Robin Matthews
Léa V. Usin's article "'A Local Habitation and a Name": Ottawa's Great Canadian Theatre Company', is commendable and balanced at all points. I have nothing to object to in her fine consideration of the Company's work. For readers concerned with theatre history, however, certain aspects of policy and production are omitted or handled in such a way as to give an impression that might not be as clear or as helpful as Ms. Usin intended.
First, the scope of the activity in the first seven years needs highlighting. GCTC was early into children's theatre with considerable success - doing, of course, only Canadian theatre. That decision was something of a revelation to many schools that greeted the policy with enthusiasm. Underlying the main stage production was production of children's plays - usually two a year - that rarely received anything but enthusiastic response. My play, The Youngest Canal Man, for instance, played the schools, the community, the lock system between Ottawa and Kingston until it had been played something close to 210 times. Popular enthusiasm for the Company was significantly influenced by the children's theatre arm.
Secondly, the decision to do only Canadian theatre (which is no longer policy) caused quite incomprehensible fury among Establishment critics. That is a subject that could bear considerable investigation. We came to realize that as long as we played Canadian plays that were involved in some way with the political and social texture of this country, commentators like CBC critic Charles Haines and Ottawa Citizen critic Audrey Ashley would find ways to disallow the productions as 'real' theatre.
Thirdly, the agitprop activity was of tremendous importance. Some of the most interesting and most lively and most successful productions was of agitprop materials. They were usually, but not always, group written. They were rehearsed in a few days. They were presented to audiences interested intimately in the action of the works. And they were often greeted with overwhelming enthusiasm. Performances for the postal workers, in support of the Inco strike and the Mackenzie Papineau veterans stick in my mind. In the days following such performances the enthusiasm generated helped to build knowledge of the Company and support for it. Needless to say, Establishment critics never attended a single one of such performances - theatre having its divinely appointed home in the National Arts Centre, for them.
Fourthly, and finally, the Ottawa milieu must be credited, at least in part, for the survival of the Company. A civil service town, Ottawa has a quite large number of highly educated, socially concerned people: they want Canadian theatre and relevance. The City Council during a few critical years had one of the city's most socially concerned mayors of its history: Marion Dewar. Her understanding and sympathy went a long way to making a house for the Company a reality. If the Company were to make similar appeals to Ottawa City Council now, the words of appeal would fall on cold stone. Such are the shifts of history.
As a founder and former playwright in residence and member of the Board of Management of the Great Canadian Theatre Company I am still wondering how much the shift in policy (and, therefore, in production focus) is a product of audience pressure and how much it is a product of a new team at the helm whose own politics are much softer and much more liberal personalist than the politics of the founders of the Company.