INFINITE VARIETY OR A CANADIAN 'NATIONAL' THEATRE: ROLY YOUNG AND THE TORONTO CIVIC THEATRE ASSOCIATION, 1945-1949

Anton Wagner

The founding of the Civic Theatre Association in Toronto in 1945, and its four-season production history until 1949, provide a microcosm of the embryonic development stage of post-World War II indigenous Canadian theatre. Created through the merger of fourteen Toronto-area amateur companies under the leadership of the film and theatre critic Roly Young (1903-48), the CTA sought to finance adequate theatre facilities and to provide work opportunities and appreciative audiences for Canadian artists and playwrights. Young's opposition to the principle of government arts subsidies to create a Canadian 'national' theatre placed him in direct conflict with the organizational work of John Coulter and Herman Voaden at the Arts and Letters Club and the Canadian Arts Council.

L'établissement de la Civic Theatre Association à Toronto en 1945 et l'histoire de ses productions au cours des quatre saisons que vécut cette association représentent en microcosme l'état embryonnaire du théâtre canadien indigène à la fin de la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale. Produit de la fusion de quatorze compagnies locales de théâtre amateur, la CTA, animée par le critique dramatique et cinématique Roly Young (1903-1948), cherchait à assurer des conditions de travail et des locaux adéquats aussi bien qu'à attirer une clientèle susceptible d'apprécier les travaux d'artistes et de dramaturges canadiens. Opposé par principe aux subventions gouvernementales qui tendraient à créer un théâtre canadien «national», Young se trouva par cela même en conflit direct avec John Coulter et Herman Voaden qui, eux, préconisaient l'établissement d'un tel système au sein de l'Arts and Letters Club et du Conseil des arts.

Canadian theatre history provides a number of instances in which theatre activity at particular periods is more significant for its revelation of cultural conditions and trends than for its artistic quality and achievements per se. One such example is the Civic Theatre Association in Toronto, founded by the Globe and Mail film and theatre critic Roly Young in 1945. Though largely forgotten today, the Civic Theatre Association warrants examination because its work from 1945 to 1949 occurred during the embryonic stage of indigenous postwar theatre.

The CTA provided a microcosm of the difficult artistic, economic and political challenges faced by those wishing to establish a Canadian theatre and drama, and demonstrated the necessity for a transition from private commercial to government-subsidized theatre. Roly Young's inspiration for the Civic Theatre Association derived in part from the municipally subsidized City Centre Theatre in New York and the beginnings of similar civic ventures in other key U.S. cities at the end of the Second World War. ¹

His attempt to establish a community-based professional theatre through the merger of amateur companies in the Toronto area predates the more successful and significant founding of the Manitoba Theatre Centre in 1958, the beginning of the Canadian regional theatre system. Like the later regionals, the Civic Theatre Association struggled with problems such as how to finance adequate theatre facilities while at the same time Canadianizing our stages and drama. It attempted to discover whether more popular programming could significantly widen the limited audience base of amateur companies and thus rival commercial professional theatres, such as the Royal Alexandra.

Young's opposition to the creation of a Canadian national theatre through federal government subsidies and particularly his total rejection of the 'art' theatre traditions of the Little Theatre movement contributed to the Civic Theatre Association's eventual demise. The CTA's failure thus supported the contention of cultural nationalists and animateurs such as Herman Voaden and John Coulter that a truly indigenous Canadian theatre and drama could emerge only through genuine individual artistic self-expression and the dramatization of Canadian subject-matter, characters and themes, in productions made possible with government financial assistance.

This contention of cultural nationalists in the 1930s and 1940s ran counter to the century-long history of professional theatre in Canada, which from approximately 1850 to 1950 operated in an exclusively free market economy and was largely dominated by American, British and European theatre companies. ² Young had direct experience working professionally as a performer and producer in the 1920s, and never lost his belief in commercial theatre. Yet he was not alone in his opposition to federal government subsidies to the arts in the immediate postwar period. Robertson Davies expressed similar reservations in his 'Dialogue on the State of Theatre in Canada,' written for the 1949 Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences. 'I oppose giving artists money from the public purse except under the most unusual circumstances: lessen their burdens, but give them no cash,' Davies advised the Massey Commission. ' The artist who gets nothing from his Government is not under his Government's thumb.' ³

Public lobbying for government subsidies to Canadian theatres had begun to intensify in the late 1920s when the decline of 'the road' and the decrease in touring houses began to deprive Canadians of professional productions from abroad. Only a year after the demolition of Ottawa's only legitimate touring house, the Russell Theatre, in 1928, Duncan Campbell Scott and other individuals associated with the Ottawa Little Theatre suggested the federal government appoint a Royal Commission to consider the feasibility of the government's subsidizing 'theatres throughout Canada for the production of a national drama.' ⁴ Press reaction to this proposal was almost uniformly negative. In an editorial entitled 'A Subsidized Theatre for National Drama,' the Mail and Empire expostulated that 'Some persons in Ottawa have taken up the idea of getting the Dominion Government to subsidize a string of national theatres across Canada in which hoi polloi would be initiated into the mysteries of our "national drama," real and still to be.' ⁵ Though himself strongly in favour of government support for Canadian writers, William Arthur Deacon, literary editor of the Mail and Empire, called the proposal a 'fantastic theatrical enterprise.' He cited the enormous costs of professional theatre production and the struggles of legitimate theatre with radio and other forms of entertainment, and decried the 'plan to produce a non-existent national drama from coast to coast at terrific expense ... It is impossible to visualize this projected string of national theatres ... without facing the certainty of loss on premises running at anything from a million a year up.' ⁶

In the Toronto Star, Merrill Denison similarly declared 'a theatre of any sort subsidized by the Canadian government' to be 'impossible nonsense.' While he lauded 'a feeling somewhere in the country that nationhood demands more than a favorable trade balance,' Denison, like Deacon, cited the cost of theatre construction and production, competition with the 'talkie,' inadequate audience support and the lack of an existing body of Canadian dramatic works of literary merit. ⁷ Even Herman Voaden, though warning of 'the Americanization of the Canadian mind,' conceded in a Toronto Globe essay that 'for the government to subsidize and attempt to operate national theatres in all our larger cities in direct opposition to commercial theatrical enterprises, facing the tremendous costs incidental to production, is manifestly unwise at the present time.' ⁸

The general press reaction to this first proposal for a government-subsidized professional regional theatre system is perhaps best summarized by a Mail and Empire editorial:

It may be true that getting a play produced is the most difficult thing in the art world today. But at least we get infinite variety, or as much variety as the public taste wants. The prospect of a national theatre chain under the auspices of the department of agriculture offers things we dread to contemplate. ⁹

In view of this negative press reaction to the suggestion for federal arts subsidies, it is perhaps appropriate that the leadership of the Toronto Civic Theatre Association from 1945 to 1948 was provided by the movie critic, entertainment writer and, before his death in December of 1948, the drama critic of the Globe and Mail, Roly Young. ¹⁰ Young began his joumalistic career while attending Dalhousie University, writing a movie column for the Halifax Herald. After several years of practical experience as a performer with the Halifax Dramatic and Musical Club and a touring Gilbert and Sullivan repertory company from the United States - and as producer of his own variety revue, the Dominoes - Young came to Toronto in 1928, making his stage appearance playing the part of a Chinese in an opium den in one of Jack Allen's presentations. ¹¹ He joined the Toronto Star and again wrote movie reviews which developed into the popular daily 'Rambling 'Round with Roly' column he wrote for the Mail and Empire from 1932 to 1936 and, as 'Rambling with Roly,' in the Globe and Mail from 1936 to his death in 1948.¹²

Young avidly reviewed American and British films, touring theatre productions and international opera and dance companies. Yet he also frequently wondered, from the early 1930s on, why Canada could not have its own movie industry and professional stage, opera and ballet. ¹³ Citing the steady stream of Canadian artists, ranging from Mary Pickford, Raymond Massey and Norma Shearer to Edward Johnson, Walter Pidgeon and Yvonne de Carlo, who had left their country for careers in the United States, Young concluded in April 1945 that 'it is a blot and a shame on those Canadians who sit idly by and permit such a situation to exist.' ¹⁴ When he founded the Civic Theatre Association later in 1945, four of its six stated objectives aimed to halt this flow of Canadian talent abroad. These were:

2. To establish a company, probably consisting of several units, of professional calibre that would provide an opportunity for talented Canadian artists to make a living in their native land.
3. To provide them with an understanding and appreciative audience.
4. To present them under the most auspicious conditions and circumstances.
5. To publicize them before the Canadian public and build a reputation for them in Canada, so that they will not have to go abroad to gain recognition. ¹⁵

The reason Canadian artists went abroad was of course the lack of professional stage opportunities and facilities at home. As Arthur Stringer, whose comedy The Lady Intervenes inaugurated the production history of the Civic Theatre Association, declared in November of 1945, 'Canada will not be grown up until she has learned to express herself in the arts and she cannot give forth with those cultural expressions until there is a place in which to present them.' ¹⁶

How could Canadian talent and companies be presented to the public in an economically viable manner? Young's solution was to propose, as early as 1936, an amalgamation of performing companies housed in a large arts complex similar to Toronto's O'Keefe Centre, opened in 1960. When he founded the Civic Theatre Association in 1945, an amalgamation consisting of ten Toronto amateur theatre groups plus the Players Guild of Hamilton, the Woodstock Dramatic Society, Boris Volkoff's Canadian Ballet, Bettina Beyers' Academy of Ballet, the Canadian Mastersingers and the Playwrights Studio Group, the first objective of the Association was 'to acquire a suitable theatre and associated premises to be a permanent home for the organization.' ¹⁷

In 1945, Young's call for such an arts complex was virtually identical in scope with his ambitious plans for a multi-purpose Toronto Opera House in 1936. 'Plans for the ultimate home of the Civic Theatre Association call for a handsome modern theatre with one of the largest and most completely equipped stages on the continent,' he reported in his column in September:

There will be a large foyer and a long lounge down one side of the auditorium, large enough for dances or art exhibits, and containing a small stage which can be used for intimate experimental productions. Backstage will be large workshops, extensive dressingroom accommodation, two rehearsal rooms the same size as the stage, plus accommodation for all the departments needed to run a modern theatre. Besides the theatre there is provision for a large continental café. The plans have been arranged so that this ambitious project can be completed in instalments over a period of years as funds become available. ¹⁸

In the fall of 1945, the Civic Theatre Association launched a subscription campaign for a property on North Yonge Street. Its official publication, the Civic Theatre Magazine, reported (1 October 1945) that 'the Association has a property in view, centrally located on a main carline, and containing a building which can be partially remodelled into a theatre.' ¹⁹

What kind of programming would be presented in such a theatre and what was Roly Young's 'intellectual energy' which so shaped, and probably misguided, the Civic Theatre Association? Young's own stage experience was exclusively in musical theatre and popular revues rather than in serious drama and the classics. In 1939 he wrote and produced the musical wartime revue Chin-Up which ran for two weeks at the Royal Alexandra Theatre and toured several other Canadian cities. He also produced Funny Side Up, which toured Ontario. In the winter of 1942 he acted as stage manager for the transcontinental tour of Celebrity Parade, which raised several hundred thousand dollars for the Air Cadet League. Young also contributed as a writer, composer and director to the all-women troop show Merry-Go-Round in 1944 and 1945. The proceeds of their farewell performance after five seasons, at the Eaton Auditorium (1 November 1945), starring Anna Russell, were donated to Young's newly founded Civic Theatre Association.

Unlike his successor, Herbert Whittaker, and Young's own predecessor at the Globe, Dr. Lawrence Mason, Young's critical bias was consistently on the side of popular commercial entertainment rather than on what he pejoratively referred to as the 'art of the theatre.' Writing about 'The Failure of the Little Theatre' in the final (Spring 1946) issue of the Civic Theatre Magazine, Young offered the following advice to 'any civic authority starting a civic theatre' regarding the selection of an impresario for such a venture. 'Let your choice fall on a man who is modern but not too modern,' he suggested:

Let him not be the devotee of some cult which insists on Surrealist decor, atonal orchestra, and actors with sealing-wax eyelids and tin beards going through their parts hanging from trapezes halfway up step-ladders or squatting on the apices of rhomboids. Choose a man who you think will be satisfied with a ten percent improvement in public taste, and not one of those lunatic highbrows who want to abolish the theatre's established traditions and substitute something they have read of in magazines with tides like Whorl or Blink. ²⁰

No wonder that when J.V. McAree, in the Globe and Mail, reported on the planned programming of the Civic Theatre Association, he declared that 'it shrinks from "arty" as from an obscene epithet.' ²¹

Undoubtedly influenced by his daily film reviewing, Young thought realism to be the only production style capable of attracting wide audiences and apparently believed that drama should have no distinctly recognized, non-realistic set of stage conventions. In October 1936 he attacked John Gielgud, touring in Hamlet, who had already aroused Young's ire with his 'ill-advised remarks in an interview that the films were not a suitable medium for Shakespeare.' Young declared that 'to my surprise and disappointment I found an actor who acted throughout. He posed and he toe-dragged, and he orated his lines. It was Shakespeare and the Victorian tradition at its best.' ²² Young compared Gielgud's production of Hamlet with George Cukor's 1936 Romeo and Juliet, starring Norma Shearer, Leslie Howard and John Barrymore. He asserted that

Here are players dealing with the period of the 'grand manner.' They have flowery speeches, flossy costumes ... but they are so human that within a few minutes you forget that you are looking at a screen. I never thought, in watching Gielgud and his fellow players, that I was watching other than a troupe of very fine actors. I never thought, in watching 'Romeo and Juliet,' that I was watching actors ... I was watching the Capulets; and the Montagues; there they were, vibrant, living human beings, like you and myself.²³

Young's criticism of Gielgud aroused considerable protest from his readers, one of whom suggested, 'Please, Mr. Young, stick to your slick, wise-cracking film criticisms and leave the legitimate drama to real lovers of art in the theatre.' Young replied, 'If I left the legitimate drama to real lovers of art in the theatre, the theatre would soon close up.' ²⁴

Young was clearly suspicious of the commitment towards the arts on the part of Toronto's cultural elite. In his 1936 'If I Had a Million' daydream about establishing a Toronto Opera House as a multi-purpose arts centre, Young queried the extent of local support for the classic, as opposed to the popular, arts. 'If I had a million dollars and spent it that way, what would happen?' he asked:

I should probably watch it slipping away, thousands at a time. I would present Wagner and Shakespeare to a scattering of people, representative of the very small proportion of Toronto's population that is really interested in these things as other than an occasion to display a new wardrobe. A few hundred would listen to Strauss and Tchaikowsky, while thousands crowded elsewhere to tap their feet in rhythm to some new Swing band. The Canadian Ballet would probably find itself entirely unable to compete with Sally Rand [the notoriously risqué Vaudeville fan dancer]. ²⁵

Young was certainly not a cultured critic in the manner of Lawrence Mason or B.K. Sandwell, drama critic and editor of Saturday Night. Young's column, a mixture of reviews, anecdotes, general arts news and Hollywood gossip, has its current equivalents in Rob Salem's film reviews and Sid Adilman's 'Eye on Entertainment' column in the Toronto Star. Yet his theatre aesthetic was probably more representative of general public taste than either Mason's or Sandwell's. By the 1930s the Little Theatre movement itself had been transformed from its art- theatre-inspired origins in the first two decades of the century into the much more popular programming of the Dominion Drama Festival.

Despite the nationwide scope of the D.D.F., itwas film rather than theatre, whether professional or amateur, which was 'undoubtedly ... the most popular form of entertainment,' as Young asserted in December of 1935. ²⁶ A month later he substantiated that contention with the statistic that 'last year approximately 107,000,000 movie tickets were sold in Canada alone.' ²⁷ While the professional stage was struggling for survival in the 1930s, the cinema, that is American and British films, consistently attracted huge audiences. Lawrence Mason on occasion gave space in his Globe dramatic column to leading members of the Canadian amateur theatre. Young's guest columns featured the 'folks down in Hollywood' such as Joan Crawford, John Barrymore, Luise Rainer and Jeannette MacDonald. In 1926, 1929 and 1931 Mason had toured Europe, informing Globe readers of the latest developments in the arts. ²⁸ In the summer of 1938, Young's column became 'Rambling with Roly in Hollywood,' and ranged from reports on the technical intricacies of film making to such scintillating features as 'Betty Davis Forms Club to Rescue Orphaned Pooches.'

While Young was clearly not a major critic, he was an influential arts journalist. ²⁹ It was primarily this journalistic influence and power which enabled him to play a leading role in Toronto's theatrical life in the mid-1940s. In a May 1939 column, he had declared that 'the time is ripe' for a body such as the Arts and Letters Club to organize the amalgamation of local drama, opera, dance and orchestral groups which could serve as the basis of a Canadian National Theatre. ³⁰ When John Coulter became chairman of the Drama Committee of the Arts and Letters Club in October of 1942, the Club did in fact initiate three years of concerted activity to establish a professional Canadian national theatre. In May of 1943 the Club offered its stage for the production of Canadian drama, encouraging playwrights to submit works 'which derive from the writer's own experience ... that is, Canadian plays, genuinely imagined out of the life we know, instead of ingenious concoctions of plot or situation thought-up with a speculative eye to the commercial entertainment industry of Broadway or Shaftesbury Avenue.' ³¹

From 1943 to 1945 the Arts and Letters Club revived plays by T.M. Morrow, Marjorie Pickthall, Merrill Denison, Elsie Park Gowan, Gwen Pharis Ringwood and John Coulter, produced new plays by Lister Sinclair and Mavor Moore, and works by Saroyan, Pirandello and Oscar Wilde. Of even greater importance was the Club's leadership in bringing together sixteen national arts organizations to lobby the federal government for public support of the arts. Their summary brief (21 June 1944) to the Special Committee on Reconstruction and Re-Establishment called for, besides a wide range of recommendations, 'the establishment of a state theatre for professional musical and dramatic productions.' Such a national institution 'could be supplemented by a chain of regional theatres, financed by federal government assistance under arrangements with municipalities which would undertake to manage and maintain them.' ³² However, the main recommendation made to the 1944 Turgeon Committee, that the federal government set aside ten million dollars for the construction of 575 community cultural centres of various sizes throughout Canada, found little support at the government level. The largest of these community centres, suggested for Canada's twenty-five major cities, would have included 'a large auditorium designed and equipped for drama, ballet, orchestra and concerts of all kinds.' ³³ To implement their objectives, the sixteen national organizations founded the Canadian Arts Council on 5 December 1945, with Herman Voaden as its first President. The C.A.C. (from 1957 on the Canadian Conference of the Arts) was instrumental in the creation in 1949 of the Massey Commission whose main recommendation, state support for the arts through the largely politically independent Canada Council, began to realize the C.A.C.'s far-reaching proposals in the 1960s and 70s.

Faced with an unresponsive federal government in 1944-45, John Coulter nevertheless continued to agitate for the creation of a national Canadian Theatre Council with subsidiary councils in each province. At his suggestion, the Arts and Letters Club invited 15 representatives of Toronto drama groups on 14 April and 26 May 1945 to discuss the establishment of an Ontario Provincial Theatre Council. Coulter presented the invited groups with a manifesto which suggested that 'the necessary fulcrum of extended dramatic activity in Ontario is now a central theatre, a building of modern design and equipment with workshops for mounting and dressing shows, premises for a play library and a school of theatre arts.' ³⁴ Such a professional provincial theatre organization would also consist of a permanent company of players which would 'perform a chosen repertory of plays in the central theatre, and later would tour the Ontario circuit and the theatres of the other provinces.' ³⁵

To Coulter's consternation, on 27 June Roly Young also invited Toronto-area drama groups to pool their resources in a multi-arts civic organization. Many of the groups which had attended the April and May Arts and Letters Club discussions responded favourably. Following four organizational meetings from 17 to 26 July, the Civic Theatre Association was officially launched with the first general meeting of the Association, attended by over 200 persons from Toronto's theatre community, at the Royal York Hotel, 11 September 1945. When on 29 September a National Theatre meeting at the Arts and Letters Club was poorly attended, the Club's project was abandoned. ³⁶

One catalyst for the founding of the Civic Theatre Association was the London Little Theatre, itself an amalgamation of three local drama groups which merged their resources and subscription lists in 1934. In June 1945 Young reported that the London Little Theatre had purchased the Grand Theatre with the intent of eventually transforming itself into a professional company. ³⁷ With Hart House Theatre closed for the duration of World War II, amateur companies in Toronto clearly felt left behind and quickly rallied to Young's call for a Civic Theatre Association.

Canada's national development during the Second World War also augured a new phase in her cultural life which lent substance to Young's venture. Sixteen years after he had decried the plan to 'produce a non-existent national drama' through government subsidy, William Arthur Deacon suggested in the Globe and Mail in September of 1945 that just as Confederation had given birth to our first wave of national poetry and as the Canadian novel had emerged after the First World War, the Second World War would result in a similar accomplishment in Canadian theatre and drama. ³⁸ Deacon pointed to Young's Civic Theatre Association as an example of this upsurge in Canadian theatre. Young agreed that a national drama was on the way, declaring that 'how soon we have this great development in Canadian culture depends on how soon we provide a home for it.' ³⁹

At first glance, the inaugural season of the Civic Theatre Association appeared to fulfil Young's goal of bringing together drama, opera and dance organizations and to encourage Canadian dramatic writing. The season opened in the Eaton Auditorium with the world première of Arthur Stringer's comedy Me Lady Intervenes on 13 November, fulfilling the last of the Association's six stated aims, 'to sponsor the writing of Canadian dramatic works.' The Canadian Mastersingers' production of Gounod's Faust quickly followed on 19 November, and Robert Sherwood's Reunion in Vienna on 14 December. The season concluded with a five-day Inter-Association Drama Festival at the Northern Vocational School in April 1946, which featured twelve productions by seven theatre companies, the Volkoff Canadian Ballet and the Academy of Ballet. The organization had a strong executive with Roly Young as general manager, Dorothy Goulding, director of the Toronto Children Players, as secretary, and a board of directors composed of such respected actors and directors as Lorna Sheard, Ben Lennick and Edgar Stone. Sterndale Bennett was engaged as the Associations's dramatic director, ⁴⁰ and Boris Volkoff served as ballet director.

From a critical point of view, the season started inauspiciously with the première of Arthur Stringer's play starring Anna Russell as the eccentric old Lady Augusta Blythewood, interfering in the lives of her guests at Broad Acres near Toronto. The Globe and Mail thought the play 'not a really first-rate piece of work,' while Rose Macdonald and Margaret Aitken, in the Telegram, found it, respectively, 'trite' and 'too prosy, too slow.' ⁴¹ In his memoirs, John Coulter remarked of the Stringer work that 'the first production was of precisely the sort of play which we regarded as worthless theatrical futility, one of those would-be Broadway-Shaftesbury Avenue concocted pieces.' ⁴² The subsequent 1945 productions of Faust and Reunion in Vienna received a much more favourable critical reception. ⁴³ In his Saturday Night review, B.K. Sandwell declared of Reunion, directed by Sterndale Bennett, that 'the show ranks well up near the top of Toronto's amateur performances of the past twenty years.' ⁴⁴

When one examines the overall four-season production history of the Civic Theatre Association, one is struck by the mediocrity and lack of intellectual content of its repertoire. Noticeably absent are the productions of Shakespeare, Coward's Private Lives and Cavalcade, Priestley's Dangerous Corner, Hellman's The Little Foxes, and of experimental works - all promised in the Civic Theatre Magazine. It is undoubtedly this lack of artistic direction and vision which caused Dora Mavor Moore, a participant in both the Arts and Letters Club and Civic Theatre Association organizational meetings, to withdraw the Village Players as one of the founding CTA charter groups at the end of August 1945, ⁴⁶ and to chart her own direction toward professional theatre production with the New Play Society the following year.

Though ballet and members of the Canadian Mastersingers were featured in Young's original Christmas extravaganzas, no full-scale opera and ballet productions appear after the first CTA season, and plans for an opera and light opera company as well as a Civic Theatre Ballet under Boris Volkoff went unrealized. Achievements in Canadian play production were similarly weak. Young's Christmas extravaganzas, some with casts of 100 singers, dancers and actors, were critically well received yet, partly because of their appeal to both children and adults, failed to achieve the cultural topicality and importance of the New Play Society's annual Spring Thaw. Only a single work by members of the Playwrights Studio Group, one of the founding CTA charter organizations, reached production, Winnifred Pilcher's Selective Service, staged in the 1946 CTA Drama Festival. The only Canadian drama staged as part of the regular CTA season, besides The Lady Intervenes, was Brian Doherty's comedy Father Malachy's Miracle, already a proven success on Broadway. Young was apparently unaware of the inherent contradiction in attempting to create an indigenous Canadian theatre largely based on a repertoire of 'hit' shows from London and New York, ⁴⁷ fare already adequately supplied by the Royal Alexandra Theatre.

Perhaps the greatest achievement of the Civic Theatre Association was its production standards which, though largely restricted to a realistic style, on occasion rivaled those of the professional theatre. Yet as Herman Voaden had warned in the Canadian Forum in November 1945, 'in the last analysis the great theatres of the past have been known most of all for the plays that have been produced for the first time on their stages ... any theatre operated primarily for the actor is not apt to be of lasting importance. The playwright, the artist, and the experimental and imaginative producer must be accorded a larger place in the Civic Theatre if it is to be a significant venture.' ⁴⁸

The Civic Theatre Association does indeed suffer badly in comparison with the first four-season (and also 40 play) production history of the New Play Society. From 1946 to 1950, the Society staged Synge, Strindberg, Somerset Maugham, O'Neill, James Bridie, Saroyan, Gogol, Barrie, Shakespeare, O'Casey, Shaw, Hellman, Sophocles and Sheridan; sponsored a Chinese-language production and visits by Les Compagnons de Saint-Laurent and the Montreal Repertory Theatre; and produced Canadian plays by Lister Sinclair, Morley Callaghan, Mavor Moore, Harry Boyle, Andrew Allan, John Coulter and, of course, Spring Thaw. ⁴⁹ The core of New Play Society actors composes a virtual Who's Who of contemporary Canadian theatre. Of the several hundred CTA performers (262 in the first two seasons alone), the few artists we still recognize today, Anna Russell, Charmion King, Eric House, Jack Medhurst (and others such as Francess Halpenny) had already received their initial training elsewhere. In 1948 and 1949 the Association operated a summer school of acting, with courses based on the Stanislavski method. Organized by Joe Jolley, appointed director of the Association in 1947, it was not in existence long enough to produce lasting results.

Of the four elements suggested by David Gustafson as necessary for successful professional theatre production, the Civic Theatre Association possessed only two (and those only until the revival of the D.D.F. in 1947): proper timing and a sense of need. It sorely lacked the even more important elements of intellectual energy and money. ⁵⁰ The Association had been launched with gala benefit performances by the Toronto Children Players on 17 October and by the Merry-Go-Round revue on 1 November 1945. Proceeds from these performances were little augmented by the blessings of Toronto's Mayor Saunders, obviously relieved that no more concrete demands had been made of his municipality. Annual membership in the Association was only $2. By December 1945 there were 1,100 members, of which only 285 had purchased tickets for The Lady Intervenes. Surveying the founding CTA charter groups in July 1945, Young had estimated that their 'aggregate audience for one production would come to more than 6 000 patrons.' He added, 'I am optimistic enough to believe that from these 6 000 who attend your varied performances, we should be able to count upon one-third, or 2 000 as interested patrons of a civic venture, providing we give them what they want.' ⁵¹

Subscriptions to the annual series of six Civic Theatre productions were $6, and single ticket prices averaged $1. Despite the titular patronage of Sir Ellsworth and Lady Flavelle and, in its final 1948-49 season, Mary Pickford, the Association was unable to create the financial capital to secure the civic centre to house and provide a focus for its operations. Unlike the case of the London Little Theatre, to which five public-spirited citizens loaned $15,000 to make up the balance of the down payment on the $35,000 purchase of the Grand Theatre, Young was unable to generate financial support in the business community. 'I've been kicked around from one end of this town to the other in my efforts to find a home for the organization,' he reported in a July 1946 column about philistine Toronto:

When you start trying to raise actual money for anything like dancers or actors, the reaction borders on the comical. You go up to a guy who is rolling in cash. He spends perhaps $100,000 a year on horses. Improving the strain, and all that sort of thing, you know. When you suggest that he spend $1,000 on a young human being who happens to dance, he looks at you as though you had made some immoral proposition. So far, no one has explained to me this preference for improving horses rather than humans.⁵²

Paradoxically, the financial plight of the Civic Theatre Association did not lead Young to become an advocate of state support for the arts, a concept he strongly opposed. 'Canada needs a Canadian Theatre, but not a National Theatre in the accepted sense of that title,' he declared in 1947, meaning a theatre subsidized, and possibly artistically and politically controlled by, the state. ⁵³ Commenting on the government lobbying conducted by the Canadian Arts Council in May of that year, Young demanded,

Among the questions that should be answered before a cent of the taxpayer's money goes to a National Theatre idea are (1) What is meant by National Theatre in Canada? A movement? or an edifice? (2) Who will run the Canadian National Theatre, and determine its policy? (3) Who (and how many) actually want a National Theatre and what are their political affiliations? ...

Will the advocates of a National Theatre be willing to turn it over completely in matter of policy and running to an experienced commercial theatre man who has made a success in the theatre, or do they propose to make it a place wherein the classics will be preserved at an annual deficit to the nation, and more taxpayers' funds expended on weird theatrical experiments which have virtually no appeal to the ticket-buying public? ⁵⁴

Roly Young suffered a heart attack at the Royal York Hotel, where his Civic Theatre Association had been launched in 1945, and died prematurely on 24 December 1948, at the age of 45. Herbert Whittaker tells the story that the cause of Young's attack was his having been given a raise by the Globe and Mail. Perhaps a more likely reason was his work, besides his daily journalism, on the Christmas extravaganza Cinderella, advertised as the 40th CTA production, which opened at Hart House Theatre on 27 December. Young had been its producer as well as the writer of most of its lyrics, songs and dialogue.

In his final column, published the day after his death, he still expressed his hope for 'a theatre in Toronto where local groups can perform, as well as in other centres across Canada,' and for Canadian companies securely established where young players can make a living, where artists can paint and design Canadian stage settings, where musicians can work out native compositions for opera and ballet, and incidental music for plays ... and writers can gain experience at creating drama with an authentic Canadian flavor. ⁵⁵

Young's death spelled the loss of the driving force behind the Civic Theatre Association. His attempt to establish a permanent Canadian professional theatre in Toronto was continued, besides the New Play Society, by the Jupiter Theatre in 1951, ⁵⁶ the Crest Theatre in 1954, ⁵⁷ and Toronto Workshop Productions in 1959. ⁵⁸ These companies and many others across the country helped to create our contemporary theatrical mosaic, providing both 'infinite variety' and a Canadian 'national' theatre. ⁵⁹

Notes

1 See 'Rambling with Roly,' Globe and Mail, 28 Nov 1944. Young cites that week's front-page headline from Variety, 'Civic Show Biz Spreading.'
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2 For an overview of the economic and cultural development of theatre in the province, see ANTON WAGNER, 'Theatre in Ontario' in the forthcoming Oxford Companion to Canadian Theatre.
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3 ROBERTSON DAVIES, 'A Dialogue on the State of Theatre in Canada,' in Royal Commission Studies: A Selection of Essays Prepared for the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences (Ottawa: King's Printer, 1951), repr, in Canadian Theatre Review, no 5 (Winter 1975), 29-30
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4 WILLIAM ARTHUR DEACON, 'National Drama for Canada by Government Subsidies,' Toronto Mail and Empire, 16 Nov 1929, p 10. See also WILLIAM MARCHINGTON, 'National Theatres,' Toronto Globe, 15 Nov 1929, and 'Subsidized National Theatre for Canadian Cities Planned,' Toronto Mail and Empire, 15 Nov 1929, p 1
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5'A Subsidized Theatre for National Drama,' Toronto Mail and Empire, 16 Nov 1929, p 8. See also 'National Theatres for Larger Cities in Canada Urged,' the editorial 'Drama's Last Stronghold,' and 'Opinion Varied on National Theatres,' Ottawa Citizen, 14 Nov 1929, pp 2, 36 and 15 Nov 1929, p 13
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6 WILLIAM ARTHUR DEACON, op cit, 16 Nov 1929, p 10
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7 MERRILL DENISON, 'Canada Can Have No National Theatre,' Toronto Star, 19 Nov 1929, p 6. Denison's disillusionment with the Canadian Little Theatre movement and the attempt to create a national theatre and drama are revealed in his essay, 'Nationalism and Drama,' in the Yearbook of the Arts in Canada 1928-1929, ed BERTRAM BROOKER (Toronto: Macmillan, 1929), p 49-55
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8 HERMAN VOADEN, 'Government-Owned Theatres?', Toronto Globe, 30 Nov 1929, p 12. Voaden's essay did call for the federal government to provide 'direct or indirect assistance in establishing dramatic training in our schools and universities,' particularly in providing 'well-equipped theatrical plants,' to award 'honors and prizes to writers of distinctly Canadian drama,' to establish 'Provincial or Dominion play-lending libraries,' and to encourage 'play competitions and assistance to Little Theatre societies' on a provincial and Dominion-wide basis as subsequently established by the Dominion Drama Festival in 1932.
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9 'A Subsidized Theatre for National Drama,' Mail and Empire, 16 Nov 1929, p 8
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10 Born Rowland T. Young in Saint John N.B. in 1903, he received his education at the Toronto Model School and the University of Toronto Schools and briefly studied law at Dalhousie University. For biographical information on Young, see BRUCE WEST, 'Noted as Critic, Actor and Producer, Roly Young Answers Last Curtain,' Toronto Globe and Mail, 25 Dec 1948, p 3; HELEN ALLEN, 'Roly Young's Last Party. Heart Attack Proves Fatal,' Toronto Telegram, 24 Dec 1948, p 28 and 'Roly Young, Movie Critic Passes of Heart Attack,' Toronto Star, 24 Dec 1948, p 9
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11 For details of his theatre background, see HELEN ALLEN and BRUCE WEST op cit note 10
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12 He was also one of the first news broadcasters on radio, on station CFCA, and again had a weekly entertainment program on CFRB in the mid-1940s.
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13 See, for example, 'Rambling 'Round With Roly,' Mail and Empire, 10 Jan 1936, p 13, and Young's 'Can Canada Sustain a Native Movie Industry?', Liberty, vol 12 no 8 (30 Nov 1935), p 3. I am grateful to Glen Hunter, Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library, for referring me to the microfilm of the DOUGLAS WILSON scrapbook, 'Roly Young Globe and Mail Entertainment Features,' containing reviews from 1934-36, 1938, and 1944-47
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14 'Rambling With Roly,' Globe and Mail, 30 Apr 1945, p 16. See also THELMA S. BROWN, 'Lost Canadians,' Civic Theatre Magazine, vol 1 no 1 (Oct 1945), p 21
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15 'Rambling With Roly,' Globe and Mail, 13 Sept 1945, p 7 and 'What is the Civic Theatre Association?', Civic Theatre Magazine, vol 1 no 1 (Oct 1945), p 7
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17 Cf preceding note. The inaugural issue (Oct 1945) of the Civic Theatre Magazine lists the following charter members: Belmont Players, Canada Players, Canadian Ballet, Canadian Mastersingers, Comedy Theatre Players, Comet Productions, Community Players, Plaquest Drama Group, Toronto Children's Theatre, Village Players, the Players Guild of Hamilton and the Woodstock Dramatic Society. 'The Civic Theatre Association,' (Globe and Mail, 13 Nov 1945, p 6) adds the Academy of Ballet, Toronto Caravan Players, University Alumnae Dramatic Club and the Playwrights Studio Group, but omits the Toronto Children's Theatre and the Village Players.
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18 'Rambling With Roly,' Globe and Mail, 13 Sept 1945, p 7. See also Young's 'Wanted - One Opera House,' Mail and Empire, 4 Feb 1936, p 12
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19 'What is the Civic Theatre,' (see note 15). FRANK CHAMBERLAIN refers to the North Yonge location in his 13 Sept 1945 Globe and Mail column, p 11
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20 ROLY YOUNG, 'The Failure of the Little Theatre,' Civic Theatre Magazine, vol 1 no 6 (Spring 1946), p 7. For Young's attitude toward little theatres, 'art' and commercial theatres, and non-realistic production styles, see 'Hart House Horrors,' 'Encore!' and 'Festivalues,' Mail and Empire 26 Jan 1935, 30 Apr 1935 p 15, and 1 Apr 1935, p 17. Young received the Canadian Drama Award in 1946 and was an executive member of the Central Ontario Drama League in 1947.
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21 J.V. McAREE, 'Amateurs to Build Canadian Theatre,' Globe and Mail, 14 Sept 1945, p 6
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22 ROLY YOUNG, 'Odious Comparison,' Mail and Empire, 7 Oct 1936, p 7
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23 Ibid. For Lawrence Mason's critical reaction see 'A Glorious "Hamlet"' and "'Romeo and Juliet"', Globe, 1 Oct 1936, p 10 and 3 Oct 1936, p 10
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24 'Rambling 'Round With Roly,' Mail and Empire, 12 Oct 1936, p 20. For the debate over the Gielgud controversy see also his column of 13 Oct 1936, p 15
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25 ROLY YOUNG, 'If I Had a Million ­ ' Mail and Empire, 2 June 1936, p 12
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26 'Rambling' Round With Roly,' Mail and Empire, 16 Dec 1935, p 19
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27 'Rambling 'Round With Roly,' ibid, 20 Jan 1936, p 7
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28 See ANTON WAGNER, 'Dr Lawrence Mason, Music and Drama Critic 1924-1939,' Theatre History in Canada vol 4 no 1 (Spring 1983), p 7-9
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29 HELEN ALLEN, movie editor of the Toronto Telegram, called him 'one of Canada's best known newspaper men.' The Globe and Mail similarly editorialized on the occasion of Young's death that 'his judgements, always candid and boldly stated, were trusted not only by his large audience in Toronto and other Ontario centres, but far and wide through Canada.' See Helen Allen, op, cit note 10 above; and 'Roly Young,' Globe and Mail, 25 Dec 1948, p 6
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30 'Rambling With Roly,' Globe and Mail 8 May 1939, p 27
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31 'Drama Club Invites All-Canadian Plays,' Toronto Star, 29 May 1943. See also JOHN COULTER, In My Day: Memoirs (Willowdale, Ont.: Hounslow Press, 1980), chs xiii and xiv
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32 Session 1944 House of Commons, Special Committee on Reconstruction and Re-Establishment. Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence No. 10 (Ottawa: Edmond Cloutier, 1944), p 336
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33 Ibid, p 333. By a remarkable coincidence, the 1983 edition of the Facilities Directory (Ottawa: Touring Office of the Canada Council) lists exactly 575 'small and large performing halls, theatres and auditoria.'
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34 JOHN COULTER, 'Toward a Canadian Theatre,' Canadian Review of Music and Art, vol 4 nos ½ (Aug-Sept 1945), p 20
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35 Ibid. See also C.R.M.. 'Nat'l Theatre Idea Growing?', Toronto Telegram, 14 July 1945, p 17
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36 Young of course had not simply stolen John Coulter's concept for a professional multi-arts central theatre organization as Coulter believed. He periodically had been advocating the idea for a decade and by the end of 1944 was also moving toward its implementation. See Young's columns of 28 Nov 1944 and 30 Apr 1945 in the Globe and Mail.
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37 'Rambling With Roly,' Globe and Mail, 18 June 1945, p 11 . See also Young's column for 21 Nov (p 15) and 22 Nov 1945 (p 21)
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38 WILLIAM ARTHUR DEACON,'Will a Canadian Drama be Gain from the War?', Globe and Mail, 15 Sept 1945, p 8
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39 ROLY YOUNG, 'National Drama on Way: Canada's Next Logical Cultural Development,' undated Globe and Mail clipping, Herman Voaden Papers, York Univ Archives, Political Papers Box 8, File 5
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40 See 'Meet the Director,' Civic Theatre Magazine, vol 1 no 2 (Nov 1945)
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41 Reviews are cited verbatim in 'Who? Me?', Civic Theatre Magazine, vol 1 no 3 (Dec 1945)
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42 JOHN COULTER, In My Day, p 216
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43 See 'C.T.A. Callboard,' Civic Theatre Magazine, vol 1, nos 4/5 (Jan-Feb 1946), p 23. See also

'C.T.A. Drama Festival Exceeds Expectations,' Civic Theatre Magazine, vol 1 no 6 (Spring 1946), p 37; and W.A.D., 'Drama Festival Trophy Awarded to Belmont Group,' Globe and Mail, 18 Apr 1946, p 29
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44 LUCY VAN GOGH, It Was the Week Before Christmas,' Saturday Night, 22 Dec 1945, p 25
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45 Civic Theatre Magazine, vol 1 no 1 (Oct 1945), p 8-9, and vol 1 no 3 (Dec 1945), p 5
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46 DORA MAVOR MOORE to (Dorothy) Jane Goulding, 27 Aug 1945. Correspondence in the Dora Mavor Moore Papers, Box 43, Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library, Univ of Toronto. The Village Players are listed as a founding CTA member in Young's broadsheet, 'Towards a Civic Theatre: Toronto, July 17, 1945,' Dora Mavor Moore Papers, Box 91
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47 See the programs 'The Civic Theatre Association 3rd Season -1947-48' and '4th Season - 1948-49' at the Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library.
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48 HERMAN VOADEN, 'Theatre Record, 1945,' Canadian Forum, vol 25 (Nov 1945), p 187
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49 See BILL TEPPER, 'The Forties and Beyond: The New Play Society,' Canadian Theatre Review, no 28 (Fall 1980), p 18
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50 DAVID AXEL GUSTAFSON, The Canadian Regional Theatre Movement, Ph D thesis, Michigan State Univ 1971, p 97
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51 ROLY YOUNG, 'Towards a Civic Theatre: Toronto, July 17, 1945,' p 1
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52 'Rambling With Roly,' Globe and mail, 3 July 1946, p 17
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53 'Rambling With Roly,' ibid, 9 June 1947, p 12
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54 'Rambling With Roly,' ibid, 8 May 1947
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55 ROLY YOUNG, 'Behind the Footlights,' ibid, 25 Dec 1948, p 8
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56 Cf 'National Theatre is Canadians' Goal,' New York Times, 6 Aug 1953
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57 Cf 'The Crest Controversy,' Canadian Theatre Review, no 7 (Summer 1975), p 5
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58 Cf RENATE USMIANI, Second Stage: The Alternate Theatre Movement in Canada (Vancouver: Univ of British Columbia Press, 1983), p 27. See also JOHN DOIG, 'Battle for an Arts Centre 1959-1968 ... it lasted longer than World War II,' Toronto Star, 16 Mar 1968, p 7
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59 Cf ROBERT CREW, 'Take Your Seats, Curtain rising on an Exciting May,' Toronto Star, 2 May 1986, p D16. Reporting that more than 40 productions would be opening in and around the Metropolitan Toronto area in the next 28 days, Crew declared that 'the choice is one of infinite variety, from Shakespeare and Shaw to new works by George F. Walker and Norm Foster.'
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A CALENDAR OF CIVIC THEATRE ASSOCIATION PRODUCTIONS

-13 November 1945, Eaton Auditorium. Arthur Stringer's comedy The Lady Intervenes. Sterndale Bennett, director. Dorothy Jane Goulding, stage manager. Edgar Noffke, set design.

-19 November 1945, Eaton Auditorium. Gounod's Faust. Poul Bai, director. Percy Grisewood, set design.

-14 December, 1945, Eaton Auditorium. Robert E. Sherwood's Reunion in Vienna. Sterndale Bennett, director. Dorothy Jane Goulding, stage manager. Edgar Noffke, set design. Lillian Milne, costumes.

-10, 11, 12, 16, 17 April 1946, Northern Vocational School Auditorium, C.T.A. Inter-Association Drama Festival:

-10 April (Adjudicator: H. Napier Moore). Comet Productions, Philip Johnson's The Distant Drum. Robert Flynn, director. Volkoff Canadian Ballet, mixed divertissements. Boris Volkoff, choreographer. University Alumnae Dramatic Club, Philip Johnson's comedy Orange Blossoms. Stemdale Bennett, director.

-11 April (Adjudicator: Robert Finch). Civic Theatre Players' Guild No 1 entry, Sara Sloane McCarty and E. Clayton McCarty's comedy Three's a Crowd. Hugh Watson, director. Volkoff Canadian Ballet, Nouveau Riche. Boris Volkoff, choreographer. Edgar Noffke, costumes. Toronto Troupers, Josephina Niggli's comedy Sunday Costs Five Pesos. W. S. Milne, director. Lillian Milne, costumes.

-12 April (Adjudicator: Herman Voaden). Toronto Theatre Guild, Alice Gerstenberg's Overtones. Academy of Ballet, La Danse. Bettina Byers, choreographer. Civic Theatre Players' Guild No 3 entry, Winnifred Pilcher's comedy Selective Service. Phyllis Devlin Jerome, director.

-16 April (Adjudicator: Mary Lowrey Ross). Civic Theatre Players' Guild No 4 entry, Frederick Fenn and Richard Pryce's 'Op O' Me Thumb. Lorraine Bate, director. Canada Players, Noel Coward's Fumed Oak. Martin Howard, director. Belmont Group Theatre, William Saroyan's drama Hello Out There. Ben Lennick, director and set designer.

-17 April, Civic Theatre Drama Festival Finals: Toronto Troupers, Josephina Niggli's Sunday Costs Five Pesos. University Alumnae Dramatic Club, Philip Johnson's Orange Blossoms. Belmont Players's Guild No 1 entry, Sara Sloane McCarty and E. Clayton McCarty's Three's a Crowd.

SECOND SEASON: HART HOUSE THEATRE

- 29, 30 October 1946, Robert Nichols and Maurice Browne's drama Wings Over Europe. Ib Melchior, director. Edgar Noffke, set design. Jack Medhurst, make-up. [Repeated 30 Nov 1946 at London Little Theatre's Grand Theatre.]

- 25-28 December 1946. Gone with the North Wind. 'A Christmas Pantomime-Extravaganza,' written and produced by Roly Young. Vincent Da Vita and Jack Medhurst, set design. Lillian Milne, costumes. Ballets by Bettina Byers.

- 14, 15 January 1947. Noel Coward's Tonight at 8:30. Family Album: George Patton, director. Edgar Noffke, set design. Lillian Milne, costumes. Ways and Means: Mack Inglis, director. Edgar Noffke, set design. Hands Across the Sea: Brian Hodgkinson, director. Percy Grisewood, set design. [Family House entered in Central Ontario Drama League Festival, Hart House Theatre, 26 Feb 1947. George Patton, director. Lillian, Milne, set and costume design.]

-11, 12 February 1947. George Kelly's comedy The Torch-Bearers. E. Dean, director. Lillian Milne, set and costume design. [Entered in Central Ontario Drama League Festival, Hart House Theatre, 28 Feb 1947.]

-4, 5 March 1947. James Warwick's thriller Blind Alley. Joe Jolley, director. Percy Grisewood, set design,

-1, 2 April 1947. Lenore Coffee and William Cowen's biblical drama Family Portrait. W.S. Milne, director. Lillian Milne, set and costume design.

THIRD SEASON: HART HOUSE THEATRE

-14, 15 October 1947. Brian Doherty's comedy Father Malachy's Miracle. Joe Jolley, director.

-26, 27 December 1947. Aladdin '47, 'Another Gala Christmas Extravaganza,' written and produced by Roly Young.

-10, 11 February 1948. Frank Vosper's melodrama Love From a Stranger. Joe Jolley, director. Roly Young, set design.

-23, 24 March 1948. Maxwell Anderson's Journey to Jerusalem. Joe Jolley, director.

-13, 14 April 1948. Lawrence Riley's comedy Personal Appearance. Joe Jolley, director. Roly Young, producer. [Substituted for I Pagliacci and Cavalleria Rusticana.]

- 4, 5 May 1948. Music All the Day. Joe Jolley, Roly Young, directors. [An original musical comedy based on the life and music of Stephen Foster.]

FOURTH SEASON

- 4, 5 October 1948, Hart House Theatre. George Kaufman and Moss Hart's comedy George Washington Slept Here. Joe Jolley, director. Allan McLean, set design.

-30 November and 1 December 1948, Temple Theatre. Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts's thriller Portrait in Black. Joe Jolley, director. Allan McLean, set design.

- 27-29 December 1948, Hart House Theatre. Roly Young's 'Extravaganza' Cinderella. Roly Young, producer. Joe Jolley, director. Allan McLean, set design.

- 22 February 1949, Parkdale Collegiate Auditorium. James Thurber and Elliot Nugent's comedy The Male Animal. Joe Jolley, director. Allan McLean, set design.

- 26 April 1949, Northern Vocational School Auditorium. Maxwell Anderson's biblical drama Journey to Jerusalem. Joe Jolley, director.