Matthew Romantini and Christine Horne created The Thistle Project in 2004, to bring other artists together to share knowledge and skills in a performance context.
We constantly reexamine why we are doing this: why do we want to start a company, why do we want to work together, why do we even want to pursue careers in the theatre? The Thistle Project is sustained by the answers to these questions: we need to ensure that we are creating relevant, visceral, exciting, interesting performance works.
The company officially debuted to the public on 25 May, 2006 at our launch party and first annual fundraiser, hosted by Rower's Pub on Harbord Street. We then went on to workshop Gorey Story, our inaugural production in July and August 2006, before opening that production to a sold out house on Halloween 2006. Thistle has spent the last two years developing its adapatation of Ibsen's Peer Gynt, and will present the fully mounted piece in Autumn 2009.
The Thistle Project is the recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council and the Laidlaw Foundation, and has been nominated for four Dora Mavor Moore Awards.