Ann Saddlemyer
In this opinion piece, Ann Saddlemyer explores the problems of the critic and theatre historian faced with incomplete evidence from the past and an increasingly unsatisfactory critical terminology for present day theatre, with particular reference to the work of women in Canadian theatre.
Dans cet essai, Ann Saddlemyer fait l'exploration des problèmes qui existent dans le domaine de la critique et de l'histoire du théâtre. Les chercheurs/chercheuses doivent se débrouiller avec des documents du passé incomplets et une terminologie de moins en moins satisfaisante pour le théâtre d'aujourd'hui. Elle se réfère surtout à la participation des femmes au théâtre canadien.
For better and for worse, theatre historians are dependent upon observers' reports of performances; we trade in second-hand selections from the past. Our sources range from the comments of newspaper reviews and occasional critical essays to the ephemera spawned by individual productions: if we are lucky, we may have access to the actual records of stage manager, technician, designer, director, even the memoirs of performers, but these are added bonuses. In recent years more and more Canadian institutions, often at the instigation of individual theatre historians, are recognizing the urgency of Heather McCallum's concern for the preservation of theatrical documents of all kinds, and theatre companies are happily relieving themselves of congested cupboards and filing cabinets. Let us hope that the dream of another visionary, Herbert Whittaker, of a Canadian theatre museum network will meet with similar success.
But we are all aware that to document is not enough: we must not only recognize patterns, but reflect upon them in an attempt to make sense of past experience and relate it to present situation. And so to supplement the information we gain from scrutiny of our collected data, we turn more and more often to the social historian, literary critic, sociologist and even the philosopher for assistance and direction. Frequently we adapt not only the methods but the language of these other disciplines in our efforts to interpret and make sense of our findings. In this process of attempted re-creation, distance tends to acquire an enviable if deceptive clarity; the closer we come to an examination of contemporary theatre, in spite of the greater accumulation of records, the more personal prejudice and emotional response dilute the 'objectivity' imposed by time. And so we concentrate even further on the evidence before us, willing this mass of documents and data into an orderly coherence.
Admirable as the desire for historical accuracy is, all too often we overlook what may be even more important - what is missing from the picture. We may forget the major role chance has played in what has been preserved and the very ephemeral nature of the theatre that has prompted this attention in the first place. Even more, we tend to overlook the many levels of selectivity that have caused individual observers and collectors to take note of some things while ignoring others, and by imposing both inherited, unquestioning responses and assiduously acquired new methodologies on that casual detritus from the past, our vision may become further clouded still. In looking so earnestly at what is, we do not always adequately take into account what is not. This special issue of Theatre History in Canada provides an opportunity not only to celebrate the achievements of women in Canadian theatre, but to examine more closely one particular aspect of the selective process at work in historical criticism. What is missing from the picture?
It is ironic that the profile of women in Canadian theatre was probably higher in the nineteenth century than it has been ever since. One reason may be the very hierarchical system of nineteenth century theatre which, in this century, has become so complex that the actress/actor-manager has now been replaced by several more rungs on the ladder, from director and artistic director to the paternalism of boards of directors and government funding. A report - never published - by Rina Fraticelli, prepared for the Status of Women Canada in 1982-3 vividly highlights the discrepancy between the extraordinary activity of women in contemporary theatre and their absence from key decision-making roles.1 The situation has not noticeably altered since that time, although thanks to special issues devoted to women in theatre by Room of One's Own (summer 1983) and Canadian Theatre Review (summer 1985), more of us have become aware of it. In addition, during the past three years two occasions provided a forum for further exploration and debate: at the Women and Words conference held in Vancouver in 1983, a panel on 'Criticizing Criticism: Women's Writing in the Literary Tradition' included theatre in its mandate; the equally stimulating and informative 1985: The Next Stage, held in Montreal during the Theatre of Americas Festival, elaborated the concerns of women practitioners in all branches of theatre. More recently still, during the Thirty Years after Brecht conference and theatre festival held by the University of Toronto in October 1986, several panel discussions touched upon the situation of women, and more specifically feminist theatre, but only where the issues were compared to Brechtian theory, without exploring why or how they might be different or might have evolved independently. Again and again acknowledgement is made of the relative powerlessness of women in Canadian theatre despite their proven skills as actors, critics, directors, playwrights, designers, producers, stage managers and (though rarely) artistic directors. What has become increasingly clear to me is that we have neither language nor methodology with which to probe or even describe adequately the quality of that contribution, much less to answer the simple question, why this striking invisibility? And why, when the issue is raised at all, is it labelled (and all too easily dismissed) as 'political'?
The question is too complex to be dealt with in a single opinion piece, had I the critical terminology or knowledge at hand to do so. We do not even have sufficient documentation to grasp fully the historical implications. But as historians who are also critics, we have a responsibility to identify what is missing from our armory and to find the means and language with which to interpret anew. Because the printed text is relatively more accessible, perhaps one of the easier places to begin is with the playwright. For despite the shockingly small percentage of plays by women included in the repertoire of mainstream theatre, the number of fine plays written by Canadian women has increased immeasurably during the past ten years, as even a cursory glance at the catalogues of Talonbooks, Playwrights Canada, Borealis, Simon and Pierre and NeWest will confirm. Anthologies include examples of their work; children's theatre might not exist, would certainly not flourish, without them. But theatre for young audiences is still not regularly reviewed despite its significance: nor are productions by small theatre groups - the true alternatives to established theatre. Rarely is the rich repository of plays produced on radio and television reviewed; many women who write for radio are more successful in being heard and reviewed outside Canada. One need not belabour the point further - until more women playwrights are accepted by mainstream theatres, they will not be noticed (in the full sense of that word) by serious reviewers. And reviews in turn beget further productions.
The most perceptive criticism of plays still tends to be of the printed text rather than the play as produced. Editors of anthologies and book reviewers often deal sensitively and lingeringly with the published word, but theatre is a collaboration, a collective art, and is neither complete nor fully alive until produced and participated in by an audience. Every playwright requires an audience; for many women playwrights whose work depends upon and is based in a multi-levelled, non-traditional pattern of communication with the individuals in that darkened auditorium, performance becomes an even more important condition of assessment.
What do we want from a theatre review, no matter who wrote and produced the work? An awareness of how the playwright has employed stage space and theatrical techniques, and directed the use of props, sound and lighting. A sense of history both of the theatre and of the social contexts presented through situation and characters. An ear for the nuances of dialogue and the unspoken, always prevalent subtext. An alertness to the subtle (as well as obvious) departures from traditional form and genre. An understanding of the byplay, tensions, and responses among characters on stage and between those characters and the audience. Above all, a sympathetic, patient and helpful attempt to understand what the dramatist is trying to do and say.
As La Sagouine would say, 'Aint easy'. 2
All of these qualities are needed no less by male playwrights. Is there anything specifically required of the critic by women dramatists? Is there anything different in the way women write for theatre that requires additional critical sensibilities? Here is where we move from more decisive ground into the realm of personal experiences, from the precise to the tentative. For much of theatre written and/or produced by women during the past decade or so is still in the process of becoming, breaking new ground, trampling on established forms and generic conventions, challenging images of women (and men) as determined by men, sometimes mocking, sometimes parodying, frequently contradicting conservative audience expectations, introducing laughter where tradition demands tears, unashamedly exaggerated when decorum dictates restraint or silence, symbolism when we expect statement, attack when we are trained to acceptance. Instead of sequential narrative it may be nonsequential; time and setting - even characters - may dissolve, irrationality may replace common sense, subtext may overwhelm plotline, feeling may shout louder than words. Even when the conventions appear to be enforced or acknowledged, the play wilfully embraces rather than remaining aloof. Yet, unlike the deliberate conscience-raising theatre of the 1960s or the Brechtian challenges to Aristotelianism before that, the energy in these plays even at its most critical and challenging flows both ways, encloses and encircles rather than assaults, incorporates and surrounds instead of alienating and isolating. Forgives while it elaborates. This is women's theatre today at its best and most exhilarating, belying the falsely narrow interpretations of the term 'feminist' and embracing a freedom, flexibility and inclusiveness accessible to and for all. 3 It requires not only a new language with which to deal with the form critically, but an awareness that performers must also forge a new method with which to express it on stage. Above all, it demands to be treated on its own terms, expressing the multiplicity of a woman's view of the world, acknowledging the practicalities of theatre while remaining aware of the just as practical problems women experience in operating within a male-centered world and a rigidly hierarchical institution.
Many of these qualities are, of course, shared by contemporary men playwrights. What happens when the reviewer acknowledges that the playwright is a woman? What expectations, defences, barriers are raised with the specificity of the ' term 'woman playwright', or 'women's theatre' even if we delete the more 'political' word 'feminist'? Too often biography takes over completely, as in a Books in Canada article on Sharon Pollock, ostensibly about Blood Relations, where readers are treated to a detailed discussion of the life of the playwright rather than the play, her work analyzed in the context of her personal relationships and family history, her characters equated with issues in her own life, and her income an indication of selling out to 'bourgeois hordes of middle-class theatregoers'. 4 Yet there is a place for biography in the criticism of women's plays, for frequently they write from the viewpoint of women, standing firmly in their own place and resolutely refusing to give way to man's place and man's vision of the world, as in the work of Jovette Marchessault, Denise Boucher, Beverly Simons, the later Gwen Ringwood, to name only a few. Is there a way of accommodating both viewpoint and gender without excluding male reviewers? If we are to comprehend the social context, nuances of dialogue and subtext, we must find one.
Further, what happens to critical terminology which has been strait-jacketed for so long by conventional expectations? Why should the words melodrama, or gothic, for example, be pejorative if the matter and manner require them? Yet Betty Lambert's poetically powerful study of good and evil, Jenny's Story, was dismissed in just these terms. Rachel Wyatt's comedy Geometry was pronounced an unsatisfactory mélange of styles because the dialogue continually threatened to break out of the critic's preconceived generic patterns. And what new terminology is required for the poetic evocations of Marchessault's Night Cows, or Pol Pelletier's compelling enactment within it, which led to standing ovations at virtually every performance across Canada? Conversely, what is wrong with segments of super-realism, as used by Margaret Hollingsworth in, for example, Ever Loving, if the power of the communication insists upon it? Perhaps we should dust off some of these critical idioms and reassess them, even while forging new terminology, in the light of contemporary theatre, adapting terminology to the work rather than the other way round.
One might in fact question whether it is possible to assess a play at
all without taking into account its genesis, its social, sexual and political
context, and its intended audience. Not all plays by women are theatre
for women, but what of those that are deliberately aimed at a woman audience?
Should men be excluded? Can they be if theatre is to remain the whole and
healing art which, history tells us, was its origin in intent and performance?
Does not the playwright also have a responsibility to the critic to make
her work accessible to the entire audience? Conversely, do not the critic
and the historian have the same responsibility to recognize the present
comparative invisibility of women in the theatre and identify its sources?
To draw a circle that includes both women and men practitioners and critics,
not to charge the shorthand of understanding so compactly that only women
(or men) can appreciate and operate within it, but to extend practice and
language sufficiently that comprehension becomes possible for all. Only
then can theatre continue to connect, and the historian and critic acknowledge
and record the entire picture, not to excuse and therefore forgive, but
to understand therefore demand.
Notes
Forum - ON THE NECESSITY OF CRITICISING CRITICISM
Ann Saddlemyer
1 The Status of Women in the Canadian Theatre
was excerpted in Fuse, vol 6, no 3 September 1982 and was quoted
in both Room of One's Own, vol 8 no 2 and Canadian Theatre Review
43, where the graphs prepared by Fraticelli are reproduced to great effect,
but the report has still not been published in full.
Return to article
2 Antonine Maillet's La Sagouine crosses linguistic,
generic and geographical barriers in a manner which almost defies traditional
criticism: yet many of the qualities of that remarkable work are exemplified
in much of contemporary Canadian theatre written by or about women.
Return to article
3 An earlier attempt to describe and explore a small
segment of the plays written by Canadian women can be found in the special
issue of Room of One's Own above, which I first presented as a paper
to the Vancouver conference of the Association for Canadian Theatre History.
Return to article
4 John Hofsess 'Ms Blood' Books in Canada vol
12 no 4 April 1983 pp 3-4
Return to article