canadian theatrehistory 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 a b js b jh l li...
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CANADIAN THEATRE HISTORY
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The Owners
September 16Canada Council for the Arts Toronto Workshop Productions National Theatre School Rochdale College/TPM
September 23Royal AlexNational Arts CentrePlaywrights Co-op Ministry of MulticulturalismCanadian Theatre Review Cahoots Theatre Company
September 30The Dora Mavor Moore Awards [TAPA]TarragonThe B.A.A.N.N. Theatre Centre One Yellow RabbitEspace GoFringe Festivals (Edmonton, Toronto)
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)
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 been identified throughout our history as a site for a debate on the nature of nationhood.”
-- Alan Filewod, “National Theatre, National Obsession” (1990)
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Scene Reading
What kind of Ca-na-da is Michael Hollingsworth describing?
“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)
The Plains of AbrahamThe 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. Therefore, they left their homes to settle eventually in what remained of British North America. • The Loyalists came from every class and walk of life. • 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 for the
Loyalists. Faced with further mistreatment and the hostility of their countrymen, and wishing to live as British subjects, Loyalists who had remained in the Thirteen Colonies during the war now were faced with exile. Those who wished to in North America had two choices; Nova Scotia (Maritimes) or Quebec (Ontario-Quebec).
• Approximately 70,000 Loyalists fled the Thirteen Colonies. Of these, roughly 50,000 went to the British North American Colonies of Quebec and Nova Scotia.
• Fleeing in panic and confusion, the Loyalists faced unpromising beginnings. The lands they were to settle were isolated, forbidding and wild.
• The Loyalists did not mix well with the older settlers and preferred to live in groups by themselves as far away as possible. • 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.
Sir Guy Carleton/Lord Dorchester, Governor of the Province of Quebec and Governor General of British North America
Bishop Jean-Olivier Briand of Quebec
Sir John Johnson, Loyalist politician and wealthy landowner
Benedict ArnoldDefected to the British side
Laura SecordHeroine of 1812
Some characters
General John Burgoyne British army officer and dramatistSurrendered his army to the Americans
Richard Montgomery Led the failed invasion of Canada
More characters
Prince Edward, Duke of KentTrendsetter
Madame de Saint LaurentSteadfast mistress
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
Molly Brant
more
Native Americans, and notably members of the Five Nations in New York, tended to side with the British because they believed the British were more likely than the Patriots to protect them. Approximately 2,000 followed Thayendanegea (Joseph Brant) into British North America after the war. The majority settled in the valley of the Grand River; smaller groups went to the head of Lake Ontario and to the shores of the Bay of Quinte.
Cherry Valley Massacre 1778
Non.
seigneur• A feudal lord
habitant
Cornelius Krieghoff, Habitants, 1852
Part Three: The Loyalists • 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.
The play
Videocabaret 2014
Videocabaret – Michael Hollingsworth and Deann Taylor
Why is this country the way it is?
• 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
Like most Canadians, he knew more about the Alamo than the Algonquin.
Michael Hollingsworth
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– Black box stage
– Eliminates scenery, stage furniture and every other physical reference to time and space
– Hundreds of computerized lighting cues
Lighting designer Jim Plaxton “Where there’s a light, there’s a stage”
Influences
http://www.welfare-state.org
WELFARE STATE INTERNATIONAL
Engineers of the ImaginationA 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.23 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
Past Perfect opens on September 24 Talkback and PWYC: Oct 1
Question for next week:
How is Tremblay's family drama also a commentary about the state of the nation?