Death of Marion Andr é

[Don Rubin]

Dear Candrama list:

Marion Andre was a colleague and friend, one who deeply cared about theatre in
Canada.

Those who had the privilege to know him are keenly aware that he fought his
entire life for those things he believed most deeply in: fairness and honesty. 
Given that belief, most human behavior -- especially at the social and political
levels -- troubled him deeply. His work as both director and playwright
reflected his concerns and the two major theatres he created and ran in Canada
-- the Saidye Bronfman and Theatre Plus -- are important historical testaments
to his staggering vision and fierce commitment.

Both my wife -- Patricia Keeney -- and I worked with Marion at various times as
Literary Managers at Theatre Plus. We fought and debated with him on a daily
basis and we loved him for every outrageous argument. He later worked with us
again on the editorial boards of both the Canadian Theatre Review and the World
Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre. Until illness began to ravage him, he
never stopped battling and never stopped asking uncomfortable questions.

We feel his loss most profoundly.

Anyone interested in wanting to understand Marion at a deeper level, anyone
wanting to understand more about his life and work, might want to look at an
essay I wrote about him in 1994. It appeared in Albert-Reiner Glaap's
Post-Colonial Drama: Plays and Essays from Canada and New Zealand. It was
published in Germany by Schwann. The essay appeared in English. The volume only
exists in the Schwann edition.

I am attaching it for your interest.

Don Rubin
York University

Quoting Leonard Conolly <lconolly at TRENTU.CA>:

> Thanks, Anton. It's sad news, but colleagues might like to be reminded
> that many of Marion's achievements have been recorded and preserved in
> collections at Guelph--the Theatre Plus archives and the Marion Andre
> Collection.
>
> Len Conolly
>
>
> Anton Wagner wrote:
>
> >Please find below the obituary for Marion André from today's Globe and Mail.
> >
> >
> >MARION ANDRÉ, THEATRE DIRECTOR 1920-2006
> >The Holocaust shaped the artistic vision of a Pole who came to Canada and
> >founded two dynamic theatre companies, writes SANDRA MARTIN. His productions
> >showcased significant moral and political issues
> >Marion André was a triple threat in the theatre: a writer, a director and an
> >impresario. But his greatest contribution was as founding artistic director
> of
> >Montreal's Saidye Bronfman Centre and Toronto's Theatre Plus, a company that
> in
> >its ambitions was a forerunner of the Soulpepper Theatre Company.
> >"He was a sparkling ignited soul" and "a real mentor for me," said actress
> Lynn
> >Griffin, who performed in A Doll's House, Antigone and The Lark at Theatre
> >Plus. "He was very demanding to work with," she said, adding she was happy
> for
> >the training and discipline he instilled in her because "you can often get
> by
> >being really lazy" as an actor. "He challenged himself and everybody around
> him
> >to bring their work up to his inspiration."
> >Calling Mr. André a "very welcoming man with a very generous heart," said
> Robin
> >Phillips, former artistic director of the Stratford Festival. What he
> >remembered was not so much the quality of the productions that Mr. André
> >mounted at Theatre Plus but the attitude behind them. "There was a real need
> to
> >communicate beyond the play," an obsession that Mr. Phillips thinks
> originated
> >in the Polish underground theatre where Mr. André worked after the Second
> World
> >War -- where the experience of going to the theatre was a much more engaged
> and
> >political act than simply being entertained for a couple of hours. "He
> always
> >looked behind the easy criticism to a connection and empathy with the
> intention
> >of a work."
> >Marian Andrzej Tenenbaum was born in Le Havre, France, while his Polish
> parents,
> >Emil and Renata (née Liebling) Tenenbaum, were studying at the university.
> After
> >earning their degrees, the Tenenbaums returned to Lvov in southeastern
> Poland
> >(now part of Ukraine), where they worked as pharmacists and had a second
> child,
> >Hanka.
> >After the signing of the German-Soviet pact in 1939 and the subsequent
> Soviet
> >invasion of Poland from the east, the Jewish population in Lvov doubled when
> >100,000 refugees fled from the Nazi onslaught in the west. When the Germans
> >occupied Lvov after their invasion of the Soviet Union in June of 1941, the
> >Tenenbaums' family home and other property were confiscated.
> >More than 6,000 Jews were killed in Lvov in two pogroms before the Germans
> >established a ghetto in the northern part of the city in November of 1941.
> With
> >the help of Christian friends, Marian obtained false papers for himself and
> his
> >mother in the Polish name of Czerniecki, and that enabled them to live
> outside
> >the ghetto. He joined the Polish underground and smuggled messages in and
> out
> >of the Lvov ghetto (where his father and his sister had been forced to live)
> >while he was ostensibly collecting scrap metal from the Jews for the German
> war
> >effort.
> >In March of 1942, the Germans began deporting Jews to the Belzec death camp.
> By
> >August, more than 65,000 Jews had been transported to the camp and murdered.
> >Ten months later, the Germans shut down the ghetto, killing many thousands
> of
> >people in the process. Marian never found out the fate of his father and
> >sister, but he always believed they had been killed in the camps.
> >Passing as a Christian, Marian had escaped the deportations and made his way
> to
> >Warsaw, but he was arrested because of his work in the underground and sent
> to
> >a German camp. He escaped after the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944 and
> was
> >recruited by the British army because of his linguistic skills in Polish,
> >German, French and English. By the end of the war, he was in France, where
> he
> >learned from the Red Cross that his mother was alive. He returned to Poland,
> >found her and, together, moved to The Hague in 1946. Working as a cultural
> >attaché for the Polish legation, he met and married his first wife, a Dutch
> >woman, with whom he had a son, Tom.
> >In 1950, they moved to Warsaw, where he began making documentaries and
> >translating American plays for Polish radio. Three years later, he started a
> >small children's theatre called Kleks. His marriage broke up and he and his
> >mother emigrated to Montreal in 1957, sponsored by his uncle.
> >In Montreal, Marian Andrzej Czerniecki shortened his name to the more
> masculine
> >and French-sounding Marion André (a change he legalized in 1980). He found a
> >series of jobs: helping to establish a drama program for the Protestant
> School
> >Board, directing plays on a freelance basis at McGill University, writing
> for
> >CBC radio and television and starting a theatre company called Studio Six
> and
> >another one called The Freelancers. He also married a second time and had
> >another son, Krystian.
> >In 1967, Minda, Phyllis, Edgar and Charles Bronfman, children of Samuel
> Bronfman
> >of the Seagram Distillery fortune, established the Saidye Bronfman Centre
> for
> >the Arts, as the cultural branch of the YM-YWHA Montreal Jewish Community
> >Centres, in honour of their mother's 70th birthday. Mr. André was appointed
> >inaugural director of performing arts and subsequently became executive
> >director and artistic director. It was at the Saidye Bronfman Centre that he
> >met Ina Rubin, a dancer and teacher who had been brought in to help with the
> >dance program. They married in 1970, and he later adopted her two children,
> >John and Jennifer, from a previous marriage.
> >After a traumatic youth, Mr. André seemed to be prospering both artistically
> and
> >romantically. Coming from Poland, where theatre had always been a forum for
> >showcasing controversial ideas, he tended to present thought-provoking,
> >sometimes even disturbing, material about moral and political issues. In
> 1971,
> >Mr. André scheduled a production of Robert Shaw's post-Holocaust drama, The
> Man
> >in the Glass Booth, a play about the Adolf Eichmann trial in Israel in 1961
> that
> >raises questions about Jewish passivity as well as dealing with German
> guilt.
> >Some Holocaust survivors and members of the Jewish Y were deeply offended by
> >the play's content. There was a huge controversy that manifested itself in
> >telephone campaigns against the Andrés and others, and threats to torch the
> >theatre. Afraid of incipient violence and overly sensitive to the feelings
> of a
> >survivor's group, the board closed the play before it opened.
> >Mr. André quit as artistic director in protest because "he felt it was
> important
> >that they shouldn't knuckle under to this kind of fear," said Ina, his wife.
> >"I have nothing but deep feelings of compassion for the victims of Nazi
> >oppression," Mr. André said in an interview with the Montreal Gazette at the
> >time. "Theatre must not fear controversy, but consider it a necessary
> >ingredient of its existence. I have a profound feeling of revulsion when
> >intimidation is used, or when any group goes to extremes to have its own
> views
> >prevail."
> >The aftermath of the 1970 FLQ crisis added to Mr. André's unhappiness over
> the
> >furor at the Bronfman Centre, and he and his family moved to Toronto, where
> he
> >was given teaching work in the theatre department at York University. Within
> a
> >year, he had seized the opportunity presented by the unused smaller theatre
> >space at the St. Lawrence Centre in the summer and launched Theatre Plus in
> >what was then the Jane Mallet, and now the Bluma Appel, theatre. As he said
> at
> >the time, "People don't turn their brains off in the summer."
> >His statement of purpose was to "present plays from a national and
> international
> >repertoire that reflect the social, political and moral problems of our
> times."
> >Over the next 13 years, he mounted 56 productions, many of them premieres of
> >modern Canadian, European and American plays. A few of his choices were
> written
> >and directed by himself, which caused some critics such as Matthew Fraser to
> >label him "self-indulgent" and Ray Conlogue to argue that artistic directors
> >should have to do what every other writer does: "Convince somebody else that
> >the play is worth producing."
> >Nevertheless, The Aching Heart of Samuel Kleinerman, a play Mr. André wrote
> and
> >directed, was voted the best production of the 1984-85 season by Theatre
> Plus
> >subscribers. He was given the Toronto Drama Bench Award for distinguished
> >contribution to Canadian theatre in 1985, the year that Meniere's disease, a
> >disorder of the inner ear that causes extreme vertigo and nausea, forced him
> to
> >step down. His health continued to trouble him and, by 1988, he needed a
> >quadruple heart bypass.
> >Mr. André continued to write, always using the Holocaust, the central
> experience
> >of his life, as his theme in novels Maria B. (1990) and The Battered Man
> (1996),
> >both published by Mosaic Press. By then, he had been diagnosed with Lewy
> body
> >disease, a progressive dementia that is accompanied by hallucinations and
> has
> >symptoms similar to both Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Eventually, Mrs. André
> >could no longer care for him; he went into a retirement home, and then a
> >nursing home.
> >Marion André was born
> >in Le Havre, France, on Jan. 12,
> >1920. He died in Toronto of
> >complications from Lewy body
> >disease on May 9. He was 86. He
> >is survived by his wife, Ina, four
> >children and six grandchildren.
> >
> >
> >
>


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