celebrations of the past

[Day, Moira]

Hi folks,

It sounds as if this dialogue is at least temporarily coming to an end. Thanks you so much for everyone who contributed. I am putting together a timeline from my own research and tips that people have sent me. Perhaps, I will try circulating it, and ask people to contribute corrections or additions to it as needed.

Ric, as regards your inquiry, I was recently reminded by Annie Smith that she played a role in helping to create and teach two Canadian theatre courses at UBC with an Indigenous focus: “Thtr 325B: Canadian Theatre History:  History of Contemporary Native Theatre in Canada” and “Thtr 425A: Studies in Canadian Theatre: The Theory and Aesthetics of Native Performance” (2004, 2005). But I’m sure there are others. I think your comment is a reminder that while it’s relatively easy to identify when a particular course entered the stream, that kind of bookkeeping doesn’t always do justice to people who were doing a similar job sub rosa within the existing frameworks. Or indicate what kind of Canadian Drama was being taught as part of the course. I would hope that most of us teach a different version of our own CanDram course now than we did when we started, whether we teach a specific course in intercultural or indigenous theatre ourselves.

As for the Mavor Moore debate, I feel a little like the fool rushing in where the fools fear to tread, but I do feel obliged to say one or two things from my own perspective as a researcher into earlier periods and people. First of all, Don, I’m sorry for your loss of someone you clearly loved and valued deeply on a personal level. My sense in reading your review is that Allen’s book made you feel as if you had lost Mavor twice over, and that you feared that Mavor would also be lost to a generation that did not have the privilege to know him personally, because you felt that Allen had not “got him right.” I absolutely honour and respect that. I would like to say in Allen’s defence though, that this really was not a case of a callow grad student constructing someone out of an interview or two and a mound of primary and secondary materials - which as Anton and you have pointed out - has its limitations. Allen really did spend a lot of time talking and working closely with Mavor in the final years of his life, and I feel he genuinely came to love and value him and to want to see his heritage preserved for another generation for many of the reasons that you do. But speaking from personal experience, I think it is always a temptation to feel that the person we meet towards the end of their lives is the most accurate, definitive or authoritative version of that person and if we’ve got a “lock” on that, we’ve understood most we need to understand about them. Elsie Gowan herself once warned me against that. She said it was a mistake to think of her as one person who had lived a single long life. By her late 80s she had lived several lives and the “self” she was in one life sometimes had little relationship to the “self” she had been in another. I think it’s entirely possible that the Mavor that Allen got to know in late life sent him down a different line of inquiry that led to a different result. If, in the process, things inadvertently got overlooked or undervalued that should have been considered, there is a lesson in that for all of us who do work of this kind. If there is a value to the debate on this, it is a reminder again that Mavor Moore is someone who should be remembered and documented for a further generation as a major force in the creation of the Canadian theatre - and that no one book or article may be able to fully catch the measure of someone who lived so long, did so much, and was a very rich, dynamic and complex person in all his iterations of “self.”

Cheers,
Moira
On Mar 1, 2016, at 7:44 AM, Ric Knowles <rknowles at uoguelph.ca<mailto:rknowles at uoguelph.ca>> wrote:

Hi all,

I wonder if rather than getting nostalgic for the heyday of the early 70s and before we might celebrate some of the best ways of looking back--such as the current revival of Salt Water Moon at Factory Theatre, directed by Ravi Jain and featuring Kawa Ada and Mayko Nguyen? In fact, Factory's whole season of revivals seems celebratory. Up next is Nigel Shawn Williams's production of A Line in the Sand, then Judith Thompson directing The Crackwalker in a way that acknowledges Theresa's Indigeneity. Those heady early days were pretty white and pretty male ("after the revolution, where are the women?"). Factory is adding some colour, and I expect/hope that this is happening elsewhere too.

I'd love to see a discussion on this list of revivals elsewhere that are injecting new life into our field--and also into our curricula, since we're talking about courses and programs. I wonder when and where the first courses on Canadian intercultural performance were? Or the first courses on Indigenous theatre in the land now called Canada?

Cheers,

Ric

Professor of Theatre Studies
University of Guelph
Guelph, Ontario, Canada
N1G 2W1

ph: 519-824-4120, x52931 (w)
FAX: 519-824-0560
email: rknowles at uoguelph.ca<mailto:rknowles at uoguelph.ca>
http://www.uoguelph.ca/sets/sets-ric-knowles

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://artsservices.uwaterloo.ca/pipermail/candrama/attachments/20160302/34161594/attachment.html>