JESSICA GARDINER
When I was in elementary school, I remember my class being assigned a geography project. We were to outline and shade in colour a map of the Dominion of Canada. The map was mimeographed and distributed to each student. We were instructed to outline and label the ten provinces and two territories and to shade them in pink. Pink, it was explained, was the recognized colour of the British Commonwealth nations. The sea was to be blue. I remember that it was extremely important to me that I use Laurentian brand coloured pencils. The completed map was graded for how clearly and accurately we reproduced the lines on the mimeograph, and for how neatly and uniformly we shaded the colour. This year my fifteen year old son was asked, as part of the province of Ontario's new high school curriculum, to produce a similar map. In this case, his class was asked to outline each province and the three territories in the colour of their choice. He used a combination of marker and coloured pencil, no particular brand, and was graded for "presentation and organization." His sea, too, was blue. Each class was invited to be as creative as possible in creating their map of Canada within the confines and parameters of the exercise. If it were possible to place these maps side by side, a close reading might tell much about a shifting and evolving set of social and political values, as well as the individual skill employed, that allowed each student to chart their nation so differently. This example is perhaps too literal a metaphor for the exercise undertaken by the collection of essays contained in Establishing Our Boundaries: English Canadian Theatre Criticism, but in some respects it serves.
Establishing Our Boundaries (EOB),as editor Anton Wagner explains in his excellent introduction, is a cultural history, a collection of essays written by theatre academics about a selection of theatre critics who wrote for the daily press, and in some instances, weekly entertainment magazines, in Canada between the years 1826 and 1998. "Newspapers and magazines," Wagner argues, "have reflected and shaped how we view and express ourselves and how we differentiate ourselves from others--how we establish our political, collective and political boundaries."
As a keyword, culture is explored throughout the text in both of its most common senses, as a term associated with artistic endeavour and linked to notions of truth and beauty as well as the art theatre of "high culture." For many critics, this means a theatre and drama that should be evaluated by an essentialized standard (or habitus) of excellence. In the more contemporary sense, this is a cultural study of how theatre relates to and interacts with the ideology of a grouping of individuals who share political beliefs and social practices. It is, then, perhaps not surprising that these seventeen essays reveal a theatre criticism and a nation closely aligned to and influenced by British standards and ideology in the pre/post Confederation periods, a "garrison"ed Canada, both regionally and in the major centres, as it begins to assert a distinct national profile in the wake of the more powerful American and European influence throughout the first half of this century, an increasingly nationalist Canada in the post-centenary Canada, and ultimately a Canada and a theatre trying to place itself in a global village both threatened and made more accessible by recent technologies. What is perhaps more surprising and exciting is that this evolution can be charted through the dialogue created by eighteen separate theatre scholars, critics themselves in a sense, as each records and analyses the work of one of twenty-one journalists responding to the theatre and ideology of their respective time.
This is not an arbitrary grouping, however. Wagner points out in his introduction that the critics selected for this text are included because of their "commentary--or direct influence--on the embryonic development of theatre and theatre criticism in English-Canada and the role of theatre criticism in English-Canadian theatre and culture." As such, EOB is divided into four chapters and periods. In "Part One: Editor-Critics," Patrick O'Neill explores the compromised symbiotic relationship created between the reviewer/critic, the commercial concerns of the editor/owner for which he works, and the theatre manager who relies on the press to both critique his or her work and to promote it.
"Part Two: Reviewer-Critics" explores the careers of and provides the profiles of four types of reviewer-critics. In "The Critic as Reviewer: E.R. Parkhurst at the Toronto Globe and Mail 1876-1924," Ross Stuart profiles a critic whose reviews come closer to reportage than studied discernment. Still, Stuart argues, Parkhurst's reviews mirrored the taste and biases of his day. Douglas Arrell's essay "The Cosmopolitan, the Cultural Nationalist and the Egocentric Critic: Harriet Walker, Charles W. Handscomb, and Charles H. Wheeler in Winnipeg, 1898-1906" introduces three approaches to theatre criticism which, like Parkhurst's, remain with us.
Of course, as a commodity, theatre at the turn of the century was primarily produced outside of Canada and toured. In "Part Three: Cultural Nationalism," the young Dominion begins to seek political and cultural autonomy, and a cry for ownership of our cultural production increases, notably led by B.K. Sandwell of the Montreal Herald (1900-1914), and Saturday Night (1932-1951). But as Denis Salter points out in his insightful essay, "Hector Willoughby Charlesworth and the Nationalization of Cultural Authority, 1890-1945," the standards by which many reviewers critique our theatre, while undergoing a gradual evolution, nonetheless, belong to other nations and cultural traditions. In fact, more than one essay in this collection shows how the influence of Matthew Arnold's seminal work The Function of Criticism at the Present Time, with its call for "disinterested" critics who can "propagate" a set of universal standards, "the best that is known and thought in the world," haunts the writing and evaluation of many Canadian critics.
"Part Four: The Post-Nationalist Period" takes a look at the most recent generation of critics as they debate the role of theatre and direction the theatre it should take in a post-modern and increasingly diverse cultural mosaic.
This is an important and uniformly well-considered and well-written collection, as well as a long overdue text for students of Canadian theatre. And while I have delineated the over arcing narrative in this text, there are surprises in the manner one generation and class of theatre critic assesses the contribution of their predecessors: notably, Jennifer Harvey and Richard Paul Knowles's qualified critique of the gentle and frequently praised Herbert Whittaker. It is not so much that he was too generous, too quick to look the other way in his crusade for a national theatre, but in their opinion, it seems, he was too centrist, too mainstream in his tastes. They conclude their essay as follows: "We need, too, to ask whose nation is represented by his nationalism, and who is excluded. We need to analyse the 'kind' of theatre he championed, together with the kind of theatre that has emerged partly as a result of his crusade. Ultimately we need to ask whether that is the kind of theatre we want." I was also intrigued and entertained by Alan Filewod's generosity to the traditionally vilified Gina Mallet. From fresh perspectives come new questions.
Furthermore, this text has invited me to examine my own personal boundaries in relation to theatre criticism. These relate somewhat to the comments of Knowles and Harvey. And yes, I do realize the irony of what I am about to say as I question the role of one school of criticism while engaging in another. At the turn of the same century in which Matthew Arnold so enduringly mapped the role for theatre criticism, Oscar Wilde posited another role for the critic in The Critic as Artist. He suggested that criticism was a creative act available to all of us. What worries me is the power we afford the men and women who review theatre in the daily press. They, no matter how qualified or well intentioned, are asked to pronounce judgement in a reactionary manner as deadlines press. I would have liked to see even further questioning of the critic's role in EOB than does exist particularly if we are to, as this text suggests, let them play such a decisive role in determining "how we view and express ourselves" as a culture and nation.
As the barriers and definitions of performance texts and the theatrical institution evolves and shifts in this new century, it would be pleasant to think that these new contributions could be assessed with more careful consideration than a subjective five-star assessment made in haste; that a new breed of criticism genuinely devoted to the promotion of developing the critical faculty in all of us and the creation of meaningful dialogue would emerge in our daily newspapers. And while I'm on this utopian bent, wouldn't it be nice if children creating their map of Canada were graded not so much for their ability to stay within the lines, as for their proficiency in recognising and naming their nation, and by the hue they choose to colour their sea.