RICHARD BRUCE KIRKLEY
This article examines John Hirsch's attempts to bring Canadian theatre artists and stage plays to television during his tenure, as Head of CBC English Language Television Drama in the 1970s. When the CBC appointed John Hirsch, they gave him a strong mandate to strengthen the drama department's relationship with Canadian theatre by bringing some of the best plays and performances to television, and by recruiting new talent from the theatre. To fulfill this mandate, Hirsch initiated a bold, comprehensive strategy; yet a series of historical forces, ranging from financial and economic to cultural and aesthetic, made the full realization of his strategy very difficult. By examining the problems that confronted Hirsch's theatre projects, this article will show how historical circumstances specific to the 1970s impeded the success of the projects, and will further suggest that more recent technological, structural and cultural developments related to television production and reception may have generated an environment more conducive to the achievement of successful collaborations between theatre and television.
Cet article étudie les différentes tentatives de John Hirsch, pendant son mandat comme Responsable du théâtre de langue anglaise à la CBC, pour que les artistes et les pièces du théâtre canadien trouvent leur place dans la programmation télévisuelle pendant les années soixant-dix. Au moment de sa nomination, on lui confie le mandat d'intensifier les rapports entre la télévision et le théâtre canadien en choissisant les meilleures pièces et les spectacles les plus percutants pour les produire au petit écran, et en recrutant pour la télévision les nouveaux talents du théâtre. Hirsch met alors sur pied une vaste et audacieuse stratégie. Pourtant, toute une série de difficultés, économiques mais aussi culturelles et esthétiques, en ont rendu la réalisation difficile. En étudiant les problèmes rencontrés par Hirsch, cet article montre comment des circonstances historiques spécifiques aux années 70 ont empêché la réussite de ses projets, et comment les développements technologiques, structurels et culturels des dernières années quant à la production et à la réception ont sans doute engendré un milieu plus favorable aux collaborations fructueuses entre le théâtre et la télévision.
When John Hirsch became the CBC's new Head of English Language Television Drama in 1974, he sought to develop an on-going collaboration between Canada's theatre and television communities. By creating an electronic stage where the best theatre and drama in Canada could be presented to a national audience, he hoped to provide opportunities for talented playwrights and directors from the theatre to expand into and explore new forms of television drama. During Hirsch's tenure at the CBC, several contemporary theatre artists, particularly from Toronto's exciting new alternative theatres, brought their work to television. For a few brief seasons in the mid-seventies, the creativity of the Canadian stage found a prominent place on national television. While it lasted, the project helped to promote and foster awareness of the contemporary Canadian theatre scene, and also demonstrated, albeit to a limited degree, that television drama could be enriched through a more dynamic interaction with theatre. Yet in the end, the productions could not attract a large enough share of television's mass audience to justify the costs of continuing the project. Most of the theatre artists returned to the stage and Hirsch's dream of a national television theatre faded.1The reasons for the disappearance of Hirsch's project relate both to financial and administrative constraints within the CBC at the time, and to problems of finding compatibility between the different production practices of theatre and television. As well, larger cultural and ideological forces shaping broadcast television and alternative theatre in the 1970s made the mediation of their different modes of discourse difficult to resolve. An examination of these historical problems suggests that the project's demise had more to do with timing and commitment than with the aesthetic or dramaturgical viability of the project itself.
The desire to develop a productive interaction between the CBC Drama Department and the Canadian theatre community was one of the main reasons the CBC recruited John Hirsch to be their new Head of Drama toward the end of 1973. Two years prior to this, the CBC had launched a massive study "to assess the strengths and weaknesses of past drama programming" and to determine what "the CBC should be doing in the drama fields [and] the steps that had to be taken to achieve these drama goals" (CBC 1973a, 2). Headed by Thom Benson, Peter Hermdorf and Robert McGall, the study group consulted network executives and drama producers, as well as performers, directors, writers, critics and academics in Canada, the United States and Great Britain. The group produced a five-year plan for revitalizing television drama, the primary objectives of which were summarized by Thom Benson in an internal CBC memorandum:
Over the next five years we plan to give far greater emphasis to attracting the best Canadian writers to CBC television drama, and ... will invest far more money in the development of new Canadian scripts, [in) production training and recruitment of new staff, and [in] the establishment of closer ties with both regional and underground theatre across the country to ensure that the best new Canadian plays are exposed to television audiences (CBC 1973b).
The CBC had decided to embark on an ambitious course of action to increase the amount of Canadian drama shown on the network and to offer a genuine alternative to the formulaic drama of the giant American networks. In appointing John Hirsch to carry out this plan, the corporation was signalling an openness to new ideas and new people.
Essentially a CBC "outsider," Hirsch's experience in television production was impressive, although limited. He had worked briefly as a staff producer for CBC Winnipeg in the mid-fifties, and had produced or directed for CBC on a contractual basis during the sixties, notably producing Tom Hendry's Fifteen Miles of Broken Glass in 1964, and directing for television his Stratford Festival production of The Three Musketeers in 1969, with producer David Gardner. As a theatre director, Hirsch had established an international reputation. Among his many achievements, he had co-founded the Manitoba Theatre Centre (with Tom Hendry) in the fiffies, served as Associate Artistic Director (with Jean Gascon) of the Stratford Festival in the sixties, and directed acclaimed productions at such leading American theatres as the Guthrie Theatre and the Lincoln Center. His prominent position in Canadian theatre and his familiarity with television drama production made Hirsch an ideal choice for the work of injecting CBC television drama with some of the excitement and energy of the contemporary theatre scene.
When Hirsch arrived at the CBC in March 1974, his first priority was to reinvigorate a department that had become demoralized and moribund in recent years.2 To achieve this, he embarked on a strategy which met the objectives of the Drama Study Group, and consisted of three integral parts: training programs to introduce new writers, producers and directors to the craft of television production; the revival of anthology drama programs, largely dedicated to producing new plays from the Canadian stage; and finally, the development of popular television series reflecting Canadian characters, settings and stories. To accomplish these objectives, Hirsch was relying on CBC management to fulfil its promise to double the number of programming hours devoted to original drama, from 65 to 130 hours annually, which compares with the 500 hours being produced annually by the BBC at the time (Ross, 120). Hirsch believed 130 hours were the minimum needed to achieve a "critical mass," without which, he told the Globe and Mail, "it's impossible to improve ... the quality [of CBC television drama] and ensure that there's going to be writers and directors able to carry on the maintenance of this quality in the next six or seven years" (Kirby, 1976a).
Unfortunately, the CBC was not able to deliver on its promise. The original drama produced by the CBC reached a peak of just over 80 hours in the 1976/77 season, but fell back to 65 hours in the final year of Hirsch's tenure (Hirsch 1978, 11-12).3 This was partly necessitated by financial constraints imposed by the federal government which decided not to proceed with recommendations to fund the CBC on a five year basis, rather than annually. Since the five year plan of the drama study group had anticipated the implementation of the new funding policy, without it, the drama strategy was in jeopardy.4 As well, a new executive team in charge of programming was appointed at the CBC shortly after Hirsch's arrival. He was never able to convince the new executives, such as Don MacPherson and Denis Harvey, that television drama should be as high a priority as he thought it should be. MacPherson and Harvey decided to put the lion's share of the CBC's limited resources into news and current affairs programming (Hermdorf). These priorities were determined, in part, by television audiences. By the mid-seventies, Canadians increasingly looked to the CBC more for news and documentaries than for drama. Indeed, at the end of the 1975/76 season, an internal CBC survey showed that the audience size for drama had declined "from 12 per cent of total sets at the beginning of the [1974/75] season to a mere 7 per cent" and that the enjoyment of those watching had plummeted (Kirby, 1976b). These were depressing statistics for Hirsch, especially because the 1975/76 season had seen a concentrated effort to provide a showcase for Canadian theatre. Higher ratings would have helped convince CBC management to continue supporting Hirsch's more experimental projects. The frustrations Hirsch felt over the CBC not following through with its promises prompted him to tell one reporter that the most apt metaphor for his experience at the CBC was "coitus interruptus": "They kept getting me all excited and then they took everything away" (Ross, 120).
Hirsch was incensed by what he saw as impatience and short-sightedness from the CBC's upper echelons. For the collaboration with the Canadian theatre community to succeed, Hirsch needed time to nurture and develop the project. He needed patience from audiences and management to tolerate experiment and occasional failure. By the end of the 75/76 season, Hirsch was acutely aware that this tolerance would not be forthcoming. "Whether it is possible for the Corporation to be what I think it ought to be," he told the Toronto Star, "whether the Canadian public and the country generally has the patience to enter a developmental process without asking for immediate results and a great competitive kind of triumph in such a short time, I have the greatest doubt" (Adilman 1976, 118). By the 1970s, the vast majority of Canadians had become conditioned to see American television drama as the standard by which all television drama should be measured. According to the 1969 Special Senate Committee on the Mass Media in Canada, chaired by Senator Keith Davey, "U.S. produced programs had about 80 per cent of the audience in English Canada ... They reflected the skills of the most sophisticated entertainment industry in the world; people liked them and advertisers were willing to pay for the big audiences they attracted" (Bird, 375). Compared to the slick American series, with their on-location shooting, rapid editing, luxuriant production values and charismatic celebrities, the studio-based drama of the CBC's theatre projects appeared stilted, even anachronistic. Many of the programs seemed a throw-back to the days of black and white television when studio-based drama anthologies out of New York dominated the air-waves. Since the early 60s, however, production in the United States had shifted away from live studio drama to the more exciting and realistic filmed series produced in Hollywood. For many Canadian viewers, anything that deviated from the Hollywood style was greeted with either hostility or, more often, indifference.
Production practice and technology contribute significantly to the determination of different dramatic styles. Most stage plays transposed to television from the alternative theatres during the Hirsch years were produced in television studios using multi-camera shooting, a practice developed in the early days of live television production. Multi-camera production uses three or more cameras to capture a continuous performance from several different angles. During the fifties and sixties, studio productions were usually recorded and "edited" live onto videotape (cameras were actually switched electronically from one to the other, or the tape was stopped in order to set up new scenes or camera angles). This practice was determined, in large part, by the available technology: until the arrival of computer-based electronic videotape editing in 1972, it was extremely difficult to edit videotape effectively in post-production. Hirsch was anxious to take advantage of the promise for greater innovation and flexibility in studio production made possible by the technological advance. Unfortunately, because electronic editing was still relatively new, the equipment was very expensive and there were few people with sufficient knowledge or experience in using it (Anderson, 1_9).5 Production was also confined to the studio because film remained the most viable practice for on-location shooting. The development of durable, portable video cameras and recorders that could deliver broadcast quality images would not be perfected until the 1980s (Compesi and Sherriffs, 6-9).6Yet film production was prohibitively expensive and, given its budget constraints, CBC Drama had to be very selective in allocating money to film. Indeed, producing stage plays in the studio, because it was a comparatively less expensive form of production, was a cost-effective way of coping with limited budgets. Nonetheless, these technical and financial realities compelled the continuation of a production practice and style that many viewers found outmoded-and many producers and artists found inhibiting to their creative objectives.
Undaunted by the setbacks and limitations, Hirsch persevered with the original objectives of introducing playwrights and stage directors to the techniques of television production and of presenting Canadian stage plays on the small screen. In the summer of 1974, he established a workshop for writers, under the direction of David Helwig, which included such participants as Sharon Pollock, David Fennario, Larry Fineberg, Tom Cone and George Walker (CBC 1974c). Hirsch also set up the first of what he hoped would become regular training programs for new television directors. Under the guidance of George Bloomfield, a CBC producer who had gained considerable experience in live-to-tape production during the sixties, the program brought in several promising theatre directors, most from Toronto's alternative theatre scene: Alex Dmitriev, Ken Gass, Stephen Katz, Martin Kinch, George Luscombe, Eric Steiner, Henry Tarvainen and Paul Thompson (CBC 1974b). According to Bloomfield, the intention was to "begin with directors who [knew] how to relate with actors, how to direct in the theatre, and provide an opportunity for them to learn the techniques of television" (Kirby 1974). With this undertaking, Hirsch was altering the received traditions of the CBC, which had tended to move promising people from technical to creative areas, a procedure with which he disagreed:
The attitude within the CBC was that television drama involved a great many mysteries, and the best people to direct and produce were those who graduated through the ranks and were technically oriented. Although there are exceptions who bear out this belief, it is clear that people who have some kind of theatrical training will make better producers and directors of television drama, once they have acquired the necessary technical skills. (Hirsch 1978, 25-26).
Yet acquiring these skills demands a considerable investment of time and resources. As the following comment by theatre director Stephen Katz indicates, the transition from theatre to television was not easy:
The first week we were all terrified. We are used to making our impacts with actors, and suddenly the actors have become no more important than the chesterfield. And rather than just one pair of eyes, suddenly we have three eyes, and they move around. (Kirby 1974).
Television drama production requires a sophisticated understanding of and sensitivity for the visual discipline of moving image composition, multiple camera perspectives, and editing. With a studio-based training program of only one month, Bloomfield could do little more than provide rudimentary instruction in the traditional techniques of multi-camera production. For directors experimenting with innovative theatrical techniques, such as collective creation and environmental staging, this more rigid style of television production restricted their creative ideas. The directors needed a more extended and flexible program, yet the Corporation could not provide the necessary resources. This limitation set in motion an unfortunate chain of events which eventually resulted in the cancellation of the innovative training programs.
In part because of federal budget cuts to the CBC in 1976 (Kirby 1976a), the only way Hirsch could continue with the training programs was to fund them through the Drama Department's production budget, which could only be justified by broadcasting the experimental work done in the directors' training program on a half-hour anthology called Peepshow. If successful, Hirsch hoped this program might provide a vehicle for continuing the development of new talent as well as interesting viewers in alternative forms of television drama. His hopes for the anthology were dashed, however, by abysmal ratings. As one commentator observed, the productions were "practice plays" and "were never good enough for prime time, were never meant to be. The ratings were awful. The idea never surfaced again" (Miller, Jack). Years later, John Kennedy, Hirsch's successor as Head of Drama, indicated that the failure of Peepshow subsequently made it very difficult for Hirsch to win support for further experimental projects:
In looking back on it, [Peepshow] represented more of a failure than it did a success from the broadcaster's point of view. So much so, that attempts to encourage anthology drama using people newish to the medium were not met with a great deal of enthusiasm (qtd. in Miller, M.J., 360).
Kennedy's comment points to the incompatibility of educational and professional objectives. "From the broadcaster's point of view," the immediate priority had to be generating programs of high quality that would appeal to and serve the interests of the Canadian public. From the educational point of view, the new directors needed room to explore, play, experiment, make mistakes and learn the discipline and the possibilities of the new medium. Since no educational institution or program dedicated to television drama production existed in Canada then (or exists now, for that matter), Hirsch had little choice. If he wanted to bring new people to television drama, he would need to train them first. In a Personal Report to the CBC, submitted at the end of his term as Head, Hirsch expressed his disappointment with the fate of the training program:
Training, although it was initially supported by management, had to be done within the Department's budget allotment for programming, which required the showing of, what I consider, "finger exercises."
I tried to explain that this was a foolish way to proceed; when I lost the battle, I requested that we should only telecast shows from the training program which were reasonably successful. Once again the battle was lost, and almost all of the training program productions found their way on the air in the Peepshow series. The final blow came when Peepshow was cancelled because it did not receive a large enough audience and the enjoyment index was low. Nevertheless, we managed to involve a great many young directors and writers in Peepshow. However, there seems to be little or no point in training young people unless there is a large enough volume of productions in which the successful trainees could be employed (Hirsch 1978, 26).
In comparison to the slick Hollywood style, most of the productions on Peepshow were undeniably crude and unpolished, yet a screening of the surviving programs in the National Archives reveals that the negative reaction to the anthology, while not unfounded, was nonetheless exaggerated. The program "Microdramas," for example, is a collection of sketches written by workshop participants Hrant Alianak, Louis del Grande, V.M. Rakoff, and George Walker, and directed by Alianak, Ken Gass, and David Cronenberg. The sketches certainly have the appearance of rough cuts, with occasional mismatched edits, some lurid lighting and uneven sound quality. Yet beneath the technical imperfections, there is evidence of intelligent and imaginative work taking shape. The plays themselves are intriguing parodies of conventional television drama formats, such as the soap opera and the mystery thriller. Although superficially derivative, the parodic style and tone of these sketches manifests, on a deeper level, an ironic perspective on contemporary popular culture that would prove central to the work of these artists, especially Alianak, Cronenberg, Gass and Walker.
Beverley Roberts' production of Louis del Grande's stage play, So Who's Goldberg, directed by Stephen Katz, is perhaps the best of the surviving shows. Featuring fine performances from Saul Rubinek and Martin Short (in a rare serious role), the well-crafted script develops a homosexual pick-up between a lonely and sensitive musician (Rubinek) and an emotionally scarred street punk (Short), creating a disturbing commentary on the vulnerability and violence suffered by the gay community. Whatever shortcomings Peepshow may have had, the surviving programs reveal a potential which, if allowed to develop, might have proved a valuable forum for experiments in dramatic form and style, as well as for the expression of often marginalized voices in Canadian society.
Besieged by pressures from all sides, Hirsch decided to abandon the directors' training program after only one year. Not only were the CBC executives and the television audiences not impressed, many of the theatre directors themselves became frustrated by the technical constraints and logistical magnitude of television production. In a personal interview, Peter Hermdorf related how the theatre people "often found [the medium] cumbersome and impersonal. As directors, they had to be more involved with the technical problems of camera and lighting than with the performances." One of the main frustrations was the lack of control and intimacy. The economic and technological demands of television production necessitate the involvement of many technical and organizational specialists. The directors from the alternative theatres, Hermdorf recalled, "were used to greater control over the production process-and television is not a medium that lends itself to individual or small group control." Here again, historical circumstances frustrated Hirsch's objective. With improvements in the quality and efficiency of electronic editing and portable cameras and recorders during the 1980s, video production practices did become more economical and flexible. By working outside the studio, for example in a theatre or an open warehouse space, it is now possible to develop more intimate and relaxed shooting procedures. In Hirsch's day, however, this technology was not readily available, nor even in existence. Thus, it was very difficult, if not impossible, to support the kind of intimacy and flexibility the theatre artists needed. 7
The challenge of finding compatibility between the different production processes of theatre and television is also evident in the anthologies which featured plays from the alternative theatres. During his tenure at the CBC, Hirsch launched three anthology programs designed "to reflect the creative ferment in the current theatre scene across Canada and to bring some of its excitement to a national audience" (CBC 1974a). Opening Night, which ran in the 1974n5 season (Hirsch's first), presented Michael Cook's Head, Guts and Soundbone Dance and David Freeman's You're Gonna Be Alright, Jamie Boy. Performance ran for two seasons, ending in 1976, and featured Toronto Workshop Productions' Ten Lost Years, Theatre Passe Muraille's The Farm Show and, with Rick Salutin, 1837: The Farmers' Revolt, Ann Henry's Lulu Street, David French's Of the Fields, Lately, Carol Bolt's Red Emma, and David Fennario's On the Job. The final anthology was Front Row Centre, which might be seen as Hirsch's "swan song" since it was aired in the final months of the 1977/78 season, concurrent with Hirsch's departure. This anthology presented productions of Michel Tremblay's Les Belles Soeurs and Allan King's award winning adaptation of Carol Bolt's One Night Stand.
When the plays worked well on television, it was either because the original play suited the established conventions of the medium, or because the play was sufficiently adapted to conform with these conventions, such as the realistic, on-location filming that Allan King used for Bolt's One Night Stand. Freeman's Jamie Boy worked surprisingly well on television because the play parodies the conventions of the situation comedy, specifically the contemporary American hit series All in the Family, in order to satirize the harmful effects of addictive television viewing. When transposed to the very medium it criticizes, Freeman's satire had an immediate impact that was arguably stronger than in the stage version.
Nonetheless, some of the other studio-based productions appear stilted and tedious in comparison with the excitement, imagination and energy of the original theatre performances. The television versions of the collectively created documentary plays, Ten Lost Years and The Farm Show, for example, used a realistic and objective style of camera work that was sharply incongruent with the theatricality and subjectivity of the presentational performances. The unsatisfactory treatment of both plays demonstrates the problems that were experienced when a relatively new and unfamiliar kind of theatre was transposed to television using conventional approaches to multi-camera production. Theatre Passe Muraille's production of 1837: The Farmers'Revolt, on the other hand, was a promising attempt to work more innovatively with the medium. Using such techniques as animation, chromakey, and direct address to the camera, they created a carnivalesque style which complemented the parodic theatricality of the play's revisionist history. The results were uneven (for reasons which will become evident momentarily), but the production was beginning to push television drama in new and exciting directions. Unfortunately, the experimental process that generated such innovative work ended too soon.
Despite some promising productions, Hirsch needed an immediate popular success, and the theatre experiment could not produce such immediate results. Faced with budgetary constraints and executive pressures, Hirsch's own commitment to the theatre project began to falter. He sometimes became irritated with the inefficiency of the theatre practitioners who (quite legitimately) were often more interested in process than product. The difficulties can be illustrated by looking behind the scenes at the shooting of Theatre Passe Muraille's 1837: The Farmers' Revolt. In a personal interview, Rick Salutin recalled that the CBC's participation was less than enthusiastic. For example, although Paul Thompson wanted to involve the production crew in the collective process, the director dropped the idea when he found the camera operators and technicians resistant to the idea. Given the highly specialized tasks of television production, crews expect the producer/director to know exactly what is wanted, and to provide specific schedules and directions for setting up and shooting the daily scenes. To the technical people, the idea of coming into the studio and collectively discussing how to produce each scene was seen as a colossal waste of time. Yet from the perspective of the theatre company, a more flexible and participatory production process was precisely what was needed to learn and to innovate. Here again, the objectives of the theatre projects were hampered by existing procedures within the CBC, which assigned camera operators and technicians according to their availability, rather than their particular expertise or interests. Hirsch would later complain about "the indiscriminate assignment of cameramen to the Drama Department, regardless of their ability or desire to work in drama" (Hirsch 1978, 29). The theatre artists needed the participation of technicians who were open to exploring new methods and ideas.8
Salutin also remembered feeling considerable indifference to their creative goals from the executive ranks of the CBC. The corporation reneged on an initial commitment for a program free of advertising, and decided to slot four commercial segments into the broadcast of 1837. Seeing the move as interfering in the artistic integrity of their work, Theatre Passe Muraille held a sit-down strike in the studio, refusing to continue shooting until the commercials were removed. Hirsch convinced TPM to resume production, promising the commercials would be cut. They were, but the confrontational atmosphere persisted. Salutin complained, in particular, about Hirsch's decision, at the last moment and without consulting Thompson or Salutin, to cut a satirical talk-show interview scene between William Lyon Mackenzie (played by Eric Peterson) and contemporary historian William Kilbourne, in which Mackenzie attacks Kilbourne's presentation of the "official" version of the 1837 Rebellion. "Hirsch couldn't stand the scene," Salutin said. "He objected because the scene undermines authority and [showed] a lack of respect" (Salutin). These incidents reveal the kind of pressures confronting Hirsch. Caught between the expectations of the Drama Department and the CBC executives, on the one hand, and the demands of a theatre company wanting to explore a whole new approach to television production, Hirsch found himself trying to reconcile seemingly intransigent positions. Hirsch's interference in cutting the Mackenzie/Kilbourne interview probably stemmed from his own sense of frustration and urgency. He had staked a good deal of his reputation on making the theatre project work and, as Peter Hermdorf recalled, was impatient that sufficient proof of its viability would not be forthcoming given the many constraints and conflicts.
Hirsch's theatre project was frustrated by a series of unfortunate circumstances. A change in the programming priorities of the CBC left him with only luke-warm support from the executive ranks of the corporation. A lack of money and resources made it very difficult-and eventually impossible to continue the training programs and develop the experimental environment needed to realize the creative potential of the project. And finally, the television viewers themselves remained largely indifferent, showing an overwhelming preference for the more exciting and realistic formulaic drama of the American networks. Already a marginal presence in the North American broadcasting industry, Hirsch was making CBC Drama even more marginal by producing stage plays that were themselves marginal to the contemporary mainstream theatre. Hirsch's project can be seen as an attempt to re-orient or enrich the mainstream by giving Canadian drama and theatre a prominent presence on the national airwaves. Yet by the 1970s, theatre had become a relatively marginal cultural activity in contrast to the expanding global culture of electronic information and mass communications. As such, the stage had increasingly become a medium for the expression of more radical ideas and cultural forms. This was certainly true of many of the alternative theatre productions that Hirsch sought to televise. His theatre project may not have generated any sustained interest because, in the 1970s, the cultural differences between the two media made collaboration fundamentally problematic.
Television has become the dominant mainstream medium of our times. As John Fiske points out in his book Television Culture:
Television is, above all else, a popular culture medium. The economics that determine its production and distribution demand that it reaches a mass audience, and a mass audience in western industrialized societies is composed of numerous subcultures, or subaudiences ... (39).
Analyzing programming from drama to news and documentaries, Fiske argues that television relies primarily on the conventions of realism to construct a "common ground" and make the representations of television accessible to the diverse subcultures within a pluralistic democratic state. Yet realism itself, Fiske contends, reflects the literate and empiricist modes of thought and organization that have been determined and perpetuated, over the course of time, by the dominant social group in contemporary Western civilization (defined, essentially, as white, male, and affluent). Television appears realistic, Fiske suggests,
not because it reproduces reality ... but because it reproduces the dominant sense of reality. We can thus call television an essentially realistic medium because of its ability to carry a socially convincing sense of the real. Realism is not a matter of fidelity to empirical reality, but of the discursive conventions by which and for which a sense of reality is constructed (39).
Through its use of realistic conventions, television has a remarkable ability to incorporate, as well as to exclude, the voices of subcultures whose ideological perspectives challenge or subvert those of the dominant culture. To make alternative forms of expression accessible to a mass audience, the makers of television will often use realistic conventions to reconstruct the alternative discourse. Fiske's analysis helps to elucidate some of the deeper reasons why Hirsch's project of presenting works from the alternative theatres on television encountered so many difficulties.
Many of the theatre artists who were invited to work at the CBC during the mid-seventies were exploring alternative theatrical forms and techniques, such as collective creation, environmental staging, and presentational acting styles. Yet given the predominance of realistic modes of discourse on television, the presentation of radical or alternative forms of theatre often met considerable resistance from viewers when their expectations for realism were inexplicably challenged. This resistance occurred because the productions often confused or mismatched radical and conventional forms. As indicated earlier, in several instances the formal experimentation of the alternative theatres was inappropriately represented by inadequate (or even unconscious) attempts at making the television production conform to realistic conventions. In particular, the traditional methods of multi-camera studio production imposed such realistic techniques as objective camera viewpoints and "invisible" editing on the highly stylized staging of the alternative plays. When this happened, the televised stage productions often offended viewers. For example, many people criticized the television version of Toronto Workshop Productions' Ten Lost Years for resenting a grossly distorted portrayal of life during the Great Depression.9 Preserving the presentational acting style, non-narrative structure, and anti-illusionistic scenography of the original stage production, the actual content of the television version explicitly defied realistic conventions. Yet the camera's realistic representation of the theatrical staging caused many viewers to perceive the play's theatricality as a falsification of history, despite the fact that the stories related were all based on the true experiences of real people. On the other hand, to have completely adapted the stage production into a more realistic form for television would have obliterated the theatricality that is the very essence of the play, not only aesthetically, but ideologically. As Alan Filewod has argued, the collectivity of the performance action demonstrates the efficacy of collective political action, which is the underlying purpose of the play (Filewod 1989, 65). To be effective, the television production needed a radical rethinking of the formal techniques used to capture theatre for television.
By its very nature, the broadcast television environment of Hirsch's day was not conducive to vigorous formal and conceptual experimentation. The struggle to produce innovative work using traditional approaches to studiobased production certainly exacerbated the situation and did more to inhibit creativity than encourage it. Yet Hirsch encountered an even more fundamental difficulty in the economic and ideological realities that existed within the television industry and shaped the formal structures of the medium itself. In broadcast television, every network--even a public network such as the CBC-has to attract and maintain a sufficiently broad base of support to justify its existence.10 To achieve this, television programming inevitably gravitates towards conventionality and homogeneity. Hirsch's theatre project was an attempt to resist---or re-orient-this gravitational pull. He wanted the electronic stage to be a showcase for a diversity of dramatic forms and styles, from the conventional and mainstream to the experimental and marginal. His vision reflected a progressive idea of what national public television could be: a medium for presenting the plurality of cultural and ideological perspectives that existed in Canadian society, as these were being manifested in the drama and theatre of the day.
However laudable the dream, the realization of Hirsch's project could not be easily achieved within the broadcast environment that existed in North America during the 1970s. Yet the medium of television has changed significantly in the two decades since Hirsch arrived at the CBC, and the environment needed to nurture the experimentation he hoped to generate may now exist. The 1980s saw some radical changes to the conventional forms of television programming, and perhaps one of the clearest manifestations of these changes was the music video. At least in its formative stages during the first half of the decade, the music video became a vehicle for some of the most creative and exciting formal innovations the medium has seen. Rejecting realism categorically, the makers of music videos unleashed the associative and imaginative power of the medium through their liberated and wildly unconventional treatment of visual image and sound (in much the same way as Theatre Passe Muraille had tried to do with their production of 1837 in the mid-seventies). The underlying purpose of the music video, of course, was (and still is) to sell records, tapes and compact discs, as well as to promote the fashions and commodities of consumerism. Yet the formal experimentation of the music video also demonstrates how the pluralistic nature of the television audience can create a demand for difference and diversity. As John Fiske has observed, the medium of television is the site of continual ideological struggle and negotiation between dominant and subordinate groups in a democratic society and, hence, between the cultural forms these groups generate. As a result, there is a "constant tension" within the medium between cultural difference and cultural homogeneity, between radical expression and conventional form (37-47).
The reasons for the success of the music video in the 1980s are complex. In conjunction with the consumerist appeal of the music video, viewers found enjoyment in the subversion of realistic conventions and the creation of what Fiske characterizes as a "free play of signifiers," in which viewers are able to construct their own meanings, or else reject meaning altogether in favour of "a more carnivalesque, liberated pleasure" (250-54). Yet even when the novelty and commercialism of the music video are taken into account, its emergence during the last decade is evidence not only of the willingness of television audiences to accept radical formal experimentation, but indeed of the hunger for cultural difference and diversity that exists in contemporary society.11 Fiske emphasizes that "a television program is a relatively open text," and viewers are free to make sense of it according to their own cultural or social experience. Viewers do not simply accept passively the encoded discourses of the dominant ideology:
those who found that the dominant ideology did not enable them to make adequate sense of their social experience, and who thus turned to an oppositional or alternative one, were able to bring this different ideological frame to bear upon the program and still make sense of it and find a pleasure in it that was their sense, their pleasure, not the one proposed by the program. In other words, the program can be different things to different people (40).
From here it is only a short step to the fuller realization of cultural and ideological difference in terms of formal experimentation, as the music video demonstrates. Yet for this diversity to expand beyond novelty and fashion to include a wider range of expression, including electronic theatre, the significant restructuring which the television industry has been undergoing for the past decade needs to progress to the next stage.12
Perhaps the single greatest impediment to the full development of cultural diversity and formal experimentation in television programming over the four decades of its history has been the broadcast structure of the television industry. Homogeneity and convention have largely been determined by the economic necessity of attracting mass audiences. Yet the domination of television programming by large broadcasting networks has been substantially eroded in recent years. The rapid expansion of cable and satellite communication systems has led to an explosive proliferation of channels. Consequently, the audience size for the major networks has been declining as more and more channels specializing in certain kinds of programming have emerged. Channels that show only movies, weather, sports, news and music videos are now common and the trend toward specialization---or narrowcasting-is well established. As yet, this restructuring of the transmission and distribution system has not translated into significant changes in the form and structure of the programs themselves. Indeed, if anything, viewers often complain that, despite the plethora of channels they receive, there are very few genuine choices. They flip through 57 channels and still find "nothing on." Yet narrowcasting could eventually generate more significant diversification in the forms and styles of programming, allowing for the expression of the plurality of voices and viewpoints which should be heard in a genuinely democratic, genuinely global society. As Hirsch envisioned, television could become a medium of cultural diversity, rather than homogeneity, in which alternative forms of expression will find their niche. In a 1976 lecture in Ottawa, Hirsch expressed his hope that the creation of a national electronic stage would restore CBC television drama to the prestige experienced during the "golden days" of live studio drama in the 1950s (Hirsch 1975). Yet the expectation that alternative theatre could be effectively transposed to television by simply updating the traditional practices of studio production was not given sufficient thought. As a result, the theatre projects often appeared outmoded or, at the opposite extreme, outlandish. Ironically, Hirsch's dream may have been both behind the times and ahead of its time. Given the emerging "information highway," we need individuals with Hirsch's vision and passion who can generate a dynamic collaboration between Canadian theatre and television, to assert the diversity of our culture and enrich our lives.
NOTES
1 Hirsch's idea of a national electronic theatre reflects the preoccupation with establishing a
national theatre that has pervaded Canada's cultural scene through most of the twentieth
century. Recently, the notion of a national theatre has been questioned by scholars who argue
that it represents the colonial imposition of an essentially foreign and elitist model of the nation
state, and therefore tends to overpower and inhibit the emergence of a more authentic theatre
and drama from the local and popular "engagement of the theatre with the living culture of its
audience" (Filewod 1990, 9). While this paper does not address this issue directly, it is worth
noting that Hirsch's vision of a national television theatre departed from the colonial model in
significant ways, especially in his efforts to present plays and performances from the "living
culture" of the alternative theatres, and to provide opportunities in television for promising new
Canadian playwrights and directors. In doing so, Hirsch participated in the historical process of
redefining the inherited colonial model to articulate a new vision of nationhood based on
diversity and plurality.
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2 The morale of the Drama Department began to decline in 1969 when, as part of an internal
reorganization, the CBC decided to hire producers on a contractual, per-show basis, resulting
in the departure of many talented and experienced drama producers, such as Leo Orenstein,
Gordon Hinch and David Gardner (Adilman 1969). CBC management's cancellation of the
provocative and popular public affairs program This Hour Has Seven Days three years earlier
had also contributed to the demoralization of many CBC producers (Miller, 314-15;
Rutherford, 412).
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3 Hirsch points out that the 76/77 increase was largely caused by the need to broadcast productions from the training workshops, which artificially increased the programming hours for original drama during this season:
... we went from 64.5 hours in 73/74 to 61.5 hours in 74/75; to 60.5 hours in 75/76. This figure changed radically in 76/77 when we increased the total broadcast hours by 20, that is from 60.5 in 75/76 to 80.5 in 76/77.
Unfortunately this was an artificial increase because pressure was exerted on the Drama Department to broadcast shows which were originally intended as training vehicles.
Thus in a sense, we cannot speak of a real increase in production, especially where quality
is concerned. This is borne out by the figures for 1977/78 when, with the elimination of those
training programs, the output of the department returned to the volume produced in 1973/74
(Hirsch 1978, 11-12)
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4 The five year funding plan for the CBC was originally recommended in the Fowler Committee's
1966 "White Paper on Broadcasting," but was deleted from the 1968 Broadcasting Act (under
which CBC funding is still controlled) because of vociferous objections from the commercial
broadcasting industry in Canada. Instead, a separate CBC financing bill was proposed.
However, despite continued lobbying over the next few years, the public broadcaster was unable
to persuade the federal government to implement a five year funding formula. For the relevant
documents, see Bird.
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5 Anderson indicates that the arrival of computerized video editing for practical broadcast
purposes occurs in 1973 with the international standardization of time code systems for video
recording by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) and the
European Broadcasting Union (EBU). Hirsch complained about the unavailability of skilled tape
directors and the need to hire foreign experts in his Personal Report (Hirsch 1976, 38).
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6 Although Sony had introduced a portable black and white video camera as early as 1967, it was
not capable of producing the high quality images required for broadcast purposes. Compesi and
Sherriffs indicate that portable video cameras capable of broadcast quality images did not
become available until the early 80s. Some portable video cameras were being used in television
news during the 70s, since immediacy was a higher priority than quality in this area.
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7 In the early eighties, the Amsterdam Werkteater was one of the first theatre companies to
realize the flexibility and intimacy that the advances in video technology had provided for the
transposition of stage plays to television. The exciting and compelling results of their
experiments were presented and discussed at the International Federation for Theatre Research
Conference, Theatre and Television, Hilversum, the Netherlands, 1-7 September, 1987.
Company director Shireen Strooker emphasized the importance of exploring how the
technology of television could be used to develop production practices that were compatible
with their experimental theatre practices. While attending the conference, I screened the
Werkteater's award winning production of You Are My Mother (Du bist meine Mutter). The
intimacy and intensity of actor Joop Admiraal's solo performance of a dialogue between a son
and his dying mother is brilliantly captured by treating the camera not as an objective, indifferent
observer, but as the listening counterpart in the conversation. The use of direct address, on-location settings, and counterpointed editing between Admiraal as son and then as mother, was
made possible through the skilful use of portable video equipment and electronic editing. For
more on the Amsterdam Werkteater, see Ogden.
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8 Here again, the relevance of Theatre Passe Muraille's complaint is home out by the experience
of the Amsterdam Werkteater. At the IFTR Conference on Theatre and Television, the
Werkteater directors emphasized the crucial importance of working with camera operators and
technicians who were sympathetic to the artistic objectives of the company and sensitive to the
intimacy and vulnerability of the performer's exposure to the camera.
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9 Perhaps the strongest negative reaction was columnist Dennis Braithwaite's article, "The
depression as it wasn't," Toronto Star (4 February 1975): E8. Other representative responses
are found in letters to the editor of The Globe and Mail on 6 February 1975 (from George
Wallace) and 22 February 1975 (from Philip F. Mihorean). In a review of the program by Blaik
Kirby, "Boy's death makes touching drama," Globe and Mail (4 February 1975): 13, Kirby
reports that people phoning into the CBC after the show "hated it by a margin of 349 to 35."
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10 For commercial networks, this justification is economically driven; for a public network like
the CBC, it is more political. Through its programming, the CBC has to convince Canadian
taxpayers, and hence politicians, that it is worthy of government support.
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11 The interest of viewers in experimental work on television is not new, of course. As Mary
Jane Miller points out in Turn Up the Contrast, loyal audiences existed in the fifties and sixties
for anthologies dedicated to formal experimentation, such as the CBC's Q for Quest and
Eyeopener (303-324).
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12 The 1992 Rhombus Media television adaptation of Robert Lepage's Tectonic Plates, producer
Niv Fichman, brilliantly demonstrates the efficacy of using techniques borrowed from (or
inspired by) music video in the production of stage plays for television. For more on Rhombus
Media's use of music video techniques, see Taylor.
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