Don Rubin
Of all the things done under my editorship at the Canadian Theatre Review I suppose the most important in retrospect was the creation of the annual archival series, Canada on Stage. Until the series began in 1974 (the same year as CTR itself) there was no permanent record of the hundreds of productions done each year by the country's professional theatres. To put it in a very Canadian way, our national theatre history was being both created and forgotten almost simultaneously.
When I left CTR in 1982 after eight exhausting years, Joe Green of York University took control of the publishing operation generally and Bob Wallace of York's Glendon campus became editor of the journal. Green, the Dean under whom CTR was started and a loyal member of the Board of Directors since its inception, faced financial difficulties, difficulties very much a part of the period under discussion.
The journal was, more or less, breaking even but the book publishing program - particularly Canada on Stage - was losing money regularly (something like $25,000 a year if memory serves me). The price being charged for the book came nowhere near our costs (the first yearbook in '74 was priced at $14.95; the '80-'81 edition just $21.95). And this did not even take in the fact that it was being put together by an essentially volunteer staff. In any event, I was told some months after stepping out - not consulted, just told - that for reasons of fiscal responsibility, the book publishing program was being dismantled and the journal's day-to-day operations were being taken over by the University of Toronto Press. I agreed with the latter decision (in fact, had actually started the wheels rolling on it before I left) but disagreed strongly with the decision to stop publishing books such as Canada's Lost Plays, Toby Ryan's evocative Stage Left, Canada's Playwrights: A Biographical Guide, and the many Canadian checklists that had been done.
To be fair, Joe Green had been trying to find alternative publishers and had, I believe, even tried to get the Canada Council to provide the Canada on Stage series with direct subsidy. But no one had any money. At least no one had any money to put into an archival series. And York - which had continued to subsidize the whole operation since its inception in 1974 - just couldn't keep doing it.
When I heard the news about the shut-down, I was, in turn, angry, hurt, frustrated and annoyed. If the shut-down was allowed to occur, how many more years of our theatre history would be lost before it - or something like it - could be recreated? In protest, I made life miserable for everyone I could for as long as I could, especially for Joe Green. I even stopped talking to him for a time, which he didn't seem to mind. Over the next few years, I would hear that some publisher or some theatre organization or another was going to revive Canada on Stage. And then nothing.
But nothing doesn't always come to nothing and in late 1989 the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres (PACT) - with the support of the Records of Canadian Theatre (ROCT) Project at the University of Guelph - published a new edition of Canada on Stage, a quadruple-duty edition covering the years 1982 to 1986. And PACT is threatening to publish further multi-year editions until they catch up with earth-time, at which point they hope to get back onto an annual schedule.
Bravo. And bravo again. Canada on Stage - and I say it with malice toward no one - is a needed publication. It is essential stuff for everyone working in and concerned about theatre in Canada from companies themselves to researchers, historians and governments.
As for this specific edition, it has always seemed to me that there are two uses for a book of this type: the factual information and the critical interpretation of that information. To start with the facts, there are a lot here and they are all welcome. Production information for hundreds of theatres can be found (there is no itemized Table of Contents for theatres so I can't easily tell you how many theatres are included): names of plays, playwrights, directors, designers, actors and so on and so on.
The material goes from May 1982 through August 1986, more than four full seasons documented here, several thousand productions in all. To jam this into less than 700 pages, a few things that had higher priorities in previous editions were cut (most notably photos; there are not many and this is a loss; the type too seems significantly smaller than previous editions. For those of us who are aging and wear glasses, this is unfortunate.) But better this than nothing at all.
As well, cast lists have been tightened on each page to eliminate as much white space as possible. In visual terms, the book is not impressive. Out of 132 productions included from British Columbia in the 1982/83 season, there are, for example, only nine photos; that's less than one photo per theatre, hardly enough to get a sense of anything.
On the positive side, the volume has what appears to be a strong and attractive library binding. For those who are bad to books, this should be most useful.
In previous editions, theatres were divided according to their type of production - summer theatres with summer theatres, children's theatres with children's theatres, etc. The current edition lists every theatre alphabetically on a province-by-province basis. This may be good. I don't know.
As for the critical interpretation, this is limited, as in the past, to a series of brief essays - an overview of the country by former PACT Executive Director Curtis Barlow and 10 provincial essays by a varied group of critics and commentators.
What we learn from these - or perhaps what is put onto the historical record by these - is that 1982-1986 was a period of economic recession for our theatre companies full of 'dwindling audiences and indifferent governments' according to Max Wyman in B.C. Liz Nicholls, in the volume's liveliest essay, tells us that in Alberta 'everyone phoned Toronto a lot and had lawyers instead of fun' but she adds that the birth of the Edmonton Fringe Festival was balanced by the fact that Alberta theatres staged fewer plays per season.
In Saskatchewan Don Kerr reports that the province's three major theatres (Globe, Persephone and 25th Street House) were running deficits by the end of the '86 season. In Ontario the period, according to Bob Wallace, was one of 'consolidation of established structures' and the status quo 'held sway.' Co-productions and commercial approaches grew in significance during the period while smaller theatres 'began to pursue methods of operation, development, production and promotion that brought them closer in style and structure to Canada's regional theatres than ever before.'
The Quebec essay, which, unfortunately, appears only in French, is by Diane Pavlovic and Lorraine Camerlain. Its canvas is larger than the others, harking back to the glories of the 70s before enumerating the key figures who emerged in Quebec in the first half of the 80s - René-Daniel Dubois, Normand Chaurette, René Gingras, Michel Marc Bouchard, Maryse Pelletier, Robert Lepage and the work of the Carbone 14 company.
'The image,' we are told, 'has eclipsed language' in Quebec leading to the exploration of a whole new vocabulary influenced by visual artists, deconstruction and technology. These two writers are impressed by this 'retheatricalization' of the theatre.
French theatre is also given good coverage in the New Brunswick essay by Richard Paul Knowles, who calls the period 'a time . . . of transition in both French and English theatre.' Eva Moore adds that in Nova Scotia 'funding has always been a major problem' and the early 80s kept up the long tradition.
Taken as a whole the essays are less insightful than they might be but, like the information presented, worth having. Given all that is included, the volume's high price is justified and, no doubt, if not for the financial contribution of the Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Family Foundation, the Laidlaw Foundation and the Ontario Ministry of Culture, would be even higher. Indeed, without these forward-looking agencies, PACT would probably not have been able to publish this essential volume at all. And that would have been a major loss for both Canada's theatre community and the country.