lennoxville

[Don Rubin]

Dear Candrams:

I said at the recent ACTR meeting in Lennoxville that I wd be submitting
a copy of my remarks as well as a copy of my own favourite Canadian play
list. Sorry I don't have time to give full reasons but hopefully the
titles will be useful:


Don Rubin


First my Lennoxville remarks:

Anton Wagner says in the introduction to his important new book
Establishing our Boundaries: English-Canadian Theatre Criticism
(University of Toronto Press) that "universal humanist values and
uniform critical standards appear no longer appropriate for evaluating
poswt-modern productions and even conventional theatre forms...." (p.
41).

So what is a critic to do today? Simply describe? Back off genuinely
responding to a work of art? Are judgements useless in our
post-post-modern world? Are attempts to change attitudes, to dissuade,
persuade, invade no longer acceptable in art? And criticism at its best
is an art.

Well, I'm sorry. I have ideas and points of view and beliefs and I think

that some of them may be useful to theatre artists who do need and
deep-down do want serious criticial response to their work. Does this
make my remarks ultimate truth? Perhaps not. Ultimate right or wrong?
Perhaps not. Ultimate good or bad? Unlikely.

But to suggest in this world of political correctness and post-post
modernist chickenshit attitudes that to argue personal positions
passionately, to debate your own viewpoints with anyone who is willing
to enter into the challenge is somehow neanderthal is to renege on not
only the essence of the critical function but also on one's own morality

and onnection with the world.

I repeat, let's not be chickenshit in the service of art (whatever that
word means to you). What is it YOU stand for as critic or as academic?

Jean-Paul Sartre once suggested that it is also possible to define
yourself by what you say "no" to. But I don't even hear negative
definitions anymore in Canada. I hear waffling and I hear silence. Let's

bring back the declarative sentence. Just because truth is multiple,
just because truth can be seen -- like a diamond's light -- from many
angles, is it necessary (as too many critics and academics are now
doing) to imply that there is NO truth.

We all have our truths and a critic's job (like a teacher's) is to share

his or her truth as widely as possible in as an articulate and
challenging and provocative a way as possible. Not to back away.

In George Ryga's most important play, The Ecstasy of Rita Joe, Jaimie
Paul cries out "gimme back my truth." That, I suggest,  needs to become
our collective motto. We have to stand up for something today. Even if
we lose. We may be wrong. We may get killed (either figuratively or
actually (as Jaimie Paul is killed). But our art, our way of life, our
country is at stake as the millenium looms.. Are we simply going to back

into becoming Americans over the next 25 years? Are we simply going to
be "absorbed" (as one politican recently put it) into the United States.

With only a few noble exceptions, over the last decade and-a-half, I
have found Canadian critics (and academics and most Canadian artists)
rather gutless, for the most part without articulated critical
standards, without positions on what they see, where they are or why
they even think this art of ours matters. We are losing our country?
Doesn't that matter to anyone?

Our current artistic situation is also rather boring and life, I
suggest, is too precious to be boring.

In the 1970s there was risk in our country and fun in our theatre. I'm
for trying to get some of that back.

Wagner's essay also quotes the very right wing critic Michael Coren as
saying: "what Canadian culture needs right now is...a few more enemies
provoking it into greater maturity." I couldn't agree more and I hereby
offer myself at this moment as cultural enemy number one.

Anton Wagner ends his essay by suggesting that "the theatre critic no
longer appears to play a major national role in...English-Canadian
theatre."

That's true. And that's sad. That's also a great loss for our art and
our country. We need our critical voices. They must no longer be silent.



And, as promised, Don Rubin's favourite Canadian plays:

George Ryga         The Ecstasy of Rita Joe (it started it all in
English-Canada)
John Herbert         Fortune and Men's Eyes (proved Canadian work cd be
important and commercial)
Beverley Simons   Crabdance (a still brilliant feminist fantasy)
Michael Cook       The Gayden Chronicles (his best play. unappreciated
still)
Michel Tremblay   Hosannah (identity meets theatricality)
Rick Salutin          1837 (the best of a genre; still reads well)
David French        Leaving Home (Canada's best well-made play; still
effective)
David Freeman     Creeps (a nasty and critically sharp hand-biter)
Gratien Gelinas     Yesterday the Children Were Dancing (prescient and
well-made)
George F. Walker  almost any title (urban, witty bordering on and
sometimes crossing into  the absurd)
Hrant Alianak        Mathematics  (the cleverest work of a mad mind)
Al Pittman             Rope against the Sun    (a Canadian Under
mMilkwood)
Brad Fraser           Poor Superman (revenge of stichomythia)

Other writers of note among the anglophones:  Jason Sherman, Judith
Thompson, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Daniel MacIvor. none of these has as yet
written their major play.

Submitted in true Canadian humility by Don Rubin

(founding editor, Canadian Theatre Review -- 1974-82
  editor, World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre -- 1983-1999
  former chair, Department of Theatre, York University
  editor: Canadian Theatre History: Selected Readings (Copp Clark, 1996)