A Post Script on NTS and Canadian Acting Schools

It’s difficult in a climate and theatre community of largely half-hearted group hugs and the perennial obsession with the celebration of hurt feelings to exercise critical thinking. It’s difficult for some to understand that one doesn’t go to theatre (acting) school to acquire talent and that no school can deny or rob one of his/her talent.

I find it difficult to understand that many people actually believe that a moral (and ethical) core and a deep set of principles are bought with either money or fame, or, similarly, through poverty or obscurity, and that conditions and circumstances, personal or communal, great or harsh, create the core as opposed to simply affecting it.  These people are often swept and driven by emotion and blind to logic and reason, and usually (eventually) lead family members, friends, communities or countries to hell.

Fortunately there are people out there who do stick to making clear points, who agree or disagree with an idea or opinion by pointing to specific issues of concern and bones of contention, who elaborate on their point, hopefully with as many facts as they can get their hands on, so that others may also get the chance to agree or take issue with their views, thereby provoking healthy, sober, domino-effect debate. If theatre artists can’t or won’t do it… who should?

I’m thankful for those minds that refrain from projecting and vomiting their own personal frustrations and gripes with the world and their community, those who can spot templates instead of auto-generated imaginary personal attacks, who can make the critical distinction between describing (to the best of their ability) how the world and their community appear to them and lamenting or cheering (ad nausea) how the world and their community serve  - or fail to serve and promote - their own personal needs and dreams.

A lot of the emails sent my way, directly or indirectly, reacting to the first piece I posted yesterday, that others then proceeded to post elsewhere (which I have no problem with), are literally soaked in an emotional incoherent woe-is-me-or-us refrain or spread over a passive-aggressive who-the-fuck-are-you? subtext.   

Basically, and overall, the reactions fall under two clear categories: those who take offense, and those who exercise their own critical thinking and ponder the journalist’s question in whatever way they see fit. 

Yesterday, I suggested I could forward the journalist emails from those people who did not mind sharing their views. Thus far, less than a handful have informed me they have no problem with my doing so.

A couple of NTS alumni responded and did not take offense. Nor did they agree. They simply thanked me for offering food for thought. They knew that the collective ethos I took issue with transcends personal attacks on individuals and/or on NTS. They knew that my piece was not a sweeping comment on the caliber of people attending NTS or on their talent. (I have a number of friends who graduated from NTS, and they're very talented: some have done very well for themselves)

Given that young people admitted to some of the “finest” acting schools possess talent from birth, that we know  a school can never furnish an actor with talent, the question remains: What has the Canadian acting school, including NTS during its 50-year history, fostered in the actor and the community of actors? What has NTS encouraged the Canadian actor to be? 

We know that the French side of NTS stems from a French-Canadian society that considers culture and theatre very important (crucial) to everyday life. We know that, for the most part, generally, French-Canadians do not see theatre or culture as simply a must-do "night out" of the civilized, an entertaining journey through a one-size-fits-all supermarket of international theatre hits, but an important cultural mirror that reflects and challenges the French-Canadian society, a society keenly interested in theatre and in being challenged. For the most part. And some of my French-Canadian artist friends would not be as generous in describing the state of culture and theatre in Québec.

What about NTS’ English side?

Does it reflect and/or instill the same commitment to the process of theatre and the vital (viral) role of the actor within it and society? Does it support a commitment to a theatre that does not play TO an audience but reflects a society’s dreams, nightmares, aspirations, fears, foibles and challenges especially by addressing those issues the audience (society) would rather not deal with and ignore in daily life? Yes or no?

Do the best acting schools in Canada - does NTS  - instill in the actor the energy, commitment, craft and a social/political awareness needed to create works on par with the great relevant theatre of the past, or do they simply teach people how to best mimic the past, bypass the present and to remain silent where voices should sing and howl?

If Ontario's total annual theatre output is comprised mainly of plays from Britain and the USA - to the tune of 85%  - is it possible that this FAT fact and statistic offers an insight into what  English Canada’s acting schools preach, teach, encourage and expect? 

Some actors who chose NOT to attend NTS in the 70s and 80s (and who have done very well for themselves) expressed (in emails) similar sentiments on what The School projected during those years: an English-colonialist-infested pathology. 

The perception might be just that: a perception. But it is too widespread a perception for it to be summarily dismissed by knee-jerking, emotionally-driven, hurt-feelings-wound-licking thespians gorging on Facebook like drunks in a beer hall.

I believe Paul Thompson worked very hard as NTS director to get people away from the school’s colonialist shackles and stranglehold. That's what people tell me, and I have no reason to not believe them. Thompson, like Douglas Campbell before him, is often the youngest theatre artist in a room or a theatre. It’s why he lasts and why he’s been relevant.

A JOURNALIST CONTACTED ME RE THE POSSIBILITY OF (him) DOING A STORY ON THE NATIONAL THEATRE SCHOOL (NTS) CELEBRATING ITS 50th ANNIVERSARY.

The question he asked: Is NTS  a wonderful place with highly successful alumni as the ads say or is there someone he should talk to who may have another perspective on acting schools, what they promise and deliver? 

This was my response to the journalist:

You may be asking the wrong person or the right person, depending on where you sit with the idea (creation) of an acting school, its purpose, importance, or relevance.

Though my ideas on acting schools have somewhat changed since the late 1970s, some ideas have not, in particular where it pertains to establishments like the National Theatre School. 

In the ‘70s, the theatre people I hung out with were generally allergic to NTS. It was perceived as an establishment type (privileged) institution that apparently guaranteed a quicker entry into the sacred kingdom of Canadian theatre, Stratford in particular.  Of course! The “allergy” was in part due to the opinion that NTS preached, taught and practiced a colonialist, trickle-down, top-down theatre education template. The school, in the view of many in English Montreal, did not promote or instill individual expressions of acting reflecting the dreams and nightmares of an authentic Canadian reality but a standardized approach to theatrical expression – from England.  NTS did not reflect a (1970s) present-day, organic Canadian reality but an imposed (colonialist) reality in which Canadians would constantly be made to feel second-class citizens on home turf unless they could pretend to sound and look more English than the English from England. Culturally speaking, in the ‘70s, “National” was a misnomer.  Colonial was a better fit. I know that with time the school has probably changed its approach to acting and theatre. How much?  I don't know the answer to that. But there’s the rub.  Take Julliard, for example.

According to many theatre people and audiences in New York, the best production ever of Angels In America (Millenium Approaches) was its New York premiere in 1992 at Juilliard - when Tony Kushner was a playwright-in-residence at the School.  I saw the play on Broadway in 1993 when I was living in New York. And though people loved the Broadway production they would always point to (and lament) the one produced at Julliard the year before.  Considering how quickly this play hit the stage after the AIDS epidemic of the mid and late 1980s, the question is: has any theatre school in Canada contributed any relevant piece of theatre on issues relevant to the society at large?

There was a time in the 1980s and 1990s when my dear friend (and director) Tibor Feheregyhazi (now deceased) could tell instantly (at auditions) where an actor had studied acting in Canada – just by how he/she approached a character or a text. He was horrified. So was I when he told me. He would apparently listen to (and watch) the actor do his/her audition and would immediately say to himself (he’s from NTS, she’s from York, he studied at Ryerson, or University of Alberta, or University of Regina, or University of Saskatchewan.) Then he'd run to his office and look at his files and the actor's resumé and BINGO! He was always right. Rarely, if ever, did he miss the mark. This is no joke. It’s a nightmare!

Like manufacturing companies that put out cars and appliances year after year spending millions telling people how and why they’re different (cars that ultimately share the basics: carriage, at least four wheels, a motor, a trunk, a steering wheel and seats) acting schools promote easily recognizable acting templates like status symbols, and both the schools and students are proud of that fact.  NTS was no different in the ‘70s and ‘80s and early ‘90s. I can only speak for those years because that is when I became acutely aware of the problem with all acting schools in Canada. The irony is, of course, that a NTS student would have felt a huge sense of pride (and accomplishment) at the comment: “You studied at NTS, didn’t you?”  To many, that statement in the form of a question would have been a huge compliment, and, in many cases, it was meant as a compliment.

Let's not forget: In the late ‘70s and during early ‘80s, Stratford, and many professional theatres in Canada, were enjoying the last days of being run by or populated with repressed, middle-aged gay men (most residing unfortunately in communities hostile to gay people) whose interest lay mainly in well articulated Shakespeare and in young boys with cupid faces and tight butts.   No joke.

In the 1990s of course a different problem emerged: the same people who graduated from the school in the '70s and '80s now considered it a status symbol to teach there, whether they were qualified or not did not matter.

in 2001, a young ('hot') director I was working with at Soulpepper informed me that he had just been offered a job to teach at NTS. Should he take the job, he asked?  This young director was very bright, but his understanding of actors and acting was minimal, intellectual at best. I suggested that if he had long-term plans and goals with theatre he should choose an experienced  director whose work he admired and to propose him/her to NTS and to also propose that he be allowed to assist him/her. The young director thought my suggestion was interesting and then accepted the job.
                     
In other words, the institution, what it represents as a cultural symbol, as a status symbol, for its students and its teachers, is bigger and more culturally relevant than the artists and teachers that attend or teach there and bigger than the art the students produce.               
     
This is no different than the Canadian bureaucratic artistic community at large that has castrated our culture, where the institutions are privileged and funded and not necessarily the artists, where culture has noting to do with the art artists produce but with the general noise being made about culture in the various cultural institutions, where it's often more attractive and rewarding to work for an arts institution or council than to work as an artist in the real world having to apply for an arts grant.
       
Here’s a story you may find interesting: In 1982, at Stratford, while working as an apprentice actor, I was asked to be the tour guide for the visiting French acting class from NTS (I spoke French). A colleague was asked to be the tour guide for the English acting class from NTS. At one point both groups met in the main festival theatre. The English students were there first: as soon as they set foot on the stage you could swear they had just landed in MARS or in HEAVEN: they froze, awestruck at the immensity of the moment, choked and numbed by it. They couldn’t move. They clearly were treating it like an altar, like something that was beyond their humanity, a far cry from where any actor (a devil, or Arlecchino) should be. When the French students hit the stage: BOOM! No fear! The place exploded. Immediately the French actors ran across the stage, broke into soliloquies and song and duets, ran up the aisles, went all the way up to the catwalk and exchanged (yelled) dialogue with schoolmates from scenes they were studying at NTS. The place literally exploded with electric energy. There was no reverence for the place. The French students immediately justified why that theatre was built in the first place. Young as they were, they literally took it over. Made it their own for the brief time they were there.Owned. There’s the difference. I was very depressed that afternoon in 1982. I knew that what I had seen defined (culturally and artistically) the two Canadas of the two solitudes.

English NTS had clearly prepared the students to revere the place; French NTS had encouraged the actors to be and express all of who they were. And they did.

Simon Callow, since 1985 (in his book: Being An Actor), has been addressing the diminished role of the actor (and his craft) in the theatre.  In his 2001 Foreword of Michael Chekhov’s reprinting of “TO THE ACTOR”, Callow states: “The last time there was a full debate about acting in the British theatre was in the late 1950s and early 1960s of the last century, and it may be interesting to consider what came out of it. The debate was provoked by the revolution in playwriting at the Royal Court Theatre, which led to an urgent demand for new kinds of acting.”

This revolution apparently ushered in the (historically and culturally important) wave of “angry young man” theatre: Look Back In Anger, etc.

Today, Callow says, experiment has become “centered on design and concept, both under the control of the director. The actor’s creative imagination – his fantasy, his instincts for gesture – (is) of no interest; all the creative imagining (is) done by the director and the designer.”

Callow would not be surprised to learn that most theatres in Canada (AND THEATRE SCHOOLS) practice director-driven theatre – and a mediocre one at that.  And it’s killing our theatre. Even those companies (AND THEATRE SCHOOLS) purportedly claiming to be actor-centered theatres (OR SCHOOLS), and founded on that principle, have, sadly, abandoned what they set out to be, and have become, instead, colonialist-second-fiddle-facsimile establishment theatre companies and schools.  Nothing more. The theatres (OR THEATRE SCHOOLS) may be different in size and yearly operating budgets, but the mentality is one and the same. IN ENGLISH CANADA.

Can you imagine a revolution on acting being provoked by present-day “resident” playwrights out of the Stratford or Shaw Festivals - or even Soulpepper?  Or from NTS? Or from any of the smaller companies or theatre schools?, or from our community of playwrights? Not in a million years. The colonialist-infested mindset permeating professional theatre and acting schools (NTS is no exception), and the pursuit of dollars, success, and a relative – minuscule - fame in the place of the pursuit of ideas and organic creations that deal with issues our society deems important, taboo or ignores, have essentially castrated our theatre and theatre artists.

Theatre schools, like our playwrights and theatre companies - for the most part – foster and want good-little-boys-and-girls actors. At least, the pedagogic template and theatrical works by professional playwrights and theatres  - for the most part - emanate that energy and reflect that need.

Since the ‘50s we have built more cathedrals of theatre than anything else, and take pride in that fact. NTS is one of our finer cultural institutions. Has it nurtured and fostered actors who have created lasting original authentic Canadian works? How many?

Great societies of the past (enjoying an explosion of cultural activity) did not promote the positives; they acknowledged - and took responsibility for - the negatives: the positives took care of themselves. After 50 years, it’s better for NTS to ponder what it didn’t do, where it failed and why, instead of celebrating what it has done and where it has succeeded.  Like any theatre production the audience, the public, ultimately, rightly or wrongly, tells us whether our theatre or acting has been relevant or not.

And if the be all and end all of our collective and individual cultural efforts (if the goal of our theatre and acting learning and practice) is to end up playing a lead role in Bonanza, like Lorne Greene, in Star Trek, like William Shatner, or Sandra Oh in Grey's Anatomy, then maybe we should consider voting for a head of government whenever Americans go to the polls. The question is: If Sandra Oh had never landed a role in Grey's Anatomy where would she fit in Canada's present-day cultural (TV/film/theatre) landscape?  And if a "national" theatre school (English side) instills a sense of individual voices and expression why would Andrew Moodie feel the need to write for the spring 2011 issue of ACTRA TORONTO PERFORMERS "Sharing the Spotlight: Diversity is not about taking the spotlight away from anyone; it's about sharing the spotlight together"? And why would ACTRA winter 2011 Magazine include an article (with contribution by Jani Lauzon - Actra Diversity Chair) that stresses "Today, over 11 million people in Canada are either culturally or physically diverse (visible minorities, Aboriginal or disabled). The outcome of this is seen visually in our daily lives as one walks on our streets but is not reflected on our screens."?
           
This refrain has been playing on repeat for awhile. Canada has been promoted as one of the most culturally diverse countries on the planet for awhile, at least since the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism  (established July 19, 1963) handed in its final report in 1969. NTS was established in 1960. Do the math.

Best regards,


Tony

Olbermann: the beginning of the end of America

The MULTI contradictions and nightmares of the Multi-cultural Canada(s)

In view of what happened in the Quebec National Assemby (National Assembly turns away Sikhs - http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/National+Assembly+turns+away+Sikhs/4130758/story.html#ixzz1BYDY81fm  and Barbara Kay's Multiculturalism ‘is not a Quebec value’ http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/01/19/barbara-kay-multiculturalism-is-not-a-quebec-value/#ixzz1BYDIP8Xc) I think it's important to copare these facts and articles with comments made in recent Episodes of The Agenda on the state of the Canadian State (see Still Lamenting a Nation, Ken Dryden - Becoming Canada, Who is Your Canada?, The trouble with Canada...still, see http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda) here are a few comments:

Ken Dryden's school example baffles.

If children congregate in tribal groups at lunchtime and not during class, if the luxury existing in the former is denied in the latter, the math is clear:  the children are (FEEL) freer in the former than in the latter. They are themselves in the former and who-they-are-told-to-be in the latter.

The whole Canadian concept of multiculturalism and multicultural harmony (as it has been has been preached) is largely a fabrication with a nightmare boiling underneath and waiting to explode. 

The only reason the Vesuvian nightmare has not erupted is because there are enough federal and provincial institutional COMA CENTRES that attempt to numb (and to some degree do numb) the senses, that (like the school Drydren mentions) contain the problem, minimize it's effects, with a ton of meaningless eye candy and by putting the focus on something else (other subject matters and chocolate covered dog bones).

Dryden's example is great for revealing what's NOT working in Canada. Any multiculturalism that excludes English and French Canadians is in fact not multiculturalism but 'otherculturalism'... a branch... a gigantic twig on the Bicultural Maple Leaf Tree.

Richard Gynn no doubt longs for the good old days.

The ridiculous notion that all Canadians have a fundamental self-confidence problem (and that feel-good projects such as the Vancouver Olympics with it's 'let's own the podium' battle cry will over time heal the self-inflicted pathology of inferiority) is NOT SHARED BY MOST CANADIANS of non-ethno-English backgrounds. 

French Canadians have no problem wanting to own a podium. And the many diverse communities in Canada are not comprised of mainly fear-infested individuals who believe it is their birthright to underachieve. YET no one takes Richard Gwyn or that idea to task. Ever. Roberto Martella could have. Partly did. He was skating around that subject. But said more than the others.

There is unfortunately too often tacit agreement in group conversations on issues and labels that most non-English Canadians disagree with (and manifest differently) in reality, and in how they view, define and manifest the concepts of will and sense of self.

Institutionally? That's another story.

There is a perception problem.

Roberto Martella, by the way, was born in Canada NOT in Italy.

But that's not the perception problem.

Richard Gwyn's "Can I say a word in defense of the old Canada?"

Everything that official and institutional English Canada is and promulgates is in defense of an old Canada, the one that Gwyn and many others like him lament daily, a Canada largely surviving (maybe solely) on institutional privileges and protection, and, facsimile culture, borrowed culture, memory culture. 

The old Canada didn't allow multiculturalism; it HAD to allow some semblance of it. Many of the immigrants that came to Canada in the early part of the 20th century were coming to America, not Canada, or to an almost America for those who could make the distinction between Canada and the US. Canada benefited greatly from the many immigrants who believed they had come to a promised land offering the same rights as in the States. That's why "multiculturalism"could happen here and not in Germany. A lot of people came to Canada and stayed. Germany was never America in the minds of emigrants. Canada was, or was close enough.

Once these people settled in Canada, had children, and did not return to the old country (as English Canada would have preferred during the first half of the 20th century) they naturally began to share - especially through their Canadian-born children, in the feeling (and right) of entitlement. But institutional Canada was not (is not) structured to accommodate more than two entitled tribes. Never was. The multicultural carrot was - is - less than a carrot. It's yet another imaginary nation within an imaginary nation. If a WASP Canadian were to be asked if he or she belonged to a multicultural community, he/she would respond: "No, I'm just Canadian."

Multiculturalism is an expensive dog bone and Richard Gwyn wants everyone to know that he belongs to the tribe that paid for the deluxe dog bone for 'ethnics', that unlike other countries' treatment of animals, their pet dogs and cats, Canada has allowed all animals to live in the house, on the bed, and gave them the very best dog food money could buy.  What more could the animals possibly want, given where they came from?

Multiculturalism is a mirage... it's not real and it won't go away. It reflects a disturbing reality. A recurring dream or nightmare.  It's Lady M's blood-spotted hands that appear but won't disappear no matter how hard she tries to rub them out. The fact that multiculturalism automatically excludes English and French Canadians tells you it's not what it purports to be.

The funny thing is this: Richard Gwyn says, "Can I say a word in defense of the old Canada?" as if he had been saying something else all along.

Dryden is correct in saying that the polite, nice, respectful, and clean Canada gave birth to multiculturalism. The problem is in the definition of what type of multiculturalism we have. It failed. In my opinion. Dryden and Gwyn on the other hand believe it's a success story.. and that it makes us world class in the eyes of the world. It's a dog bone with added sugar. Nothing more. It's a huge failure, as with many other social experiments in Canada. That is why people like Ken Dryden were embarrassed by Canada-defining descriptions and labels of 'polite', 'clean', 'nice', etc., not because they are bad qualities in and of themselves but because they reflect a general Anglo-Canada timidity with manifesting any type of will or opinion on any progressive front, and because Dryden knew instinctively (practically from birth) and via too many living examples around him, that those qualities produced - and could only produce - MEDIOCRITY.


The WE Steve Paikin mentions is the big difference.  I'm glad he opened that can of worms. Dryden fumbled on that one. But here's an answer to Steve Paikin's question of WHO IS THE WE?

The following is from Andrew Cohen's essay: Imagining Canada's 153th birthday.

"No, this isn't your father's Canada. Nor is it the Canada of Sir John A. Macdonald, Mackenzie King, Lester Pearson, Brian Mulroney, Pierre Berton, Margaret Atwood, Michael Bliss, Douglas Coupland, or Avril Lavigne. They would not recognize it, and few in this new country would recognize them The nation roams around under a cloud of amnesia, as if nothing happened before yesterday: This summer holiday - what do they call it? This capital - what does it represent?  This Parliament - what does it do? July 1 was once Canada Day (in prehistoric times, it was Dominion Day) and this was a national celebration. Ottawa was a national capital and Parliament was a national legislature. There is no 'national" anymore becaue there is no nation, at least not as we knew it. Canada is a country in little more than name. It has taken the 19th century idea of the nation-state and turned it on its head; Canada is now a collection of many nations (its ethnic minorities) who know only their own past, and many states (its provinces) that now know only their own interests...Now in 2020 we look around in despair. In the voiceless country there is no left to recall its past, no one left to celebrate its principles, and no one left to speak its name."

The above is a perfect description of present-day Canada, and the tribal Canada I've known my whole life. So what is Andrew Cohen talking about? The FUTURE? Is he insane? Is he out of touch with reality? Just a little maybe. There's no imagination required in what he says. That which he believes can and will be Canada's unfortunate future is actually present-day Canada.

But m important: WHO is Andrew Cohen talking to? Who is his WE?

Look at the books, who wrote them and why:

CANADA IN 2020
LAMENT FOR CANADA
THE TROUBLE WITH CANADA
IF YOU LOVE THIS COUNTRY
THE UNFINISHED CANADIAN
Who We Are: A Citizen's Manifesto

There is a common WE in these books. It's not the WE in Québéc and not the WE shared by the many people who came to these shores since the latter part of the 19th century. In many ways it's a WE that never was - never existed - across the entire nation, except within the reality and minds of  Anglo-Canadians .

The MOSAIC WE is a Canadian ad campaign. It's also an outsider's view of Canada, of how a Canadian family celebrates birthdays. It does not carry the knowledge of what is driving a huge wedge between the family members, the cultures in Canada, and what dis-unites them.It's an opinion largely based on ignorance of facts and travel books and brochures.

It's a Father-Knows-Best "wish we could re-live '50s television again". Meanwhile Robert Young was busy trying to kill himself. His Wikipedia Bio is a perfect description of Canada. "Despite his trademark portrayal of happy, well-adjusted characters, Young's bitterness ... never diminished, and he suffered from depression and alcoholism, culminating in a suicide attempt in the early 1990s."  Took him more than 83 years to muster the courage to end his life.And failed at that. Like Canada. Doesn't know how to live and it won't kill itself, but dying nevertheless..

WE are in trouble,

and the fact that many people in English-Canada (as Steve Paikin echoed in Still Lamenting a Nation) keep underlining the glorious nation-defining '60s  ... when CANADA WAS (apparently) COOL, is insanity. It reflects Canada the ONE-SIDED country.

I have lived in Québéc, raised there, worked there, still do, and speak French. I have yet to hear people in English Canada describe the Québéc I know. The events of the last couple of days in Québéc remind us that the ethnocentricity of the Two Solitudes is alive and well.

In Québéc the '60s are seen as the years of reckoning, the years that finally settled some truths. It gave birth to an active, very vocal and loud French-Canadian voice too long suppressed in service of, to benefit and accommodate, Anglophones of Lower Canada.  It ushered in the nationalization of Québéc companies. The FLQ manifesto read on the air during the October 1970 crisis - as a condition for releasing British Trade Envoy Cross - was partly responsible for escalating matters at the time. Why? Most French-Canadians had no problem with the FLQ's manifesto and its content. They agreed with it; they had a problem with the FLQ's tactics (murder).

Film maker Pierre Falardeau (deceased) was (is) very popular in Québéc. His funeral and the eulogy by his son (and another memorial speech by one of Québéc's well known actors) played like political rallies for the separatist movement.  If it weren't for how the separatist movement (and Québéc)  ignores the other cultures and the aboriginals there's very little wrong with it.

English Canada is in a dream world. French Canada is in a let's wait and see mode. Meanwhile the country is changing dramatically in both English and French Canada. Has been for years. And within this new reality the TWO-SOLITUDES Canadas fight even harder to keep a past alive as a present, they need to keep alive the Plains of Abraham in order to preserve the memory of the Canadas of Old... on both sides. That's what you get when you don't have a country with an idea of nationhood and rights that transcend cultural tribes. English and French Canada have given Canada the Canada it has. The other diverse communities ape the mainstream and keep to themselves, every lunchtime, just like the students in the school Dryden visited and talked about.

Tony Nardi

The public debate on non-traditional casting

Tony Nardi's email to Don Rubin following the public debate on non-traditional casting, with a commentary by Nick Mancuso.

November 22, 2010 
Subject: The panel

Dear Don Rubin,

I don't know about you, but I was very surprised at last night's turnout. I thought that by arriving so close to 5:00PM I would risk not getting in. As it turned out there were only a dozen people in attendance, if that.

THAT perhaps is the most important statistic, last night's actual turnout.

It actually felt like the many Letter presentations I did in Toronto in 2007 when only a dozen people or less would show up. With the Letters, the actor (me) at times threatened to outnumber the audience; with yesterday, the 5-person panel risked outnumbering the audience.

Does this mean the subject matter is irrelevant? Not at all. It is vitally relevant. It does mean, however, that, problem notwithstanding, people out there do not believe panel discussions can address the problem.

As Nick (Mancuso) said yesterday, it's all about perception. And there is a huge perception problem.

The other important statistic is the fact that Kamal was apparently the first and only theatre critic 'of colour' to work at the Globe and Mail - in its history.  Considering that Kamal was not born in Canada... this essentially means that no Canadian-born theatre critic "of colour' was ever hired by the Globe... This is a stat worthy of South Africa during apartheid, not of a multicultural Canada.

Telling yesterday was Playwright Djanet Sears' story, when, a number of years ago,  hoping she could be seen for a role in a Chekhov play at the Shaw Festival, got this response from then artistic director Christopher Newton: "You know there simply weren't black people living in Chekhov's Russia" 

Djanet Sears, if you recall, apparently understood the dilemma Newton found himself in.

I didn't. That's why I asked Djanet, "Did you ever think of asking Newton how many white Canadians with phony English accents lived in Chekhov's Russia?"

The house laughed, if you recall. Not because what I said was funny. They had not previously considered that what Newton and gang had been doing for years (at Shaw) was  non-traditional casting, but were reserving it for a few (white English Canadians).

The victim - it seems - gets used to believing the abuser is the norm, the standard. It had never occurred to Djanet - and many others - including everyone else in the room, that non-traditional casting in this country started when English-Canadians and French-Canadians, in other words the two mainstream cultures, chose to perform plays from foreign writers with funny (foreign) accents on stage. It was NORMAL, traditional, for white English Canadians to play Russians, Greeks, Italians, Germans, etc., usually and always with an affected English accent (go figure). The minute a non-English Canadian, those of different ethnic backgrounds and colour, wanted - expected - equal treatment, the whole issue of "non-traditional" casting was raised, as if it were a new, groundbreaking discovery and the mainstream would now have to make room for it. Unbelievable.

If more than 80% of the plays performed in Ontario (professional and amateur theatre combined) are from the British and American 'hit' list and canon,  'white' English-Canadians have been practicing non-traditional casting from day one, since most of them are neither British nor American. The pathology, the sickness, is in the fact that mainstream Canada, and even those not in the mainstream, like Djanet Sears, are so accustomed to accepting non-traditional casting as a norm (as traditional) when it pertains to those belonging to the so-called two founding nations, and see it as different, odd, new, abnormal, when it includes those outside the two founding nations. This is why Christopher Newton could make a racist comment (and get away with it), not even aware that he was being racist, and so out of touch with reality that he actually believed that white Canadians with phony British accents were a norm in Russia and that Russians would agree with him. 

Absent last night, sadly, was any discussion on power and politics, that those who control the public purse and institutions, unfortunately, have, for decades, embraced, organically, Christopher Newton's logic and reasoning. But history teaches us, if anything, that those who have the political power, and therefore the public purse strings (especially when both are held by those who firmly believe they have cultural and ethnic entitlement), if they do not share it equally will eventually force the 'others' to wrest it from them. Some of the great classics deal with this very subject. The not-too distant horror in Bosnia (Sarajevo) demonstrated how easily a celebrated multicultural state can dive to hell in a second. Artists from the former Yugoslavia living in Vancouver reminded me of this when I was shooting My Father's Angel in '98. They found our Canadian naiveté (and political immaturity) baffling and arrogant.

For those yesterday who believed (and maintained) that some subject matters belong (strictly) to a previous generation, that they have no relevancy today, they have a poor knowledge of history. History shows that the world does not move forward; it simply repeats itself. The issues repeat themselves and we're (collectively) too stupid (or scared) to move forward (by choosing not to deal with them). And if we have not advanced from when Tyrone Guthrie said in the late 1950s "English Canada will have no culture to speak of if it does not reflect the climate, the landscape and the people with whom it shares both" we have no one to blame but ourselves.

I thought that Antoni Cimolino and Kamal were refreshing voices. What they said should have been a starting point for a debate that, in a sense, never took off. In my opinion, you as the moderator, could have provoked the debate to go further given the 'polite' trepidation among the panelists.  How we discuss our theatre reflects in many ways the theatre we have. The odd thing is that academics are generally more interested in keeping score on these topics than theatre practitioners. Theatre practitioners do not make the same money as university professors; they have a tough time trying to make ends meet.  They're IN it, for the most part, and do not have the luxury of stepping outside of it. That's no excuse however.

Our theatre scene is essentially a fear-based facsimile of other people's culture. We're often drowning in second-hand - borrowed - culture. When our video stores place Canadian and Québec films in the foreign film category, what else is there to say?

A brief word about rants... since  Andrew Moodie brought it up, and feared delivering (falling into) one.   I think 99% of people hate rants. Always have. Throughout history. The paradox is that history also shows that 99% of people love rants, but usually after the fact, with a 30-year to a 50-year distance. Our universities are filled with professors earning good money on the backs of rants made years before ...all the way back to the big bang.
Thanks for yesterday.


Sincerely,


Tony

N.B.  Please see Nick Mancuso' comment below.

Begin forwarded message:

tony, after yesterdays panel on non-traditional casting, which orginally it seems was supposed to have been about "people of color" in really it seems about the inclusion and expansion, of women, colored folks, hispanics, etc-within the framework of a multi-colored nation which as of yet does not truly reflect, its rich and varied people- certainly worthwhile discussions and worthy of an attempt to implement into a culture which still mostly reflects the founding two nations, to say nothing of the indigenous people- it seems  to me that it is almost impossible to affect change as long as the cultural industres for the most part are influenced and funded by govt agencies which have mandates of control and lobbies of vested interest in the creation of culture, theatre, painting, poetry, novels etc...
as i pointed out in the Q&A right after the panel statements and was rather quickly silenced, in the ususal manner- the essential difference bewtween the american and the canadian mandates is that there is little to zero discsussion about american culture in the states, at least  within the creative communities, unless of course it manifests as a religious or for the most part right wing ideological idea of what consitutes a patriotic american, and for the most part its not a pretty picture-

personally i dont feel that that the issue of cultural mandates of one kind or another that do not entail freedom of expression on all levels in cluding the utter freedom of a white othello or a black juliet amount to much in terms of any ultimate creative gain

culture can not and should not be mandated from above, or from any prefixed idea f what should ot should not exist but will of course be influence from the direction of where the checks come in frm-

as long as canadian culture, so called is funded by a government system at at current rates of supprt amount to 4 - to 20 percent of the total dollar that actually goes into the pockets of the artists- there isnt much hope and it is tokenism and welfare culture at its finest

as chung-stzu, the chinese sage wrote;

"where beaurcrats advance, the people are harmed"
i would hasten to add- artists of all stripes, color, denomination, racial original and pont point of birth including england and france-

pax

nickm



nick mancuso

Panel on NON-TRADITIONAL CASTING, Nov. 21, 2010, sponsored by The Canadian Theatre Critics Association

Tony Nardi's email to CTCA’s national president, Don Rubin, of York University, November 16, 2010


Subject:  CTCA Panel Nov. 21 - THEATRE ARTISTS AND CRITICS TO DEBATE NON-TRADITIONAL CASTING


Dear Don Rubin,

I just heard about your  event at Tarragon Theatre on Sunday, Nov. 21, to debate the subject of “Non-Traditional Casting and Criticism.”  I hope I can make it. I hope Rocco Galati (Constitutional lawyer and producer of the filmed version of "Two Letters... And Counting!") can make it, as well.

It's too bad I wasn't informed earlier about this panel. Given the subject of Letter Two, which specifically takes issue with cultural stereotyping by critics, directors, actors (even those from non-Anglo and non-Franco backgrounds), and from a centuries-old infestation of colonial mindsetting, it would have been interesting to be a part of it. 

I confess, I find "Non-Traditional Casting and Criticism" problematic. It presumes that there exists a normal, standard position, set by a casting God, and another standard that deviates form the norm, and, that there are people who are "like this", 'this tight' with the casting God and could define normal for all the others. Is casting a white Canadian male as Treplev or Trigorin with a phony affected English accent considered traditional (normal) casting in Canada? The answer is ‘yes’. Has been ‘yes’ for many years.

Is it traditional (normal) for white Canadian actors to slap a phony English accent on almost every role in any classic of world theatre in translations published by Penguin? Yes. It has always been ‘yes’. We have a history of a (white) Canadian theatre scene that has, for the most part and consistently, been pathologically inauthentic – and therefore largely irrelevant. Even Domenico Pietropaolo’s translation of Pirandello’s Six Characters … was performed (on stage and on CBC radio) with stiff upper lip English accents by Shaw Festival actors, and, it was directed by an east-European director.

We have a Playwrights Canada that has refused to publish Canadian plays written (and produced professionally) in languages other than English and then refuses to publish the plays once they have been translated into English. This practice, according to many English Canadians, is okay. It’s the norm. It’s the tradition.

I did some research two years ago. Eighty percent of the plays performed yearly in Ontario (professional or amateur) are classics or hits from the English or American repertoire. That, too, is traditional. This, of course, wouldn’t make sense to the group of seven. It wouldn’t have made sense to Tyrone Guthrie, either, when he left Stratford in the late 1950s with the parting words that no theatre culture in Canada could thrive – would thrive, or become vital and relevant, unless the theatre artists reflected the landscape, the ‘climate’, and the people with whom they shared both.

The problem is tribal. Cultural. Non-traditional casting sidesteps the issue. Because the issue is tribal, cultural, and political and no one wants to touch it. Like with education. Could you imagine a Canadian politician going on television and telling Canada that the government in Ontario violated the 1867 constitution for decades by taxing illegally those who sent their children to Catholic schools? The constitution guaranteed public schooling across Canada for those attending both protestant (public) and catholic (separate) schools. So how about we give the millions of dollars back to those immigrants or French Canadians living in Ontario all those years right up to the mid 1970s?

It's tribal.

In the mid 1970s Canadian author Neil Bissoondath was assigned to York University’s Bethune College (an institution devoted to Third World Studies), though his major was in French language and literature. He should have been sent to bilingual Glendon College. What happened?  He was a recent immigrant from a Third World country (Trinidad). His adviser assumed he would be most comfortable in an environment of mainly non-whites. Mr. Bissondath in his 1994 book Selling Illusions partly excused  the custom (in classic Oreo cookie fashion) by saying  “the concept of ‘sticking with your own’ was just then in vogue at York.”

Apparently, we don’t have the same problem today, he and others argue. Yet, a January 12, 2009 Toronto STAR headline read:  Study (done at York University) Shows High Tolerance For Racism.   The racial slurs that were encouraged, excused or totally ignored - daily - at the university apparently shocked many.

And that’s at a university, your university, where, in a 30-year span, since Bissondath’s graduation, society’s more ‘enlightened’ have apparently been gathering, learning and hashing out progressive, non-traditional-casting ideas.

A flat tire cannot be changed when the car is travelling at 100 miles an hour. Impossible. The bi-cultural Canada wheels with the multicultural paint job speeds down the highway with a couple of flat tires, but the car radio yahoos at full volume.

Canada’s nationhood is (still) predicated on cultural privilege (cultural background). Those belonging to the so-called two founding nations have entitlement. The others are on the outside looking in, even when they’re in looking out.

Why are the two “founding nations” excluded from the list that defines multicultural Canada? Why do we have a bi-cultural Canada for the two founding nations and a multicultural Canada for all the others?

I agree with these words by author Pat Duffy Hutcheon, though I do not agree with his proposed solutions.

“Canada has been applauded as the first immigrant country to become thoroughly pluralistic -- in guiding philosophy as well as the obvious fact of an ethnically diverse population. However, I intend to argue that the actual situation is much more ambiguous and complex, and that the earlier vision driving the country has altered drastically and rapidly over the past several decades until, today, it seems to many Canadians that we have arrived at a place envisioned by very few and sought by no one. In the vague hope of achieving an intercultural society with room for all-comers, we appear to have been propelled from the dark vision of two non-communicating founding nations within one country through a failed attempt at an inclusive biculturalism. In the process, we have seen our long-time vision of equal opportunity for individuals within an integrated intercultural nation change drastically to what looks suspiciously like one of race-based apartheid in a mere geographical territory housing a multitude of isolated ethnic groupings. A look at the course of this revolution may prove enlightening….A successful pluralist culture is one that is continuously enriched and altered by innovation from within, and by the subcultures being carried into it by immigrants.”

Well, we’re nowhere close.

Here’s some logic that derails.

“In fact, most new Canadians have chosen to come to Canada precisely because of their perceptions of what our culture, as a whole, represents. The attribute most often mentioned is our internationalist outlook: an outlook precisely opposite to that fostered in the sheltered subcultural enclave. Most immigrants do not want a replica of what they left behind. Least of all do most of them desire a re-playing, in a new setting, of the old religious conflicts, caste rules and blood feuds that they were trying to escape.”

If this is true, why should new Canadians leave their cultural baggage at customs while the “old” (English) Canadians (those who were here first, still cling to their inauthentic Victorian and pre-Victorian pasts? Last I checked Canada’s flagships theatres were still the Shaw and Stratford festivals.  Is this not pathology? And has pathology not become the norm, the standard? And we are using this standard (interesting and telling than anyone would think it IS a worthy standard) to gauge how to include (position) non-Anglo and non-Franco Canadians within in this bi-cultural, Anglo-Franco, Plains-Of-Abraham tribal nightmare?

I wish Douglas Campbell were alive. He would be a much-needed tonic at any roundtable on theatre and non-traditional casting. I wish Nathan Cohen were alive. I quoted him in Letter Two. And Douglas moderated Letter Two at Espace Libre shortly before he died.

As for the follwoing question taken from the release:

“Could critics and audiences, for example, accept the notion of a female Hamlet or a female Lear?”

What year are we in? Is this a serious question?

Did Sara BERNHARDT not play the title role of Hamlet in 1899? Did she play it in French with a stiff upper lip English accent, or in English with a pointu’ French accent? She travelled the Americas.

This is why no one takes theatre seriously. We entertain questions that often sound better in a parlour, with a gin tonic in hand, low lighting, and at about 2:00A.M.

Could you imagine doctors today holding conferences and discussing medical advancements introduced in 1899 as if they were just brought in today? Would those doctors not be helped to a straight jacket and a permanent visit to the Clark?

Here’s a word on Tony Howard”s book: Women as Hamlet: Performance and Interpretation in Theatre, Film and Fiction.

“Tony Howard’s lively and informative study draws our attention to the fact that the extensive history of Shakespeare’s most famous character includes an extraordinary and rather unexpected presence of women including, remarkably, the first Hamlet on film and, in all likelihood, the first Hamlet on the radio (1). Howard tells us that since the mid nineteenth century more than two hundred professional actresses across the globe have played the role of the procrastinating protagonist and his Women as Hamlet impressively examines a wide selection of those performances in the theatre and on film as well as looking to representations in other media including the visual arts and fiction. The project starts by situating some of the most famous female Hamlets among the number of travesti roles on the professional stage. This includes, of course, Sarah Siddons in the eighteenth century along with Charlotte Cushman and Sarah Bernhardt in the nineteenth.”

I could understand if the press release that came my way today had been written in the 1950s, just about the time that Tyrone Guthrie left Stratford and Canada. I cannot understand its content or context today. The problem is not with casting, traditional or non-traditional. The problem is with the tribal war being waged by Canada’s two founding nations, reserving a first class seat for themselves and bunks in cargo for all the others.  It’s the 'mainstream' thinking (and those who have bought into it from all cultural backgrounds) that produces the results (theatre culture) we have. And if we do not think differently about our theatre, we won’t have one, or, if we do, it won’t mean much to most Canadians, which is just about where we are now ... where we have been for awhile.

Come to think of it perhaps we – in the theatre - should all buy a comfortable coffin, like the famous coffin Sara Bernhardt apparently often slept in, in lieu of a bed, “claiming it helped her understand her many tragic roles”. Maybe we’ll have a better understanding of our Canadian reality if we slept in one of those comfy coffins.  Our theatre, after all, is a string of mausoleums with bars and liquor.  By the time we leave the theatre we’re too drunk to discuss Peter brook’s dead theatre and actually make fun of it, like we just invented the wheel, live theatre, and non-traditional casting.

BTW. Kamal Al-Solaylee (former theatre critic for The Globe and Mail and now a professor of journalism at Ryerson University) was invited to moderate Letter Two in 2006 and 2007. He never called back.


Sincerely,

Tony Nardi