Transcript Massey Report - Canadian Theatre

H d H I ui N l sk ds lo oO J n M, s S B T h YY hs S g g g a
CANADIAN
THEATRE
HISTORY
>>
A b js B jh l LI j OO j h jk g yw a Q p o O ui O p o K nj V f s
The Owners
September 22
Royal Alexandra Theatre – Fateema & Shaq
Massey Report – Martha and Liz
Stratford Festival – Ceilidh and Shannon
Canada Council for the Arts – Nicole K and
Sandra
Rochdale College/TPM – Michael and
Marianna
The Dora Mavor Moore Awards [TAPA] Saskia
and Anna
October 6
David French – Lanndis
Linda Griffiths – Gokhan and Raunak
One Yellow Rabbit – Graham and Linda
Espace Go Lyla and Louis
R. Murray Shafer –Simona and Catherine
Ram
Robert Lepage – Claire Renaud + Frank
Fringe Festivals (Edmonton, Toronto)Carmen and Armon
Cahoots Theatre Company – Braden and
Marium
Human Cargo Theatre – Kirsten/James
September 29
National Arts Centre – Clara Feinstein
and Natasha
Tarragon Theatre – Augusto solo
Carol Bolt – Eunji and ross
The Farm Show/The Drawer Boy Orly and
Olivia N
David French – Lanndis
Canadian Theatre Review – Sabryna and
Mira Salti
The B.A.A.N.N. Theatre Centre – Jack and
Callie
It is difficult to think of a country – except perhaps Australia –
so consistently populated by the abandoned and the defeated.
- John Ralston Saul
“Canada is state-of-the-art colonialism…
Blink your eyes and you’re a nation, blink your eyes and you’re a colony.
Blink your eyes..”
-- Michael Hollingsworth (1994)
“For American historians, the Loyalists were the “losers,” men and
women who had chosen the wrong side and who, all too often, turned
out to be the villians of the piece. American scholarship has tended to
lose interest in these people when they went into exile, but that exile
was precisely when they became important to Canadian history.”
-- J.M. Bumsted, Understanding the Loyalists (1986)
an extensive
group of
states or
countries
under a
single
supreme
authority,
formerly
especially an
emperor or
empress.
a country,
state, or
territory
ruled by a
king or
queen.
a country or area under the full or partial
political control of another country,
typically a distant one, and occupied by
settlers from that country.
“Canada’s past is more dramatic than any
romance ever penned..To her shores are
thronging the hosts of the Old World’s
dispossessed, in multitudes greater than any
army that ever marched to conquest under
Napoleon…It would be a mistake to conclude
that Canada’s nation builders consisted
entirely of poor people. ..Princes, nobles,
adventurers, soldiers of fortune, were the
pathfinders who blazed the trail to Canada.”
-- Agnes C. Laut, Canada: The Empire of
the North (1909)
Scene Reading
What kind of Ca-na-da is Michael Hollingsworth describing?
The Plains of Abraham
The death of General Wolfe, Battle of
the Plains of Abraham (1759) painting
by Benjamin West 1770
The Loyalists
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
The United Empire Loyalists were those colonists who remained faithful to the Crown and wished to
continue living in the New World.
For some, exile began as early as 1775 when "committees of safety" throughout the Thirteen Colonies
began to harass British sympathizers.
The signing of the Treaty of Paris (1783), which recognized the independence of the United States, was the
final blow.
Approximately 70,000 Loyalists fled the Thirteen Colonies.
Fleeing in panic and confusion, the Loyalists faced unpromising beginnings. The lands they were to settle
were isolated, forbidding and wild.
Many of the Black Loyalists were members of an exclusively Black corps of the British army who had been
promised their freedom if they would support the Crown. Assuming their equality with white soldiers, the
Black Loyalists expected similar treatment. Sadly, this did not turn out to be the case since benefits in the
form of land provisions were not distributed equally. Doomed to a life of subservience, if not actual slavery,
about half of the Black Loyalists soon left for Sierra Leone.
“The common thread that linked these diverse groups was a distrust of too much democracy
which they believed resulted in mob rule and an accompanying breakdown of law and
order.”
–
Ann Mackenzie, “A Short History of the United Empire Loyalists,” www.uelac.org
Benedict Arnold
Defected to the British side
Laura Secord
Heroine of 1812
Bishop Jean-Olivier Briand of
Quebec
Sir Guy Carleton/Lord
Dorchester, Governor of the
Province of Quebec and
Governor General of British
North America
Sir John Johnson, Loyalist
politician and wealthy
landowner
Some characters
More characters
Richard Montgomery
Led the failed invasion of Canada
Madame de Saint Laurent
Steadfast mistress
Prince Edward, Duke of Kent
Trendsetter
General John Burgoyne British
army officer and dramatist
Surrendered his army to the Americans
Lord Simcoe
HAYENDANEGEA (he also signed Thayendanegen,
Thayeadanegea, Joseph Thayendanegea, and
Joseph Brant), Mohawk interpreter, translator, war
chief, and statesman; Indian Department officer;
member of the wolf clan; probably b. c. March
1742/43; d. 24 Nov. 1807 in what is now
Burlington, Ont.
From Canadian Dictionary of National Biography
Online
King George III
more
Molly Brant
CARLETON: Sons of bitches would be more appropriate.
Cherry Valley Massacre 1778
Non.
seigneur
• A feudal lord
habitant
Cornelius Krieghoff, Habitants, 1852
Vincent Massey (1887-1967)
Massey Report 1951
Our military defences must be secure….
but our cultural defences equally demand national attention;
The two cannot be separated.
Massey Report 1951
(From the correspondence of Samuel Marchbanks)
To Apollo Fishhorn, Esq.,
Dear Mr. Fishhorn:-You want to be a Canadian playright, and ask me for advice as to how to set
about it. Well, Fishhorn, the first thing you had better acquaint yourself with is
the physical conditions of the Canadian theatre. Every great drama, as you
know, has been shaped by its playhouse. The Greek drama gained grandeur
from its marble outdoor theatres; the Elizabethan drama was given fluidity by the
extreme adaptability of the Elizabethan playhouse stage; French classical drama
took its formal tone from its equisite, candle-lit theatres. You see what I mean.
Now what is the Canadian playhouse? Nine times out of ten, Fishhorn, it is a
school hall, smelling of chalk and kids, and decorated in the Early Concrete
style. The stage is a small, raised room at one end. And I mean room. If you step
into the wings suddenly you will fracture your nose against the wall. There is no
place for storing scenery, no place for the actors to dress, and the lighting is
designed to warm the stage but not to illuminate it.
Write your plays, then, for such a stage. Do not demand any procession of
elephants, or dances by the maidens of the Caliph's harem. Keep away from
sunsets and storms at sea. Place as many scenes as you can in cellars and
kindred spots. And don't have more than three characters on the stage at one
time, or the weakest of them is sure to be nudged into the audience. Farewell,
and good luck to you.
March 4, 1950.
S. Marchbanks.1
“… the very idea [of a national theatre] is a
historical anachronism inapplicable to this
country…”
“..the theatre has images.jpeg
been identified throughout
our history as a site for a debate on the nature
of nationhood.”
-- Alan Filewod, “National Theatre,
National Obsession” (1990)
Part Three: The Loyalists
The play
• The British is part two of Hollingsworth’s
historical play-cycle, The History of the
Village of the Small Huts. It premiered at
Theatre Passe Muraille in 1986. The
British is composed of four one-act
plays: The Plains of Abraham, The
Conspiracy of Pontiac, The Loyalists
and The War of 1812. The plays were
presented in repertory over week-nights,
and as full-day marathons on the
weekend.
Videocabaret 2014
Videocabaret – Michael Hollingsworth and Deann Taylor
Why is this country the way it is?
Michael Hollingsworth
Like most Canadians, he knew more
about the Alamo than the Algonquin.
•
His epic cycle of plays is called The
History of the Village of the Small Huts (an
early translation of the Huron-Iroquois
word for Canada)
•
The original productions premiered from
1985 to 1999.
•
Importance of designers: especially
Lighting and set design by Jim Plaxton
and Andy Moro;
•
“Hyperbolic''' costumes by Astrid Janson
•
Puppets and props by Brad Harley and
Shadowland
•
Integration of light and sound from day one
of rehearsal
Unlikely chronicler
Clear Light premiered at Toronto
Free Theatre (now Canadian Stage
Company’s Berkeley Street space)
1973
Toronto Morality Squad shuts it
down after 12 performances
Discovery
Lighting designer Jim
Plaxton “Where there’s a
light, there’s a stage”
– Black box stage
– Eliminates scenery, stage
furniture and every other
physical reference to time
and space
– Hundreds of computerized
lighting cues
Influences
http://www.welfare-state.org
WELFARE STATE INTERNATIONAL
Engineers of the Imagination
A collective of radical artists and
thinkers who explored ideas of
celebratory art and spectacle between
1968 and 2006.
Shadowland
Influences: Trinidadian ‘mas’ carnival
Videocabaret produces ‘Island to
Island’ workshops with artists living on
Toronto Island
“A raggle-taggle band of anti-heroes…Larger-than-life sized wigs, inflated costumes..
overblown two-dimensional props and the white-faced make up of mime”
Michele White, Introduction to “The History of the Village of the Small Huts, etc”
Popular Culture
Other important sources for
Hollingsworth are cartoons, The Goon
Show, and Monte Python’s Flying
Circus
Monte Python’s Flying Circus
The Goon Show
Whistle while you work
Every colonized people – in other words every people in whose
soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and
burial of its local cultural orginality – finds itself face to face with
the language of the civilizing nation: that is with the culture of the
mother country. The colonized is elevated..in proportion to his
adoption of the mother country’s cultural standards.”
-- Franz Fanon, in Black Skins, White Masks as quoted by S.M.Crean,
“The Invisible Country” (1976)
“The rhetorical proposal of a national theatre in effect means the canonization
of a theatre and drama that reflects the national ideals of the governing elite.”
Alan Filewod, “National Theatre, National Obsession”
Maggie & Pierre by Linda Griffiths
NEXT WEEK
Sep.29 The Occupied
Reading:
Michel Tremblay, Les Belles Soeurs (1968). (BK)
Rachel Killick, “In The Fold? Postcolonialism and Quebec”
(2006). (CW)
Activities:
Scene readings – who?
Short presentations
Yours Forever, Marie Lou is running at Soulpepper on
September 25, 26 and 30 at 8 pm
Question for next week:
How is Tremblay's family drama also a commentary about the
state of the nation?