Lennoxville Remarks

[Anton Wagner]

As per Barbra French's/Don Rubin's gauntlet, following are part of my introductory remarks for the ACTR/ARTC June 2, 1999 ESTABLISHING OUR BOUNDARIES: English-Canadian Theatre Criticism Panel Discussion with Don Rubin, Malcolm Page, Don Perkins and Patrick O'Neill.


What we are presenting here today are some of the findings of a research project that began in 1988 with a successful $50,000 one-year research grant application to SSHRC. In fact, it's taken 10 years to reach publication. We hope the wait has been worthwhile.

I've been describing this project as the first cultural history of Canada as seen through the eyes of 21 leading English-Canadian theatre critics commenting on the creation of an indigenous Canadian national theatre and drama over two centuries.

Our original 1988 SSHRC application listed 27 contributors from 17 universities and institutions across the country. Over time, this slimmed down to 17 contributors at 12 universities. In 1996, the University of Toronto Press contracted for "approximately 500 manuscript pages." The Press eventually received 700 manuscript pages in what turned out to be a 428 printed page collection. The book probably would not have been published without the very strong support from readers (whose identity, except for Richard Plant--quoted on the back cover jacket-- UTP is still refusing to divulge to this day) and to the extensive research and publication assistance acknowledged in the book.
  
The basic premise about the cultural data we wanted to analyze is quite simple and is stated in the opening paragraph of Establishing Our Boundaries: "Canada's cultural history--from colony to Dominion to independent nation--is mirrored in the pages of its newspapers from the 1750s to the present. Newspapers and magazines have reflected and shaped how we view and express ourselves--how we establish our personal, collective, and political boundaries."

According to Patrick, the first theatrical notice in English appeared in newspapers in Halifax in 1773. Since then, theatre critics have left us several hundred thousand reviews published in newspapers and magazines across Canada over two centuries. These reviews often are the only descriptive record left to cultural historians of theatre production in Canada. 

In our research application to SSHRC, we said we would investigate who many of the major writers of these reviews were. That we would analyze what their aesthetic, moral, sociological, political, and other orientations were that affected and shaped their critical writing. We would look at the varied personalities and cultural backgrounds of these critics to determine how these affected their perception of--and commentary on--theatre production in their communities. What was the specific chronological, geographic and overall cultural and sociological context of the local theatre being observed? How were reviews contextualized by the very publications in which they appeared? And what could be learned from this cultural analysis over two centuries about the development of Canadian theatre and drama, past, present, and possibly future?

Our SSHRC research application suggested that because of the lack of easily accessible, in-depth research on major critical figures and periods in English-Canada's cultural history, that there was a general public and academic misconception that there were no major English-Canadian critics prior to 1945 and that the quality of past theatre reviewing was generally poor and without critical standards. 

The "Social and Practical Importance" section of our application suggested that the publication of essays resulting from this research project would positively affect public recognition of the cultural function of the critic in past and contemporary theatre production and possibly would even positively affect the quality of critical writing by Canadian theatre critics today.

In 1996, for example, Brian Brennan published an insightful article entitled "Confessions of an Unlettered Arts Critic" in Deadlines and Diversity: Journalism Ethics in a Changing World (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing). Brennan, critic for the Calgary Herald from 1975 to 1988 and a former President of the Canadian Theatre Critics Association, wrote not only about his own tenure at the Herald but of theatre criticism in many other regions of Canada as well when critics were writing with only a partial awareness of the full context of theatre criticism as a discipline.

He asserted that "during the 1970s, arts criticism at many Canadian newspapers was practiced by persons without specific training as critics, engaged in the business of conducting their education in public...I could not in all honesty say I had what it took to be a competent critic when I wrote my first theatre reviews for the Herald...when I started, I had little more than my gut to rely on. My kind of criticism could have been practised by almost anyone who had read a few plays and seen a few productions. It consisted of allowing the waves of a performance to wash over me, then analyzing the markings in the sand like some amateur fortuneteller reading the tea leaves."

Brennan confessed that "I suspect I may...have done harm with my early reviews, squelching promising talents while trying to impress readers with my wit, intelligence and the fruits of my reading list that week. Because criticism often has a direct and immediate effect on a theatrical production, I fear some actors, directors and playwrights may have had their careers damaged by my early reviews..."




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