Politics And Culture
Over the course of a career that has spanned the full geography of this country, I have broken bread and interacted with our politicians and business leaders in various ways and at various times. I was the token artistic condiment in a private supper when Conrad, future Lord Black of Cross Harbour, also future inmate of an American prison, met Ed Broadbent, then the former leader of the NDP. (See details in the Gazette book review “A Tycoon’s Progress”) I was also a guest at Stormont when John Turner, the Leader of the Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, on the eve of the 1985 ‘Free Trade’ federal election, was consulting the cultural community about his policies. Previously I had had to deal with his wife in our foyer, yelling at the our TFT box office staff when she couldn’t get tickets to a sold-out show.
If Canadian artists dare to have opinions on any political issue, or about what might be good for the ecology and culture of our country, we are disparaged by the business and political community and dismissed with a patronizing smile. “What the heck would an artist know about the real world?” I remember a few snide remarks James Leech, future head of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Fund, made, when he was President of the Toronto Free Theatre Board, about actor RH Thompson’s political involvements. Mr. Leech (an apt name for a “business leader”?) was also President of the Canadian Stage Board at the time of the Highjacking, but you won’t find that in any of his resumés or Encyclopedia Canadiana entries. Can’t blame him for wanting to obscure his involvement. He knows, in retrospect, he fucked up. RH, in the meantime started his ongoing The World Remembers project with the Canadian War Museum that has collected (so far) the names of over 4 million soldiers and combatants who died on both sides during WWI. Enough said. You can check out RH’s project here: https://www.warmuseum.ca/event/the-world-remembers/
The reality is artists usually call things as they are, see into the future in a way that politicians don’t and can’t and are prepared to take a stance. No wonder our views are marginalized.
Read the Montreal Serai article below, “Who’s Side Are You On?” It is an ironic dis-embowlment of Canada’s foreign policy in the Middle East. Totally relevant even today. Read the articles on the self-indulgent theatrical culture of re-united Berlin and the numerous articles on how corporate Canada, by branding our work, in a business practice called “sponsorship”, has absconded with the tax-payers contributions to our cultural world. (eg: Going By The Board in the magazine, Our Times)
Despite its (then) unofficial policy of not covering suicide stories, I was able to persuade the G&M to publish my Andrea Ross obituary in its Lives Lived section. The Jeu article was written in a time period when I had independentiste sympathies, and was struggling to have Anglophone artists be accepted as Quebeckers by the Francophone majority. I do believe small is beautiful and Quebec might have had a fighting chance to be a model small country.
Articles
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Montreal Serai
‘Whose Side Are You On?’
An article written in 2017 for the superb Montreal on-line magazine, Montreal Serai.
It is an ironic dis-embowlment of Canada’s foreign policy in the Middle East. Totally relevant even today.
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Lives lived - Andrea Ross
Andrea Ross. Born June 30th 1975, in Kingston, Ont. Died Aug, 27th, 2004, in Montreal, by her own hand, aged, 29.
For years my morning ritual was to walk or bike to Navarino’s, the Greek coffee shop on Park Ave, just north of St. Viateur. I’d arrive bleary-eyed, the night’s dream-echoes still bouncing around inside my brain, and try and get ready for the new day with a great latte and greek pastry. Much of that time I was served my coffee by a perky spirit named Andrea. In my self-centred bubble I barely noticed her. Then one day she was not there any more. She had committed suicide. As a citizen who had been part of her world, I felt complicit in some indirect way. Why had I not bothered to engage her, find out about her, perhaps let her just vent about her world? I attempted to make it up to her, as much as I belatedly could, by trying to understand who she was. I felt strongly we should not be sweeping the Andreas of our world under the rug. The Globe & Mail broke what was then their unofficial policy of not covering suicides, and published the article.
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Born-again Berlin reaches a new stage
Twenty-five years after working at the Schiller Theater as an Assistant Director, I returned in 1995 to Berlin to see how theatre was faring in the newly un-divided capital of a united Germany. The results, unfortunately, seemed horrendously self-indulgent and mainly politically irrelevant. The Globe published the article, not something they would have interest or space for today. Rereading it over twenty years later, I am kinda proud of this article.
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Les Anglos enchaînés
As a known vocal proponent of the need for the diversity of English-language artists to be accepted as full participants in Quebec culture, I was invited by the highly respect theatre magazine, Jeu, to contribute an article. I wrote it in English and the editor, Michel Vaïs, translated it. To quote him, the article made a lot of readers grind their teeth. (“ grincer les dents”) Here is the published article, with the original English attached. The French title, btw, is mine. “enchaîné” is both what in English theatrical parlance we call a run-through of a play in rehearsal, but it also means, “in chains.” A nice pun, you have to admit.
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Going by the Board
After the highjacking of the Canadian Stage Company, I was given the occasional opportunity to comment on the relationship between Business and the Arts In Canada. Here is an article commissioned by the left-wing magazine, Our Times.
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The 1991 SFU / Equity Showcase Voice Intensive
As part of my continuing attempt to understand the craft of acting, I signed up for the five week 1991 The Equity Showcase Voice Intensive retreat at Simon Fraser University. Led by the extra-ordinary teacher, David Smukler, I found it to be a seminal source for understanding and exploring the relationship between body, voice and mind. In the third decade of this millennium the course is no longer an intensive, nor held as a retreat, and is half as long in duration as it was thirty years ago. Interesting that working actors no longer have the time nor the interest in perfecting their craft. It is a reflection of the erosion of standards right across our theatre practice. I wrote this article for Canadian Theatre Review to try and challenge theatre makers to up their game.
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Acting W.O.
My first directing gig after returning to Canada in 1976 was W.O. Mitchell’s Back To Beulah for Theatre Calgary. It was the surprise success of their season. The production toured to the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto, where it won the Chalmers best new play of the year award. At W.O.’s insistence, I then directed his play The Black Bonspiel of Wullie McCrimmon for Peterborough Summer Theatre and, later, for Theatre Calgary. My production of W.O.’s curling play was such a huge financial bonanza, it was revived three times, toured Alberta and financed Theatre Calgary’s move into the new Arts Centre. This is an article I was asked to write in 1996 for a compendium of essays on W.O., “The Art Of W.O. Mitchell”, edited by Sheila and David Latham.
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Review in the Toronto Star of Rick Salutin’s Novel, The Age Of Improv
I admire Rick Salutin as a political writer. That is why I head-hunted him to work on Les Canadiens after Maurice Podbrey green-lit my concept for the play. Rick, although a great ideas-person and opinionated left-wing commentator, is not a playwright. He has no sense of how to build character or establish dramatic structure. Our collaboration on Les Canadiens did not end well, as you can read at Les Canadiens The Toronto Star may have known about our dysfunctional working relationship and, since Rick was a columnist for their competitor, the Globe and Mail, may have offered me the novel to review in the hopes that I would trash it. I suspect I disappointed them. I actually gave it a decent review. Ironically, when the Globe dumped Rick the Star snapped him up as one of their star weekly columnists.
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Fuck da Queen
Article celebrating David Fennario written for the Maisonneuve magazine to accompany a celebration of David the Centaur was planning.
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Hollywood gospel stifles ideas
Occasionally I picked articles to appropriate media outlets. Times were tough enough that even the pittance in recompense helped keep the body alive.
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Let's Hear it for the Luddites
Description goes here
THE SCHOOL/NTS
While still a student at McGill, late sixties, abetted by friends who were students there, I snuck into a few technical classes at the National Theatre School. I remember, for instance, a class given by a theatre lighting specialist, flown in from the U.K. for the occasion. Since that time, I have had a very strong emotional attachment to the institution. I was thrilled when Douglas Rain hired me to direct Ibsen’s Per Gynt with the 1977 graduating class. He had seen my work at the Centaur and admired my understanding of how actors work. (Directing this play I first met Assia De-Vreeze.)(Carlo button) The large cast for Per Gynt had to be fleshed out with students from the first-year acting cohort. The challenge of the role of Solveig, Per Gynt’s long suffering sweetheart, I gave to a talented, strikingly vulnerable, first-year student, Kate Trotter. “Solveig” literally translated means, “Woman of the Sun”. I fell in love with that woman/actor. She was at the time, with someone else and I had to hide my feelings. Two years later we started a relationship and in 1982, we got married. I was fortunate in the 80’s to work at the school a number of times. In 1981, with the second year class that included Diana Fajrajsl, who decades later became a good friend and admired Montreal colleague, we concocted a collective creation, “Ooh, Ooh, Ahh, Ahh”. (Carlo Button to play) In case you are not aware, this means “Manwatching” in chimp language. 🐒 The creation was an adaptation of Desmond Morris’ book, “Manwatching. It was a pretty crazy but electrifying piece of theatre. On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the founding of the National Theatre School I was asked by Jean-Louis Roux former head of the school, to contribute an essay to a celebratory compendium of essays entitled, The School. As a director who had directed the students a number of times, and still being considered an “angry young man” of Canadian theatre, I was expected to provide the POV of a younger generation. What I wrote was not entirely to Jean-Louis’ liking as I was somewhat critical of the school. To his credit, J-L included my thoughts in the book. If asked in 2021, what I thought of the state of the English section of the school I would be even harsher. All focus on craft, on integrating voice, body and instinct into a disciplined, well-trained actor in the great British acting tradition, has been eliminated/forgotten. The public productions are an embarrassment. When Douglas Rain ran the English Section of the School in the mid Eighties, he insisted, until they graduated, that all students address him as, “Mr. Rain.” It was a custom intended to instil a respect for experience and the craft of acting and remind the students how much they had still to learn before they could be considered to be an “actor.” When Alisa Palmer, the current (2022) Artistic Director, was first appointed in 2013 she gave an interview in the press that stated she wanted to be “a friend” to all the students. A diametrically different approach. As with is the trend in much of English-language theatre across the country, the drift towards mediocracy is protected by a wall of political correctness. —Fodder for another time. Here, bless your soul Jean-Louis, is the essay I wrote for the 1985 book, The School.
Family
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Father
Obituary of George Mervyn Carter (Spike) Sprung in the Globe and Mail
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Mother
Obituary of Ilse Erna Sprung in the Apsley News