Effective the end of the, not yet announced, 2017/18 season Larry Beckwith will step down as Artistic Director of Toronto Masque Theatre and with his going the company will pack up its tents.  It’s unfortunate because TMT filled an interesting niche but fifteen years of organising, directing, administering and fund raising (especially the last) is a pretty long innings.  TMT has done a lot of innovative stuff over the years but I’ll remember them as a company that was not afraid to experiment with ideas and elements from outside the Western Classical tradition as exemplified by Alice Ping Yee Ho’s The Lesson of Da Ji and their upcoming show The Man Who Married Himself.  Toronto, of all cities, needs to find ways to incorporate the different cultural and musical traditions we come from into new art.  Larry and his collaborators did that.