Ten Best

[Ric Knowles]

Gaetan,

Well, there's love and there's love. I go to several plays a week, I spend
18 hours a day seeing, teaching, reading, reading about, writing about,
writing, and directing (mostly) Canadian plays and Canadian theatre. I
still don't feel comfortable with "ten best" lists. Not because the values
they inscribe are arbitrary, as Richard suggests, but because they're
NOT--they're just naturalized, taken for granted. And they tend to
reinforce dominant formations, most of which I don't like, and most of
which are dominated by the kind of American-style corporatism and
xenophobia that turns (some of) us Canadians cultural nationalists.

I get as enraged as you do about the kinds of coverage you descibe here,
and have described in the past. I think, though, that one of the
major problems here is buying in to the publicity machine that has led to
Tori Spelling's bellybutton getting more press that Guillermo
Verdechhia's--well, dramaturgy. And I think one way of buying in to that
system is to start producing "ten-best" lists. I'm all for
shit-disturbing; I think it has to take carefully considered form, or it
ends up reinforcing what it sets out to attack.

I think the inclusiveness of your encyclopedia is hugely healthy and
welcome, and although any such reference inevtitably does some sort of
"who's who" work, they can do so in more or less damaging ways, and as in
the case of your work, the good they do can far outweigh any potential
problems. But still, I'd vote for pro-actively gathering the things that
best-seller lists, popularity contests, and "common sense" tend
to marginalize or demonize.

Cheers,

Ric


On Tue, 4 May 1999, Gaetan Charlebois wrote:

> 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
> >
>