Producing Marginality: Theatre and Criticism in Canada
Essays by Robert Wallace
Fifth House Publishers
253 pages
We can deny that marginality is
negative. We can claim it as a
strength.—Rick Salutin
In a protracted introduction to this series of essay concerning the state of Canadian theatre, Robert Wallace dedicates his collection to all the small theatre companies that are currently defying the odds, struggling in the face of adversity, and proudly “producing marginality.”
His dedication is a hopeful gesture that takes on an ironic face after one reads most of what Wallace has to say. The York University professor spends much of his book bemoaning the poor financial and artistic state of the Canadian theatre industry and the criticism that surrounds and constructs it. Ultimately, he predicts its imminent demise. Yet his prediction is a half-hearted one, going hand in hand as it does with a clarion call to Canadian artists to continue producing the alternative theatre that is their raison d’etre.
It is difficult to exactly pin down the central thesis here, for Producing Marginality is more a broad survey of what Wallace feels are the vital and salient aspects of Canadian theatre, than a single concerted argument about where the industry should head.
Yet it would not be doing Wallace a disservice, or those about whom he writes, to note that his opinions are firmly rooted in a tradition of marginalism. His belief, strongly supported by endlessly cross-referenced research, is a compelling one: it is only from the social and economic margins, and in opposition to the commercial products of the homogenous, generic mainstream, that Canadians in general, and theatre professionals in specific, can continue to define themselves.
What is horrifying about Wallace’s assertions is the underlying implication that, while there may be no “Canadian identity” per se (this is a post-Meech book in the intellectual, if not literal, sense), there is still something unique about Canada, and that it can only be preserved and cultivated through indigenous theatre. Unless we contine to define ourselves against British political and American cultural influences, we may as well drop the curtain now on our country’s future.
At times, Producing Marginality reads like a depressing litany of social and economic ills befalling the Canadian theatre. The stories are all too common of renowned artistic directors living on less than $1,000 per month, and the lack of recognition faced by the majority of people working in the field (one cultural literacy survey showed that most Canadians think internationally produced playwright Michel Tremblay is a hockey player).
There are valuable lessons in self-definition here for both Montreal and Toronto theatre professional, and an interesting thesis on why Quebec may, in fact, be considered distinct in the cultural landscape of Canada.
Missing from Wallace’s argument, in his rush to valorize anything indigenous, is the acknowledgement that there is, in fact, bad theatre being produced in Canada, and that it may deserve to die a graceless death. Also unobserved is that, while theatre may go through its boom and bust periods much like the economy (a comparison that Wallace, with his wariness for anything that parallels theatre with business, would probably abhor), the need to produce indigenous theatrical expressions can’t help but continue.
Nevertheless, Producing Marginality is an important work, if only because it renews the urgency of the call for indigenous theatre in Canada. That the essays offer a challenging argument is to state the obvious; to accept that their rigorous approach and almost irrefutable conclusions demand attention is to acknowledge that the idea of Canada itself is inextricably bound up in the fate of our theatre.
The academic tone of the essays — including the one originally published in 1980, which is a valuable touchstone of expectations against which we can measure the advances and declines of Canadian theatre in the past ten years — makes the book a perfect complement with which to contextualize any university course on modern drama, Canadian or otherwise. Without understanding the dubious promise of our future, the study of our past and present will prove to be but an irrelevant venture.
