was beautiful and challenging, and all the things that I think our job is: to put everybody on stage.
We’ve committed to having an Indigenous story on stage every year, and although I haven’t yet, I’m trying to find dedicated funding for it. We’re going to build another Indigenous jury to take submissions and identify another project for the next three years; we’re looking to do another original piece for our 60th anniversary.
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*Eda Holmes dancing: photo by Dahlia Katz.