ALAN FILEWOD
A close examination of the history of the Mummers Troupe raises questions about the nature of the theatre "company" as a central but problematic signifier in the narration of Canadian theatre history. An analysis of the conflicts between the Mummers' institutional history, as recorded through its dealings with the Canada Council, and its internal history of ideological conflict and personal rivalry, suggests that the Canada Council was unable to develop a policy that could support an activist and locally engaged model of theatrical structures. Insofar as its struggle to survive within the Canada Council's terms of containment exposes deeper crises in Canadian culture, the Mummers Troupe may be the typifying expression of Canadian theatre in the 1970s.
Un examen de l'histoire de la Mummers Troupe pose des questions à propos du rôle de cette «compagnie» de théâtre comme signifiant central--mais non pas problématique--dans l'histoire du théâtre canadien. L'analyse de l'opposition de l'histoire institutionnelle de la Mummers Troupe (leurs relations avec le Conseil des Arts du Canada) et des disputes idéologiques et personnelles internes, suggère l'incapacité de concilier la politique du Conseil avec l'activisme des institutions théâtrales. Comme exemple de lutte contre la rigidité des règles du Conseil, le cas de la Mummers Troupe est caractéristique d'une crise dans la culture canadienne, et l'expression typique de la scène pendant les années 70.
Theatre history narrates the endurance and passing of structures on a ground defined by the negotiation of artistic volition and the structures of economics and policy that produce aesthetic possibilities. The work of theatre history reifies the idea of the supra-individual company or troupe as the locus of theatrical activity, even though the accomplishment of a particular company may be contingent on one creative mind. The company is in this way the central but always problematic signifier in the narration of Canadian theatre history.
But companies are historically contingent bodies that change and adapt to circumstances both internal and creative, and external and economic. A case study of the material conditions that determined the structures with which the Mummers Troupe intervened in the political reality of Newfoundland from 1973 to 1982 shows that the "life" of the company can be read as a set of actions produced by negotiations of internal conflict (personal and artistic) and external relations to funding bodies--chiefly the Theatre Section of the Canada Council, which is capable of perceiving companies only in terms of particular institutional policies. The case of the Mummers Troupe reveals how the processes of founding and cessation come to be integrated into history as aesthetic conditions and ultimately as signifiers of value.
In its decade of work in Newfoundland, the Mummers Troupe may have been the least representative of Canadian theatres. For the same reasons, it may be the typifying theatre of its time. The historical significance of the troupe derives from two conditions: the company's development of a working methodology that came to typify the work of popular theatre for social action, and its contentious relationship to funding bodies. These two conditions are correlative. Because the Mummers Troupe initiated a methodology that required a new form of theatrical organization, it exposed a crisis in the model of production and administration enforced by Canada Council funding possibilities. An examination of this crisis reveals the extent to which aesthetic possibilities are produced by material conditions, which in the case of the Mummers include funding policies, external sponsors, critical response, interpersonal negotiations and individual ambitions.
In the early 1970s the Theatre Section of the Canada Council was ill-prepared for the dozens of new theatre companies that had begun on grants provided by federal make-work programs, especially Opportunities for Youth (OFY) and Local Initiatives Projects (LIP), and sought ongoing operations funding after having met the Council's criteria for eligibility. The number of theatre companies funded by Council more than doubled between 1972 and 1977 (from 49 to 125). (Kilbourn 179) Most of these companies, like the Mummers, had been started by young artists with little administrative experience, many of whom were ideologically suspicious of the very concept of administrative structure. And like the Mummers, many of them began with small project funds and their experience of administration was by and large restricted to crisis management in the micro economy of the small theatre sector. Companies that showed themselves creative managers on this micro level managed to survive to the next project, and by doing so regularly could make a claim for Council subsidy. For the small number of theatres that survived this process, the shift from crisis to rationalized management usually came with the acquisition of real estate and a permanent basis of operations, and a contract with Actors Equity which normalized employment policies.
In the Mummers' case neither of these conditions were attainable in the early 1970s. As a mobile intervention company, the idea of a permanent base was at first perceived to be unnecessary, and the decision to acquire a space in St. John's in 1975 was a major factor in the company's eventual collapse. And founder Chris Brookes' early attempts to enter into an agreement with Equity were rebuffed because the institutional context of theatre in Newfoundland--in which the Mummers functioned as an "alternative" theatre, but without a large "regional" company to define the terms of alterneity--did not conform to the structural patterns to which Equity was equipped to respond. (Brookes 1988 160)
Newfoundland was one of the few jurisdictions in Canada without a cultural policy and provisions for funding the arts. In 1972 there was no arts council in the province, and when one was formed in 1974 by a group of artists, it had no budget. Such cultural funding as existed was under the discretion of John Perlin, the director of the province's Cultural Affairs Division, an appointed civil servant whose responsibilities included the programming of the four Arts and Culture Centres across the province. Brookes' dealings with the province's cultural branch were therefore dependent on the good will of a bureaucrat who he saw as (and indeed proved to be) an ideological antagonist as well as a competitor for audience support. For the duration of its history, the Mummers Troupe was one of the few theatres in Canada to receive no sustaining funding from its provincial arts agency.
Faced with dozens of prospective new theatres in the early 1970s, the Canada Council insisted that funds go to an incorporated body that could prove public accountability (usually through an elected board of directors of a not-for-profit corporation) and evidence of administrative and artistic stability. Expressing a liberal humanist ideology which supported artistic adventure but which demanded financial evidence of community support, Council responded to theatres according to two fundamental criteria: administratively, to season planning and financial management; and artistically, for which it usually depended on outside assessors. But Council officers, themselves drawn from the theatre, could not deny their own aesthetic judgements, although they seem to have taken care to err on the side of liberality. Brookes consistently argued that this liberal humanist model was not in fact universally applicable, and that it was incapable of responding to the realities of a company which needed to develop unique administrative and planning procedures to fulfil its mandate of political advocacy.
For the most part, Council officers were satisfied with the Mummers' artistic work; although they had serious reservations, these were generally assuaged by evidence of "community" support. In terms of administration, however, Brookes was under constant pressure from Council to clarify the company's nature as a corporation and employer. The more Brookes tried to meet Council procedures, the more the internal composition of the company was disrupted by conflicting analyses of the very nature of the company and personal conflicts, themselves intensified by the pressures of crisis management.1
For the first three years of operation, until the Mummers Troupe went on to operations funding from the Canada Council in 1975-76, Brookes hired actors on a project basis. Many of those actors came from outside Newfoundland, but as he began drawing more exclusively on local actors the need to resolve questions of internal relations and contracts became more pressing. By the mid-70s Brookes relied on a corps of actors who felt ownership of material they created, some of whom challenged his operations of the company and his creative authority. Although he was the director of a company that hired employees on a job basis, Brookes could not relinquish the idea of a company of comrades whose work together was cemented by bonds of friendship and political affinity. He preferred to establish close rapports with his actors, so that each of them felt a special bond. These intimacies inevitably conflicted. Brookes dispensed information as required by the moment, giving news in confidence to some, withholding it from others. In this way he created a complex entanglement of loyalties. Disputes over company policy necessarily became complications in personal relationships, and resulted in frequent accusations of manipulation. Consequently after the schism in 1976, when four members left the company to set up a rival theatre, there were deep feelings of personal betrayal on all sides. These feelings were exacerbated by the financial sacrifices the actors had made; during that first season wages averaged $80/week (ranging from $40 to $125 depending on the funds available) out of which actors were expected to pay all expenses; over the next decade, wages rarely exceeded $150 per week for the life of a particular project. For his part, Brookes insisted on receiving the same wage as his actors, and in the early years frequently subsidized company budgets with salaries he received from occasional outside employment.
Brookes was an avowed socialist, as were many of his co-workers, but he was never able to propose a structure that reconciled socialist principles with the imperative to conform to Council expectations. Consequently his socialism was expressed in his artistic practice and in his outspoken attitude of cultural resistance. That his actors should replicate this attitude of resistance in their responses to their conditions of employment was inevitable.
This history of internal disruption and personal rivalry affected the official history of the Mummers Troupe as recorded by the Canada Council, whose responses in turn intensified the problems within the company. The clearest summation of the official reading of the company's history is to be found in one of the reports prepared by the Theatre Section of the Canada Council to support its recommendation for funding. These annual recommendations, prepared by the Theatre Officers after the various juries have deliberated, are passed on to the Council for final approval, and they normally contain background information to assist the Council in its decision. In June 1980, the recommendation for the Mummers Troupe contained an explicit attempt to untangle what had become a complex and confusing case. Insofar as this document records the official perception of the Mummers' tormented history, it is worth quoting extensively:
Perhaps one day the "real story" of the Mummers will be told. Until that happens, a new Council officer walking into Newfoundland is apt to hear as many as a dozen different versions of "the facts." However, the bare bones of the company's background seems to be
1. The company was founded in 1972 by Chris Brookes and a group of actors. It operated as a collective, or so it appeared [...]
2. In 1976/77 there was a power struggle, with Chris Brookes and administrator Lynn Lunde on one side and all the actors on the other. At this point Chris informed everyone that the Mummers was not a collective and never had been. Collectivity was confined to the rehearsal hall.
3. Since the split the company has lost its impetus [...] The work seems to have been done in spite of Chris Brookes. The administration of the company, always a mess, became worse.
4. In 1978/79 Rising Tide Theatre was formed by some of the disaffected Mummers.
5. In 1979 a public meeting to discuss the management of the LSPU Hall resulted in the Mummers moving from the hall and giving up responsibility for its management. The Resource Foundation for the Arts/Mummers Troupe became two organizations, a) the Resource Centre for the Arts, which is a public entity with an elected board, and an appointed administrator who are responsible for the hall and b) the Mummers Troupe, a limited company consisting of Chris Brookes, Lynn Lunde and Miller Ayre, a local businessman.
6. In late 1979 Lynn Lunde stopped working for Mummers. She has not been replaced as Administrator.
7. The 1979/80 season consisted of one show, Some Slick, which played in Newfoundland, Labrador, the Maritimes and Upper Canada to very mixed reviews; the annual Christmas Mummers plays which is provided free in schools and private houses at Christmas; and also a workshop of a new work, The Postcard Show.
8. In 1980/81 Chris Brookes intends to take a leave of absence. He has appointed Rhonda Payne, a local actress, to run the company during this time.
Project Just what Rhonda will be taking over is a bit hard to ascertain. In fact when asked why she was doing it, she replied that she had several projects she had been wanting to work on, and this seemed a good way to get them produced.
[...] Rhonda Payne is definitely aware of Council's concern regarding the Mummers. She is as discouraged as anyone by the Mummers [sic] previous lack of responsibility but feels strongly that this situation can be corrected. (NAC 241-80-0007)
As an official chronology (and indictment) of the rise and fall of the Mummers Troupe, this document is particularly useful because virtually every statement in it is false, mistaken or distorted.
"Agit-Prop political warfare"
Brookes' return to his native Newfoundland completed a journey that began after his graduation as a professional engineer and an apprenticeship at Neptune Theatre. Following graduate studies in the
United States (at Yale and Michigan) he worked briefly with John Juliani's ensemble at Simon Fraser University before moving on to Toronto. It was while working with Steven Bush and developing a repertoire of radical puppet shows (under the informal company name of THOG) that he began making plans to return to St. John's to start a theatre. At this point he was already aware of the need to develop a structure in which it could develop. In the winter of 1972, while living in Toronto, he wrote to Jeanne Sabourin at Theatre Canada to request a $1500 grant "to create a theatre resource in Nfld that will be
a small travelling theatre-resource, able to function as a well-trained theatre ensemble when appropriate, and also able to function as "catalysts for expression"--to be able to enter a community and show them/work with them to find tools for their own expression, forge mirrors for their own existence [...] (Brookes 1972)
Brookes proposed that this company consist of a "core group of about six" but beyond that he does not seem to have yet defined whether it would operate as a collective or as a company of employees. He recognized that a corporate parent was necessary:
I think it may be a help to set up as a non-profit charitable corporation and I intend to begin those arrangements soon if it is possible.
He was however clear as to the political function of this company. In a paper titled "Disjointed notes" attached to his file copy of the letter to Sabourin, he proposed that he would
Work with what is there--create with people the tools they need to forge a mirror for their own existence NOW. Tools that are as accessible as the tom-cod off the wharf, that don't cost $50,000 or a mainland income. [...] Work with something that is as close and deep as mummering, not the imported bullshit upperclass theatrical titillations that grace the polished boards of the Arts and Culture Centres.
Brookes and Lunde incorporated their company when it was still in its early planning stages, calling it Resource Foundation for the Arts. The articles of incorporation (21 November 1973) were standard for not-for-profit organizations, which require an elected board of directors. But the criteria for membership were left deliberately vague:
Any person engaged in furthering the aims of the Foundation shall be eligible for membership and may be added to the membership by the Board of Directors.
The Board of Directors may decline to accept any applicant as a member of the Foundation without assigning or being required to assign any reason for refusal. (CNSA 2.01.001)
In April 1973 RFA's request for charity status was approved by the federal Department of National Revenue. This secured the company's existence more solidly than Brookes may have expected at the time, and would have severe repercussions six years later. The three founding members of the board of directors (Brookes, Lunde and John Doyle) were also the only legal members of the foundation, a situation which remained unchanged for several years; it was not until 1976 that RFA held its first real annual general meeting. For Brookes, RFA seems to have been intended as a legal fiction to enable the operation of the theatre company, but for his co-workers, the foundation was their obscure employer.
As Brookes recalls in his memoir, the name Mummers Troupe was introduced in the summer of 1973, after he had mounted his first Christmas mummers play in St. John's. (Brookes 1988 71) Although Brookes writes that he came up with Mummers Troupe for the tour of Newfoundland Night, the posters for that play announced the name as "The Travelling Mummers"; it wasn't until the end of the tour that the name was stabilized. Unlike Resource Foundation for the Arts, Mummers Troupe evoked a concrete image with a strong resonance of local tradition. Although the difference between these two names would later prove critical, at first it appears that Mummers Troupe was intended as a catchy label for the public face of Resource Foundation for the Arts.
The Newfoundland Night tour had two major effects on the subsequent history of the troupe: it established the tenor of Brookes' ambivalent policies with his actors (who, in his application for a Canada Council "Canadian Horizons" grant in the spring of 1973, he referred to as both "the group" and "employees") and it brought Donna Butt into the company. (CNSA 3.03.001) Butt would later prove to be Brookes' principal antagonist in the troupe and the most insistent that the Mummers had been since its inception a collective effort. Butt was one of the four actors to split from the troupe in 1976, and two years later was a co-founder of Rising Tide Theatre, which superseded the Mummers in the eyes of the Canada Council. From 1973 to the schism of 1976, Brookes and Butt were locked into what one co-worker would later describe as a "love-hate" relationship. (Brookes 1988 191) On one level, the two were complementary: both were deeply committed to radical socialism and theatrical populism. But their personal relationship was frequently abrasive, and they both had the ability to cement ideological affinities with personal loyalties.
The Newfoundland Night tour determined the course of the troupe's future political work when the company arrived in the outport of Sally's Cove and stayed to create a play (Gros Mourn) to assist in their struggle against a planned relocation of the village, which was inside the newly formed Gros Morne national park. The Gros Mourn experience was the first example of theatre as a tool of intervention in a community struggle in English Canada, and it established the principle of collaborative intervention that would later define the popular theatre movement. But if it was a breakthrough in the development of political theatre, it was perceived as something else altogether by the provincial government and the Canada Council. As Brookes later recalled, he sent a copy of the transcribed text, which contained satiric caricatures of federal and provincial politicians, to Timothy Porteus, then Theatre Officer at the Canada Council: "he was appalled at what an awful piece of shit the show was." (Brookes 1980)
In his memoir, Brookes writes that Porteus told him that "as soon as you use real names your theatre becomes political rather than creative." (Brookes 1988 99) Faced with this attitude, Brookes began clarifying the principles that would qualify the Mummers for Council funding as a professional and artistic company. In October 1973, in an application to the Council's Explorations program, which was administered by a separate Council branch, he argued that the unique conditions of artistic development in Newfoundland required unique funding solutions:
We feel that Council funding concepts should be tailored to fit theatre structures as they exist in Canada, not vice-versa. ... Our projects, for the most part, don't have a clear beginning and end. ... This means, in part, that we prefer not to predict, eight or nine months in advance, where we will be in this process and exactly what we will need to do. (CNSA 3.03.001)
The need for flexibility was a constant refrain in Brookes' subsequent applications, even after the onset of operations funding in 1975. As the company grew, the debate became more bitter, reaching a climax of barely restrained hostility in 1978-79 when Walter Learning, a Newfoundlander and former director of Theatre New Brunswick, took over as Theatre Officer. His refusal to accept the principle of flexibility and last-minute changes in programming created an ultimately unresolvable conflict for the Mummers.
During the fall of 1973 and the following winter, Brookes mounted another mummers play in St. John's, and prepared for a spring tour of Gros Mourn and a summer project that would take them to the mining town of Buchans, to which they had been invited by the local union to create a community play. Busy with fundraising and grant applications, Brookes was supported in February 1974 by a community artist-in-residence grant from Memorial University's Arts Extension service. It was during this period that he began discussions with other local theatre artists to "hammer out some reasonable scheme for Council's support for theatre in the province." (Brookes 1973)
On January 11 1974, Brookes met with Michael Cook, whose reputation as a playwright was on the rise across Canada, and Dudley Cox, who had formed Newfoundland Travelling Theatre to take Shakespeare to the outports, and who in the summer of 1974 would be touring a pageant of Newfoundland history to commemorate the controversial 25th anniversary of Confederation in the province. Cox and Cook presented the draft proposal of a scheme they had developed, with the endorsement of John Perlin, to unite their efforts in a new company under the name of Theatre Newfoundland. Brookes was opposed to the scheme unless the Mummers could continue as an autonomous unit with a fixed portion of the budget. According to Cox's minutes, Cook stressed that "Agit-Prop political warfare type productions" (a phrase which delighted Brookes) had no place in the proposed company. For his part, Cox disagreed with Brookes' belief that a populist theatre should be available to all possible audiences even if it had to be offered without charge. Cox argued that the theatre
must sell tickets ... every ticket sold is a public endorsement. [...] With the provincial government's multi-million dollar investment in a chain of public Arts and Culture centres across the province, and its most recent school auditorium improvement programme, it is not sensible to suppose they will finance a theatre company, only half of which is designed to avail itself of these above mentioned facilities while the other half is given over to an anarchist. [...] (Minutes n.d.)
Brookes saw this as a clear indication that the Mummers would never receive a sympathetic hearing from the provincial Cultural Affairs Division. To find a solution to the impasse this presented, the Canada Council commissioned Keith Turnbull, who had the year before spellbound Toronto audiences with his production of James Reaney's Sticks and Stones, to visit Newfoundland and make recommendations for Council policy. Turnbull's report, submitted in May 1974, recommended that a Newfoundland professional theatre should be "small, highly mobile, organizationally committed to audience development and artistically committed to the realities of working in an [sic] theatrically unsophisticated context." (Turnbull) This might seem to describe the Mummers in fact, but Turnbull was aware that his proposal would require the support of John Perlin. He therefore recommended a company of "5 to 8 members" which would produce "one or two adult touring shows, one school tour and one full mainstage production to be presented in the arts and culture centres." He further suggested that the Director of Cultural Affairs should be an ex officio member of the company's board.
Turnbull's comments on the Mummers form the conclusion of his report. Clearly sympathetic to Brookes' position, he recommended that the Mummers "should be allowed to develope [sic] in individual and idiosincratic [sic] directions which would not be possible as part of a provincial company."
Turnbull's recommendations did not clarify the situation for the Canada Council; if anything, they muddied the waters even more by recommending a company that seemed to combine the antithetical positions of Perlin and Brookes--a company wedded to the Cultural Affairs office but yet "highly mobile."
By the fall of 1974, when applications for funding were due to the Theatre Section, David Peacock was faced with yet another complication in the form of CODCO, which had been formed in Toronto by a group of Newfoundland actors, and which had now relocated in St. John's. In an attempt to impose a resolution, Peacock asked the three potential client companies, Mummers, CODCO and the Newfoundland Travelling Theatre, to submit a joint application under the name of Newfoundland Theatre Ltd., a company established for that purpose. The idea of the tripartite company did not survive the funding year, and in 1975 it was as Resource Foundation that the Mummers submitted its next application.
The Turnbull report and Peacock's response at the very least signalled the Council's desire to treat the Mummers seriously and to find a workable formula. By this point, Brookes had built a solid body of work with very little funding support, and his Buchans project seemed, especially at a distance, to be a Newfie version of The Farm Show. It was of course much more political than the Ontario model of community documentaries, but that fact wasn't yet readily evident. The Mummers' gains in institutional credibility, however, were shaken by the first collective expressions of discontent from within the company.
The actors who created the Buchans project with Brookes were perhaps the most unified group of mummers in the company's history. Personal compatibilities aside, this was due to the experience of the show itself; living in bunkhouses in a mining town and coming to know the miners and their families engendered a strong sense of solidarity with the community and commitment to its stormy labour history. Youthful as it was, this was also the most experienced cast Brookes would work with for some years; most had been hired in Toronto and had professional experience, including work in community documentaries and clowning. The exception was Donna Butt, who was also the only Newfoundlander other than Brookes.2
With the mostly mainland cast in Buchans, issues of labour relations were confined by and large to working conditions. Although the cast felt some proprietary interest in the show they created and for the most part valued their affiliation with the Mummers, they did not look to it as an ongoing source of work, and therefore--with the important exception of Butt--did not claim the right of ownership that would later be expressed by members of the cast who lived in the province.
Nevertheless, the cast of the Buchans project identified sufficient areas of discontent to issue a "Mummers Manifesto" to Brookes in the fall of 1974, after the arduous tour of Buchans: A Mining Town. As was the case with the Newfoundland Night cast, the Buchans mummers had worked long hours for low wages, a condition they cheerfully accepted as necessary. But in the manifesto they advised Brookes that the administrative structure of the company needed to be clarified. (Brookes 1988 160) In the absence of Lunde, who had returned to the mainland before the project to continue her graduate studies in anthropology, the company lacked a full-time administrator, and the actors felt strongly that the director should not occupy both functions. In this they unknowingly echoed the policies of the Canada Council, which stressed that administration should be autonomous from artistic leadership which determines artistic policy and priorities. Council policies dictated that the allotment and management of budget resources should not be left entirely to the person who has a personal investment in the artistic product. In the Mummers case, budgets were global; that is, a given project had a lump sum to work with, and spending was at the discretion of the director of the play. Because of this, the manifesto identified Brookes as "management" and demanded a separate administrator so that artistic and management priorities would not be confused. Further, the manifesto asked for an agreed upon minimum salary, open books and budgets, and a regular series of company meetings, to be known as (in the spirit of mummerish anarchism) "vichychoises" and to be presided over in rotation by a "Master of Pretense."
The Buchans project precipitated Brookes' first major labour dispute in the winter of 1975, when he negotiated a remount of the play (under the new title of Company Town) for a Toronto run, to be followed by a tour of mining towns in Ontario and Manitoba. The negotiations with the actors, most of whom had returned to the mainland, raised recurring questions of air fare subsidies and salaries. Brookes had to settle these demands in the face of an unstable budget; because the tour itself was still in the planning stages, budget projections were incomplete. In April, a week before they were scheduled to arrive for rehearsals, the actors were notified that the tour was cut back severely because the United Steel Workers of America, which had agreed to support the tour and book a performance for its upcoming convention, withdrew its sponsorship on the grounds that the Mummers Troupe did not operate under the union jurisdiction of Equity. Lunde had pulled the plug in Toronto, and Brookes was stranded by blizzards in Labrador, where he had gone to research the possibilities of doing a show. The actors felt betrayed by the company; as Bembo Davies angrily wrote to the cast,
Chris doesn't know a thing fucked off to Labrador. The Canada Council money is there 20,000$ + 15,000$ for the tour--the problem is with a 400$ advance guarantee that each town visited was to supply--what is this--Cultural imperialism--who said yes--No-one defended these miners from C.C. presumption that if you want your culture - you'd better be prepared to pay [...] (Davies)
Complicating the issue was Brookes' deteriorating personal relationship with Lunde. In response to his demand for more information, Lunde wrote to him,
There is no information being held back from you concerning the cancelled May tour [...]
Concerning the USWA--same as I've told you before. USWA became concerned that as we weren't a union company. The last I heard from them was months ago saying they were going to contact Equity as to whether there would be hassles or not. I phoned [Bernard] Chadwick at Equity then to see if there would be problems. I was told Equity would cause problems for the USWA. Equity would allow us to perform at the convention if we promised to go Equity afterwards, & I said I would think about it, & then decided I wasn't interested in being pushed around by Equity. (Lunde 1975)
The administration of the company was in shambles, even though Brookes was poised for an ambitious year, with the Company Town tour concurrent with rehearsals and performance for East End Story, the first show to be presented in the LSPU Hall in St. John's (which Resource would purchase in the following year). To follow East End Story Brookes had planned Dying Hard and I.W.A. (with Rick Salutin as writer) to take the company through to the end of the calendar year. These plans called for a twelve-month season of research, rehearsal and performance, and yet the administrative support for the season was unstable, and tensions with actors were explosive. Cast members felt further alienated from the administration because the only company office and telephone was in Brookes' house in Petty Harbour, fifteen miles from St. John's.
To the Canada Council, the Mummers' future appeared stable. The joint application of the year before brought a $35,000 grant from the Theatre Section, and a letter from Timothy Porteus that commented, "Increased funding brings with it increased responsibility in the control of budget and in your accounting procedures." (NAC A-75-1066)3
But the promise of funding intensified Brookes' problems with the actors, because it raised once again the question of ownership and responsibility: Brookes was still not accountable to anyone but Resource, which was under his control, and which still occupied the phantom space it had when it had been formed as a tactical necessity. Following the advice of the manifesto, however, he instituted regular meetings in January 1975, which until the implementation of a "core group" policy later in the year were attended by whoever was involved in a show at the time. These meetings continued through May, beginning with the cast of the Christmas mummers play (several of whom were drawn from the Company Town cast), and continuing through the casts of Company Town and East End Story. The result was a changing roster of mummers who found themselves articulating recurring complaints. Only the first several meetings were referred to as "vichychoises." In the meetings, as recorded in the minutes (which are handwritten in several hands and informal; meetings were usually held in bars), Brookes appears willing to discuss problems and ask advice for resolving them but tends to appease rather than commit to specific solutions. The vichychoise meetings were often out of hand and circular, and the minutes cryptic. Typical of the meetings was the one held on 6 February 1975:
Butt stressed need for union/collective bargaining
concern: Chris as director holds the only control over the mummers
Boland raised issue of permanent memberships
- discussion of Mummers/Resource relationship.
- A functional & character analysis of CR Brookes
Bembo asks for a Humanistic Approach to Schizophrenia
[...] A discussion of matters of trust & power. (Minutes 6 February 1975)
In May, with Lunde still in Toronto, the Company Town cast in St. John's for rehearsals and the East End Story project about to begin, the tenor of the meetings changed. The minutes of 21 May 1975 are notably more formal, typed rather than handwritten. The meeting recommended eight main points, some of which reiterated the demands of the "Mummers Manifesto":
1. All workers with THE MUMMER'S TROUPE would hereafter sign contracts/ letters of agreement [...]
2. The situation regarding immediate need for a company Business Administrator would be dealt with as soon as possible [...] It was agreed upon that Chris Brookes would invite Lynn Lunde to a meeting [...] to discuss her role in the cancellation of the tour, and her future role with the group. [...]
3. That the function of Donna Butt [...] be recognized as that of Associate Artistic director / Board Member. Donna did not reply to this suggestion [...] One of the problems, doubts seemed to be: What exactly would Donna's role be if she accepted this new concept of her role with company ... would it make any difference to the way things were run, would she in fact have any power to accomplish certain ends?
4. That an Administrator be determined as soon as possible [...]
5. That the books would be open [...]
6. That with regard to the season, Chris Brookes as Artistic Director would have the primary voice, however the actors deserve the right to know what their rights are as workers [...]
7. Rhonda [Payne, due to arrive to work on East End Story] would be called in Toronto to let her know what was happening.
8. That an office in St. John's would be an advantage. (Minutes 21 May 1975)
With the references to the board of directors and the role of the artistic director, the Company Town cast was pushing the Mummers troupe towards a more conventional model of theatrical organization, which would have suited Brookes' purpose. Even so, Brookes hesitated to empower the Resource Board of Directors, which had neither met formally nor changed its composition since 1972. In the conventional model of a public theatre, the artistic director is accountable to an independent board as a contracted employee, but Brookes appears to have been reluctant to surrender his control over board decisions. In these terms, Butt's reluctance to accept a seat on the Resource board is understandable; had she accepted she would have been joining an ineffective board and abrogating her analysis that the troupe must function as a collective. The issue remained unresolved until June, when Brookes accepted the proposal of a "core group" policy. The "core group," which initially comprised Brookes, Lunde (who had returned from Toronto), Butt and Rhonda Payne, functioned as an executive committee. It was accepted that members of the group would have ongoing status in the operations of the company, and could depend on it for steady employment. Given Brookes' differences with Butt and his emerging personal differences with Lunde, Payne's presence promised him some degree of support.4
By and large, the core group worked effectively through 1975, meeting regularly to discuss issues of budget and season planning, although many of the minutes record Butt's absence. Personal difficulties still interfered with administrative decisions, as the undated minutes of a meeting in mid-autumn record:
- need for an administrator full time
Rhonda wants to ass't direct Oxfam show.
Lynn--wishes to be performer not full time admin; does not want to be full-time performer.
Chris--As a company we should all take new and different responsibilities for individual and collective growth. [...]
New problem--Chris will not direct the Oxfam show if Lynn performs. (Minutes n.d.)
The core group policy realigned the company once again to a collective model. Although the company was now on a funding track with the Canada Council, it still operated on a level of administrative improvisation that would have alarmed the Council officers had they realized its extent. As the Labrador example demonstrates, the Council imperative of careful pre-planning simply could not be reconciled with the exigencies of collective decision making. Moreover, because Council policy was that no company should be fully subsidized by Council funds, the Mummers had to seek external funding to compensate for the lack of provincial subsidy. Brookes was an effective fund raiser, managing to secure commissions for projects from public interest organizations such as the Community Planning Council of Canada, Newfoundland Division (for East End Story) and Oxfam (for Price of Fish). While such commissions brought funds into the budget, their granting and reporting procedures rarely coincided with those of Canada Council, which meant that funds frequently had to be moved from one project budget to another to make ends meet. Typically, during the meeting of 1 December, Brookes proposed a possible way to meet payroll expenses through January:
Currently no money for performers from end of mummers play to beginning of Oxfam show.
Rick [Boland who had joined the core group in November] suggested beginning rehearsals earlier but there will be no guarantee of the money til January 5th.
Possibility of redistributing Oxfam money for research during the January period. Clearer by middle of December. Lynn will have assessed IWA show budget, etc. (Minutes 1 December 1975)
These discussions contravened the basic tenets of Canada Council procedures, but they were unavoidable. Many of the planned projects required long negotiations with sponsoring agencies and host communities, and decisions were often forced to the last minute, with Brookes juggling alternatives until funding for a particular project might lock in. Again, this complicated his dealings with actors, who were often kept on edge waiting for confirmation of project dates.
In the context of this state of permanent crisis, the prospects for 1976 seemed relatively secure. The Mummers had already enjoyed favourable exposure on the mainland with the Toronto run of Company Town, and a run of I.W.A. was booked into Centaur Theatre in Montreal. With the Labrador project on the back burner and the Oxfam show scheduled for work in the spring (with a projected national tour), Brookes looked to round the season off with a community show on the South Coast. Although the minutes do not record the decision, Brookes states in his memoir that Butt was scheduled to direct it. To the Canada Council, which granted the company $45,000 in 1976 "in recognition of the substantial strides Mummers have made in this past year both artistically and administratively," it may well have seemed as if the Newfoundland question was happily resolved. (NAC A-76-0315)
"A Capitalist structure..."
Two principle events shaped the crisis of 1976, from which the company never fully recovered. The first was the effect of the acquisition of the LSPU Hall on the administrative structure of the company, and the second was the extremely complex and antagonistic working relationships in the Oxfam show project. These events acted on each other, because the move into the hall gave the company a tangible material reality: no longer was it just a constantly renegotiated matrix of working relationships. Now that the company had material assets, a performance space and an office, its newly acquired public face promised a permanence that made the questions of ownership even more critical.
Brookes had rented the downtown hall for East End Story from the Longshoremen's Protective Union, which was in decline and willing to sell the building. In 1976, Resource managed to put together a funding package (including a $57,000 grant from Secretary of State) which enabled the company to buy the hall outright for $50,000. (Locke)
The operation of the hall demanded a clarification of the relationship between the Mummers and Resource, which could no longer continue as a legal fiction. Brookes was heavily involved in the preparations for the performance season, and Lunde managed the financial arrangements for the purchase. Brookes felt increasingly alienated from the decision-making process, and his personal relationship with Lunde had by this time deteriorated to the point where they barely spoke to one another. On 9 February, he wrote an angry letter to Lunde to protest her draft preparation of the Canada Council application form:
Lynn--
I write this for the record,
After our meeting this eve re the Canada Council 76-77 season application form I am quite upset. Our previous meeting on this seems to have been some formality, as you intend to ignore some of my urgent requests (which I make as Mummers resident Artistic Director) in the name of "administrative expedience" (your quote). [...]
When administrative swashbuckling contravenes artistic policy, I feel my integrity to be compromised. [...] (Brookes 9 February 1976)
Resorting to brinksmanship, Brookes demanded that his name be removed from the form, and that the application indicate it had not been approved by the artistic director. A week later (17 February), he wrote again to raise the question of Resource:
When you took over as administrator of the Mummers last July, I requested that you consider as a priority to clear up the technicalities of Resource Foundation operation. [sic] To wit, that our membership is nowhere clearly listed, and there has not been an annual meeting since 1973. This may even make the Foundation's present operation technically illegal, and I feel it is a matter of some importance especially as the Foundation is about to enter int-[sic] major capital acquisition. .... (Brookes 17 February 1976)
In his statement that "morally, at least, you cannot disregard the requests of the core group and the artistic director as regards administrative policies...," Brookes implicitly acknowledged that the company was moving to a board-controlled model, substituting the core group for the still inactive Resource board. For its part, the core group seems to have perceived this as an acknowledgment of collectivity.
As Brookes details at length in his memoir, tempers were at a pitch during the rehearsal process for Price of Fish in February and March. The issues were the familiar ones of collectivity and authority, compounded by hostile personal relationships. In February, the problem had intensified to the point that rehearsals stopped for five days so that the company could consider "collective processes; aims and objectives of company." Minutes from the meetings are sketchy, but record the circularity of the arguments and the emotional stakes at play, as indicated in these excerpts:
Chris Says that the company has changed. We have never had a collective direction.
Lynn--is going to quit she feels that because of the paranoia on the go and because of the Anti-Canadian feelings.
Donna There are conflicting views as to what the things are that play has to say. Donna finds it hard to work in a situation where she can't get her say. [...]
Donna feels that she has no control over structure and that she should.
Donna thinks that it can't work.
Chris About style, two main differences is in the style of Chris Brookes & Donna.
Donna Thinks that we are into the show and there is no solution.
Chris Feels functionless
Chris feels that trust is essential
Donna feels that is not a lack of trust. it is a difference in method.
Chris Think that there is a difference in politics. My reason for firing Rhonda was purely on a working level not on a mainland level.
Donna. feels that there is an important thing about having a Newfoundland cast.
Donna feels that Rhonda should be told that she doesn't have a place in the company.
Chris feels that it is hard to tell a Newfoundlander
Donna thinks Chris is affected by the mainland
Chris doesn't think Donna should leave
Donna Doesn't think that Chris should leave
Chris would like it if those people who are confused about the position of the director should. (Minutes February 1976)
In July, after the cast had returned from the Price of the mainland, matters came to head when four of the six cast members (Butt, Boland, McNiven and Maddie Williams) publicly announced their disassociation from the Mummers and issued a manifesto that demanded that Resource allow the name Mummers Troupe to "die an honorable death":
[...] we, as workers, feel cheated and betrayed. Each of us has contributed significantly to the growth and the reputation of the Mummers' troupe but we worked under a false premise, the premise that we all owned the company, which we do morally, but unfortunately legally it lies in the hands of Resource Foundation for the Arts. [...]
[...] It should have been stated clearly in the beginning that this company, through that legal corporation, in fact belonged to Chris and Lynn, and that we were employees--then we could have decided if we chose to work under such an arrangement. But instead we were strung along, for the management knew we would likely turn down such a set up [...]
[...] We cannot condemn the evils of capitalism and find ourselves working under a capitalist structure. [...] (Untitled Manifesto)
Although the schism set back the company's plans, Brookes was able to propose a workable season. In his memoir he states that Butt's south coast show was cancelled when she failed to show up for rehearsals; in its place Brookes produced a show on bingo, Irregular Entertainment in the LSPU Hall with a cast of newcomers. (Brookes 1988 183) The experience of the show was happily uneventful, even though Brookes himself has called it "tepid." In a gesture of reconciliation, he had given the four dissenters a grant to create their own show under the name Community Stage; when that failed to materialize he rehired them for the fall tour of Price. (Brookes 1988 183) His choice to hire Dudley Cox (whose Newfoundland Travelling Theatre had folded that year) to direct the remount answered the cast's misgivings about the role of the director on a show.
The turmoil in the company had reached the ears of the Canada Council, whose relations with the Mummers began to disintegrate. The company was now reporting to a new Theatre Officer, Anna Stratton, whose responses to the Mummers' work was less than enthusiastic to begin with. In March 1976, Stratton saw I.W.A. at Centaur Theatre, and added her jotted impressions to the Mummers' file at Canada Council:
27 Mar 1976
overall impressions--good
-- Performers certainly capable of this kind of theatre
-- need for specific voice and movement training is apparent
-- Show itself did have dramatic interest and some depth--probably due to Salutin's writing -
but it was
-- essentially a sketch of situation.
not enough background information given [...]--very one-sided view--fine--but not enough information given to support it.
[...] show suffered from lack of depth and subtlety that most collectives do. (NAC A-75-1066)
Such judgements reinforce Brookes' position that the Canada Council assessed the Mummers' work according to inappropriate criteria. As the controversy surrounding Council's attempts to establish a policy in collectives in 1978 suggest, Council officers tended to confuse collective creation (which they saw as relatively inartistic) with the operating structures of the companies that created them. The Mummers' schism in 1976 seemed to confirm this view, as it would again in 1978. In October 1976, Joanne Morrow of the Council's Touring Office added a memo to the Mummers' file which indicates concern about the company's stability, and which seems to have been based on conversation with the dissenting actors:
-- 4 main actors left because they did not have enough influence on co's affairs.
-- Chris and Lynn Lunde are the board
-- nature of work at stake--political agitprop
Chris's work too watered down.
-- who is in co? Anna wants to know
-- Anna is going to Newf next wk [...] & will call to be briefed on questions before she goes. (NAC A-76-0315)
In November, Stratton contacted Resource and asked for details on its structure. Lunde sent her a copy of the articles of incorporation, and Stratton responded by suggesting that Resource and the Mummers separate:
re Resource.-
I advised they should
-- establish themselves as community org. w/ representatives of several artists and make hall Resource's
-- Mummers should be separately incorporated as a theatre co.
-- suggested Resource - could be a centre for info, organization, etc.
-- start w/ summer festival and establish a committee. (NAC A-76-0315)
After four years of struggle and negotiation Brookes was left with few choices. The collective model had collapsed, and the only functional alternative was to accept the terms of organization he had always opposed from Council. This he was not yet prepared to do. Stratton's informal advice was a perceptive foreshadowing of the eventual solution, and had Brookes and Lunde been prepared to accept it they might have averted a very painful struggle. But the Mummers Troupe had barely survived the schism, and given Brookes' state of emotional and creative exhaustion, it would have been surprising had he been able to undertake a major reorganization of the company. Internal conditions still necessitated crisis management, and his control over the Resource apparatus was still Brookes' principal tool of creative survival. Council's interest in the Mummers organization did however encourage Brookes to reform Resource. By the end of the year the foundation had an active membership of eight, of whom only half (Brookes, Lunde and Ann Anderson, who had joined the troupe as an administrator, and John Doyle) had worked with the Mummers. In December, Resource held its first actual annual meeting, in which it re-elected the long standing board of Brookes, Lunde and Doyle, and discussed, inconclusively, the problem of the Mummers' status:
General discussion re incorporating the Mummers Troupe separately under Resource Foundation. Fears were expressed at creating a complicated legal and bureaucratic structure that would be to the detriment of Resource Foundation and the Mummers Troupe. (Minutes 16 December 1976)
With the company now devoting more of its time and administrative energies to the development of the hall, Brookes scaled down his plans for the Mummers Troupe. From 1974 to 1975 he had produced five shows a year. This was a rate of production comparable to most Canadian theatres in the Mummers' budget range, but because his plays were collective creations, the process of mounting them involved more research and development than usual. In 1977 he produced only three shows: Weather Permitting (the Labrador show), The Bard of Prescott Street and the annual Christmas mummers play. The Canada Council appears to have been satisfied with this apparent stability following the crises of 1976; but although it encouraged the Mummers to develop its in-house programming in the hall, the expected grant increases did not materialize. In May 1977 David Peacock's notification of a $50,000 operations grant (as opposed to the requested $78,000) advised that
Now that the company has a permanent home, the possibilities of raising revenue through the box office, fund raising, rentals and special projects (e.g. benefits, auctions, concerts, flea markets, etc.) should now be increased. (NAC A-77-0133)
Although the operations grant promised secure funding, it remained at the same level for the next year. In a 1978 position paper, Brookes estimated that inflation had decreased the value of the Canada Council grant by 30% since 1976, against an increase in salaries of 40% since 1975. (Brookes 1978) Total annual revenues for the company at this time amounted to $140,000; a third of this was raised in box office sales, and approximately another third from Canada Council. The Mummers record for private sector fundraising (chiefly through commissions) was comparable to the national average, but the company's major handicap was the continuing absence of provincial support. Moreover, while Canada Council funding to the first generation of alternative theatres across Canada had increased substantially during the 1970s as the Council sought to regularize a select few (such as Tarragon Theatre and Factory Theatre in Toronto), the Mummers Troupe had been effectively frozen since 1975, thus finding itself relegated to a permanent third-rate funding status.
This was in part a reaction to its history of erratic administration, but Brookes perceived a deeper reason in the Council's mistrust of collective theatre. Council officers are technically neutral parties in the granting process; their function is to monitor the theatre's ability to fulfil the terms of its grants, solicit advice from outside appraisers and to facilitate juries of peer assessors. But the officers choose their sources and jurors. In November, for example, the Council asked Walter Learning, then artistic director to Theatre New Brunswick, to assess Bard of Prescott Street. Learning's response, which in accordance with Council policy was kept in confidence from the company, is of particular significance because he would himself take over as Theatre Officer in the following year.
The Mummers finished work always seems, to me, to have a "work-in-progress" quality about it. My usual reaction is--"now there's the basis for a really fine and exciting production."
They always seem to lack really tight script editing and direction. This, of course, is in part the result of their work method and perhaps this would be adversely affected if another element were introduced into the process. Maybe they need a chance to work with some really experienced directors from the collective creation area. (NAC A-77-0133)
There were in fact few directors as experienced in collective creation as Brookes (and none who had as much reason to understand the political pitfalls of the form). The particular values that Learning addressed (script editing, direction) rested on aesthetic assumptions that were not necessarily appropriate to the kind of work Brookes was doing. As the eighties drew nearer, Brookes began to analyze his relationship with Canada Council as an ideological condition that had less to do with the internal history of his company than with the Council's inability to understand the fundamental principles of political theatre.5
"The Inscrutable East"
In the period of 1977-79, the Mummers were embroiled in an increasingly complex series of financial crises from which the company never recovered. In an ironic pattern that was becoming familiar, these crises followed the company's moment of national celebrity with the highly publicized mainland tour of They Club Seals, Don't They?, the Mummers' pro-sealing intervention in the media circus of the anti-seal hunt campaign.
Despite the fact that the sealing show brought the company new credibility with the provincial government (which supplied 20% of production expenses through the Department of Rural Development), no promise of operating support was forthcoming. The province, it seemed, was willing to provide funds only when the Mummers' political agenda accorded with its own. The one-time grant for the sealing show seemed to confirm the official view that the Mummers was no more than a renegade propaganda troupe. When the Cultural Affairs Division finally began handing out arts grants in late 1978, the Mummers was not on the list, but Rising Tide Theatre (newly formed by Donna Butt and David Ross) was.6
In March 1978, Brookes applied for a $65,000 operations grant from Canada Council, and received $50,000. His original submission proposed a continuation of the sealing show, a tour of Bard of Prescott Street, a new tour of the sealing show, The Post-Card Show and an as yet unplanned community show. The shortfall in the grant required a revision of the plans, for which Brookes was reprimanded in the following year by Canada Council. In March 1979, Walter Learning, informing Brookes of a $45,000 grant, wrote that
[...] there is a serious concern about the ability of the company to consolidate and build upon its success, assuring a firm basis for future development. Ad hoc and re-active programming seems to indicate some problem in realizing the mandate the company has set for itself. [...] Some vestige of your pre-planning must remain otherwise the real viability of the organization is brought into question. (Learning 26 March 1979)
Consequently, the notification stipulated, the grant would be paid as a series of project instalments conditional on "receipt of budget and production details of new work." In short, Learning was placing Brookes on a very short leash.
Brookes responded in fury, answering each of Learning's charges in detail, and noting that "Since you took office, communication between the theatre section and my company has been at an all-time low." (Brookes 1979) He was particularly enraged that Learning had brought his commitment to the Mummers' mandate into question:
My company's ability to deliver on its mandate is measured by the response to the society of its region, by the production of shows which are relevant to the issues confronting that society. This means that our production plans may have to change as rapidly as the social issues they express. The evaluation of the social topology and the substance of the response must be decided by the artistic director of the company in the region, not by Ottawa arts bureaucrats [...]
Accusing Learning of "artistic interference," Brookes insisted that "There is a serious question of perspective here [...] you mistake flexibility and responsiveness for 'lack of preplanning' and 'ad hoc programming.'"
Learning's pro forma statement of Council's concerns about Brookes' ability to deliver on his mandate was evasive; he had formulated those concerns himself in his annual grant recommendation to the Council. The underlying cause was the founding of Rising Tide Theatre in September, 1978. Citing "serious doubts" that the Mummers "can deliver what they promise," Learning reported to Council that
Newfoundland is our very own mysterious East and the Mummers Troupe one of its more inscrutable institutions [...] The theatre scene in Newfoundland is marked by [...] three primary characteristics a) schizophrenia, b) paranoia and c) diffusion. At this point there is no real leadership at any level. ...
The emergence of Rising Tide Theatre, which is doing a similar type of collective creation, clouds the issue. They have presented one very successful show and now have an Explorations grant for their second which will be presented this month. In September they will be eligible to come to the Theatre Section for assistance.
The Theatre Section has met with this group and is impressed with a) the quality of their work, b) the thoroughness of their artistic planning and c) the effectiveness of their administration. (NAC 241-79-0009)
In normal circumstances, the founding of a new theatre should have no effect on subsidies to existing companies, but Learning, aware of Butt's history of conflict with Brookes, perceived Rising Tide's claim to the Mummers' history as an indication of the fundamental instability of collective theatre. In December 1978 Learning had announced a reorganization of Council granting procedures; henceforth operations grants would be awarded for three year terms to companies receiving more than $25,000; companies under that "floor" would compete annually for project funding. (Learning 13 December 1979) In May 1979 he announced that "for a trial period of one year collective companies would not be eligible to receive base operating grants" regardless of their funding level. (Learning 27 September 1979) This move affected over a dozen companies across the country, and many of them agreed with Brookes that it was a repercussion of the Rising Tide/Mummers situation. According to Brookes,
I gather, from sniffing around the jury, that Walter went into them and said, "this is what is happening with Mummers and Rising Tide, this is terrible and I think collectives are unstable and we should put them all on project funding." He presented a case from Mummers and Rising Tide which as far as I can document was inaccurate in the extreme and the jury went along with it. (Brookes 1980)
None of the Council records confirm Brookes' assertion, but then comments to juries are not recorded in Council documents at any point in the files. But it is reasonable to assume that Learning's comments to the jury were similar to his inaccurate précis to the council that passed on the jury's recommendations. Certainly the new policy was perceived in the theatre community to be a direct result of the Newfoundland situation; even Rising Tide's co-founder David Ross suggested that Council was slapping Brookes' wrist for the St. John's "fiasco." (Filewod 23 January 1980) Although Learning stated to the Board of Directors of Kam Theatre Lab that the policy was never intended to deal with the Mummers, Kam Lab's co-director, Michael Sobota, reported to Brookes that a Council officer had "told us it was designed to 'assure a situation like the one in St. John's would never happen again.'" (Sobota)
Just what that situation was, none of the documents states explicitly, and details are obscure. Whether Rising Tide had lobbied Learning for the Mummers' operations grant on grounds that they were the real Mummers is difficult to ascertain, but this was widely reported to be the case in the theatre community, and it would explain Learning's perception of unstable collectives. The new collectives policy did not remain in effect long; Learning tempered it after a meeting in Toronto in January 1980 in which representatives of more than twenty variously defined collectives argued that they were as stable as any other company, and that Council was confusing working methods with administrative structure. But the policy did succeed in resolving the Newfoundland anomaly: by displacing the Mummers from the new three-year funding formula, it further destabilized the troupe, which was already reeling from the aftershock of the battle for the LSPU Hall.
The struggle over access and control of the hall was the final chapter of the debate about the relationship of the Mummers Troupe and Resource. Brookes gives the episode short space in his memoirs, referring to it as a "byzantine political dogfight" precipitated by the Mummers' desire to find another group to assume responsibility for the hall. (Brookes 1988 155) As Fran Locke has noted, the hall had become an important community resource:
From September, 1977 to September 1978, over 27,000 people came to the Hall. During that year there occurred 20 musical concerts, 75 performances of 13 different plays, 76 meetings, 50 weeks of rehearsal, 4 workshops over 7 weeks and 4 visual arts/crafts exhibitions. The users of the Hall included 45 different arts/community groups. [...] (Locke)
The struggle for control of the LSPU Hall was more than byzantine; it was extraordinarily bitter. It concentrated all the recurring grievances held against the Mummers, and added new ones. The first documented stage of the controversy was a letter from Lynn Lunde to the St. John's arts community on 2 April 1979 in response to a petition calling for open membership to Resource: in it she invited signers of the petition to an open meeting on 6 April and advised that "Resource Foundation is exercising the proffered option in the petition to suggest a viable alternative to an open membership for Resource Foundation for the Arts." (Lunde May 1975) An undated, unsigned handwritten document records a motion presented from the floor:
That the people present at a public meeting held at the L.S.P.U. Hall, April 6, 1979
a) elect a council of people to set up a charitable organization with public membership to investigate assuming responsibilities for the L.S.P.U. Hall & its contents
b) That the people present at this public meeting call upon the Resource Foundation negotiate transfer of the L.S.P.U. hall & its contents to this charitable organization and that this council and the RFA find a mutually agreeable mediator to oversee this transfer. (unsigned motion n.d.)
Brookes and Lunde resisted this proposal for a public takeover; on 13 April John Doyle, the other long-standing member, resigned from the RFA board, and Brookes and Lunde incorporated the Mummers Troupe as a privately owned limited share company. Ironically, because the articles of incorporation were taken from standard forms, Brookes found himself to be, on paper at least, the capitalist that his actors had once accused him of being; one of the legal objectives of the Mummers Troupe Ltd. was
to establish, transact, and carry on the business of an investment company in all its branches and to carry on and undertake any business commonly carried out or undertaken by financiers, discount houses, capitalists [....] (CNSA 2.04.002)
Public meetings continued to mount pressure, and on 23 April Resource received another petition for open membership. Tempers rose; Mike Riggio, a well-known local artist, sent an open letter to "All Prospective Members of Resource Foundation for the Arts" which argued against any proposal that would acknowledge Brookes's right to retain rights to Mummers Troupe and artistic residency in the hall. His letter reopened the old sores of collectivity in the company:
I believe that evidence can be brought forward which will show that "The Mummers" is not an artistic direction under Chris Brooks (as presently constituted). It is my opinion that "The Mummers" is a collective, a collective from which some of its founding members have been "locked out." (Riggio)
By the end of the summer, Resource was faced with a boycott. At a public meeting on 14 August, three possible motions were debated: a) to establish a boycott and set up a new board to be bound immediately by an arbitration committee; b) to set up a board of trustees immediately; or c) to establish a boycott committee. (Public Meeting 14 August 1979) On 15 August, Andy Jones, a principal member of CODCO, wrote to Brookes and Lunde,
At the public meeting held last night the proposal of an arbitration body was was [sic] unanimously accepted with the proviso that the public be admitted as members immediately. (Jones)
Brookes and Lunde accepted the proposal of a separation and an arbitration committee, consisting of F. A. Aldrich, a Memorial University of Newfoundland scientist as chair, themselves, and Peter Earle and Rising Tide co-founder David Ross for the new board of Resource (which would shortly change its name to Resource Centre for the Arts). Considering the temper of the controversy, the arbitration report, issued in September 1979, is a model of restraint. The parties agreed that
The idea and the fact of the solid unity and one identity of the two entities represents an idea or concept whose time has not only come, but gone. That the RFA and MT Ltd. should now "go their own ways" is now clear and desirable to all members of this, your committee. (Arbitration report 4 September 1979)
In the division of assets, the report determined that since government capital investment is given to performing arts companies, not buildings, the Mummers Troupe Ltd. had valid claim to residency in the hall. It awarded the troupe a guaranteed minimum of 25% of the Hall's rehearsal and performance time, but recommended that the arrangement be reviewed after three years. In December, the first annual report of the new Resource celebrated the victory in the form of a 13 verse ballad in the style of Johnny Burke (the subject of the Mummer's Bard of Prescott Street) written by chairman Gordon Inglis, complete with a dig at the Mummers' trademark hobby horse:
Now the R.F.A. and the Mummers Troupe were one thing and the same,
The difference between them being only in the name,
And both of them were managed from but one single source--
Chris Brookes and Lynn Lunde--and perhaps the Mummers's horse,
They resisted all the arguments--and not surprisingly
For their interests were threatened. If the art community
Were to take the whole thing over, who could tell what they might do?
Might they take, not just the Hall, but the Mummers' old horse too? (Resource Centre for the Arts 1979)
In the space of a year, the Mummers Troupe had lost both its guarantee of continued funding from Canada Council, and its base of operations. Lunde returned to the mainland, and when the smoke cleared, Brookes was left with what he had begun with years before: the name of a company, possible Council funding, a van and the old mummers bus, a few lighting instruments and some office supplies. He would do only one more show, the rock-based revue on the false hopes of offshore oil, Some Slick, before handing over what was left of the company to Rhonda Payne. Payne managed to produce six shows but, unable to secure ongoing funding, decided to cancel the 1982 season. On October 26, 1982 she and Brookes sent out a press release announcing the death of the Mummers Troupe.
The ten years of struggle and controversy that constitute the history of the company can be narrated as crises of ideology, of personality, or of structural management. On a level of critical synthesis, all of these conflicts question the conceptual vocabularies and larger narratives that shape the very discourse of Canadian theatre. Brookes' repeated insistence that the Canada Council failed to understand the cultural specificity of oppositional political theatre was a fundamental repudiation of the humanist construction of national culture embodied in the very concept of the Council, which delineates binary models of alternative and mainstream, centre and region. The Council's funding policies reiterated these binaries in a model of competing establishment and marginal theatres, each with its aesthetic sphere, each with its appropriate economic profile.
Seen through the eyes of the Canada Council, the troupe deserved funding because support of political art--the tolerance of dissent--is commonly offered as a proof of the validity of liberal humanism. But by the same token, the liberal humanist position defines political art as the oppositional voice of a minority, which means in effect that it must accept minority funding. The Mummers Troupe, however, was also an expression of regional culture, which could not be relegated simply to minority status. The arrival of Rising Tide, which soon renounced its original political agenda in favour of a more institutional notion of regionalism, resolved this paradox for the Council, which could now respond to the Mummers purely as a political troupe.
The Mummers Troupe was an index of overlapping postcolonial contradictions: of Newfoundland vs Canadian culture and nation; of collective vs hierarchical models of production; of artistic authority vs collective responsibility; of generational attitudes; and of course of class. These contradictions defined the material conditions in which the company could work, and their replication within the company led to its collapse. Although these conflicts led the Council to conclude that the company was an unstable anomaly, they exist, with various degrees of containment, in most Canadian theatres. To the extent that the underlying crises of Canadian culture were exposed within the internal operations of the company by its refusal to accept the Canada Council's terms of containment, the Mummers Troupe was the typifying expression of Canadian theatre in the 1970s.
>NOTES
1. Brookes, his employees and the Canada Council had
conflicting expectations of how the company should operate; it was in no
small part because in the theatre the term "company" is a shifting formation
that conveys two distinct but overlapping meanings. On the one hand, the
term is used as it is in business, to describe the corporate entity; on
the other the term retains its older theatrical meaning of the troupe of
artists engaged in a particular production. Thus in the theatre, the company
employs the company and the company is employed by the company. The ambivalent
referents are always poised to slide into conflict unless contained by
clearly defined policies. In the Mummers' case, this conflict was complicated
by the use of "troupe" as part of the corporation's operating name.
Return to article
2. Because Newfoundland lacked any facilities for training
performers, Brookes had to choose between novices or trained actors from
the mainland; after Buchans he tended to choose novices from the local
community in an attempt to develop a corps of experienced Newfoundland
actors. This was not merely an artistic and budgetary expedience, although
it did resolve the vexatious problem of whether to subsidize air fares
for actors coming to the province. Brookes had been born a citizen of Newfoundland
and like most residents over the age of 25 in 1974, acquired Canadian citizenship
automatically with Confederation in 1949. For many in the arts community
in Newfoundland, mainlanders were Upper Canadians, foreigners who could
be accepted into the community but could never truly express Newfoundland
culture. Still, Brookes continued to maintain links with the mainland theatre
community by bringing in guest artists, notably Rick Salutin as writer
on I.W.A. and Steven Bush as a performer for East End Story
and director of Dying Hard in 1975, and occasional guest actors
thereafter.
Return to article
3. NAC Canada Council Grant Applications, RG 63, A-75-1066,
box 23. The letter continued, "[...] Council is pleased to note your success
in bringing in a writer of the calibre of Rick Salutin to work with you.
It is exactly this kind of development which it is hoped the increase in
your grant will allow you to carry out." Implicit in this statement is
the pressure to develop a text-based dramaturgy which valorizes the playwright--that
is, the creation of national literature--as the purpose of theatrical work.
A writer of "calibre" can only be useful if he or she retools the theatre
to produce more writers.
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4. Payne, who had been born in Newfoundland but raised
primarily in Ontario, had acted the previous summer with the Newfoundland
Travelling Theatre, and would be a major voice in the Mummers to the end;
despite her occasional difficulties with Brookes (who fired her in 1976
but rehired her in 1978), she eventually succeeded him as artistic director
in 1980.
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5. The Mummers Troupe was not the only company in Canada to argue that their work had to be judged on its terms and in its own context: the same argument could be heard throughout the growing community of marginally funded popular theatres that addressed concerns of interest to women, gays and lesbians, ethnic minorities and the political margins.
Nor were these arguments confined to Canada; Brookes' arguments with
Canada Council were remarkably parallel to the problems that John McGrath
was encountering in Scotland with his political theatre 7:84 at the same
time. John McGrath's struggles with the Scottish Arts Council are described
in detail in his memoir, The Bone Won't Break: On Theatre and Hope in
Hard Times (London 1990).
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6. Rising Tide would later obtain the funding commitments
that Brookes could not, eventually securing residency status at the Arts
and Culture Centre, performing topical collective revues and British and
American dramas under the artistic direction of Donna Butt.
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WORKS CITED
Abbreviations
CNSA Centre for Newfoundland Studies Archive, Memorial University of Newfoundland
CRB Chris Brookes, private papers
NAC National Archives of Canada
Arbitration Report. 4 September 1979. CRB Papers.
Brookes, Chris. "The Federal Funding Cutbacks to the Arts and Their Possible Effects Upon Future Operations of the Mummers Theatre Troupe: A Brief Analysis." November 1978. CRB Papers.
-----. Letter to Learning. 14 July 1979. CRB Papers.
-----. Letter to Lunde. 9 February 1976. CRB Papers.
-----. -----. 17 February 1976. CRB Papers.
-----. Letter to Sabourin. 1972. CRB Papers.
-----. Letter to Muriel Sherrin. 15 November 1973. CRB Papers.
-----. Personal Interview. January 1980.
-----. A Public Nuisance. St. John's: Institute for Social and Economic Research, 1988.
CNSA. Resource Foundation for the Arts (Mummers Troupe) Papers.
Davies, Bembo. Letter to Filewod et al. April 1975. CRB Papers.
Filewod, Alan. Personal Minutes. 23 January 1980.
Jones, Andy. Letter to Brookes et al. 15 August 1979. CRB Papers.
Kilbourn, William, et al. "The Canada Council and Theatre: The Past 25 Years and Tomorrow." Theatre History in Canada / Histoire du théâtre au Canada 3.2 (1982): pp 164-192.
Learning, Walter. Letter to Board of Directors, Kam Lab Theatre. 27 September 1979. CRB Papers.
-----. Letter to Brookes. 26 March 1979. CRB Papers.
-----. Letter to client theatres. 13 December 1979. CRB Papers.
Locke, Fran. "A Brief History of the LSPU Hall." Inventory of the Papers of THE RESOURCE FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS (The Mummers Troupe). ed. Gail Weir. St. John's: Centre for Newfoundland Studies, MUN, 1989.
Lunde, Lynn. Letter to Brookes. May 1975. CRB Papers.
-----. Letter to petitioners. 2 April 1979. CRB Papers.
Minutes. Annual Meeting, Resource Foundation for the Arts. 16 December 1976. CRB Papers.
-----. Meeting re Proposed Newfoundland Theatre Company." n.d. CRB Papers.
-----. 6 February 1975. CRB Papers.
-----. 21 May 1975. CRB Papers.
-----. 1 December 1975. CRB Papers.
-----. February 1976.
-----. n.d. CRB Papers.
NAC Canada Council Grants Applications. RG 63. 241-79-0009, box 35.
-----. -----. 241-80-0007, box 103.
-----. -----. A-75-1066, box 23.
-----. -----. A-76-0315, box 15.
-----. -----. A-77-0133, box 8.
Public Meeting. Possible Motions. 14 August 1979. CRB Papers.
Resource Centre for the Arts. Annual Report. 1979. CRB Papers.
Riggio, Mike. Open Letter. n.d. CRB Papers.
Sobota, Michael. Letter to Brookes. 5 September 1979. CRB Papers.
Turnbull, Keith. Letter to David Peacock. 6 May 1974. CRB Papers.
Unsigned Motion ms. n.d. CRB Papers.
Untitled Manifesto. 26 July 1976. CRB Papers.