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.
Play: Z: a meditation on oppression, desire & freedome || Playwright: Anne Szumigalski Shoot: CSN || Model: Ariane Gagné
FEMALE VOICE
And I’ll tell you again and again the same story.
Once I was a child and once I was a woman.
A woman in a cage, a lynx in a trap.
I was my own mother and I nursed myself.
I was my own child and I suckled myself.
Sometimes in my sleep I saw a house.
Sometimes a fire warmed my dreams.
Once I ate a chocolate dream cake.
Once my lover came to me.
That’s when I died and was burned.
Nothing, nothing remains of me but ashes in the wind.
In part two of our Sky Sounds series, we turn our ears to the mysterious Ranchlands Hum: a near-subsonic drone that has been plaguing residents of the north west Calgary community for more than half a decade, without any explanation as to its cause. We speak to community association president and Ranchlands resident Terry Avramenko, as well as acoustic ecologist Dr. Marcia Epstein. Plus the Deep Field team heads out to the quiet suburban neighbourhood to see if a little bit of fieldwork won’t shed some light on the mysterious phenomenon.
Writer/director Wajdi Mouawad was an Artistic Director at the NAC when he penned a letter to Stephen Harper in 2008.
I was never more proud to be theatre artist than on the day Wajdi Mouawad produced wrote that letter to Stephen Harper during the 2008 federal election. Mouawad accused the Prime Minister of declaring war on artists during his mean spirited pre-election slash of arts funding. The best part was when he threatened the Prime Minister:
“The resistance that will begin today, and to which my letter is added, is but a first manifestation of a movement that you yourself have set in motion: an incalculable number of texts, speeches, acts, assemblies, marches, will now be making themselves heard. They will not be exhausted.”
These were galvanizing times. Remember the Department of Culture? They organized troops of artists to campaign against the Conservatives in swing ridings. Remember the Wrecking Ball in 2008? I do. In fact, when I think back through my personal history, I can trace an unbroken line between the consciousness raising momentum of that election to where I am now, employed as the legislative assistant to the NDP Opposition Critic for Aboriginal Affairs. It was when I spoke on a panel at McGill University about surviving Harper’s attacks on artists that I serendipitously met my current boss, Niki Ashton, who was then the youngest woman in Parliament. And now we are facing possibly the most critical election Canada has ever faced – and what are we, the arts community, doing about it?
The fact that my artist friends don’t show up when it comes to politics or activism doesn’t make sense to me. We’re all so passionate about politics and social justice and community well- Most of us cite at least one of those three things in our stated purposes for making our art in the first place. So when the call is put out for bodies to join in protest, attend town halls or community meetings, knock on doors or volunteer at a local campaign office for a worthy candidate, I am disheartened by how few arts workers show up.
It’s a bit of a mystery why Canadian artists don’t see themselves as exploited proletariat. They live below the poverty line. Their work contributes hugely to the economy, and even moreso to society, and they see almost nothing of that profit. Most of them have no housing security. Some have no food security. They feel they can’t afford to have children. Yet they don’t cultivate a tangible sense of solidarity with each other or with the millions of other Canadians who are also working poor. Movements are built through that kind of solidarity.
Wajdi said you would come! Where are you, with your voices and your writing and your irregular work hours and long stretches of unemployment? Come help!
Some people will reply it’s because the arts are not an election issue this time around. No one has threatened to slash the Canada Council for the Arts for a while; Heritage Canada funding seems to be flowing regularly enough (so long as your project has some propaganda value regarding the War of 1812 or Canada’s 150th Birthday) and what else do we care about?
The Canadian Arts Coalition came knocking last winter, but their asks were tame and their presence is now long forgotten in platform building season. I was present at the meeting my boss took with the CAC for their Arts Day on the Hill. It was disappointing that only arts administrators and one fundraiser came to our meeting. I wondered why they were praising the government instead of shaming us.
It is ridiculous, however, to direct anger at the Canadian Arts Coalition for not being more radical. They are volunteers and they are working with very little while balancing the needs of arts organizations that need their funding. I told Eric Coates, a member of the coalition, that I might take a swipe at the Arts Coalition in this article and he wrote to me:
“My question is, why take a swipe at it, at all? Why not take a swipe at those who complain about the lack of arts funding, but don’t take any action to address it? When we lobbied in 2013, Heritage Minister James Moore told us afterwards that our actions spared Canada Council from sustaining any cuts. We were in a position where the only thing we could realistically ask for was to spare the axe – and I believe we succeeded. I know it’s anathema to be thankful for no cuts, but it is the sober reality of life under Stephen Harper’s Conservatives.”
The Member or Parliament for Davenport in earlier days.
I am not upset at Arts Day on the Hill. I’m upset because my community, we of the trained stage presence and masterful writing skills have no collective or subversive voice. The truth is that people who are exploited and oppressed have a very hard time advocating for themselves. The reason there were few artists at the Arts Day on the Hill is because they couldn’t afford to volunteer to be there. The reason I have the resources to write this now is because I’ve escaped the poverty of a playwright’s life and have a unionized day job.
Politicians eventually answer to political movements. When we speak about what the federal government can do for artists why are we not speaking the same language of anti-poverty activists or the trade labour movement? Why don’t fine arts majors ever participate in the student movement? Our needs and interests are all the same.
Although artists have next to nothing and work like dogs they are not low class. They are the cultural class. Many are the result of privileged backgrounds and high-level educations. Most of our parents had enough money to give us the kind of childhood that supports artistic passions. However, most of us can’t forge a consistent living wage out of the work we do even when we are regularly published, produced, on stage, in a gallery or in residence. I can think of no other professional industry where that is the case, and where the labour force doesn’t consider themselves oppressed? When should artists start to self-identify as oppressed?
After Harper announced his arts cuts in 2008, he further insulted us by saying that all we do is sip champagne at galas. I know enough from my time on Parliament Hill to know that insult was not a gaffe, but a calculated move on the Prime Minister’s part. Anti-intellectual dog whistling was a cornerstone of Harper’s strategy to destroy the Liberal Party and it worked. It was a strategy that came fully to bloom in 2011 when I couldn’t knock on a single Northern BC doorstep without hearing about what an effete, Harvard educated, geek Ignatieff was. I was happy enough to sop up his votes at the time for Nathan Cullen and his cultivated folksy cadence, but I recognized that sentiment as bigotry and I knew not to let many people know that I’m a Jewish playwright from Toronto.
I think that’s why the champagne sipping comment hurt our feelings so much: poor as we are, we do know how to look good at a Gala and sip champagne over sparkling conversation. But that privilege, in my opinion, doesn’t negate the fact that paying someone 50 cents an hour to do something that society values is exploitation.
I wonder where Wajdi is now. Where are the other senior artists, few though they are, who can afford to take the time to rally against the government? It’s true that in 2008 our interventions failed at unseating Harper. But maybe Wajdi was playing a long game. Maybe he was thinking about people like me who would naively romanticize what he said eight years ago, forage out a place for themselves in a progressive political party and then quote his letter to validate her plea to her friends: I know you are poor and tired but you have voices and you are convincing and you have irregular work hours. Please come help.
Through social media I’m fortunate to be connected with many artists across Toronto and the country. We share posts day after day expounding various theories, opinions, likes and dislikes, often burning hours of our time reading reviews, open letters, and other discussion around arts, culture, and politics. When I heard about a new initiative called LIFE LINE SYRIA, a citizen-led initiative to sponsor families from Syria to resettle in Canada, I was struck by this challenge:
Could a group of hundreds if not a thousand Toronto Theatre artists sponsor ONE family from Syria? Could we raise $25,000+? Could enough of us commit to share our time and resources to help?
For years I have wondered about the chaos that the people of Syria have endured, and how we in Canada and the rest of the world have failed them. I wondered how a country like ours, built upon generations of people fleeing conflict and persecution in search of ‘a better life’, had not done more. I wondered how our country that has thrived and can only survive on a steady stream newcomers had out fear (or even xenophobia) purposefully made it difficult for Syrians to come here.
Other countries in the region buckling under the pressure of so many displaced people and resettlement in many Northern European countries have put our efforts to shame. When Canada welcomed the “boat people” of Vietnam by the thousands a generation ago, were we inherently more compassionate? There was some resistance internally and those refuges did face racism, but that didn’t stop us from ultimately doing what was right.
Today, are we reluctant with Syrians because we might have different cultural and religious practices? Is it because they are seen as potential “security threats”? Are we so afraid and have we become so cynical that we cast judgement on an entire population? A population that is so desperate that creating social unrest and violence here in Canada is probably one of their lowest priorities.
In another time, under another regime, we might have looked to our government to deliver the services refugees need, but these are not those times. Many Syrians are looking for a chance to start over and we are 35 million Canadians who can help them.
How many fellow theatre artists, musicians, dancers, and performers must be among those displaced millions? From folk art to high art, from the fringes to concert halls, fellow artists, on the run with their friends, peers and families, unable to do what they were put on earth to do: make art.
I think about how worried I find myself these days trying to make a living as an artist, how I’m trying to feed my own family, raise money for upcoming projects, face months on the road touring, and ultimately how impossible it would be for me to help these people and how most of my friends would feel the same. We have our own struggle to deal with. Their problem is beyond our scope. That’s what I let myself think. Maybe that’s what you let yourself think as well. What if we are wrong?
Then I thought about how artists are filled with determination. How artists make something out of nothing. How artists are among the most curious and compassionate in our society. And then I thought… I bet we could do it.
Lifeline Syria suggests groups of five, a church group, for example, support a single family, to help share the burden. If that might be a challenge for only a handful of artists to take on I understand. We have hundreds who could share the burden, not just the financial one, but also the personal and emotional aspects. As a community we have a diverse pool of skills and talents to lend to this effort. Perhaps a much larger network of theatre artists under the leadership of a handful of “point people” could work together to raise the funds and divide the time needed to make it happen.
As we celebrated The Dora Awards last night surrounded by so much talent, I hope we can find a way to help ONE family come to this city and start a new chapter, sponsored by Toronto’s theatre artists.
For more information go to https://lifelinesyria.ca . I have reached out through the website to request more information on how a group of likeminded artists could help. There is an information session in Toronto on July 22nd and I encourage everyone to go the website and talk with friends, and I will post any information in the upcoming weeks that I come across that might inspire a group to take up the challenge.
Watch this space for updates in the upcoming weeks as the whole initiative is in the formative stages but hopefully we can help Lifeline Syria and the people who need our help.
