Ten Best

[Gaetan Charlebois]

Hello Ric

I absolutely see the reason academics would shy away from this which is
precisely the reason I'm doing it. I want to hear (particularly in
soliciting anecdotes) what plays have touched people and not what they think
are "the greatest." I want people to explain what they see as the difference
between what spoke to them in a performance of a Walker play compared to
what spoke to them in the singing of "Music of the Night" at the Pantages.

I also get grumpy at the fact we are willing to talk about Willy Loman in
terms which differ (partiularly in a level of respect) from the way we talk
about Germaine Lauzon or Zastrozzi. I want, finally (and this is the point
of the whole damn enterprise and my life as a critic, to some extent) to
shake things up: to proclaim that theatre lives in a real world that touches
real people. A hit play, I'd be willing to bet, reaches a significantly
bigger number of people than a Canadian best seller but we never read about
a hit play in the A&E sections of the papers. (Think about it: Belles-soeurs
at Canadian Stage, sold out for more than a month times however many
productions the work has received over the years...) How many people were
outraged by the Gzowski interview with Ann-Marie MacDonald where he acted
like she didn't exist before Fall On Your Knees (though Goodnight... had
been played all over the country, around the world and had reached and
touched literally thousands of people).

Finally, it all boils down to my rage when it comes to our love of things
Canadian: we never express it. As a cultural bastard, I can tell you that
here, in Quebec, we have no trouble loving our Tremblays and Bouchards
(Michel Marc, I mean) and Bouchers. And claiming that adoration in, I'll
admit, occasionally purple prose.

And, finally, it comes from correspondance with academics who declare huge
respect and love for the works of Voaden or Denison or even Walker, but who
sometimes act like applause or standing ovations for the works of these
people (or including them in a top ten list) would be a vulgarization. I
argue it is exactly the opposite. It's an audience "getting it" so to speak.
It's the reason drama exists. It's the reason I go to theatre (and applaud,
bravo and, God help me, occasionally boo).It's theatre: the only living
expression of a culture.

Forgive the rant.

Gaetan

----------
>From: Ric Knowles <rknowles at UOGUELPH.CA>
>To: CANDRAMA at LISTSERV.UNB.CA
>Subject: Re: Ten Best
>Date: Mon, May 3, 1999, 8:36 PM
>

> Gaetan,
>
> One of the problems academic have circulates around the canonization of
> particular works (and therefore values), and the ideological implications
> of "best" (which tends to conflate moral and aesthetic senses of the
> term). What can read like lack of interest is sometimes a deep-seated
> unease about the whole enterprise. The most significant value of your
> encyclopedia, as far as I'm concerned, is its (democratic) inclusiveness:
> if you send it, we will post. And no "experts" decide the value of
> whose contriutions (as was made clear in the stage management debate a
> while back). I'd be happiest not to see the Canon of Canadian Drama
> established--and this feeling may account for the lack of input from some
> quarters. (This is not to attack those who do respond, or who don't
> feel as I do, only to suggest that a lack of response may not indicate a
> lack of interest, or lack of commitment to the field.)
>
> Cheers,
>
> Ric
>