In keeping with my foppish style, I was overjoyed to hear that Vanessa Redgrave and her haggard boys were going to be pitching tent down on King Street with The Hollow Crown. And as I’d set my expectations so high, I was all the more disappointed by the boring disaster that they’d brought us [Editor’s note: the production was not a ‘play’, as many had hoped, but rather a collection of speeches, poems, and song from the history of the British monarchy]. Although what doesn’t kill our theatre aesthetics only makes them stronger: and there is a huge lesson to be learned-one that directly applies to theatre here at the University of Toronto and in part explains why it is inaccessible and dull.
Communication. That’s what all works of theatre (all art) are supposed to be. And yet there in front of me were four of the world’s (supposedly) greatest actors refusing to communicate with either their fellow actors or the audience in presenting their passionless oratory. At exactly the same time this old dog was dying in the sun, there were three very different and exciting theatre activities happening on campus.
These three events, each occurring relatively simultaneously in the last week of January, were: 1. Fefu and Her Friends, by Maria Irene Fornes, directed by Maja Ardal. Fornes is rarely produced and yet highly interesting, exciting and important. Producing it is a risk, but an admirable one. 2. Ghosts, by Henrik Ibsen. Watching Ibsen, Chekhov, et al. is a necessary activity to regularly return to, to recalibrate the theatre aesthetic, regardless of the production’s quality. 3. The U of T Drama Festival, where ten one-act plays were presented over three evenings; the entire artistic team of each show consisted of students.
These three productions should have created a solid theatre community on campus for that one week, instead of dividing their potential audience and excitement base. John Walker, who acted in Possible Worlds at Hart House Theatre, said that his recent performing “wasn’t terribly encouraged by my Drama professor [Ken Gass], because we’re not really supposed to do non-program related work for fear that it will take focus away from the class.”
Of course Gass’ claim is vaguely legitimate-Walker was taking potential rehearsal/study time away from the program. The University College Drama Program’s unwritten position on this is something akin to the elitist autonomy medical doctors try to create. Nothing can be better than learning about the theatre through performing a play. The idea that a classroom offers more theatre than the theatre itself does makes no sense.
Maja Ardal (a drama instructor at UC who directed the production of Fefu), in response to questions about quality control in campus theatre, says: “I feel that given that this is a university, the research and experiment should be particularly strong when working on productions and presentations. It is not just about becoming a better actor, but about knowing what is possible in all kinds of theatre, and putting that into practice.”
Experimentation in theatre needs to happen at U of T above all else. It is always stressed in the school’s literature that as much as teaching is a major component, so is research. Theatrical research needs to occur and should happen alive and on its feet (as opposed to merely producing literary/academic doctoral studies). Other departments at the school have made immense contributions to and are leaders in their respective fields. It is absolutely necessary for this to occur in theatre. Campus productions need to be exciting, new, adventurous, intense-they need to speak to their audiences and insist that they be truly heard.
Achieving such goals might mean doing a brilliant, traditional production of Hamlet, or maybe some of Sarah Kane’s edgy shock-theatre (many of which haven’t even been staged in Canada aside from a recent production in Calgary, of all places). But it should be the goal to do something in which the artists strive for a higher order of articulation, above what can be scraped from the surface of a sitcom re-run or a lunchtime chit-chat. That is why, in the pursuit to communicate, a lack of intention and focus achieves nothing. Theatre is not a field in which one mechanically attains a B.A. to get a ‘decent job’; it should be for people devoted to the practice of theatre.
The established theatres of Toronto seem too worried about satisfying subscribers, grant funding bodies, and each other to take significant risks. This leaves the academic and independent theatre to accept the challenge. But how does the theatre get to a point where its very survival isn’t an issue? Kate Heming, president of the U of T Drama Coalition (which produced the recent Drama Festival), has been working with her group to bring together the theatre bodies of the university. “By supporting one another,” she says, “we support ourselves and in doing so are freed from the artistic quagmire of doing another blockbuster musical or Shakespearean play, not because it is our artistic choice but because we want our theatre companies to survive.”
When no one attends a performance, the artist is drained of confidence-people must attend, so that mediocrity can be confidently transcended. U of T has the talent and the resources to do so, but there needs to be a better exchange of ideas between theatre-goers and theatre-makers on campus for that to happen.
U of T student Anthony Furey is the artistic producer of the Paprika Festival for young playwrights at Tarragon Theatre. His play A Simple Solution was part of the U of T Drama Festival earlier this year.
