Theatre Passe Muraille is a theatre company in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Brief history One of Canada's most influential alternative theatres, Theatre Passe Muraille ("theatre beyond walls") was founded in 1968 by director and playwright Jim Garrard, who started the company out of Rochdale College. Its intention was create a distinctly Canadian voice in theatre. It was conceived with the notion that theatre should transcend real estate and that plays can be made and staged anywhere—in barns, in auction rings, in churches, bars, basements, lofts, even in streetcars. The company was interested in the idea that theatre should endeavour to be a mirror, not a vehicle of social change. The company gained local notoriety when it was charged with obscenity for the play Futz by American playwright Rochelle Owens, about a farmer who falls in love with his pig. Jim Garrard was succeeded by Martin Kinch, who held the job of artistic director for a year (with Paul Thompson as technical director) before he went on to found Toronto Free Theatre with John Palmer and Tom Hendry. It was under Thompson's directorship in the 1970s that the theatre gained its national reputation. Thompson guided the company towards a distinctive style of collective creation with plays such as The Farm Show, 1837: The Farmer's Revolt and I Love You, Baby Blue. Other notable productions produced at Passe Muraille include O.D. on Paradise and Maggie and Pierre by Linda Griffiths; Fire by David Young and Paul Ledoux; The Stone Angel, James Nichol's adaptation of the novel by Margaret Laurence; Judith Thompson's The Crackwalker; and Lilies by Quebec playwright Michel Marc Bouchard. The company also had a major hit in 2001 with Michael Healey's play The Drawer Boy, which was based on actor Miles Potter's experiences researching and developing The Farm Show. Collective creation Paul Thompson brought to the company the art of “collective creation,” a technique in which plays are made collectively by the actors themselves. The use of collective creation at Passe Muraille began when Paul Thompson, John Palmer and Martin Kinch found themselves with many ideas for shows but no scripts. Thompson stated that “the collective-creation idea was inspired obviously by the Living Theatre, but more closely by a company called Theatre d’Aujourd’hui … There were a group of actors who had come out of the French section of the National Theatre School and were doing some very good improvisationally written