CATHERINE SMITH
Chris Johnson states in the opening paragraph of Essays on George F. Walker: Playing with Anxiety that "It's time that someone wrote a book about the accomplishments of this remarkable man, and about his contribution to Canadian drama and theatre, and indeed to world drama and theatre" (11). Johnson more than delivers this book, the most comprehensive study of Walker's work to date. He analyses all 26 of Walker's published plays. The only Walker play not discussed is Heaven, written and directed by the prolific Walker after Johnson had finished writing his book. Most of the emphasis is on text, although there is some detail on Walker's plays in performance.
The book is divided into seven chapters, preceded by an introduction and followed by an appendix of significant productions. The chapters are thematically organized, except for the first chapter which provides a chronological overview of Walker's work, and the sixth chapter, a discussion of the Suburban Motel cycle of plays. Chapter two contains Johnson's seminal 1980 article on Walker—"B-Movies Beyond the Absurd"—and his critical revisiting of it; the next chapter focuses on power and class; the fourth chapter looks at order and chaos; chapter five examines Walker's female characters and the politics of sex and identity; and the final chapter ponders Walker's relationship with Art.
Johnson's agenda is ambitious. His primary purpose is to share his profound enthusiasm for Walker's work with a wide audience, not just "a small group of academic colleagues" (12), but also with those who go to see Walker's plays and the actors and directors who work on Walker's pieces. In order to make the book more accessible to this larger audience, Johnson states that he doesn't "want to write a book of ‘theory,'" although some theory will inform his discussion from time to time (11). Johnson also wants to explore the social and cultural contexts in which Walker was and is writing. Finally, he wants to look at Walker's intentions. Johnson contends Walker's central intention in every play he has written is his compulsion to place his anxiety on the page and on the stage, a point-of-view Johnson uses as a thematic touchstone throughout the book, hence the second part of the title.
Part of the way that Johnson communicates his enthusiasm for Walker is in his inclusion of autobiographical detail throughout the book. For example, Johnson shares with us how his connection to Walker is not based just on an aesthetic appreciation, but also rests on a profound identification with the playwright's background and sensibility. Walker's influence on Johnson even extends to his writing style. Johnson could be talking about sections of his own book when he describes how critics often resort to "Walkeresque rushes of words, chopped chunks of language, exclamations, in attempts, apparently, not only to describe Walker's language, but to demonstrate it" (251). The book becomes, at times, as much the story of Johnson's journey as an academic, theatre practitioner, and human being for 27 years through the terrain of "Walkerland," as it is an analysis of Walker's work. These autobiographical details allowed me to re-experience information and ideas in ways that were fresh, sometimes even startling, always enjoyable, and pertinent.
Although Johnson professes that he is not writing a book on theory, he introduces, discusses, and sometimes refutes many theoretical approaches to Walker. Some of these approaches would seem to be more accessible than others to the wider audience that Johnson seeks to embrace, such as his discussion of the "carnivalesque" (taken from Ed Nyman's essay and Mikhail Bakhtin's book) to explain certain tendencies in Walker's work, including, but not limited to, his use of popular sources, his "vulgar" humour, his "outlaw" sensibility, his earthiness, his "grotesque realism," his suspension of the usual rules, "the rules of theatre, propriety, perception, evaluation, and audience reception" (117). The introduction of other theoretical approaches would seem to be more difficult for this wider audience to grasp, such as James Earl Baldwin's application of Bakhtin's concept of the dialogic to "illuminate the political implications of the plays as reflected in structure, rather than content alone" (87). Johnson's reevaluation of "B-Movies beyond the Absurd," and other approaches influenced by it, indicates how process-orientated he is: how open he is to refining his approach to Walker as Walker continues to evolve. Through Johnson's vigorous, thoughtful discussions of many critical approaches, it strikes me how receptive Walker's work is to many differing interpretations, all of them valid and illuminating.
Johnson's examination of social and cultural contexts reveals the source of the anxiety that is characteristic of Walker's work. Johnson pinpoints Walker's working class roots as a central starting point for understanding Walker's point of view, and defines what he means by the term "working class" and how it is evidenced in Walker's work. While Johnson makes many valid points he also makes a rather glaring generalization when he states, "One of the advantages of a working-class background is that it confers on the recipient a sensitive and efficient bullshit detection system" (64). On some level, Walker has also traveled light years away from that "east end," working class young man he was when he first came to the Factory. And the distance between where he started and where he is now sets up a whole other tension in his work.
Johnson covers a lot of territory and the book reflects this scope through its sprawling structure. There is a synthesis of autobiographical details, theoretical analysis, and commentary on the plays that results in chapters that are dense and bursting with energy. Careful reading is required. Because Johnson organizes most of the chapters thematically, he often includes examples of plays in each chapter that spans Walker's career so a reader may receive the maximum impact of being familiar with Walker's full body of work. Sometimes the thematic through-line of the chapter got lost for me because Johnson would go into great detail in his discussions of individual plays or theoretical approaches. Johnson's complex, textured organisation, his tendency to resist a straightforward linear flow, reminds me of what Walker does structurally, and so is an entirely appropriate structure for an examination of Walker's work.
Essays on George F. Walker: Playing with Anxiety is an obviously significant contribution. Johnson has more than succeeded in sharing his enthusiasm for this important playwright. It's not often that you read a book and are witness to a writer's voice that is filled with such a strong connection to his subject, such a clear conviction that the material being communicated is important on many different levels. Johnson's book is a valuable and inspiring starting point for what shall be, surely, just the first, as Johnson hopes, of many books on the work of George F. Walker.