Donor Story: Kit and Barbara Moore
In April 2000, Kit Moore attended his first Soulpepper production. It was The Mill on the Floss, which had been suggested to him by a friend during Soulpepper’s third season. It was just two years after Soulpepper opened and Kit was excited to have a company in Toronto that focused on the classics. Kit was drawn to the inviting and warm nature of Soulpepper and its acting ensemble. Ten years later Kit introduced Barbara to Soulpepper. Barbara grew up in an artistic household and is a long-time patron of Toronto’s classical music scene. Aside from occasional jaunts to the Stratford and Shaw Festivals, she did not actively attend theatre. Once she started attending Soulpepper with Kit, live theatre became a part of her life. Like Kit, Barbara enjoys theatre companies where you can get to know the actors and feel like a part of a community. As she puts it “It’s special to see a production, then, be joined by the familiar faces of the actors in the atrium post-show.”
Kit has been donating to Soulpepper for over 18 years. He recognized the financial challenges that any new start-up organization faces but believed in Soulpepper’s mission and wanted to support its growth. Barbara sees Soulpepper’s strength in its artists and its contribution to Toronto’s theatre ecology. The Moores feel that it is a priority to support theatre because of its power to expand your horizons, to present you with new points of view and also engage you in stories that often feel incredibly familiar. Kit and Barbara also appreciate the escape that attending live theatre offers. Kit, who is an avid rock climber and has been known to rappel down City Hall for charity each year, added: “Climbing on rocks outdoors is not unlike theatre, in that they both take us outside of our everyday lives for a little while.”
Over the next ten years, Kit and Barbara anticipate that Soulpepper will continue to work with great artists to produce new works and new old works they may have never seen before. Soulpepper is exactly the company that Kit imagined it would be 18 years ago.