In our final episode of the Sky Sounds series, we thought we’d try something a little different. Based on an interview with Boyd Nave – the resident ‘Butterfly Man’ at the Calgary Zoo – we bring you an original story called “Look Down” by local artist Ellen Close. In it, one species reaches out across the void to another seeking little more than a bit of understanding.
This is the final episode of Season One of the Deep Field Podcast. We look forward to returning with new stories in the fall of 2015! Huge thanks to Spiderwebshow for hosting Season One as a part of Spiderweb Sound.
Also, big thanks to Arts Commons for partnering with us to create Sky Sounds. You can still hear all three episodes playing daily the +15 System at the Arts Commons building in downtown Calgary.
Lastly, thanks to all the people we’ve interviewed this season for sharing their time and stories, as well as the musicians who leant their music to our show.
Edmonton is a wild place to make theatre. There isn’t a lot of money – though perhaps more than in some other places. There are a lot of actors trained up really, really well and not enough jobs for them and the ones that came before them. Harder still, audiences are hard to come by, particularly in the dead of winter. It sounds like a cliche but no one wants to put on 15 layers of clothes and a parka to go see a brand new company giving something new a shot, let alone the same old-same old at the austere, concrete regional theatre.
But wildness isn’t all bad. And it’s good to get the complaining out the way first. Wildness here in Edmonton means a true passion for experimentation, a deep commitment to DIY aesthetics and methods of creation. Edmonton artists are often on the forefront of national recognition for contribution to innovation. And much of this finds its history in the founding moments of the Edmonton International Fringe Festival.
Founded in 1982 by Chinook Theatre Founding Artistic Director Brian Paisley, the first Fringe Festival was inspired by the Edinburgh Fringe. That first festival saw 200 performances in five venues. Flash forward to 2014 and the Fringe welcomes nearly 600,000 guests, nearly 150 individual shows, and nearly $1,000,000 in ticket sales. The Edmonton Fringe is now arguably the second largest fringe festival in the world after Edinburgh.
Through this rather illustrious history the Fringe, as it is affectionately known, continues to hold true to the values outlined by the Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals (CAFF): participation is determined by a non-juried process; participants receive 100% of their ticket sales (save for a $2.50 add on per ticket); the Fringe has no authority over content of the performance; and Fringes should provide accessible opportunities for audiences and artists to participate.[1]
On July 5, 2015 it came to light the Fringe had altered its volunteer policy to exclude a number of persons with disabilities in favour of those whom, according to the Fringe, had more appropriate “skill sets”. The backlash was swift and forceful from both the theatre community and the disabled community. The Fringe reacted as swiftly and dug itself into a greater hole. Boycotts were called for and the media got involved. And this was all on a Sunday afternoon.
By midday Monday afternoon Marc Caron, the Chair of the Board of Fringe Theatre Adventures, had responded, with more grace and more fairness than previous responses. Boycotts were still shouted for, but with slightly less vigour, and people are hopeful that the promises contained in the apology on the Fringe’s Facebook page.
What happened to Daniel Hughes and a number of other volunteer applicants is offensive, at best, and possibly a human rights violation at worst. Worse still, the volunteer coordinator did not feel like she could communicate with Hughes directly and had to go through his aid worker, a further dehumanization.
Further disappointment came from the ongoing euphemistic use of the word ‘community’ in the rejection letter. That is not my community, and not the community of so many others. My community is a beautiful and inclusive one that promotes the participation and inclusion of all people. This situation is no different than rejecting a volunteer for being transgender or a person of colour or fat.
As a member of the theatre community and veteran fringe artist I was horrified and saddened by this new volunteer policy. One of my favourite parts of the festival has been walking up to the gates and seeing beautiful humans of all stripes sharing their love of a festival that has, since 1982, woven itself into the very fabric of our city and positioned Edmonton as a leader in the Canadian Theatre scene.
The beautiful collection of human faces reminds us that this is a festival for everyone and this all brings us back to the final tenant of the agreement that the Fringe makes with CAFF – and with us, their audience – “Fringes should provide accessible opportunities for audiences and artists to participate”.
Audiences don’t just come in the form of paid ticket holders; audiences aren’t just people who read an article in the newspaper; audiences aren’t only coming to see their favourite local “celebrity”. Audiences are those people too, of course, and we love them. But audiences are also the media, family and friends of artists, funders of all stripes, artists both past and present and, most importantly, volunteers.
A festival the size of the Edmonton International Fringe Festival does not run without a team of incredibly dedicated and passionate volunteers. And here’s a secret that many new fringe artists don’t know: volunteers are your biggest audience allies. They have big and passionate mouths that can shout to other volunteers, people in line ups, and people in the beer gardens. They chirp about shows they love and hate and are excited about. They see shows, 100s of shows, and their passion for shows is what leads them to volunteer. Without volunteers there is no festival, no real and joyful audience, and no money come in to the pockets of passionate (and often desperate) artists.
What remains to be seen is how this rather public, but necessary, shaming will affect ticket sales. It is impossible to predict what the shouts for boycotts will lead to, whether volunteers will walk away in solidarity or shame, whether artists will take up the cause, or if regular folk in Edmonton will have even heard the cries for inclusion and stay away.
Critiquing the behaviour of audiences at live performance is de rigueur in North America at present. I am of the mind this behaviour is fairly natural:
It’s not ppl addicted to phones ruining theatre, it’s that as a species we are developing telepathic abilities. Sometimes more interesting.
As Sarah Garton Stanley points out, electricity changed the nature of the theatrical experience and the web is changing it again, a theme Alison Bowie also picks up on in this edition. Meanwhile, Michelle Kennedy reminds us volunteers are also a part of our audience connecting this discussion to the controversy surrounding how people of all abilities can participate in The Edmonton International Fringe Festival.
In all instances the hope was people would sit still and be quiet, but instead they are fired up and logging in.
Chaos in creation. Neworld Theatre’s “King Arthur and his Knights” created Niall McNeil, Marcus Youseff, Veda Hille & James Long
In the past couple of weeks, the interwebs, along with televised, radio and print journalism have all been on fire with stories about badly behaved audience members. It is really weird.
There was even a story in The New York Daily News about actors getting angrier with their audiences. Angrier? So this means they were already angry? Really? Well, yes. There seems to be a lot of rage at audiences these days.
First of all audiences don’t come to the theatre (what the hell is wrong with them?) and when they do they don’t stay (why the hell didn’t they just stay home?) and if they do come they let their phones ring (Is there no intelligence left in this world?) or worse, yet, they text! (I mean don’t they know they are not the centre of the universe?) What a bunch of jerks! Audiences are assholes! Like basically they don’t know how to do anything right anymore. What has happened to civilization?!
Cell phones are such a contentious issue: what bugs me will not bug you. Cell phones bug me sometimes, but they don’t bug me other times. And therein lies the problem:
Theatre – up til now – has been a place of gathering to share rules together. And thanks to the ingenuity of humankind it has also become a space that can control darkness and light. With the advent of electricity, a single hand of god entered our theatres and organized our shared suspension of disbelief. In the theatre it could be daylight outside but nighttime inside. In the theatre a total experience, offering lighting and climate control, largely conditioned by electricity, was created.
This make believe space was a feature of a single perspective that, if hit correctly, could work magic on a massive audience. The experience – therefore – was led by a single author and the followers were invited to ‘read’ their text. That was what one came to expect of the theatre. You went to a place and you received and you behaved.
Until you didn’t. Think about the revolution of electricity in the theatre. It removed the audiences opportunity to share in the unfolding of the story but it gave the author maximum control of how the story unfolded! Suddenly electricity was everywhere. In fact, if you get a chance to see Ann Washburn’s new play 10 out of 12 there is – I think – a really compelling argument about how electricity as it pertains to the well-made play, has systematically aided and abetted in stunting our capacity to communicate.
Huh? How is that possible? Well, elegantly told, we come to understand that the system of telling has beat out the subject it means to support. Formalism has silenced the capacity for content – or culture (as I like to think of it) to emerge. So something new must occur.
Cell phones in the theatre are not the new thing but… they are part of it.
Theatre actually made the news in significant ways in these past few weeks. One story was about young guy, who wanted to plug his phone into an outlet on the stage set for a Broadway production of Hand to God, so that he could keep in touch with his girlfriend(s). He was mocked by news people and weather people alike for a lack of intelligence and culture. Not my impression. In fact the guy had been to the theatre before, and he knowingly made a choice that he understood wasn’t necessarily a ‘right choice’ to make but determined that it wasn’t all that wrong either. He was not lacking in knowledge, he simply did not find the conventional knowledge all that relevant to his needs.
More recently there is story of a second row woman texting non-stop during a preview performance of a new play about the love of theatre at The Lincoln Center in New York. In what is now known as the Patti Lupone incident, this great star of the stage (she played Evita no less!) lost her concentration due to the audience member’s cell phone use… she then went into the audience and took the phone away from the audience member and walked off the stage with it. It brings the thinking around bad acting to a whole new place. Many in the press lauded Lupone for her bravery and brilliance but personally I was relieved when a thoughtful piece in The Clyde Fitch Report showed up to argue that maybe, just maybe, it is time to make some noise in the theatre.
The theatre has been a space to commune with one another on what it means to be human. And herein lies a great part of the tension. We don’t know what it means to be human anymore. Where do I end and where does my cell phone start? This is simplistic but it is not dismissible. Were it to be… we would not stand in wonder when we meet one of the last western holdouts to not own a cell phone. And we would not stand amazed and ask how oh great one who lives among us, how do you do it? How do you get by?
Sign outside Monday Nights created by @6thmancollective in residency @TheatreCentre.
We are our data and we are becoming ever more so with each passing year. Our human condition is changing/has changed. It is not immutable as it was thought to be. And perhaps it never was immutable, but we collectively suspended our disbelief about this. Cell phones are the harbingers. They bring with them the news of change. And as theatre makers, I think the time is always right to respond to change. What can we do to mitigate and generate. How can we celebrate?
1.For conventional theatre lets create Phone Valets who will care for audience members’ phones and accept instructions for what constitutes an emergency that the audience member must be taken out of the theatre to attend to.
2. For alternative but still conventionally steeped theatre lets offer last row cell phone seats where audience members can watch a live stream of the performance (because they are in the last row and far from the stage – think opera glasses for today) and let them simultaneously commune with their interweb neighbours about the experience
3. Make theatre that invites cell phones in. A great example is onstage at The Theatre Centre in Toronto now. #Monday Nights not only encourages cell phone use it also dismantles the single author perch. And not only is it a play but my goodness me, you get to play!
An audience member at a performance of Hand to God climbed on stage to plug their cellphone into a fake outlet. During a performance of Shows for Days the seasoned Patti LuPone took a cell phone away from a texting audience member (without breaking character).
We’ve all read these stories. And we (probably) all find them troubling. The question is: why??
We are used to audiences sitting in the dark in a theatre space, expecting them to sit in silence and just watch. But it wasn’t always that way, was it? Audiences during Shakespeare’s time were certainly full of boisterous rabble-rousers. Today at Shakespearean productions we seem to want an audience full of “seen-and-not-heard” spectators.
So, what is it that is really bothering us? Is it that our audiences want to talk? They want to communicate with one another? Is it that they want to bring electronics into the theatre? No.
The real problem we are facing is not that our audiences want to bring technology into the theatrical space – it’s that by doing so, they are disengaging with the performance that is happening right in front of them. They are no longer a part of the show. And that’s not a problem with them – that’s a problem with us. That means we are not holding their attention; we are not keeping them engaged.
It is a shift in the way we as theatre artists need to relate to audiences by reassessing the power dynamics in this tenuous relationship. Today’s audiences want to have more control, affect change, and be a co-creator (or co-conspirator). And they want to be able to choose their level of engagement with what is being presented to them.
This may make us uncomfortable because it requires us to let go, just a little. But it is necessary.
I currently work for Repercussion Theatre, which produces Shakespeare-in-the-Park, a touring production (this year we are doing Twelfth Night: or What You Will) in parks across the island of Montréal and the surrounding towns. Since the initial design meetings I have been developing campaign to get the audience engaged and invested in the creation process from the beginning.
There are two major elements to our ongoing campaign.
First, three times a week I post a cast or crew bio and headshot on Facebook, with a link to the post on our website on Twitter. By the end of the summer, even the office staff will be featured.
The second initiative was to create a video series called Twelfth Night Tidbits. This began with a conversation with our new artistic director, Amanda Kellock, after she decided to film the meeting of three dramaturgs and a director talking about Twelfth Night. When the first video was to be released, I realized that this could be an opportunity to give the audience the “inside scoop”. You can see all of our Tidbits here.
Both of these elements were designed to create a personal relationship between the audience and the individuals working on our team and to get the audience invested in the production even before the actors stepped foot in the rehearsal studio. The featured cast/crew posts on average reach about 500 people on Facebook, are liked by a minimum of 200 and are shared several times each. The videos have been viewed by up to 900 people and shared up to a dozen times. These were low-stakes activities for the audience; the entry participation level was anonymous reading or viewing.
These two initiatives were lead-ups to Twelfth Night Tweets, our first-ever live tweeting theatrical experience on Friday, July 17 in Cabot Square, Montréal. Over the course of the rehearsal period, actors created tweets as their characters. During the performance, Amanda and I posted the tweets following along with the script as the characters as if the characters were tweeting backstage. I also created on-the-fly tweets based on audience comments and also little slip-ups or technical difficulties that happened during the show.
This was a higher stakes event because we were directly asking the audience to participate. In her welcome speech, Amanda explained to the audience that they could follow along using #Reper12thNight (you can still take a look at all of our tweets!) and urged them to tweet back at the cast as the show progressed.
We didn’t know what to expect. We were hoping that people would jump on board, would start tweeting at the characters, and that they would create things like #teamMalvolio and #teamTobyBelch. Well, that didn’t happen. There were only a few people who actually tweeted back at us.
From looking around the audience during the performance, it was clear that there were a lot of people following along during the performance. Several people also favourited or retweeted what we posted. And even three days later, we are still having people following us at a much higher rate than we did before the event. We also received positive feedback from audience comments on our Twitter feed and in person.
Our first two activities didn’t push our audience to engage; they put the power in the hands of the audience by allowing them to engage with us in their own personal space. These activities allowed us to start earning the trust of our audience. Our live tweeting event already push the boundaries by asking them to participate in front of us and others, even if it was just following the twitter feed. Because we only wanted content-creating interaction, we lost sight of the fact that by participating in the event at the park, they were letting us know they trusted us, that they were willing to become more engaged and take that next step.
Our original expectations were unrealistic because we wanted more from our audiences than they were willing to give at that time. We should have seen this event as another stepping-stone towards a positive and meaningful relationship with our audience. For that reason, our measures of success should have been based on the number of followers we received and the number of people in the audience on the night of the event anonymously following our feed.
People are attached to their technological devices because they allow individuals a personal and unique experience with the world. They can choose their level of engagement with every post, every Like, every share, every tag – everything. People want that same personal experience in real life, too.
They also want to be able to choose how close they get to someone or something. We found ways to begin to build trust with our audiences through technology by letting them in, by letting them affect us. We tried not to push back; we tried not to demand a response. And when we did, they let us know they weren’t ready.
But it’s okay. We know that when they are ready, they will Like us.
Canadian dramaturgs gather for a lunchtime meeting at LMDA15. There were a lot of us.
Who are the people in a performance process who have the ability to interpret and communicate while thinking on their feet? Who has a role in the creative process that is malleable enough to incorporate new practices and technologies? Who can write a blog post in an hour and distill a 3-minute-long comment into 140 characters?
Dramaturgs.
This facility for incorporating new skills was confirmed for me last week when with threeothermembers of the SpiderWebShow team and I attended #LMDA15 at Columbia University in NYC. That what we are doing at SpiderWebShow is in many ways dramaturgical has been a slow realization for me. That the internet and its tools, the social design of a project, would in many cases best be integrated with a creative process by dramaturgs, is actually quite natural though.
As someone who identifies primarily as a director in my creative capacity in the theatre, I wondered before I left if I would feel a little left out at the conference. I imagined myself on the margins, listening in on the various conversations that are revived annually.
What I found instead was an atmosphere that was heavily integrated with social media and gave multiple opportunities for social engagement. Many of the panels were livecast by Howlround, #LMDA15 generated 3000+ tweets over the event, and some of the panels also took questions from the internet.
We’re talking #TedTalk levels of social integration when dramaturgs from across North America get together.
This is not to say that we have figured out how to do it all properly. At a basic level what this achieved was to push the conversation to new audiences by rebroadcasting the words of panelists through new platforms – a useful, if not entirely creative endeavour.
Where I found the online most useful was when the tweets that accompanied a panel began a second parallel conversation. Sometimes this would be tangential, a point raised that sends the socially-active audience in a different direction than the discussion. Most interesting to me was when the livetweets would become similar to Chekhovian subtext, a space where an even more honest collection of thoughts on a topic would coalesce around the outward exterior performed by the panelists.
This development had me wondering about the social design that could be at further conferences if it moved away from the strictly panel-based format that defined this edition. If it was a single presentation on a concept or topic, how would that effect the online discussion – could it develop more substance? If there was a debate format to a discussion – would that play out as a parallel debate in the Twittersphere?
Also of note was the consensus around Twitter as a useful way for dramaturgs to maintain a consciousness of the ideas and productions occurring nationally and internationally. As a professional tool, it offers increasing opportunities for engagement with colleagues as well as the ‘global dramaturgical discussion’ on hot topics. There is an increasing immediacy to the network of intellectuals who write and think about theatre regardless of whether they identify as a dramaturg, and this seems to be how to take part in it.
Below is a Storified collection of tweets and pics mostly from Day 3 of the conference that give a sense of what was going on. With more than 1000+ tweets to choose from that day, curating elements of various discussions that were broadly about curation was its own meta-experience. Every tweet un-storified became a story untold, every author curated multiple times became a privileged voice.
Sorting through 3000+ raw tweets from an event is unmanageable for an audience however, indicating that the dramaturgy of twitter dramaturgy may also be an emerging field.
For over a century, the central goals of Canada’s Aboriginal policy were to eliminate Aboriginal governments; ignore Aboriginal rights; terminate the Treaties; and, through a process of assimilation, cause Aboriginal peoples to cease to exist as distinct legal, social, cultural, religious, and racial entities in Canada. The establishment and operation of residential schools were a central element of this policy, which can best be described as “cultural genocide.”
– Opening paragraph of “The Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.”
Ko Taranaki tōku iwi. My people are of the New Zealand Māori tribe – Taranaki, and Pākehā (non-Māori). We have one treaty, one language, no reserves and no residential school history. I teach in the Indigenous Independent Digital Filmmaking Program of Capilano University in North Vancouver, and I’m proud to be part of the cultural regeneration of Aboriginal People everywhere. I’m also a dramaturg. At the recent LMDA – Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas’ conference in New York, the Canadians got together over lunch to discuss our burning issues. I felt we should all read the Truth and Reconciliation Report and include it in our work; that it was the most vital script to be published of late and essential to the future of Canada. After all, the dramaturg’s role is to be the ‘Outside Eye’, to research the world of the work, to shine a light on the vital parts, and to make sure they are brought out to the right audience.
The report is six years of intensive research, something all dramaturgs should aspire to, and weighs in at 388 pages. But the good news is you can have it read to you. Zoe Todd, a Métis writer in Edmonton, and Joseph Paul Murdoch-Flowers, an Inuk man in Iqaluit, asked a diverse group of Canadians who care to upload a video of themselves reading a section of the TRC report.
Dramaturgs also need to read around a work, to take in the critical responses. My advice is you start with Joseph Boyden’s article in Maclean’s – “First Came Truth. Now Comes The Hard Part“.
In it, Boyden is our national dramaturg set upon asking the hard questions: Where did you go to school? Why did Stephen Harper say MMIW-Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women weren’t high on his radar? Why does his government keep cherry picking an RCMP report to prove 1,300 Native women murdered or missing in this country since 1980 is a First Nations’ problem? How can the fact that a First Nations woman is four times more likely to die violently than her non-Native peers not be a priority?
Yes, reconciliation is difficult but the truth can also set us free so that the hard work of healing a country can also be joyful and meaningful. For me, the simplest way to do this is to engage with Aboriginal Peoples any way you can. So here’s my 10 feelgood ways to make a better Canada.
JOIN THE ROUND DANCE!
In January, 2013, Wab Kinew, Director of Indigenous Inclusion at the University of Winnipeg, started a flash mob round dance on the George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight CBC TV show.
It was a joyful moment. Wab wasn’t just showing that the Natives were idle no more, but that they were ready to dance, and invite us all to join them. Go to a Pow-wow this summer. Join the round dance. Start a conversation.
#myreconciliationincludes
This twitter hashtag records what individuals are pledging to do to bring about reconciliation. Get inspired. Add what you’re doing. It can be as simple as…
LISTEN TO THE MUSIC!
You know the genius of Tribe Called Red and Tanya Tagaq, so check out Exquisite Ghost –
Assassin’s Creed 3 was a breakthrough for Indigenous content in computer games with Mohawk consultants hired to ensure their Kanien’kéha language was spoken correctly. But leading the way is Never Alone, which was built in partnership with the Alaskan Native Iñupiat.
Follow Dr. Elizabeth LaPensée (@odaminowin) and let her lead you into the wondrous world of Indigenous gaming.
CAN I GET A WITNESS?
I was invited to a healing circle/art therapy workshop for residential school survivors lead by mercurial artist George Littlechild. The Elder next to me told of how his cousins, who he’d previously considered friends, raped him. He cried. I cried. What could I say? … I talked about going to boarding school in New Zealand, witnessing bullying of others but not doing anything about it. And having a prefect punch me and break my thumb for talking after lights were out; but then feeling it worked out in my favour as I said I’d slipped on wet stairs, kept the code, and was left alone after that. Later, the Elder and I hugged and talked of our love of golf. You can bear witness and listen to survivors’ stories.
BUY LOCAL
Watch APTN / Learn First Languages like Cree through their Word-a-Day Facebook Groups / Listen to Métis in Space’s podcasts as they hilariously dissect Indigenous Peoples on sci-fi film and TV shows / Read Thomas King’s The Inconvenient Indian and Darrell Dennis’s Peace Pipe Dreams / Buy Local from Native Artists and Businesses.
Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013)
Watch Mi’gmaq Jeff Barnaby’s debut feature film. It’s a stylish revenge flick set on a reserve and residential school in 1976. It features knockout performances, a killer soundtrack, and so much dope smoking you’ll feel like you’ve been trapped in a bong for two hours… in a good way. It’s a must-see to understand why the Indian Agent became the Boogie Man.
BANG YOUR DRUM
At Capilano University, I’ve been lucky to make a traditional cedar hat with Shy Watters, and participate in medicine wheel teachings and make drums with Carman Mackay and Phil L’Hirondelle (allmyrelationsteachings.ca). They, and people like them, offer workshops to the public. Find them, get crafty, bang your drum – just do it. David Kirk, our First Nations student advisor, helped organize our workshops, and Truth and Reconciliation events such as the visit of the witnessblanket.ca. As soon as the TRC report came out, he offered to help us incorporate it into our work. That’s his #myreconciliationincludes
GO BACK TO SCHOOL
In Mission, BC, there’s a cemetery for former staff of the residential school but nothing for the children who perished there. Over 6000 children died at residential schools across Canada, many buried in unmarked graves. Some babies born of rape were put into incinerators alive. Of the 150 000 children who went to residential schools, 1 in 25 died there. This is about the same mortality rate as for those serving in Canada’s armed forces during WWII. The Mission school is now a public park with First Nations’ monument and annual Pow-wow. Find your closest residential school. Make a pilgrimage.
CITIZEN CANADA
Is Stephen Harper ready? Ready to act on the 94 Calls to Action in the report? This the last one:
94) We call upon the Government of Canada to replace the Oath of Citizenship with the following:
I swear (or affirm) that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada, Her Heirs and Successors, and that I will faithfully observe the laws of Canada including Treaties with Indigenous Peoples, and fulfill my duties as a Canadian citizen.
I would have much preferred to say this when I was sworn in as a Canadian Citizen in 2008. I’m a treaty person. New Zealand’s founding document is Te Tiriti o Waitangi/Treaty of Waitangi, signed between the Crown and Māori Chiefs in 1840. Our national day is Waitangi Day, February 6th. It’s also Bob Marley’s birthday. For most Kiwis, just like Canucks on Canada Day, it’s just a day off to chillax, spend time with family and friends, drink beer, and enjoy Pacific reggae. But for some Kiwis it’s also a day of protest on the treaty grounds.
For some it’s a day to reflect on how far we’ve come in reconciling with the truths of our country. Can Canada Day become that day? When we ask the hard questions: Did you read the TRC report? Do you want to talk about it? What does your reconciliation include? And, what music shall we dance to now?
My Kiwi mate was a tour bus guide in Eastern Europe. When everyone came back to the bus after visiting Auschwitz he’d play Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” … Won’t you help to sing these songs of freedom…
Keynote speeches, were delivered in the Low Library at Columbia University in NYC on June 25, 2015
Dear Canada:
I’m on the verge of walking away from our relationship. I confess, that I was going to go until LMDA President Beth Blickers, ever the diplomat, told me she was concerned that perhaps I hadn’t expressed my feelings properly. That I hadn’t sorted out our story. She suggested I that if I wrote my thoughts down in a loving letter to you, and then read the letter out loud to my friends at LMDA, maybe we’d find a way to stay together.
Sometimes I feel we’ll never know each other because, quite frankly, you just don’t know yourself. This has been bothering me for a while. I’ve suggested therapy, but you keep claiming you can work out these identity issues on your own. It hasn’t happened yet and I’m beginning to wonder if it ever will.
Who are you Canada?
In a 1967 television interview the Canadian visionary Marshall McLuhan said you’re the only country in the world that knows how to live without an identity. Echoing his sentiments somewhat, the poet Irving Layton said, “A Canadian is someone who keeps asking the question, ‘What is a Canadian?’”
I think he was confusing Canadians with Dramaturgs but anyway, you get the idea.
For as long as I can remember, you’ve defined yourself in opposition, by talking about what you are aren’t rather than what you are. And topping the list of what you claim you’re not is – American.
Maybe you knew yourself back in the beginning. Back in the early 1600’s when you were one of the four colonies of New France and the terms Canada and New France were interchangeable. But after the French ceded you to Britain in 1763, when New France became part of the British Empire at the end of the French and Indian wars, your sense of self began to slide. When the United States was successful in their revolutionary bid to get rid of British rule from the 13 colonies, the territories of the former New France that stayed under British control were given the names of Upper Canada and Lower Canada.
I’m not a psychiatrist, but it sounds like the beginnings of Dissociative Identity Disorder to me.
It might have seemed like it was all going to work out when England passed the British North America Act in 1867. It was Canada’s confederation.
You were quite the talker then, convincing the home country to let you go without firing a shot. You seemed to be reborn as an independent nation. Although parts of the BNA act allowed the Governor General (the Queens representative in Canada) the power to strike down laws enacted by the Canadian parliament within three years of their passage.
American identity stories are so clean. Maybe that’s why you’re so eager to adopt them. Take the Puritans and the Mayflower, for example. That story is so well packaged that you’ve introduced Puritan symbols into your own thanksgiving celebrations, even though the Puritans had nothing to do with Canada. In the early 1600’s, while the Protestant Puritans were arriving on the shores of New England, you, dear Canada, were welcoming the Catholic Jesuits to New France.
Truth be told, I’ve always preferred the French Canadian Voyagers to those stuffy tight-assed Puritans anyway. The Voyagers sang. They partied. They dressed in flamboyant clothing. It’s like comparing the people of the Upper East Side to the people of Williamsburg.
I also love the fact that the fun-loving fur-trading French Canadian Voyagers didn’t see themselves as “kings of the wild frontier”. Their worldview was more in-line with the native peoples with whom they worked. They saw themselves as a part of nature, not as the rulers of it. I like to think that’s an important part of who you are. And maybe it’s true. I mean it certainly was for those guys who started Green Peace in Vancouver back in 1971.
I love your images of Jacques paddling down the Saint Lawrence River singing French songs – stopping just long enough to get married.
I love that you called the offspring of these French and First Nations peoples the Métis. It’s got a nice ring to it.
Okay, so you may have identity issues and a little anxiety, but at least you’re a good planner. You remember the 1870’s, when the US was randomly blasting its way through the Wild West? Your biggest railway company was planning its own incursions by drawing towns on maps, spacing them 7 miles apart along the railway-line and naming them – in alphabetical order.
Back in those days your law enforcement was well planned too. Even so, I can’t help but envy those great chaotic stories from the American west, where men were hard and their whiskey was harder. Where federal Marshals stood their ground in front of the setting sun to dollop out big helpings of frontier justice to men stupid enough to take a seat on the wrong side of the law.
In contrast, you, dear Canada, created a police force, trained them in the east and then sent them westward – to control the American whiskey smugglers and the towns that were still waiting to be built.
Remember when you thought you’d spook the Americans into thinking there was an arms build up happening on their border if you called this force The Northwest Mounted Rifles like you’d planned? So you called them the Northwest Mounted Police instead.
That was very polite of you.
A hundred years later, in 1994, the Disney Corporation was given a five-year contract to handle the marketing and licensing of RCMP iconography. Control of the trademarks had been given over to Disney when the RCMP hired the company to promote their image and protect them from being abused in the commercial marketplace.
Let me get this straight Canada.
Your federal police force went to Disney for protection.
I just can’t see J Edgar Hoover in bed with Mickey Mouse. That said I have trouble picturing J Edgar Hoover in a dress. Anyway, the whole thing makes me nervous.
Margaret Atwood once said that “If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia.”
Most people in Canada probably think that if the United States has a mental illness, we should have one too.
Luckily it’s possible to treat both Paranoid Schizophrenia and Megalomania with drugs. By the way Canada, did you know you’re the second largest per-capita consumer of pharmaceutical drugs in the world? But guess whose first?
Canada, you’ve really got to try harder.
Pierre Trudeau, one of your most flamboyant and storied Prime Ministers, a guy who sometimes channeled the Voyagers in his photo-ops, and the man who repatriated our Constitution in 1982, said: Americans should never underestimate the constant pressure on Canada, which the mere presence of the United States has produced. We’re different people from you and we’re different people because of you. Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered the beast, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.
He also famously said, after he decriminalized homosexuality in 1969, “there’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation”.
Still, if you’re seeing elephants in your bed Dear Canada, I suggest you try Seroquel.
John Raulston Saul, one of your brightest public intellectuals, claims our roots of accommodation came through close working contact with the aboriginals, and the development of the Métis culture. He believes that the often ignored role of the natives as full partners in the military, civil and commercial affairs of the “Canadas” for the first 250 years of their existence is a huge problem when it comes to trying to articulate a national identity.
Saul’s premise is that, unlike the US, whose foundation of statehood came out of the European Enlightenment, Canada’s foundational culture is more aboriginal, embracing values of negotiation, tolerance, inclusivity and accommodation.
What Saul sees as a Métis view of living could be perceived to be Socialist. I’ll be reading this letter to my American friends and I don’t think I can use the word Socialist in the United States.
(Well, maybe in New York City.)
Saying the word Socialist, over the phone at least, could put me on the Department of Homeland Security’s watch list. Socialism is so wicked the very word is almost unspeakable in the US.
Better to talk in terms of the 99%.
Or income inequality.
Or the wealth gap.
I grew up in the province that was the birthplace of social democracy in Canada.
(I wonder if I’ll be taking a bus back to Vancouver when my flying privileges are revoked.)
Tommy Douglas and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, later named the New Democratic Party, was elected on June 15, 1944. They formed the first socialist government in North America.
As a Baptist Minister and the leader of the CCF in Saskatchewan, Tommy Douglas brought his province North America’s first arts council, a regional library system, an increase in the minimum wage, a workweek capped at 44 hours (I wonder where that went?), a guarantee of two weeks paid vacation for all workers, and an increased education budget.
The list goes on, including free health care for pensioners. Free psychiatric hospital treatment for the mentally ill. And a balanced budget in the first four years of his mandate. Eventually his work resulted in a Canada wide guarantee of universal Medicare.
In Douglas’s own words: “I felt that no boy should have to depend – either for his leg or his life – upon the ability of his parents to raise enough money to bring a first-class surgeon to his bedside and that people should be able to get whatever health services they require irrespective of their individual capacity to pay.
He also said: “… a nation’s greatness lies not in the quantity of its goods but in the quality of its life.”
If it’s one thing that holds us together Canada, it’s the idea that the tax base works to support the health of everyone in your family. There’s something fundamental in that proposition.
Today, for the first time in history, the NDP is your official opposition party in the federal parliament – and the party that just won the recent provincial election in Alberta.
Alberta.
Voting NDP in Alberta is like voting for Ralph Nader in Texas.
You really made me laugh with that one.
So why do I love you? For your humour, your interminable almost paranoid insecurity, your lack of an articulated identity and your basic decency. And for the fact that I still believe you’re trying hard to be a fair country.
Or, maybe it’s because you are no one, and you are everyone.
The famous Canadian architect Arthur Erickson argues that Canada’s lack of national identity will prove to be the country’s strength in the 21st century, as the world moves toward what he calls a “humanity-wide consciousness.” He goes on to say that by having “no history of cultural or political hegemony, we are more open to, curious about, and perceptive of other cultures.”
It’s this open curiosity and respect that will continue to make you, Canada, one of the great 21st century social experiments. Right now your foreign-born population is 21% compared with 13% in the United States. It’s one of the highest in the world. And yet, things are running pretty well, all things considered. Your social dramaturgs are still on task.
John Ralston Saul also said: “Canada is either an idea or it does not exist. It is either an intellectual undertaking or it is little more than a resource-rich vacuum lying in the buffer zone just north of a great empire.”
So how will your story end? Will you be subsumed by the United States? Or will you shine on as a fully realized nation? I have no idea. But for the moment, I think you characterize the notion of how people, on a very small and very crowed planet, might be able to live together side by side, uncertain of what to call the association, but reasonably comfortable with it none-the-less.
Bringing together dramaturgs from across North America in New York City for a late June weekend, LMDA15 was the 30th edition of the conference and the first time I had been to one.
(l-r) Laurel, Simon, Sarah, & Michael all made it to #LMDA15
Over the course of three days, many of the core issues facing live performance including diversity, inclusion, class, generational divides, and technological schisms were all discussed. Other elements of note included the location in a historic building on the campus of Columbia University, a great city at a pretty nice time of year, and marriage equality was legalized on Day 2 of the conference!
The articles in this edition all come straight out of the discussions at #LMDA15. Richard Wolfe has adapted his keynote speech to be read online, David Geary suggested a dramaturgy that acknowledges the Truth and Reconciliation report in the meeting for Canadian dramaturgs, and my contribution muses on how twitter is changing the nature of dramaturgy as I experienced it at the conference.
All in all – a great trip for all of us from SpiderWebShow who made the trip down, emerging more connected to dramaturgy and theatrical issues across North America.
This week, Simon talks to projection designer and all around tech wiz Nick Bottomley about the projection design for Stratford’s upcoming production of Possible Worlds.
