Denise Lynde
Reading A Public Nuisance: A History of the Mummers Troupe by Chris Brookes is an entertaining and informative while at the same time frustrating and irritating experience for the theatre historian. Perhaps the nature of this creative and talented troupe and its subsequent history are best summed up by the title A Public Nuisance, suggesting the general disquiet that they strived to achieve in their thoughtful and at times striking collective creations. This history, written by the Mummers' founder and artistic director, is equally unsettling; the disquiet in the book is responsible both for its unquestioned strengths and its equally unquestioned weaknesses.
It is above all an autobiographical account and consequently it chiefly relates Brookes's enormous personal commitment to the collective theatre movement in Newfoundland in the 1970s and his intensely subjective reaction to the events that led to its formation, artistic successes and final breakdown. Brookes's thoughts on the collective process practised by the Mummers are particularly valuable, strengthened by his lengthy description of rehearsal periods for specific shows. This autobiographical approach however has real drawbacks as well, resulting in a general vagueness concerning specific dates, places and people that suggests a more appropriate title might be One Man's History of the Mummers Troupe.
The tradition of mummering in Newfoundland became Brookes's guide to establishing the approach and criteria for his brand of Newfoundland theatre. He traces the history of the mummers play and persuasively describes its evolution from its ritualistic roots to a vehicle for social change. During the nineteenth century, reaction against the rising middle class by the working class led to what Brookes believed to be the beginnings of the labour movement in St. John's:
As a vehicle for social change, the spontaneous anarchy of mummering was unorganized, and unlikely in itself to accomplish much. It was less the custom itself which the establishment considered dangerous than the encouragement which mummering contributed to working-class political organization. (p 28)
Brookes clarifies what attracted him to the actual form of the traditional mummers play: the rhyming script; use of character personification with a commedia dell'arte flair; and perhaps most importantly for him 'some political aspects of the old mediaeval Feast of Fools custom' (p 22). More specifically he was attracted by the opportunity to invert the normal social order for a brief but definable period of time.
The Mummers Troupe grew out of the Resource Foundation for the Arts, a registered company established in 1972 for tax-deduction purposes by John Doyle, Lynn Lunde and Brookes. The first project was concerned with actor training and developing 'an indigenous acting style' (p 45), retrieving the old Mummers Play for the focus of this search. Brookes describes the research and creation of their own hobbyhorse, a process that he states was applied to all aspects of the production and which he believes resulted in 'a presentational style of acting which relied more upon gesture, action and proximity to the audience than upon props, costume and naturalistic detail' (p 49). The presentational style of acting would be one of the factors that later led to internal company strife.
Following a successful round of mummering over Christmas 1972, work was begun on what would become their first collective creation, Newfoundland Night or Cod on a Stick or Newfoundland Dressup, depending on which poster you read. Brookes's description of this creation reveals two characteristics that will remain constant for most of this company's work: the deliberately irreverent, even Brechtian opening of the provincial anthem undercut by the voice of a fisherman, and the concern for the creation of visual and aural images. During the summer tour of this production (in which advertising demanded a company name, hence the label, The Mummers Troupe), the company arrived in an area composed of a group of communities that were slated for relocation in order to create Gros Mourne National Park. A decision was made to postpone the rest of the tour in favour of remaining in this area and creating a project to publicize the residents' view of this government plan. The project evolved into Gros Mourn, the first of the Mummers Troupe's own brand of collective creations.
Brookes offers a detailed description of the research, rehearsal and performance period of Gros Mourn in diary form and explains how he feels this collective creation crystallized the philosophy and working mandate of the company for years to come. Brookes continues to relate, often too briefly, the creation of shows such as I.W.A., What's That Got To Do With The Price of Fish? and They Club Seals Don't They? in chronological fashion, interspersed with accounts of the company's financial struggles, later internal strife and digressions into his own philosophical and/or political musings. This very personal approach clarifies how this collective process differed in Newfoundland from other centres, specifically Toronto, and reveals interesting insights into the make-up of Newfoundland society in the 1970s as evidenced by the failure of the television version of East End Story. This subjectivity also accounts for the casual annotation of specific factual evidence concerning names, dates and people, reliance on drastically cut or glossed secondary material such as reviews, and a general confusion concerning the specific events which resulted in the creation and loss of the L.S.P.U. Hall as performance space, the ins and outs of financing the company and the final breakdown of the troupe itself.
Clearly A Public Nuisance: A History of the Mummers Troupe is Brookes's own account of this exciting, creative company and it must be read as one view of a series of events. He chooses to discount the considerable theatrical activity in St. John's in the nineteenth century, in order to rediscover the mummer. Activity in the twentieth century is likewise shelved, resulting in the regrettable dismissal of the work of playwright Michael Cook and the Open Group during the very time he is most directly concerned with. Instead, Brookes is interested in the impulses and goals that drove him to redirect time from his University position to create his own type of theatre, and this text offers his discoveries, his philosophies and his conclusions on this period of theatrical history.
The financial history of the company is a tale of uncertainty, personal hardship and government red tape. The battle to attain Canada Council recognition and support is related against the equally frustrating and finally unsuccessful search for provincial monies. Connected to the economic issues is the discovery and acquisition of the L.S.P.U. Hall as performance space. While the question of funding for each collective is more or less clarified in Brookes's discussion of the times in which each was created, the story of how the Mummers funded the initial purchase and set up of the Hall, how it was used and financed under their management and how it became a separate organization still needs to be told. Brookes also stresses time and time again that the company was composed of only two steady members, Lynn Lunde and himself, a troublesome assertion that ignores the reappearance of specific actors in show after show. Another area only touched upon is the role of the playwright in the collective process. Although Brookes indicates a playwright-in-residence would be a benefit and Rick Salutin worked with the company on I.W.A., it remains unclear how a playwright worked within the collective process and specifically what Salutin's contribution was to the final product. The role of playwright in collective creation is a thorny issue, one that must still be addressed. Brookes does relate how the Mummers came to be disbanded in 1982 but again a clearly subjective view is presented, a view not surprisingly hostile to the outside forces that Brookes saw as solely responsible. The story of the company's demise, the early history of the L.S.P.U. Hall and the overall financial picture are heavy casualties in Brookes's autobiographical account.
A Public Nuisance: A History of the Mummers Troupe is a valuable first-hand account of one of Canada's most innovative theatre troupes of the 1970s. The Mummers Troupe's influence on the local as well as the national scene is still being felt. This history relates Brookes's thoughts on the theory and practice of theatre, his reasons for his choices and his conclusions on the strengths and weaknesses of each phase of the company's life. Its value lies in this autobiographical approach, an approach that now must be complemented by a historical, and one hopes not distanced, but nevertheless objective, accounting which would look at this very creative period of theatre history in St. John's from every angle. Brookes has laid the first cornerstone; let us hope we will not have to wait long for the next.