Play: Lawrence & Holloman || Playwright: Morris Panych Shoot: Parc Mackenzie-King|| Models: David Paluch, Keith Waterfield
HOLLOMAN and LAWRENCE with brown bag lunches
LAWRENCE: White bread and baloney?
HOLLOMAN: Maybe.
LAWRENCE: Not maybe. You are a white bread and baloney type of guy. I mean — Holloman. Look at you. Have you ever thought of doing anything unpredictable? Ever?
HOLLOMAN: You mean — like… mustard?
LAWRENCE: With your life, Holloman. Your life.
Lawrence & Holloman was first presented at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto in 1998.
How does the Prime Minister decide who should sit here?
Last winter, I wrote an article that as I wrote it, I couldn’t decide if I was serious or not. “A Creative Approach To Senate Reform” proposed a new method of selecting members of The Senate of Canada. The article was a response to a particular set of stars that had aligned in Ottawa, as each of the major parties proposed a different reform to the Senate as public disdain for the institution peaked during revelations about the Duffy/Wright affair.
The NDP preferred outright abolition, an objective crystallized by the party’s Roll Up The Red Carpet campaign. The ruling Conservatives preferred an elected Senate with term limits and had requested further clarification on how to go about this from The Supreme Court of Canada. The Liberals preferred a plan that involved a ‘non-partisan’ selection process similar to the Order of Canada.
My proposal, which I couldn’t decide if I was serious about at the time, was instead of copying the Order of Canada Council selection process, it should be actual Members of the Order who became Senators, paired with Governor General’s Arts Award Winners. This would allow The Senate to serve a new purpose in our democracy, and I hoped could aid our evolution from Constitutional Monarchy to Republic:
“The Senate itself will be transformed into a multi-purpose venue that will allow intense exploration and presentation of these issues as well as access for Canadians. The single biggest tourist attraction in Ottawa, it will act as a theatre, museum, concert hall, studio, digital laboratory, and workspace. An open-source intellectual crucible, The Senate will forge great and unprecedented responses to the issues elected Parliamentarians in The House of Commons will be drafting legislation to face.”
To prove this was possible, I drew a fat line between The Senate and the already-directly-funded-by-Parliament National Arts Centre on a map and suggested building a tunnel so they could help.
Seven months later, the conditions for Senate Reform couldn’t seem to have less momentum than when I first wrote about it. The absence of criminal charges against ex-PMO Chief of Staff Nigel Wright in conjunction with a Supreme Court ruling that poured cold water on the proposals put forward by the parties, has led to little attention to the issue by media and politicians.
And yet this issue is not going away. Criminal proceedings against Senator Mike Duffy begin simultaneously with the resumption of Parliament in the fall, which will bring increased media focus attracted by theatrics that only Ol’ Duff can provide. This seems likely to make Senate Reform a key issue in an election year, except this time none of the parties have a credible position on the issue.
The NDP’s position of abolition was completely sunk by The Supreme Court ruling, as it is a measure that would require unanimity from each of the Provinces of Canada, a state-of-being reserved exclusively for international hockey matches. The Conservative position of an elected Senate is also toast. The court ruled consent of seven Provinces, containing over 50% of Canadians (7/50) would be required to enact such a change. The Harper Government has already indicated that this means for them the issue is now dead.
Whether this 7/50 formula would also be required to enact the Liberal plan of a parallel Order of Canada appointment process is a murky calculation, revolving around whether such a process would change the “fundamental nature” of an appointed Senate. If yes, then a Constitutional Amendment using the 7/50 principal would be required. A huge factor in whether or not this change would be interpreted as “fundamental” is whether or not other Prime Ministers would also be obliged to use the same process to appoint Senators in the future.
In short, having an advisory committee to pick Senators may not trigger a round of constitutional talks, but institutionalizing one could.
Should having one of these qualify you for The Senate?
Which has me back to my original, wasn’t sure if I was serious about it, but now I really am, proposal for Senate reform. If The PM were to announce that he or she would now be selecting from Members of The Order of Canada exclusively to fill vacancies in the Senate, it could accomplish the goals of the Liberal proposal for reform first suggested by Greg Sorbara in The Toronto Star.
The Order of Canada already exists, so it could not be seen as creating any new mechanisms that would compel a future PM to use the same process in selecting Senators. In fact, nothing about it SHOULD change. This would validate all candidates as having been proposed by an impartial panel that seeks the best and brightest Canadians. One finds it hard to imagine candidates like Patrick Brazzeau coming to the attention of The Order of Canada, which could go a long way towards rehabilitating the institution in the mind of he public.
So there you have it. I am not an expert in Constitutional matters, heck I never even wrote the LSATs, but it seems to this layperson that he has stumbled upon a Constitutional sweet-spot. That place where meaningful change can take place without long drawn out talks that bring out the existential worst in us as we question the very nature of our own Confederation.
This reform could be instituted immediately by the Prime Minister of a minority or majority government. It requires no one’s approval. It will rehabilitate the credibility of the institution and prove that whatever party engages in it is serious and successful on the file.
The Order of Senator is one new PM from becoming a reality, so future PM do me a favour and seriously consider the NAC/GG Winner connection (and tunnel!) from my original article if you run with this. I know it seems crazy at first, but creatives can help you come up with many solutions you may not have thought of on your own.
As a director and producer, I have to read reviews of my shows. I would rather be boiled in a vat of Kelly Nestruck’s bike-ride-to-Montreal sweat.
They’re important and, having come from a one-reviewer town, I know that the more reviewers there are about the same piece, the better. We know logically and absolutely that a reviewer’s response to a show is subjective – it MUST be. I don’t know if many reviewers understand that really. Many reviewers use a lot of absolute praise and insult: This is unbearable, this is wonderful, this is excruciating, this is hyperbolic. And those are just examples of the absolute. What about the examples of the subjective: Here, let’s pick from my own latest reviews for example “a non-stop riot” -Toronto Star; “not funny” -The National Post. Same show, same day.
Many teachers will tell you that the best way for your student to hear what is wrong is to cushion it in what is right. I’m told that this is called a criticism sandwich. Positive buttery toasty bread, Negative bologna and sauerkraut, Positive buttery toasty bread. We can take in the bologna because we are not only thinking about how stupid the bologna-dispensing critic is. I don’t think this makes artists immature. I think it makes them human, and you know, if artists lose their sensitivity and their capacity to feel, humanely and humanly, then we have lost something even more critical than good criticism.
Because it’s the same as subjecting myself to a root canal (or the above boiling), when I read reviews of a show I’m proud of, I create a criticism sandwich for myself by reading all of the reviews at the same time. My most recent experience reading a stack of reviews for Alice Through the Looking-Glass at Stratford went a little bit like this: good, good, not bad, bad, outstanding, harsh, forgiving, excellent, bad, cruel, good, bad, bad, good, good, good, not too bad and toasty good. I took notes on what worked, what certain people had trouble with, conflicting opinions on what communicated and what didn’t. Suddenly I can hear what the detractors are saying. It’s easy to say what a cynic this guy is and how stupid this guy is and what a smarty pants this blogger is. I’m not above admitting that it hurts to read that my offering qualified as “theatrical roadkill” to my new local paper, the Ottawa Citizen – thanks new neighbours! Reading them all at once gives me the capacity to hear what people are having trouble with: out of isolation, individual reviews are simply part of a larger sandwich – some good, some bad, all in the end, edible and helpful.
In programming for a national stage at the NAC, reviews are an incredibly important tool. A programmer can’t be at all shows all the time, but learning about what is happening across the country is a massive part of understanding Canadian work and what Canadian Theatre artists are making right now. Reviews that can’t and don’t discuss the intention of the piece, the response of the audience (though this sometimes is also strangely subjective) and the artistic and community context, are useless to me. I also must read reviews recognizing the subjective; that maybe the reviewer who loved the show has long been a champion of the under-produced writer, or the one that hated it was tired and had just seen something too similar. I must recognize that in myself as well – and make room to re-watch or re-consider shows that didn’t appeal on first viewing when everyone I trust is on fire for it. There is no real checklist for ‘good theatre.’ The only thing that is certain is that reviewers, audiences and programmers view the work subjectively.
I regularly read the national reviewers (and I use “national” loosely because truly, neither the Globe nor the National Post actually represent the national scene) and I regularly find opposing perspectives about productions. It’s exciting. It would be so wonderful to read, all together, vast and varied opinion from a large community of local Canadian reviewers– the blog reviewers from Prince George as well as the best known reviewers from Toronto and Montreal. Having four or five perspectives on a single show is really the only way we can begin to garner a larger understanding of how a piece is heard. It also is useful after I’ve seen the show myself. It helps cube my own comprehension and helps me understand my own reaction. I have often requested video recordings of a work that I couldn’t attend because I was so taken by the positive response by a wide variety of reviewers – Or the wildly negative review of a reviewer whom I consider not very perceptive. It’s helpful. Reviewers and reviews can, at their best, advance the art by promoting the finest of works, measuring a response, and helping us understand the context and import of a piece within a given community. You are important.
So I have a request: that is for bloggers, professional reviewers and student reviewers to hashtag their reviews with #cdncult #review. This way all subscribers to the SpiderWebShow – a good central hub for theatre practitioners – can read reviews for shows that are happening all over the country. We don’t always know where to seek out reviews from the wider community, but this can help us collect them and read them. We can learn about each other, and importantly the variety of subjective opinion about what is going on in the country. Otherwise it is left to the producers and let’s face it, the smart producer is not exactly going to promote a ½ star review on twitter.
Directors and colleagues who fear the review – I do recommend the binge review reading. And if you’re a reviewer, or want to simply express your response to a production – please hashtag it. Let’s get a collection and a real subjective conversation going, for work from right across Canada. #cdncult #review
Cast and crew and creative team behind of City of Wine Festival at Theatre Passe Muraille in 2009. Photo: John Lauener
Theatres in Canada like small ideas.
Those can be potent, of course, and Nightswimming doesn’t shy away from a small powerful idea; they are absolutely worth embracing and pursuing. But the big idea, and even more the huge idea, has the potential power to galvanize a community of individuals, artists and spectators alike, in ways that even the most beautiful perfect small idea never can. They are fundamentally different.
Here’s a huge idea and how we got there.
In 1997, Nightswimming commissioned playwright Ned Dickens to write a ‘prequel’ called Jocasta to his version of Oedipus, famously produced in 1994 by Die in Debt under the Gardiner Expressway, directed by Sarah Stanley in a stunning production created by a team of more than 50 artists.
A year later we commissioned a ‘sequel’ to that Oedipus called Creon, exploring the impact of Antigone’s actions on the citizens of Thebes. By 2000, we had a trilogy of plays; that was the big idea, and we struggled to find ways to continue the development of the project. So we partnered with the University of Alberta, York University and Humber College and then with a major classical festival to work on the plays.
We found the resources, over time, a long time, to commission Ned, hold workshops, set up student productions, do public readings. We believed in Ned, that he needed to write these large scale, large cast plays even if they seemed beyond our ability to develop, let alone produce. And that he must do so. And then, as Ned wrote, he began to conceive of the full seven-play cycle called City of Wine.
City of Wine tells the story of the Greek city of Thebes – best known as the home of Oedipus. Beginning with the founding of Thebes by Cadmus and Harmonia, and ending in the city’s demise seven generations later on the battlefield of Troy, the cycle is a smart, sexy, and visceral commentary on leadership and civic life told through the lens of a community’s evolution. Seven plays with a total of 96 roles: that’s an even bigger idea.
The work, not surprisingly, was slow. Then we realized that in order to make this big project happen, we had to make it huge. When we talked about it as a big project, people felt it was impossible; when we talked about it as a huge enterprise, potential partners saw opportunities to participate in something remarkable. Huge became key to moving Ned’s vision toward completion, so we made huge our mantra.
Nightswimming assembled a partnership with theatre training programs across the country, from Memorial in Newfoundland to Studio 58 and Simon Fraser in BC. Over the course of three years, seven schools participated in the development and workshopping of the seven plays. In the third year, the schools each produced one of the seven plays in their school seasons with directors including Craig Hall, Eda Holmes, Jillian Keiley, DD Kugler and Sarah Stanley. Ned and I and producer Naomi Campbell, traveled to the schools to lead workshops and bring the 160-plus student actors, designers and other artists into this epic world. But even that wasn’t enough. Dramaturgically, we realized that it would be necessary for us to see all the school productions together.
The goal of all this was to design a machine, a structure, to finish the plays and test them on stage… for isn’t the point of any and all play development processes to give birth to the show? And also that it would be a shame to not bring all the productions together so that everyone – students, faculty and the public – could see the cycle in its entirety. That is when big became truly huge. The City of Wine Festival took place in May 2009, bringing together almost 200 artists for two complete runs of the cycle at Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto. Its hugeness made it possible.
A community came together to make these plays; the size of the community and the scale of the vision were key to our collective ability to make this happen. There’s more: Ned has now incorporated lessons gleaned from those productions into new drafts of all seven scripts, a process that took more than two years. Playwright and translator Michel Ouellette was commissioned and worked with translation dramaturg Maureen Labonté to create a French translation of Harmonia.
SFU Contemporary Arts production of Harmonia. Photo: John Lauener
Throughout all of this, Nightswimming’s commitment to faith and patience was central to our ability to attract partners and convince them that the huge idea could work. We had faith that Ned’s storytelling would find thrilling new ways to explore these elemental characters; that the seven schools would secure the resources to participate in this unprecedented national partnership; that Nightswimming would be able to leverage the scale of the project to attract funding far beyond what we had ever previously required in order to develop a new work.
Is City of Wine now too big to ever be produced in Canada? The hugeness that attracted partners during the creation and development process is now a huge hurdle. The large casts required for these plays, one of the very aspects that demands that a community be created to bring them to life, are now a huge challenge. One of the frustrations of our love of the small idea is that big plays that investigate the dynamics of communities are beyond the means of most theatres, and as a result we aren’t tackling some of the big issues that communities face as a whole.
Another truth we collided with is that big projects can more easily attract support, funding and partners during the development/creation process and/or if they involve an educational component. Everyone likes to be in on the creation portion, and education is often fundable from other sources.
Any producing scenario for seven plays demands a lot of actors (even an ensemble approach would require at least 24 or more) and a very long rehearsal period, yet we believe that community is still the way forward: a community of producers working in partnership to achieve something none of them could working alone.
The greatest challenge to such a partnership is a willingness to truly risk a collaboration that demands that multiple partners put their own interests lower than that of a collaboration that, for example, asks seven theatres to each produce one of the plays and asks each to seek resources to make the scale of the project manageable for all.
It may come down to money in the end, and a theatrical world that can only afford small ideas, but I truly believe that community is the solution to bringing a big idea to fruition.
Welcome to the BIG IDEA edition of #CdnCult Times. This is the final edition of our 3rd volume and we wanted to finish with ideas that would challenge the status quo. More that pie-in-the-sky provocations, these articles each suggest tangible measures that would bring about change.
Jillian Keiley, Artistic Director of The English Theatre at The National Arts Centre proposes how we can use hashtags on Twitter to create a national dialogue around theatre criticism, Nightswimming AD and Banff Playwrights Colony Director Brian Quirt discusses how theatres can use community to take on big ideas and projects, and I follow up on my earlier proposal on how to use arts and culture to reform The Senate of Canada.
All big ideas. All doable tomorrow.
See you in October when we launch Volume 4 with new features and a new look.
Play: Salt Baby || Playwright: Falen Johnson Shoot: Parc Mont Royal|| Models: Irkar W Belljaars, Jenn Cross
SALT BABY: ‘Cause when i walk through the city no one knows that I am, that I am Indian and that’s hard. It makes me wonder why I look the way I do. You know kinda white.
DAD: ‘Cause you are kinda white.
SALT BABY: But how white? What else is in here? I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. What do you know about our family history?
Salt Baby was first presented at Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto in 2009.
Pièce: Le Psychomaton || Dramaturge: Anne-Marie Olivier Lieu: Dépanneur 1$ || Participant.e.s: Sarah Krug, Brian Lapuz
JOSÉE: Heille! J’ai quelque chose à te montrer. Je l’ai jamais montré à personne.
POLO: Tu peux me faire confiance.
JOSÉE: Yes. Bon. Si on veut changer le monde, faut commencer par des petits gestes. Je believe aux vertus du sourire. Mais en réfléchissant plus profondément, je me suis demandé : « Heille, c’est tu vraiment efficace? » Donc j’ai fait une étude sur quatre mois pis j’ai compilé les résultats. C’est un produit maison, là. Regard. À gauche, t’as le nombre de clients qui sourient; en bas, t’as les degrés qu’y fait dehors; pis ici, le prix de l’essence. La météo pis le prix du gaz influencent l’humeur du monde. La courbe pleine, c’est un service régulier, courtois, mais sans plus. La courbe pointillé, c’est un service « Sourire plus ». On voit sur le graphique que la bonne humeur des gens est proportionnelle au nombre de degrés. À trente, ça chute parce que le monde chiale quand il fait trop chaud.
POLO: Le monde chiale à trente pis à moins trente.
JOSÉE: C’est ça. Y a une légère différence entre le service régulier et le service avec sourire. C’est tout à fait déprimant, Polo. C’est un échec cuisant du sourire.
Le Psychomaton a été produit par le Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui à Montréal en 2009.
On the opening day of this year’s Forest Fringe, our annual free performance venue at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, I posted a somewhat ill-advised Facebook status. I looked at the blinking empty text box following the blue font that said Deborah Pearson, and I typed, “is getting too old for this.”
What followed were many Likes, a pep-talk style comment from my husband complete with a link to the film Rocky Balboa, and a comment from my mom who, like all moms before her, did not like to hear her daughter complain about feeling old. But even as I’m relatively young, the Edinburgh festival model I first built independently eight years ago and then collaboratively after 2008, often feels like it was designed by a 24 year old. A 24 year old takes a certain level of energy for granted. I can remember not being able to imagine how it would feel to be in my thirties, except in the abstract.
Now that I am in my thirties, and feel that way, I also feel different in the Forest Fringe skin I have donned annually for eight years. I am still on board with the ethos of a free venue in the midst of the most commercial theatre festival in the world. I still recognize that the beauty of what we do is tied up in the generosity of spirit it requires from artists and ourselves to keep going. But when you work as long and tiring as the hours we work over the festival, and you’re not being paid, you will need to have a relatively clear reason of why you’re doing something like that for the eighth year in a row.
Let me be clear about something first and foremost, because when you make art and work for free, and programme other artists to make art and work for free, it’s easy to level an accusation at your venue – you don’t pay artists, you don’t believe that art has value. Setting aside or simply accepting that notions of value and exchange are firmly grounded in a capitalist rhetoric, I want to be clear that I believe in paying artists for their work, and Forest Fringe also believes in paying artists for their work. We run a free venue at the Edinburgh Fringe festival, a festival that usually charges artists to put on shows, and that frequently acts as a platform for artists to establish a burgeoning career, to make creative and professional contacts, and/or to secure future paid bookings for their show. Very few artists come away from Edinburgh in August having made a profit, and the majority of artists make a loss which is occasionally significant.
This highly commercial atmosphere was proving prohibitive to providing a home for more experimental work – work that was made for small audiences, durational work or very short work – and it was also prohibitive to providing opportunities for a younger generation of experimental artists who did not have the money to invest in an expensive fringe run for their piece. In 2007 I devised a model that was further developed with Andy Field in our second year, which would offer artists a space at which to show their work, while providing them with accommodation, and showing work for free to build a spirit of risk and generosity in our audiences. I would say that the majority of the artists who work with us do so because, as one journalist whose name I can’t remember right now once said regarding the press and buzz that the festival creates, “A month for a theatremaker in Edinburgh is the equivalent to a year in their career otherwise.” The opportunity we provide may seem like a counterpoint to the commercial framework of the Edinburgh festival, but it often, in the long term, pays off for artists.
But perhaps a bigger question is, what’s it in for us? When we were 24 it gave us an opportunity to establish and identify with a community of young artists who were then collectively noticed by programmers. As artists we all now enjoy some degree of independent recognition in our fields. We have also all worked professionally, in a paid capacity, as curators at this point, so CV building is no longer a concern. Of course there’s only one reason we could possibly still be doing it, and that reason has something to do with Christmas.
Hear me out.
When I realized it was something to do with Christmas, I was sat across a table from the young, bright, bespectacled face of a young woman who couldn’t be more than 23 years old, and I had just said a word I’m fond of lately without being 100% sure I’m using it correctly; “neoliberalism.” It was the fourth day of Forest Fringe at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and I was talking to arguably one of the youngest, most quietly productive, energetic and enthusiastic people in the building. Although these days a lot of artists seem to be young, quietly productive, energetic and enthusiastic, especially as we get further from the young whipper-snapper upstarts that our reputation demands.
The young artist I was talking to is Edinburgh based, and she, along with her collaborator, had come to our venue with a project called “Imaginary Festivals” (acronymed “IF”), for which they produce a programme of imaginary theatre performances, and throughout the festival write a broadsheet every two days of real reviews for imaginary shows, garnered from interviews they’ve conducted with curious audience members at a table in our foyer. It is ambitious, demanding and full to the brim with energy and ideas – exactly the kind of thing I worked on when I was in my twenties, eager to make some good art. The reviews (written quickly and off the cuff) were all uncannily good and insightful.
The young artist and I sat at her table, trying to think up of an imaginary show, when we began talking about audiences, which led to collectivity, which led to capitalism, and suddenly I felt extremely aware of her youth and of my own dwindling energy on this twelve hour work day. And that’s when I mentioned something my brother once told me about Christmas. He works as a financial analyst, and I remember about ten years ago, he explained that the longer he spent celebrating Christmas, the more it became, by the rules of economic exchange, a losing proposition.
While in the first years of his life he would make our parents a card in return for a series of lavish toys and presents that his childhood self could never have acquired on his own, as an adult he spent money on his parents (and sibling) and received in return, relatively small or at least reasonable presents, many of which he never would have bought by himself. After having his children, the dream of any net gain on Christmas was lost completely – they were now in the advantageous position of all gains (Santa Clause included) that he had been in as a child. And yet, he told me then, he still enjoyed Christmas, but he enjoyed it differently – there was an affective value to the feeling of giving rather than receiving. A Gift Economy, or let’s face it, “the joy of giving” is a slightly trite and possibly problematic justification for a 31 year old working for free for their organization for the eighth year in a row, but you’ll have to excuse me, it’s after midnight and I’m sitting in a badly lit temporary office after having worked 14 hours today.
Trite feels Right, and my brother’s description of Christmas is an apt analogy for how it feels to continue running Forest Fringe at the Edinburgh Festival. Sitting across from a bright young artist in her early twenties, looking into the eyes of someone who is in a position so similar to the position I was in when I first started Forest Fringe, and knowing all the reasons I started it now that no longer apply to me now apply to her, I realized that the experience of running a free experimental arts venue at the Edinburgh Festival for little to no pay is replete with net loss. But sometimes it feels good in a way that nothing you get from capitalism ever can. So fuck it. There’s just a week left of this thing and maybe somebody will programme that imaginary festival, and in ten years time she can sit across from an imaginary artist and tell them about imaginary Christmas. Or maybe I’m just overworked and it’s half one in the morning. Eitherway it feels kind of weirdly good.
