Jill Tomasson Goodwin
Taken together, the titles of these recently published books capture the essential features of Canadian radio drama. Words on Waves alludes to the transmitting of sound over air waves, the technological development synonymous with radio; All the Bright Company, to the luminaries who congregated in Toronto to create the Golden Age of Canadian radio drama; and Image in the Mind, to the mental staging of dramas in the listeners' imaginations. From the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s the medium of radio, the creators of radio drama, and the listening audience came together in a dramatic and unique way in Canada, a fact revealed by these three books as they chronicle a little-researched decade of our theatre history.
Each book provides a different but complementary perspective on this fascinating medium and era. Words on Waves presents Earle Birney's radio dramas; All the Bright Company focuses on plays written for one CBC series, Stage, and Image in the Mind surveys the development of all the CBC radio drama series during 1940s and '50s. By consulting all three, readers can chart the development of one writer contributing to several radio drama series, several writers contributing to one series, and have access to a survey of all the series for the decade 1944-54. Charting this development is worth the reader's effort: radio trained many of Canada's best actors, directors, and writers, and the resulting dramas set the standard for the Americans and British for over a decade.
In Words on Waves, Earle Birney has selected eight of the fourteen radio plays that he wrote for the CBC from 1946 to 1957, some broadcast nationally on Wednesday Night (produced by Andrew Allan and Esse Ljungh), others broadcast regionally from Vancouver (by Robert Allen). Consisting of translations/adaptations, adaptations, and originals, these plays cover a startling range of historical eras and genres: from Old and Middle English poetry through short stories set in Napoleonic France and a fantastical English village, to an original play set in contemporary British Columbia. Professor Howard Fink's critical introduction admirably places these plays both in the context of their literary sources and their CBC production, and suggests how Birney's experiments in radio drama both influenced and were influenced by his poetry.
In his preface, appropriately entitled 'Words to Make Waves,' Birney plays off the more literal sense of 'making waves' - writing for radio - against another, more figurative one: writing to create a stir. Certainly his plays set out to do both. In writing for radio, Birney focused much of his effort on the oral/aural features of the medium. Inspired perhaps as a poet, and undoubtedly as a Chaucer scholar, Birney wanted to rekindle his listeners' appreciation of the ancient oral traditions of Old and Middle English poetry via the contemporary oral medium of radio. Fully five of the eight plays in this collection derive from or deal with themes from Anglo-Saxon poetry and drama. To heighten his poetics, Birney emphasizes the sound qualities of radio to accent the strong alliteration and noun-couplings of the early English poem Beowulf (broadcast in 1950). And to landscape the listeners' imaginations with the dream allegory of Langland's Piers Plowman (1957) he uses radio's appeal to the mental rather than the physical eye.
Birney's two adaptations, on the other hand, focus on radio's mass audience and social impact: The Griffin and the Minor Canon (1950) and The Third "Shepherds Play" (1950), as well as his most famous original drama, Damnation of Vancouver (1952), all attempt social criticism. In each, Birney combines two important features of radio - its large audiences and its intimacy - to 'bring home,' so to speak, the need for every Canadian to scrutinize his or her values, beliefs, and opinions. In The Griffin the instrument of social criticism is a fantastical creature who arrives to scold and reform the recreant inhabitants of an English (or, as Birney adds, an 'Old Ontario') town. In The Third "Shepherds' Play" Christ's nativity, set in Vanderhoof B.C., sets the critical process in motion. In Damnation of Vancouver a series of witnesses, including Captain George Vancouver, an Indian chief, and a UBC geologist testify before a court of inquiry bent on condemning the city for its present-day follies. All were written to make waves, and for the most part Birney seems to have achieved this effect, though not always in the way he intended. The CBC, for instance, never aired The Third "Shepherds' Play", fearing that its audiences might find the theme too outrageous and the content too blasphemous.
All the Bright Company collects eleven plays from the drama series identified with the Golden Age of Canadian radio drama, Canada's 'national theatre of the air,' CBC's Stage. Professors Howard Fink and John Jackson, who head the Radio Drama Project at Concordia University, provide a knowledgeable yet compact introduction, outlining the theatrical and historical context for Stage's debut on 23 January 1944, and describing how its originator and producer-director, Andrew Allan, made it such a controversial and daring programme. With powers far more sweeping than those of stage directors today, Allan hired everyone in his company, from the actors and actresses to the musicians and sound-effects men, selected and edited writers' scripts and even suggested ideas for musical scores. All to one effect: to delight and challenge CBC's listening audience with excellent theatre and, often, scathing social criticism.
Of the more famous writers Allan assembled for Stage during his tenure (1944-55), most are represented in this volume, only some of whom readers will recognize, such as Len Peterson, Lister Sinclair, W.O. Mitchell, and Patricia Joudry. Others who wrote primarily for radio will be less well known: Tommy Tweed, Fletcher Markle, Gerald Noxon, Joseph Schull, Reuben Ship, Harry Boyle and Andrew Allan himself. For each of them Fink and Jackson provide a brief introduction to their work in radio and to the anthologized play that follows.
As a title, All the Bright Company is a felicitous choice: it describes the 'illustrious' repertory company of writers and performers that created Stage, and is also the title of the volume's first play written, fittingly, by Andrew Allan. The editors have wisely selected a cross-section of topics, play lengths, and a span of years to represent all Allan's work (1942-62), including Stage. The two earliest plays (1942) are pre-Stage and are the only half-hour selections: All the Bright Company and Markle's surrealistic Brainstorm Between Opening and Closing Announcements.
From the more than 400 original Canadian plays that Allan produced for Stage from 1944 to 1955, and again in 1961-62, the editors chose eight hour-long texts, all of which admirably display the dramatic talent of some of the more prominent luminaries. W.O. Mitchell, whose radio fame rests primarily on the highly popular CBC serial Jake and the Kid (1949-57), wrote several plays for Stage, and The Devil's Instrument (1949) blends his ear for dialogue, which here creates vivid characters in a few compact exchanges, with his justly famed story-telling. As the editors rightly point out, the Stage plays of the late 1940s and early to mid-'50s often concerned themselves with issues of family and community. The Devil's Instrument (1949), for example, chronicles a boy's departure from his Hutterite community after he realizes that his 'devil's instrument,' a harmonica, makes him as much an outcast as the outcast brother who gave it to him. Likewise, in the same year, Lister Sinclair gives us Hilda Morgan, a scathing indictment of a young woman's friends and loved ones, who abandon her when they discover that she is pregnant and cannot marry. This play was one of many that members of Parliament argued heatedly about in the House of Commons, prompted by some of their equally indignant and scandalized constituents.
The plays of Harry Boyle, Joseph Schull, and Len Peterson focus on families in communities, while Patricia Joudry's text, Mother is Watching, explores how family members respond differently to their community. Boyle's The Macdonalds of Oak Valley (1949) examines an Ontario farming community where the Macdonald family members differ over the notions of progress and automation; Schull's The Jinker (1955) chronicles a turn-of-the-century Newfoundland sealing community where two rival sealers clash on the high seas; and Peterson's Man with a Bucket of Ashes (1952), another controversial play debated in the House of Commons, presents a modern-day Abraham and Isaac story in which a man kills his young son in the misguided belief that the act will save his community. Joudry's Mother is Watching (1953) focuses on three sisters, each of whom grapples with the 'woman's place' in the 1950s, a topic as problematic then as it is today. These plays share the realism of family drama, strong characterization, and compelling topical problems.
While all the plays work well because they capitalize on their medium, using the radiophonic qualities of language, sound and music to their best effect, three of them are strikingly radio-dependent. A John Philip Sousa-like march identifies and mocks the twisted American dream of Senator Joseph McCarthy in Reuben Ship's The Investigator (1954). A rich variety of sounds - from a ship running and whistles blaring to hornpipes playing and sailors singing - give voice to Tommy Tweed's satire, Full Speed Sideways (1961), a play which spoofs a real-life naval battle on the prairies during the Riel Rebellion. And an eerie musical score and soundscape set the mood for the mystery in the collection's only adaptation, Gerald Noxon's famous radio version of Conrad Aiken's Mr. Arcularis (1953), the story of a man's symbolic and literal voyage to death.
I have one reservation about this introduction to Canadian radio drama and its luminaries. The editors chose not to include even one example of Stage plays written from 1944 to 1948, a choice dictated perhaps by the half-hour (rather than hour) format and their seemingly more topical subject matter: World War II and post-war reconstruction. However, deeper issues of Canadian identity and our place in global politics, social intolerance, economic inequality, world peace, and the more personal problems of family reintegration make these plays exciting listening and compelling drama. To my mind, the collection would have been more complete had the editors included at least one of these many plays, perhaps Len Peterson's Within the Fortress or Joseph Schull's The Sound of the Weeds.
Alice Frick's book Image in the Mind: CBC Radio Drama 1944 to 1955 complements All the Bright Company admirably, placing Stage in the context of the other CBC drama series of the decade. Frick is not a theatre historian. She writes about the decade as she lived it: as Andrew Allan's script editor. Her contribution to the Stage series was direct and long-lasting. She screened scripts submitted by writers and recommended those which she thought Allan would produce, saw the scripts in all their metamorphoses - drafts, rehearsal texts, and live productions - and made sure that they were letter-proof for the actors to read. Moreover, because Frick worked for the CBC for nineteen years (1942-61) she has an intimate knowledge of the other drama series and the era.
Frick spends ten chapters chronicling the most important CBC drama successes during the height of the Golden Age, 1944-54: Stage, the showcase for original Canadian radio plays; Wednesday Night, the three-hour prestige programme for drama, literature and opera; The Ways of Mankind, the dramatized serial on anthropology; and the many socially-conscious series produced by the Dominion Network. After introducing us to the CBC in 1942, the year of her arrival, Frick alternates, more or less chronologically, chapter by chapter, between Stage (the half-hour productions [1944-46], the hour-long productions [1947] and the 'golden' years [1949-54]) and Wednesday Night (1947), the Dominion Network shows (1944-54), and The Ways of Mankind (1952-53). Knowing many of her readers will not have heard these programmes, Frick balances her discussion with a description of each series, the major personalities who produced them, and excerpts from many famous shows. Lister Sinclair's A Play on Words, Len Peterson's Burlap Bags, and Joseph Schull's The Concert complement excerpts from plays published in All the Bright Company. The Devil's Instrument, Mr. Arcularis, and The Investigator.
Frick chronicles the social consciousness evident in nearly all the contemporary drama series. For those working on Stage, the 'hopes of a better world, of greater understanding and tolerance between peoples began to surface in society and to inspire us all' after the war, she recalls. Public affairs and information programmes on the Dominion Network concentrated on education and social issues with such series as In Search of Ourselves, about mental health, and In Search of Citizens, about recent European immigrants, their adjustment to Canada and Canadians. The nationally broadcast series, The Ways of Mankind, focused on the anthropology of cultures past and present. All three programmes tried to bring the message of social tolerance and understanding directly to the Canadian people.
As Frick readily admits, Image in the Mind is a personal history, her own memories of the most exciting decade of Canadian radio drama. While this genre is the most obvious one for Frick, I was disappointed to find that she did not trust her memories enough: she relied too much on secondary sources such as Andrew Allan's autobiography to assess the Stage writers, for example, instead of relating how she interacted with them as script editor. I was disappointed, too, with the penultimate chapter in which Frick discusses the 'big four' producers, Andrew Allan, Esse Ljungh, Rupert Caplan, and J. Frank Willis. Instead of commenting on these producers as professionals and people she gives us an understated, even antiseptic impression of each man, one which suppresses her personal acquaintance with them. One final danger with memoirs, and one which the publisher's editor should have caught, is the problem of introducing the various CBC figures to readers unfamiliar with the names. Particularly in the first two chapters, Frick moves awkwardly between facts and stories about the CBC personnel without taking the time to explain who these people were and why they were important.
Readers who listened to the many plays discussed and printed in these three books will be reminded of an era rich in dramatic activity; readers new to the medium will be pleasantly surprised by the range and quality of the work. While conducting her research Frick received many letters from people who remembered the great dramas of Canada's Golden Age of Radio. Most enthusiastically recalled their excitement over the well-written and topical scripts. These letters testify to CBC's fostering of indigenous drama during this era and to its cultivating in listeners a standard of appreciation and understanding about drama that has left, thirty years later, vivid images in their minds. Perhaps, then, these two accomplishments - a drama of sound and an interested audience - are CBC's legacy to Canadian drama; and the plays by Birney and the Stagewriters, CBC's living contribution.