Revised Extracts from a presentation delivered at the Shifting Tides: Atlantic Canadian Theatre Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow conference at the University of Toronto, 26 March 2004.Author’s Note: My perspective on the development of professional theatre in St. John’s is that of a peripatetic actor/director/dramaturge. I have made only minor contributions to that development as one whose journey has taken me away from my hometown more than to it. I have, however, been a keen and engaged observer of the unique developments there since I started acting for the stage in 1967. For the record, it should also be noted that I served for sixteen years on the national council of Canadian Actors’ Equity Association, nine of those years on its executive.

1 As is widely recognized, to many of my generation the terms of Newfoundland joining Confederation amounted to a sellout. Certainly the traumatic effects of Joey Smallwood’s resettlement programs combined with his insistence on investing in job creation schemes "from rubber boots to chocolate factories, from paper mills to the great give away of Churchill Falls" (Clarke) and Come-by-Chance served to fuel a genuine Newfoundland cultural revolution.

2 During the late 1960s and early 1970s the Extension Service at Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN) had a huge influence on this "revolution" with projects such as the Fogo Process, an innovative film initiative of the Extension Media Unit (and model for initiatives such as the United Kingdom’s Open Door TV project). A creative way of animating the history and social reality of a community, the Fogo Process featured the work of early St. John’s filmmakers such as Nelson Squires (Sullivan). The Extension Service had opened in 1959, and in the late 1960s the Media Unit, collaborating with the National Film Board and "inspired by Prime Minister Trudeau’s war on poverty, began exploring issues of rural poverty" (Sullivan).

3 The Extension Service employed an extraordinary crowd in the 1960s—many of them, interestingly enough, "Come From Aways" (CFAs).1 The research being done there, in various disciplines, investigating and celebrating the history, culture, and sociological realities of rural Newfoundland and her lost traditions, was hugely influential on the work of the evolving St. John’s professional theatre artists of the early 1970s. The theatre parties in St. John’s in the 1960s were filled with folklore and media scholars such as Herbert Halpert and George Story, Tony Williamson and Don Snowden (Spence), and the intellectual debate surrounding Confederation, re-settlement programs, and indigenous Newfoundland culture flowed like Dominion Ale on Regatta Day.

4 Actor and CODCO founding member Andy Jones remembers, "I wasn’t going to MUN, nor was Noel Dinn, Nels Boland, Neil Murray and a lot of others, but we would hang around there—what was happening with George Story in Folklore and others was fascinating and exciting, we wanted to be near it" (Jones). Actor Mary Walsh also gives credit to the Extension Service,"[to] Mina Hickey, to Jake Harris, to Patty Tremblay, to Edythe Goodrich, to Susan Jameson and, of course, to Ray Cox and to all the other Memorial Extension workers"for giving"a home where we worked and fought and wrote and fought and laughed and fought" (Walsh). Specifically, as Chris Brookes notes in A Public Nuisance: A History of The Mummers Troupe, "Extension visual artists like Don Wright inked up tools of people’s daily work—barrel stencils, stove parts, fish—creating a kind of labour landscape art" (Brookes 6).2 The people and projects of the Extension Service clearly had a major influence on the intellectual focus of professional theatre artists of that era and beyond.

5 For many of these artists the images of the"Goofy Newfie,"the "Welfare Junkie," and the ignorant fisherman that seemed to pervade much of the mainland attitude about Newfoundland had to be destroyed. Also, the antipathy of the "townie" towards the "baywop"3 had to be addressed. Thus it was that so much of the theatre material of those early 1970s St. John’s groups focused on some variation of the archetypal Newfoundlander: the rural, working class, under-privileged, uneducated Newfoundlander— the "soul of Newfoundland." It is ironic, therefore, that this work was done for the most part by middle-class, university-educated "townies." They put on their grey socks, Guernseys, and rubber boots and went looking for stories (O’Neill).

6 There had been a professional theatre company in St. John’s in the early 1950s, an English touring troupe called The London Theatre Company, led by actor-manager Leslie Yeo.4 This troupe did a traditional British regional repertory/stock season at the Bishop Field Auditorium. Upon its demise, some London Theatre Company actors made their way back to England. Several, including Yeo, Joseph Shaw, Gillie and Moya Fenwick, Bill Glover, Barbara Bryne, and Hilary Vernon went to Toronto and had successful careers there.5 However, some of the London Theatre Company performers, such as Charles Mardel, Freddie Davis, and John Holmes stayed in St. John’s and helped to build a strong local amateur theatre scene (Yeo, Interview).

7 Numerous locals who had worked with The London Theatre Company also made significant contributions. These included Sylvia Wigh, Evening Telegram theatre critic, drama teacher, and director, who had been an assistant stage manager for the London Theatre Company in 1951; Andreas Barban, who had been its musical director;Art Noseworthy, who had worked as its electrician; and John Carter and Michael Cashin, who both had acted with the company.Future High Commissioner to London Don Jamieson had written savage skits for the company’s first Screech review in 1951. Modeled on the post-Second World War English review Sweet and Low (Yeo, Interview), Screech left a lasting influence on St. John’s Theatre, too. Most references to Rising Tide’s later annual Review productions tie the format to Tom Cahill’s Home Brew and Slob Ice, but according toYeo those creations themselves were really imitative of the London Theatre Company’s Screech (Yeo, Interview).

8 After the demise of the London Theatre Company, radio drama production at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) was virtually the sole home in St. John’s for professional acting or writing prior to the 1970s. Although all the actors and writers who worked in radio drama had day jobs, they were also members of the Association of Canadian Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA),6 and as such their work was professional. This fact of local ACTRA membership becomes relevant some years later. One of the terms of reciprocity (adopted December 8, 1971) between ACTRA and the Canadian Actors’ Equity Association (CAEA) states that a member of one association can only work in the jurisdiction of the other association by signing an appropriate contract issued by that fraternal association. These terms of reciprocity were in place between ACTRA and CAEA’s predecessor, the (American) Actors’ Equity Association in the early 1970s. Consistently, over the years, St. John’s-based ACTRA members (and the theatre companies employing them) have failed to recognize this reciprocal agreement by working in professional theatre without reference to an Equity contract. This differs significantly from the general practice elsewhere in Canada, as does the lack of enforcement by ACTRA and CAEA of the reciprocal agreement through the discipline of artists and companies that breach the terms of the agreement. This reflects another important distinction in the development of professional theatre in St.John’s, as compared to other cites in Canada—one to which I will return shortly.

9 Influential playwright/actor/director Michael Cook also came to Newfoundland from England to join MUN’s Extension Service. However, it was at the CBC that he, among others, got his professional start writing radio plays for producers Paul O’Neill and John Holmes. Cook burst on the scene with a memorable performance as the Common Man in A Man For All Seasons (1966)7 for The St. John’s Players. Like George Luscombe at Theatre Workshop Productions in Toronto, Cook had been inspired by England’s Joan Littlewood, and he introduced many in St. John’s to Littlewood’s theories. Cook was to have a very significant effect on the development of local professional theatre in St. John’s, acting as a mentor to many young actors, but also through the national attention afforded his plays written in the 1970s. These plays, from Colour the Flesh the Colour of Dust (1970) through On the Rim of the Curve (1977), represent a prodigious output of nine works in six years (not including his radio plays).8 His Newfoundland Trilogy work with Dick Buehler and the talented designer John Roddis of the Open Group also introduced a strong visual aesthetic that was not generally adopted by others in the collectivist work of this period.9

10 The actors and writers of those CBC radio dramas were also most likely part of the vibrant local amateur theatre scene, which was dominated by the highly (and openly) competitive Newfoundland Drama Festival Society. Organizing the festival competitions throughout the 1960s and beyond was John Perlin— son of A.B. Perlin, advisor to Premier Joe Smallwood and theatre reviewer during the 1950s as the"Wayfarer" for the Daily News.

11 In 1958 A.B. Perlin had proclaimed: "Nothing irritates me more than the uniformity which so many people in central Canada would like to impose on all Canadians, no matter where they live. All province[s are] different but Newfoundland is more different than the others" (Perlin, n.p.). Ironically, it was the attempts by the likes of The Mummers Troupe and CODCO to repel that central Canadian imposition of uniformity by defining a distinct theatrical identity that later so aggravated John Perlin.

12 In the mid 1960s Walter Learning (who hailed from Quidi Vidi, a tiny fishing community just outside St. John’s) had recently returned from studying theatre in Australia and taken up a position teaching philosophy at MUN. He approached Smallwood with the idea of starting a professional Equity company based at the new St. John’s Arts and Culture Centre, and subsequently met with Premier Smallwood, Jim Channing, and Ed Roberts in late 1966.

13 MUN had its sights set on running the new Centre as part of the Extension Service. According to Learning, however, at the meeting Smallwood tersely commented on the MUN plan: "No way Mose Morgan10 and that bunch of elitists at Memorial are gonna get their ’ands on that Centre" (Learning). Still, Smallwood was open to the idea of Learning pursuing his plans—with the province as employer—and Learning thought the deal was done. However a short while later he was sent to a meeting with A.B. Perlin. At this meeting Perlin announced that his son John was slated to become the Director General for the Arts Centre, but that Learning could become the Artistic Director reporting to John Perlin. Learning declined, as he was convinced that would result in "a two headed monster." For it to work, both he and Perlin would have to report separately to the Deputy Minister (Learning). Learning was later quoted in the Evening Telegram: "[T]o get a job, you either speak to Joey and his pals directly, or you speak to noone" (Learning). Shortly thereafter, he left Newfoundland and soon sold his vision for a provincial touring company to the Beaverbrooks, Irvings, and Richard Hatfield, which led to the establishment of Theatre New Brunswick.

14 In St. John’s, Michael Cook was starting to tell his stories on stage, but only Dudley Cox and David Weiser of the Newfoundland Travelling Theatre Co. (NTTC) produced local writers professionally in the early 1970s. (Cook’s brief period as a writer on the Mummers’ They Club Seals Don’t They? lasted a single week and resulted in one scene [Ross].) Cox commissioned Cook’s The Fisherman’s Revenge (1976), which ran for over forty performances touring Newfoundland. He also produced plays by Tom Cahill11 and Grace Butt,12 as well as his own work. Cox’s contribution to St. John’s professional theatre, though undervalued by some at the time, was quite significant. Perhaps because his work was not overtly political or focused on Newfoundland social and historical inequities, it did not receive the same recognition as the collective companies.

15 The non-collective NTTC’s mounting debt load resulted in its demise in 1978. Cox eventually was forced to take a job in British Columbia to pay off the debt (Cox, 14 February 2007). Over the years the NTTC has been dismissed as a company formed to tour light British comedies (Brookes 103) and Shakespeare to the outports using university actors (Filewod, "The Mummers Troupe" 11). However, the NTTC never performed Shakespeare in the outports. They did, however, do Moliere. Poet Mary Dalton recalls the cast loading onto a rented longliner in Jackson’s Arm and taking A Doctor in Spite of Himself to Harbour Deep (1976), where she watched the magic of the theatre take hold. A bunch of burly fishermen were standing on a luncheon table at the back of a packed hall. The table started to slowly buckle under the weight, and the men did not take their eyes off the stage as the table slowly sank behind the heads of the audience in front of them (Dalton).

16 The NTTC also did a bold St. John’s season of eight short plays in repertory for nine weeks in 1975 and again for seven weeks in 1976.13 There were works by Ionesco, Sheldon Rosen, Shaw, Pinter, Synge, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Brecht, and Beckett. In addition, NTTC staged a production of George Walker’s The Prince of Naples featuring Maddy Williams and Michael Jones [Andy Jones’s brother and a future film maker14] (Cox email 23 Feb 2007 12:13 pm). These were hardly "light British comedies." Also, Cox toured But What Have You Done for Me Lately by Myrna Lamb to the outports, as one half of the NTTC "Comedy and Controversy" programme. Lamb’s play is about abortion—a risky thing in 1970s Newfoundland. After each performance the actors held a discussion with the audience about the issues raised.15

17 As well, while almost all of Chris Brookes’s early Mummers Troupe actors were from mainland Canada, Cox, more than anyone in St. John’s in the early 1970s, gave initial professional theatre employment to local actors. He hired future CODCO members Andy Jones, Mary Walsh, Diane Olsen, Tommy Sexton, Greg Malone, Bob Joy, Cathy Jones, and Paul Sametz, as well as Kevin Noble, Beni Malone, Jane Dingle, Kevin Thomey, Rhonda Payne, Jeff Pitcher, and Charlie Tomlinson (Cox email 9 March 2004, 23 February 2007 12:13 pm; Interview; "Newfoundland Travelling Theatre Company"; Weiser).

18 As noted, throughout this period, all St. John’s theatre companies chose to work without reference to Actors’ Equity Association contracts. The historical reason given has been that actors wanted to be eligible for Unemployment Insurance (UI)—consistent with the treatment of the fishing industry’s (and other) seasonal workers.16 But the reasons were more complex and certainly politically motivated. CAEA was perceived as being part of the"big bad mainland theatre establishment." In 1976 when The Mummers Troupe were to play Buchans – A Mining Town in Ontario, sponsored by the United Steelworkers, the Steelworkers contacted the CAEA to see if The Mummers Troupe was "a union company." Discovering that it was not, the Steelworkers then unilaterally decided to pull their sponsorship from the company. The CAEA minutes of the day reflect grave concerns by elected councilors that any group of actors would lose work, regardless of affiliation (CAEA, Meeting Minutes). Back in St. John’s, the political interpretation was that the CAEA was playing the mainland "heavy."

19 This political distrust of things "up-along" (from mainland Canada) created moments of a pur lâine type of xenophobic behavior. David Ross17 remembers Donna Butt pulling him aside after a few days rehearsal on Buchans and saying: "You scab, comin’here and taking jobs away from Newfoundlanders" (Ross). Paul Ledoux18 relates another incident in Montreal where Butt and Rick Boland were demanding that only actors born in Newfoundland should be allowed to work for Newfoundland theatre companies. Tempers flared and a whole pot of boeuf bourguignon got dumped on someone’s head (Ledoux).

20 Michael Chiasson, Artistic Animateur at the St. John’s Resource Centre for the Arts (RCA) in 1991 and again from 1997-2002, has observed:[A]nything that smacked of complicitous [sic] activity with Mainland artistic production was considered absolutely verboten, right up until the 90s. Why would anyone who could realistically expect 16 weeks work (at the most) in any 52-week period wish to "donate" part of those earnings (roughly 11% of the gross) to an organization that offers no real benefit to them? From the company perspective, no company in its right mind would hire someone under an Equity contract and as an employee of the company at the same time. The company cost then rises from 11% to 22% of each gross salary thus negotiated: it would be financially stunned. (Chiasson, Interview and Correspondence)Playwright and actor Janis Spence remembers that UI was the driving reason against joining Equity, but "anyway, we’ve always earned more than Equity minimum" (Spence). This is not strictly accurate, however; unlike CAEA protections regarding minimum fees and working conditions, St. John’s contractual rates were inclusive of overtime and offered no protections concerning working conditions.

21 Brookes relates, in A Public Nuisance, a Rochdale College UI scam that he "almost" resorted to, which would have recycled artists’ UI income into the collective’s kitty (66). In the 1980s at the RCA it was rumored that some artists were hired relative to their need for UI stamps more than to their talent or being the best actor for the role. Spence, Jones, Ross, Chiasson, and current Arts and Culture Centre director Doreen McCarthy (McCarthy, Correspondence and Interview) all affirm that this practice may have existed, but it was most likely an unconscious one. If this was the practice, it was only reflective of a broader cultural approach to creative manipulation of UI for the greater communal good that dates back to Jack Pickersgill’s19 battle to include Newfoundland Fishermen under UI.

22 However it is more likely that the rejection of Equity had as much to do with the emerging theatre groups’ lack of financial and administrative resources. Companies that were collectivist, with minimal to non-existent cash flow, simply could not afford to pay the"bond,"equivalent to two weeks salary for each artist, that Equity required. The anti-establishment companies (and actors) also resented the thought that the CAEA would impose strict limits on working hours and conditions. It is difficult to miss the irony—and the evidence of Newfoundland’s unique and complex situation— when one considers that the CAEA’s raison d’être is protection of the worker from abusive management practices.For this is also the issue at the heart of Mummers Troupe shows such as The Coronation of Cecil B. DeMille (1972) and Buchans/Company Town (1974).20

23 The Mummers eventually folded, a victim of internecine warfare. Reading the minutes of the various meetings surrounding the breakup, one is struck by the vitriol and distrust.21In looking at the post 1960s development of professional theatre in St. John’s, as Alan Filewod related to me, "There was something unique about the St. John’s theatre scene (where else in Canada would a company schism lead to black eyes and broken teeth?)"(Filewod, Correspondence).

24 David Ross recounts that when he and Donna Butt helped form Rising Tide Theatre in 1978, he convinced John Perlin to give the company space and funding, and he soon also obtained annual Canada Council support (Ross). When Chris Brookes made it clear he was about to pass the reins of The Mummers Troupe on to someone else, Ross suggested that Butt ask Brookes for the job. The Mummers were getting $55,000 a year from the Canada Council. Ross’s theory was that in coexistence, this sum could be combined with Rising Tide’s $50,000, keeping $105,000 in Canada Council funding in the city. Butt’s reply, according to Ross, was characteristic: "[N]o way am I gonna ask Chris for anything, he can come give it to me, but I’m not askin’" (Ross).

25 By 1982 The Mummers Troupe was gone. Its $55,000 annual support from the Canada Council did not stay in Newfoundland. The schism that had developed between Brookes and Butt (and others) had a lasting effect on the professional theatre scene in St. John’s. It affected future regimes at the Resource Centre for the Arts, informed a general sense of competition between artists and companies, and contributed to the struggles for control over the LSPU hall that continued until the end of the 1990s.