JAMES HOFFMAN
This article examines the career of actor, director and teacher Llewellyn Bullock-Webster, a dynamic force behind amateur and educational theatre in British Columbia. Born in Wales, the 'Major' came to Canada after acting in London's West End and on provincial tours. Following service du ring the First World War he opened his first theatre school and combined that activity with acting in Victoria. He was a pioneer in curriculum development for the British Columbia Department of Education and a champion of Canadian drama.
Cet article retrace la carrière mouvementée de Llewellyn Bullock-Webster, acteur, metteur en scène, professeur de théâtre, influence puissante sur l'évolution des théâtres amateur et pédagogique en Colombie britannique. Né au pays de Galles, le 'major' émigra au Canada après une brève carrière de comédien sur les scènes de Londres et en province anglaise. Établi à Victoria après son service militaire durant la Grande Guerre, il y fonda sa première école des arts théâtraux, tout en poursuivant sa carrière d'acteur. Bullock-Webster fut un pionnier dans l'élaboration d'un programme d'études pour le Ministère de l'Éducation de la Colombie britannique, et l'un des grands promoteurs d'une dramaturgie canadienne.
The early 1920s saw the founding of a number of theatrical enterprises in British Columbia: the Vancouver Little Theatre Association (1920), the Home Theatre (1920), and the New Westminster Little Theatre Association (1922). There were also two theatre schools begun, both in 1921, one in tiny Naramata, under Carroll Aikins, and the other the B.C. Dramatic School in Victoria, under the direction of L. Bullock-Webster.
History has not been excessively kind to 'Major' Bullock-Webster, one of B.C.'s most energetic and ubiquitous theatre personalities, who, upon his return to England in 1946, left behind an impressive array of dramatic projects, from the founding of the Prince Rupert Amateur Dramatic Society (1911) to his efforts to mount the 'International Drama Festival and Pacific Drama Conference' in Victoria (1946). Betty Lee, in Love and Whisky (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1973), recalling what she terms the 'Victoria incident,' leaves the impression that Bullock-Webster was a cranky eccentric who wished to scuttle the Dominion Drama Festival even as it was being launched. Andrew Parkin, in his brief survey of indigenous theatre in British Columbia,1 chooses Bullock-Webster as a prime example of the 'crucial people' who stimulated educational and adult drama in the province, yet dismisses his work as 'deadly theatre' and calls his playwriting efforts: 'improbable plays with impossible titles.'
There is as yet no thorough study of Bullock-Webster's life and accomplishment - and that is beyond the scope of this paper; fuller assessment will have to wait. What this article will examine is the operation of his dramatic school. For a better appreciation of its genesis some accounting will be made of Bullock-Webster's life, especially his participation in the theatre.
Llewelyn Bullock-Webster was born in Wales in 1879, the youngest son of Henry Bullock-Webster, an 'English country gentleman,' 2 and his second wife, Gladys Powell, heiress of 'an ancient Welsh family' centred at Craig-y-Nos castle in Brecon. Sent to boarding school at age 9, he was educated at Ampleforth College, Yorkshire, a Roman Catholic Benedictine School - his mother's background was Catholic - where he was, by his own account, poorly educated, cold and unhappy. Sent in his upper school years to Cheltenham College in Gloucestershire, a preparatory school for the leading military colleges, he excelled at sports.3 After finishing school, he lived for a while in London with his older sister Violet, an 'accomplished painter and a writer of some distinction.' It was here that he met writers, artists and actors, and likely developed his first strong interest in and contacts with the theatrical world. For the next few years he did some military duty and maintained his inclination towards the performing arts: in the late nineties he enrolled in a singing and conducting program at the Royal College of Music, and in 1900 obtained his Associate (ARCM) diploma.
The same year he was on stage at the Globe theatre, playing Ajax in Me Gay Pretenders, a moderately successful production in a rickety, soon to be demolished theatre that had in 1897 closed the four-year run of Charley's Aunt. It was, nonetheless, a West End production and by age 21 Bullock-Webster had attained a major role. In the next half dozen years he acted in at least three other London theatres, the Shaftesbury, the Palace, and the Avenue, playing juvenile leads. He also performed juvenile lead in 'Number 1' tours, to major cities like Liverpool, Manchester and Edinburgh, in companies associated with Cairns-James and Bertha Moore; and one of his tours took him to the United States. A measure of his achievement was his being hired in 1904 by Sir George Dance to direct and stage manage 'Number l' tours. Dance was at that time 'one of the most successful and most powerful theatre managers in the United Kingdom,' who had a good eye for 'promising young directors.' 4 Earlier, in 1899, Bullock-Webster had played juvenile lead in Dance's musical comedy A Chinese Honeymoon, one of the hits of the time at the Strand theatre, running for more than 1,000 performances. Bullock-Webster seemed to have a flair for music-hall too, doing an equestrian turn in London under the name 'Bronco Bill.' This period in his life is summed up in one of his letters:
I was educated at Cheltenham for the Army, but went on the stage. Enlisted for the Boer War. Discharged medically unfit. Went back to the stage. Studied at Royal College of Music. Took to musical comedy. Became Stage Manager in time, and later Producer for the George Dance Companies. Have been in Canada on and off since 1900.5
By 1901 he was in the Similkimeen area
of British Columbia, with a locally-formed drama group, acting in a production
of Chiselling, which seemed to attract little notice at the time
or afterward: neither the group nor the production is mentioned in Chad
Evans's Frontier Theatre (Victoria: Sono Nis, 1983). With an inheritance
received at his father's death in 1906 (his mother had predeceased his
father), he became firmly established in British Columbia by 1908 with
interests in investment, in the outdoors - particularly game hunting, and,
of course, in the theatre. He settled in Prince Rupert where he bought
sections of property, served as alderman and police commissioner, and founded
the Northern BC Agricultural and Industrial Association and the
Prince
Rupert Amateur Dramatic Society, becoming its president in 1912. Obviously,
like many English 'remittance men' of the time, he had come to the province
to benefit from the almost unlimited possibilities for investment and enterprise:
that he founded and guided so many institutions during six years in this
northern coastal city is testimony to the opportunity in British Columbia
as well as his boundless energy and penchant for organization.
During the First World War Bullock-Webster enlisted in the Canadian 54th Battalion, and was one of the first to volunteer to receive a typhoid fever inoculation that was soon found to be faulty. He became very ill and spent the early part of the war in a Victoria hospital before seeing service in France. After the war he became labour manager for Harbour Marine Shipyard in Victoria, a job he resigned in 1921 after a falling-out with the yard's owner, who, he felt, had reneged on an agreement with the workers. It was then that he established a theatre school.
During the 1920s, while he operated the school, Bullock-Webster was involved in many performance activities in the community. In 1922, under Reginald Hincks's direction, he played lead in Hincks's adaptation of Quentin Durward's Black Hawk, in a semi-professional stock company at Victoria's Princess theatre. Hincks was famous locally for his adapted - or 'potted' - musical plays and comedies, in which he applied his own usually humorous lyrics to familiar and popular melodies. One participant who witnessed Bullock-Webster's performance in Black Hawk and other productions remembers that he was 'an excellent actor, comedian and singer, and had leading parts in several of the shows that Reginald Hincks; created with such outstanding success at the then Princess theatre on Yates street ... .' 6 Together Bullock-Webster and Hincks directed a mammoth outdoor pageant, Ivanhoe, in 1926, at Willows fairgrounds, involving jousting, folk dances, and wrestling matches, with Bullock-Webster also playing Prince John.
A year later he performed a more serious role in A Bill of Divorcement, by Clemence Dane, which had opened in New York in 1921 with Alan Pollock and the young Katharine Cornell. Pollock was in Victoria with the show in 1927 and used Bullock-Webster in a substantial role to complete the cast. About this time he originated the famous Yuletide festivities held annually at the Empress Hotel, and was choir director at St. Andrew's Roman Catholic Cathedral. In the summer of 1932, as his school ended its eleven-year life, Bullock-Webster was discussing the proposed Dominion Drama Festival with Lord Bessborough on his visit to the West Coast. This was the source of Betty Lee's 'Victoria incident' for Bullock-Webster was inadvertantly slighted by Vincent Massey when the western Canadian organizing was left to Percy Gomery of Vancouver. Notwithstanding, he remained an important figure in British Columbia participation in the DDF, acting as BC regional chairman during the 1930s. He also established the Canadian Drama Award, first presented in 1935 and officially accepted as a national award by the Governor-General in 1947.
In 1932 he also became 'Director of School and Community Drama' for the Department of Education and travelled the province organizing drama workshops and festivals, screening adjudicators, dispensing theatre pamphlets he had written, and making the Department's substantial theatre library, begun with a collection from his Dramatic School, available to anyone interested.7 As a playwright he was active in the League of Western Writers and wrote about 30 plays, several of which were produced in the United States and Britain. Bullock-Webster was certainly capable of writing the turgid oriental and other exotic pieces popular then, as we see in his spectacle The Curse of Chirra-Poonje, written under the name Chareh Sultan El Oswan. Published under his own name, though, were more serious works, The Shadow of the Nile (Samuel French), Remorse (Fred Ingram), and He Passed Through Samaria (Walter Baker), the last, as reported in Curtain Call (18 Jan. 1932), enjoying 'a kindly reception in England and the United States... .'
After World War II, with a change in the provincial government, Bullock-Webster, now at retirement age, lost his position with the Department,8 but worked to stage the international theatre festival, held in Victoria in August, 1946. Shortly after this, he returned to England where he worked in film distribution for Twentieth Century Fox. He died in 1970.
An examination of the atmosphere of post World War I Victoria reveals a city in transition from the industrial, political exuberance of the preceding decade to a presence as the dignified flagship of the province. As for serious theatre, the city seemed to be mainly another lucrative stop for touring American and British performers. Just before the war, in 1913, as the Vancouver Island Development League touted Victoria as 'Canada's Greatest Port, and One of the Coming Premier Ports on the Pacific Ocean for World Travel,' 9 two major theatre buildings were opened, the Pantages and the Royal Victoria, the latter with an inaugural performance of the oriental fantasy Kismet by the large Otis Skinner touring troupe from New York.10 There were frequent opportunities to see West End performers like Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson (1912, 1915), Laurence Irving (1915), Marie Tempest (1915), Marie Lohr (1921), Henry Esmond (1921), and that direct link to London's Lyceum, Sir John Martin-Harvey (1914, 1921, 1924, 1926, 1928, 1929, 1932) on the stages of Victoria.11
But the capital city, like the rest of the province, was beset not only by the disruption of war but also by labour unrest, a growing perceived threat of socialism, a militant, newly-formed Farmers' Union, a New Reform Movement, and the most immediate problem of absorbing returning soldiers. These pressures, along with several years of economic recession after the war, produced unrest and political re-evaluation, and led the city to reassert traditional values. Having resigned to Vancouver its claim as the province's major business and population centre, Victoria, as a solution to a changing identity, in official promotional materials that extolled the 'City of Enchantment in Canada's Evergreen Playground' 12 emphasized its position as a tourist and residential mecca, as well as its long-held status as the official and cultural capital of British Columbia. The British heritage, strong in 80% of the population, necessarily influenced any cultural development, but Victoria was also a Canadian city in the early 1920s, the decade of Hart House Theatre and the early glimmers of a distinct Canadian drama. The achievement of Bullock-Webster's Dramatic School was that it responded substantially to the varying needs of a community emerging from the dominance of a received theatre into an awareness of indigenous drama, at a time when the Canadian Annual Review of Public Affairs, 1922, (p. 323) reported that 'Dramatic art and literature, or theatrical development, had won few opportunities in Canada with little more than a dozen plays written by Canadians and very few which had seen the light of day in a representative theatre.'
Aside from professional tours and the work of Bullock-Webster, Victoria theatre immediately before and after the first war was confined to a number of 'amateur enthusiasts' who produced plays with titles like Lady Huntsworth's Experiment under the direction of numerous ex-military men like Major Tayler, Colonel Hobday and Major Prideaux. The Little Theatre Movement, which reflected the new, purified European attitudes toward mise-en-scene and aimed to mount plays from the current, world 'art' repertoire, had reached Vancouver in the Vancouver Little Theatre Association, which produced plays by Maeterlinck, Synge, Pirandello and Capek in its first few years. Similar work was being done by Carroll Aikins in tiny Naramata in the rural Okanagan area of British Columbia.13 But Victoria had to be content with the likes of Reginald Hincks with his 'delightful nonsense' 14 or the spectacles got up by amateurs such as the wealthy Dunsmuir family with Hello Victoria - by no means avant-garde theatre but at least '[netting] a very handsome sum for charity.' 15
Bullock-Webster was obviously the right man for British Victoria. Emphatically English, with a forceful, cultured mien, a military and organizational background, and impressive London theatre credits, he had no trouble gaining acceptance in a town that was more and more measuring its persona in the rhythms of graceful Olde England. It is to Bullock-Webster's credit that, along with offering so strong a theatrical leadership locally, he was able to provide at least some vision that looked outward to the rest of Canada, and to an extent, the world.
One of his first acts was to conceive a project that would entertain and impress Victoria society, would involve large numbers of people, young and old, and would thereby assert both Bullock-Webster's prowess as a producer and the existence of the school, known at first as 'The BC College of Elocution.' The vehicle was a mammoth outdoor 'musical drama', Danae, or the Birth of Perseus, by L.A. Griffin Brownlee, which, as well as catering to the contemporary taste for the exotic, demonstrated the work of a local playwright. The cast of over 150, with groups of nymphs, Greek dancers, ladies, priestesses, slaves, soldiers, heroes and old men, played for three evenings in June 1921, on the lawns of Gonzales Gardens, the rose gardens at the home of Mrs. F.B. Pemberton. One of the prologue speeches announced: '... this is the first time that a Pastoral Play has been given on this Island ... .' 16 The programme reads like a British Columbia Who's Who with a long list of 'distinguished' patrons including BC's Lieutenant-Govemor and his wife, Mrs. Nichol, and many well-known Victoria names such as Pemberton, Green, Butchart, Percy and Ross. The production was, however, plagued by bad weather, and had to be taken indoors for the closing performance; and the whole affair, while successful 'artistically' in Bullock-Webster's terms, was a money-loser. The play was followed, a year later, with another alfresco production, The Curse of Chirra-Poonje, written pseudonymously and directed by Bullock-Webster, with a cast of over 240, and the support of 'the Chamber of Commerce, Victoria Publicity Bureau, Rotary, Kiwanis, and Gyro Clubs and many public-spirited citizens.' 17
Thus after his first few years of operation Bullock-Webster was a strong force in Victoria theatre, lending impetus to the mainstream of theatrical endeavour in society and to the smaller group of people who were his students. These latter, plus the smaller audiences they attracted in the School's studio theatre, were exposed to more literary fare: a programme given by BC Dramatic School students in 1922 listed, along with the expected recitations of British poetry, poems by Canadians, performance of a Noh play, and production of a recent Barrie work, The Twelve Pound Look. By now he had begun his series of 'dramalogues', evenings held every two weeks, in which Bullock-Webster himself and older students and associates read or simply staged extracts from world literature and drama. The first dramalogue, given in 1922, featured Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River and a Japanese farce, along with other works. In the programme for this event Bullock-Webster described his goals, stating that in future evenings he hoped 'to include entertaining selections from the works of modern English, French, Irish, Italian, Scandinavian, Russian and Spanish dramatists.'
After an initial home in a building on the comer of Blanshard and Pandora Streets, the school was located on the second floor of the newly-renovated Castle Building on Fort Street, between Douglas and Broad Streets. There was a studio theatre that seated an audience of 70, had a small raised stage, a dressing room, lighting equipment, a reception room, a wardrobe area, and a storeroom. The school was now in the heart of the business district and therefore highly accessible to Victoria's growing white collar business and government population. Answering a request that he teach public speaking, Bullock-Webster, in a letter (22 May 1922) to Col. Lorne Ross, indicated that he had already successfully helped 'two heads of important businesses in this city,' and after listing the elements of a speech programme, announced his plans to offer for businessmen: 'At the studio a course of 30 hours [costing] $20.'
By now Bullock-Webster had established for the school a curriculum that would appeal to a broad clientele. A 1922 prospectus states that: 'Elocution is taught in all branches, in its relation to Literature, Drama and Public Speaking ... the school provides expert professional training in the principles of stage deportment, the technique of acting, and the development of physical and mental equilibrium.' All ages were encouraged and all possible uses of drama, whether for stage performance or recital, for social success or even for personal therapy, were taught. In 1929 Bullock-Webster described the range of work at the school as follows:
The objects of the school are manifold. There are groups of businessmen who come to develop their natural gifts of public-speaking ... . Ladies of social position come to gain self-confidence, or to read aloud. Children, in the main, come to correct the speech defects which are apt to develop during school years. Many girls of teen age find that dramatic work helps them to overcome self-consciousness, embarrassment and general nervousness. The bigger boys are usually interested in public-speaking. And amongst all these are people with dramatic talent, who enjoy the experience of rehearsals on professional lines.18
By the second year of operation Bullock-Webster
had made the school a very visible and acceptable cultural force in the
community. His students appeared in many locations to recite and act, including
annual productions at the 1600-seat Royal Theatre, demonstrating literary
taste that, while strongly British, did include Canadian writing and works
by Bullock-Webster himself. In June 1922, BC Dramatic School students presented
poems by Rudyard Kipling, Robert Browning, Pauline Johnson, William Drummond
and two prose pieces by Bullock-Webster entitled, 'Three Great Women Painters'
and 'Brief Address on Music' at a meeting of the Women's Canadian Club
at the Empress Hotel.19
His 'dramalogues' were held all over - at the school and in homes and meeting
places in Victoria, Vancouver and Seattle. Among the more than 100 new
plays Bullock-Webster claimed to have introduced 20
to the West Coast public were Private Lives (Coward), Hotel Universe
(Barry), Elizabeth the Queen (Anderson), The Barretts of
Wimpole Street (Besier), The Autumn Crocus (Anthony) and The
Improper Duchess (Fagan). Canadian work was also represented. When
Montreal author Elizabeth Church visited Victoria, two of her plays, The
Turn of the Road and Managing Father, were read at the school.
During Canadian drama week, in 1931, the school hosted a series of readings
of plays by local writers. The Victoria Colonist (11 Feb 1931),
commenting on a dramalogue reading of Bullock-Webster's play The Going
of the Little White Swan at a Kiwanis Club luncheon, noted that the
' ... talented performers were applauded to the echo.' In addition, the
school also mounted what Bullock-Webster claimed were the 'first Canadian
performances' 21
of Dear Brutus and Hobson's Choice.
The BC Dramatic School, by its second year, was well into its regular operation, with, on average, about 65 students in attendance. There were small group classes as well as individual instruction, mainly in speech, but also in acting and movement. Students ranged from older businessmen to primary level schoolchildren: he certainly did not have a theatre school as we understand it today, with a well-screened and auditioned group of talented aspiring professional actors, and was still working largely in the tradition of the teachers of elocution - of which Victoria had its share. He was, however, not unaware of schools like RADA, in London: he stated that his 'premises have been compared favourably with Sir Herbert Tree's School ... ' 22 and as we have seen, he included 'professional training' among the school's many aims. The vast majority of his students, many of whom were well-connected Victoria society people, came only with an interest in gaining social poise and in rounding out their cultural education. Indeed, Bullock-Webster, if he is criticized by persons interviewed who knew him or worked with him, seems to have frequently been too enamoured of the upper classes: when it came to attaching himself to the coattails of the titled and the famous he was a past master.
It followed that the school featured a highly distinguished list of patrons. A photograph of John Martin-Harvey, the 'First Patron of the School,' appears on the cover of early programmes. Other patrons named on programmes and the school letterhead were: Lady Martin-Harvey, Cyril Maude, Winnifred Emery, HV Esomond, Eva Moore, Seymour Hicks, Ellaline Terriss, Marie Lohr and Lady Tree - the latter being an impressive catch because of her husband's founding of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
Although Bullock-Webster had worked in the West End for half a dozen years or so, it is unlikely that he became closely acquainted with any of these famous people, most of whom would have been considerably older, by at least 15 or 20 years, and much better established. Probably, Bullock-Webster, ever aware of the value of promotion, especially in the ephemeral world of the theatre, contacted these notables from Victoria, described to them his London connections (Sir George Dance was an excellent reference), glowingly told them of his pioneering work in BC, and then asked them to lend their sponsorship. Whenever any of them came to Victoria on tour, as many did, Bullock-Webster was there with invitations to his school and to other well-publicized receptions or talks. It must have been a special coup to obtain the patronage of John Martin-Harvey, who was newly knighted in 1921. Although Bullock-Webster's son believes his father was a 'personal friend' of Martin-Harvey, Bullock-Webster is not mentioned in Harvey's autobiography; neither he nor his school is cited in Robert Lawrence's article 'John Martin-Harvey in Canada.' (Canadian Drama, Fall/Autumn, 1980, pp 234-241) Likely, the ever popular Martin-Harvey received many such requests as his fame spread over Europe and North America.
Nonetheless, such visits were one of the school's special features. In 1925, Sir Hugh Allen, director of the Royal College of Music, London, spoke to the students about modern music. Sometimes touring professionals gave featured dramatic readings alongside the students, as did Marie Bourgaize Carlson in 1931. The same year, Vincent Massey paid a 'surprise visit' to watch a rehearsal of a Canadian play, The Lyrebird, and GK Chesterton was a 'guest of honour.' Donald Wolfit gave an address in 1932 in which he enthused about the need for Canadian dramatists; in the same year, Thelma Rea, of the Sir Barry Jackson Company, spoke to the Students on 'A Stage Career.'
In the spring of 1923 Bullock-Webster was at the Hotel Vancouver inaugurating a series of 'lectures' that featured him in the role of literary authority, entertainer and potential elocution teacher for Vancouver. Introduced by Mrs. CG Henshaw as the director of the BC Dramatic School and 'creator of the dramalogue,' he began with a documented appreciation of the recently deceased Canadian poet, Marjorie Pickthall, followed by a reading of several of her poems, the reading of a Noh play, poems by Vachel Lindsay, GK Chesterton and the performance of a playlet entitled jealousy in which he played opposite Mrs JB Farquhar. The Vancouver Province (20 March 1923) appreciated the performance, and the Sun (20 March 1923) reported that 125 men, women and students were in attendance: thus Bullock-Webster was soon making weekly trips, leaving Victoria Friday and returning Sunday, to coach students at the Vancouver branch of the BC Dramatic School.
In Vancouver Bullock-Webster offered a dramatic training probably not so much different in substance as in tone from that offered by other notable teachers of dramatics in the city at that time. Frederic Wood, who had established the UBC Players Club in 1915 and was one of the original founders of the Vancouver Little Theatre Association in 1920, was an active and influencial [sic] instructor; and, during the mid-1920s, for one or two winters, Carroll Aikins and his wife Katharine offered acting classes (one of their students was Dorothy Somerset, who became so important in the development of the theatre programme at UBC). The difference in Bullock-Webster's approach was, as usual, his strong aura of British culture and appeal to high society. Yet his impact on Vancouver was definitely less than Wood's: newspaper accounts of him are polite rather than laudatory, and, of course, with only brief visits he was unable to mount any productions longer than the piecemeal dramalogues. Even in his promotional writing, 'The Work of the BC Dramatic School,' he gives the Vancouver branch scant notice.
Coaching his students' work to a high standard was one of Bullock-Webster's strengths, as those who knew him have recalled in recent interviews. He was, according to one former student, 23 especially keen on gesture, voice, timing and interpretation. He stressed the effective use of hands - favouring a strong use of mime to convey poetry, the careful handling of diction, the appropriate timing of gesture to the word, and the thoroughly understood meaning of a work - in which he was open to the student's contribution as long as it was not 'too far off.' Intense, yet patient, he impressed people as effective, likeable, and very English. The standards he aimed at were, in fact, those of the practicing West End actor. To achieve the School's diploma, a student had to recite and act before guest examiners who were sometimes touring performers connected with the London stage. Former students report that both Martin-Harvey and Marie Lohr appeared to take part in examinations. Listed along with Bullock-Webster as examiners on the official diploma of the School were Sir Henry Newbolt and a Miss E. Noonan. Miss Noonan seems to have been a local person who had apparently received lessons from Bullock-Webster, but Newbolt - British author, playwright and public figure - was another coup, although it is doubtful that he was often in Victoria to do any actual examining.
Bullock-Webster's theory of teaching speech and acting was a combination of traditional and progressive ideas. As a teacher of 'elocution' he firmly allied himself with the school of thought - somehow inevitably grounded in notions of the eternal British Empire - that believed in 'correct' speech as a means to social attainment and national identity. He did recognize a unique British Columbia accent, but supported a speech ideal that was British. In a letter to the Colonist (4 May 1930), he stated that:
The speech of British Columbia children is more melodious and less provincial than that of other places. There is a higher percentage of our population whose speech approximates to that of cultured people the world over. Our schools should be able to produce teachers who will be in demand in the other provinces once the desire for speech improvement becomes general. Those of Canadian birth who can and do speak standard English will be in the greatest demand.
In the same article he linked social
status with the elimination of 'local peculiarities' of speech and noted
that educated speech had 'features in common with the English of Southern
England.' In another letter to the Colonist (5 May 1930), he protested
the engagement for a music festival of a Calgary adjudicator who exhibited
a ' ... marked antipathy for a certain type of voice. Some would no doubt
call it the English voice.'
In his attitude towards gesture he was more progressive. Objecting to another festival adjudicator's 'out of date' theories he considered himself, in a letter to Ladies Mirror (10 June 1924), one of the 'younger school':
The younger school conceive it their duty, in dramatic recitation, first to analyze and understand the composition and then find out how to conjure up in the minds of the listeners a vivid picture which shall reveal and if possible enhance the full beauty of the author's meaning. As means to this end they employ, in addition to the spoken word, beauty of tone, beauty of line, and of movement. Obviously we do not advocate inappropriate or distracting gestures; but we can appreciate all movement of voice or body that definitely tends to aid in producing an atmosphere conducive to the appreciation of the author's message.
In a paper 24
he wrote in the 1930s Bullock-Webster mentioned the influence of several
Russian acting theorists, one of whom was Stanislavski. Another influence
cited was a Spanish actor-teacher, Gustav Garcia, under whom Bullock-Webster
claimed to have studied. The paper outlined the familiar basics of acting:
concentration, observation, energy, motivation (which he terms 'justification'),
attitude to the stage setting, repose, actions and interaction between
actors - all of which show that he was an intelligent, systematic instructor
aware of the difficulties of teaching the craft of acting and in touch
with some of the mainstream theories. The school had a substantial library
of theatre books. He was, in sum, an effective teacher of dramatics with
most success in developing the person rather than training the actor, more
typically in the role of coach than in that of stage director, a bit 'old
school' perhaps, but also quite knowledgable about current dramatic activities
and methods in Vancouver, Toronto and London.
Beyond the immediate wish to teach acting and speech, what was Bullock-Webster's larger vision for the School? Although decidedly British and residing in one of Canada's most faraway capitals, he had a strong sense of the Canadian theatre. The School, as he saw it, was an accessory to its development:
Believing that the time is not far distant when Canada will have a National Drama, just as she is now developing a National Literature and School of Painting, the school's policy has always been to encourage the development of talent in those whose work may ultimately be destined to bring credit to the Canadian stage.25
To this end he taught his students
about early Canadian drama, a subject about which he was quite knowledgable,
giving at least two major addresses, one in the United States and one in
Canada, in which he surveyed Canadian theatre history. In the latter, besides
recounting our history from the Theatre of Neptune at Port Royal onwards,
he also passionately answered one critic who claimed 'There is no drama
in Canada,' with the prophetic comment:
I say to JE Middleton most emphatically that Canada is at the present time en-rapidly [sic] approaching that point in her history at which the chrysalis of dramatic endeavour will be rapidly transformed and will rise on brilliant wings to challenge the admiration of the civilized world.26
In the spring of 1932 the School closed,
a victim of the depression: the budget had always been tight with fully
one third of the students entered free of charge under various scholarships,
and Bullock-Webster no longer had his inheritance, much of which was lost
through poor investments. Despite hopes expressed in newspaper comments,
it never reopened; instead, Bullock-Webster, in his new job with the Ministry
of Education took on the entire province as his 'school.'
Bullock-Webster's accomplishment in the BC Dramatic School was impressive, especially as it was essentially a one-man operation. During the School's 11-year existence (Carroll Aikins' school at Naramata lasted only two years), an estimated 800 students took classes, and many went on to government, business and education professions, no doubt enriched by working with Bullock-Webster, who stated that, ' ... the school is proud to number amongst its one-time associates two Mayors of the City, some members of Parliament and prominent KC's.' 27 Several graduates went on to careers in the theatre: two of them, Freda Warter and Peggie Cartwright went to RADA in London, and another, Henry Worthington, worked as an actor in London and New York, playing in the original production of Tobacco Road. The famous performers and personalities Bullock-Webster brought to the School created excitement and challenged local performers to raise their standards. As a practising and published playwright, he was sympathetic to new plays and by introducing many recent, important works to his community, made the School a forum for Canadian literature and drama. His productions, whether large alfresco spectacles or the small-scale Thursday evening 'acting nights', provided a great range of performance experiences for a community otherwise limited to the sporadic visits of touring professionals or the 'potted' works of local stock companies. For the public schools he raised the standards of speech and dramatics by organizing and improving the operation of school festivals; certainly his influence was felt through the many school teachers who were at one time his students or were adjudicated by him.
It seems easy today to belittle the efforts of 'the Major,' and what appears to have been too stilted, too 'old school' a style of theatricalized elocution simply intended for the well-connected, especially as we search for an authentic, indigenous drama - a scarce commodity in the 1920s. But persons interviewed and contemporary newspaper and magazine accounts confirm that Bullock-Webster was an exceptionally strong and vital presence in the city, a presence that went far beyond that of a mere teacher of elocution. Curtain Call (18 Jan 1932) believed that Bullock-Webster had 'done work of inestimable value in stimulating interest in the theatre as an artistic and educational influence in our far Western Province.' The Victoria Times editorial (22 April 1932), upon news of the School's imminent closure, regretted 'that prevailing conditions compelled him to suspend operations ... Bullock-Webster has conducted the school with such excellent results.' A long, detailed letter by a HG Hinton outlined the School's many achievements in the same newspaper.
Perhaps a measure of Bullock-Webster's effectiveness is that his teachings are still used today, forty years after he left the province. Theatre BC, the official publication of what was formerly known as the BC Drama Association (now Theatre BQ, printed a biographical survey of Bullock-Webster in April 1979 and concluded:
... I think the Major would be proud of Theatre BC and its present driving force throughout the province. We have 88 club members at present. We continue with the same goals, some of the visions, and strive for standards that 'Bill' established ... .
The same publication (Jan 1978) contained
excerpts from Bullock-Webster's paper 'Notes on Directing' for the benefit
of its readers.
In all, it was a significant accomplishment for a man who, not for lack of trying, might just as determinedly have functioned in a larger, more national theatre project, such as Hart House in Toronto; in fact he wrote a letter in 1922 offering his services. He nurtured Victoria's professed love of culture with standards that recognized the city's place as responsible to Empire, province and country. He was certainly not the only teacher of dramatics in the city: even as he operated his well-publicized School Marion Ord opened her Victoria School of Expression in 1925, but he had vision, a sense of his art in a changing world context and he had the skills to make it work for 11 years.
Notes
L. BULLOCK-WEBSTER AND THE B.C. DRAMATIC SCHOOL, 1921-1932
James Hoffman
1 ANDREW PARKIN, 'The New
Frontier: Towards an Indigenous Theatre in British Columbia,' in Theatrical
Touring and Founding in North America L.W. Conolly, ed, Westport, Conn:
Greenwood, 1982 pp 101--112
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2 Telephone interview (25
April 1984) with Sandro Bullock-Webster, son of L. Bullock-Webster, residing
in Devonshire, England. Quotations regarding the Bullock-Webster famfly
in England are from this source. The author is deeply grateful for this
trans-Atlantic interview and for the subsequent letter (7 Oct 1984) containing
much biographical information.
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3 One of the trophies he
won at Cheltenham was donated by his son Sandro to a private school in
Victoria, University School, and is awarded annually to a student outstanding
in athletics.
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4 PHYLLIS HARTNOLL, ed,
The Oxford Companion to the Theatre (1951), p 179
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5 L. Bullock-Webster, letter
to J. Burgon Bickerstetch, 31 July 1922, Bullock-Webster papers, Provincial
Archives of British Columbia (hereafter: PABC).
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6 VIVIENNE CHADWICK, 'Productions
of the Past: When Bullock-Webster and Hincks Were Tops,' Colonist, Islander
Magazine, 27 Sept 1964, p 11
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7 This collection, which
became the responsibility of Anne Adamson, who was his assistant when he
was drama advisor for the Ministry of Education, grew, according to Adamson,
to more than 15,000 volumes, which she feels was the 'largest drama library
in Canada.' (Telephone interview, 7 April 1985)
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8 He refers, in a letter
to Christine McNab, 14 August 1946, to his 'superannuation,' but Anne Adamson
reports he left 'under unhappy circumstances,' apparently upset that his
successor received an immediate rise in salary and made too free and presumptuous
use of Bullock-Webster's drama materials. Cf Peter Mannering's taped interview
with Adamson at the oral history section at the PABC.
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9 Vancouver Island Development
League, Victoria BC, Canada, Victoria, 1913
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10 See the Colonist
(11 March 1979), 'The Royal Victoria, A Gem Worth Restoring,' for a description
of the theatre on its opening night.
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11 I am indebted to professor
RG Lawrence, of the University of Victoria, for his list 'English Actors
in English Victoria,' distributed after his paper at the ACTH conference
at the University of British Columbia, 1983.
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12 LADY WILLISTON, Victoria,
BC (Victoria: the Empress Hotel, 1913), subtitle
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13 See JAMES HOFFMAN,
'Carroll Aikins and the Home Theatre,' Theatre History in Canada,
Vol
7, No 1, Spring, 1986, pp 50 -70
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14 CHADWICK, p 11.
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15 'Dramatic Art in Victoria,'
The Canadian Bookman, August 1924, p 184
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16 The 'Souvenir Programme'
of Danae or the Birth of Perseus, 1921, PABC
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17 'Dramatic Art in Victoria'
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18 L. BULLOCK-WEBSTER,
'The Work of the BC Dramatic School,' ts, ca. 1929, PABC
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19 The complete list of
nineteen events is recorded in the 'special programme' which included several
dramatic 'sketches' as well as prose and poetry recitation, 1922, PABC
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20 'The Work of the BC
Dramatic School'
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21 Ibid
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22 Ibid
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23 Personal interview
with Marjorie Sullivan (nee Spencer), 31 Aug 1983
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24 L. Bullock-Webster,
'Acting,' one of the estimated 18 theatre papers he wrote as drama advisor
for the Ministry, during the 1930s, PABC
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25 'The Work of the BC
Dramatic School'
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26 L. BULLOCK-WEBSTER,
'The Development of Canadian Drama,' lecture given at Loretto Hall, Victoria,
23 Feb 1943, PABC
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27 'The Work of the BC
Dramatic School'
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