#CDNTimes

I bounded up to my theatre teacher and told him I couldn’t wait to audition for the next season of plays at our high school. “Don’t bother auditioning, Andrea,’ he said, ‘there are no black parts.’ Well, at least he said it out loud. Eventually my school produced ‘The Crucible’ and guess which role I played? No, not Abigail, but nice try.

The NAC is a theatre that is dedicated to celebrate and strengthen Canadian voices and our unique way to tell stories. It’s an impossible goal – to make a theatre that attempts to give voice to a Canadian ideal – but the trying is everything. So I was pretty surprised (and heart-kicked I admit) to learn from Kate Taylor in her Globe and Mail article of July 24 – that Canada doesn’t actually have a National Theatre. But not being in Toronto, and not being completely mobile in our seasons doesn’t mean that we don’t exist.

My hope is that we can move forward also dealing with diversity in form. That our perceptions and our expectations of what theatre can look like will not have to fit into the Western or European constructs that most of us learned in theatre school and/or the proven model that is selling tickets to the aging subscription audience.

Stratford is focused on a Englishman from the 16th and 17th century. Shaw is focused on their namesake, his contemporaries and plays that occur within his lifetime. Soulpepper’s mandate is perform “modern classics”. These mandates, in the hands of the country's most powerful companies, keep the artistic resources of some of our best artists tied up in the work of writers who are predominantly men, predominantly white, predominantly dead.

This may be just the first wave of some significant changeover in leadership. In the arts community, we talk about change a lot – and this is an opportunity for organizations to be transformed from the top down. Will some of these positions go to women and/or artists of colour and/or artists with disabilities?

Michael: The problem is then governments turn around and are like, “we invested X # of dollars in the arts last year” but really it is circulating amongst a few players and it goes without saying it never trickles down to artists. Devon: I think our best option is a renewed focus on living artists / core creators. I am unsure about open inter-tribal warfare. Like what are the limits if we start fighting with each other for resources?

Unlike so many of the theatre events I had attended, The Harolds seemed hardwired to oppose the status quo. Swearing: Check. Disdain for value-affirming theatre: Check. Mad respect for artists that aren’t mainstream and all the other people that are required to create theatre from stage managers to volunteers: Check. What kind of amazing Anarcho-Communists were funding this enterprise –and why hadn’t I heard about them before?

I don’t like award shows. I don’t like any award shows. I don’t like what they represent. I don’t like how they suggest it is possible to judge one film or play or performance or song against another. I don’t like their in-group back slappery, or how they all seem to be trying for some representation of American showmanship and the Oscars.

I mean the guy rarely made sense and yet, when he did, it cut through all the bullshit like only a true fool could do. I basked in his attention (whether wanted or not) and I can assure you that being heckled by Harold during a Toronto performance made us feel as though we had arrived. That we were noteworthy. That we had a Harold Heckle story to tell.

We held post-show panel discussions with local advocates, donated a portion of tickets to two local organizations supporting and advocating for sex worker rights, and hosted an interactive website where you could learn more about our local sex trade through mini documentaries. I wrote to my local MP and posted regularly online to spread the word about how our laws were affecting these women’s lives. I felt this sense of accomplishment like I was opening people’s minds or something… And maybe I did. But was that enough? Does that qualify as activism?