Denis Salter
Reading this collection of plays leads to a surprising thought: the documentary style of theatre in Canada is now an historical phenomenon. Rendered safe and intelligible by the passing of time, it provides an ideal subject for critical articles, dissertations, and books - and for anthologies like this one. Diane Bessai and Don Kerr have not only brought these three plays together, but they have also provided the sort of historical and critical data which establish a context for understanding. Their joint introduction outlines how these plays developed and makes several concise yet suggestive observations about their stylistic and thematic characteristics in relation to the docu-drama 'tradition.' There is also an informative bibliography of plays and criticism, and a generous selection of original production photographs. Medicare! also includes archival photographs of Tommy Douglas, Ross Thatcher, and some of the doctors and patients involved in the original, often vitriolic debates for and against socialised medicine. These kinds of information and commentary encourage us to consider the complex and possibly subliminal ways in which the documentary mode attempts to interpret historical actuality. In its apparent search for verisimilitude it is meant to provide a so-called objective analysis of history; yet it tends to manipulate or rearrange the historical record so as to score some ideological points. The alert reader or audience member will therefore ask: what kinds of perceptions am I being allowed? How are my perceptions being directed? Where does history leave off? And - most important of all - where do fiction and propaganda begin?
Perhaps the word propaganda is too strong or inappropriate in this particular context. In The West Show the ideological objectives are actually subsumed into the larger purpose of identifying some of the key themes, attitudes, and social problems which have characterised the settlement of the Canadian prairies. As Paul Thompson once observed, to investigate our social history through drama is still a relatively uncommon experience; in fact the mere attempt to do so is a political statement in its own right. In developing The West Show, director Paul Thompson and the Theatre Passe Muraille actors travelled from Ontario to Saskatchewan, to carry out primary on-location research into the province's landscape, people, and history. And then, instinctively recognising the paradoxes inherent in what they were doing, they tried to improvise their discoveries into theatrical form but without losing one iota of the 'truthfulness of place' which their research had uncovered.
It is worth remembering here a conventional critical observation: this is an art of process rather than product in which the medium of theatre is itself part of the message. Accordingly the editors have included a photograph which shows the actors looking at Joe Fafard's painting which formed part of the setting; the painting, in turn, shows Fafard's unique view of how prairie people inhabit (and are inhabited by) the immense prairie landscape. Here, then, there are three artistic media (photography, theatre, and painting) which interact to comment usefully on the specific values which each can bring to the interpretation of western Canadian history. We can of course stand away somewhat sceptically from these mixed media in order to test against them our own firsthand responses to the West. It is in this way that the so-called truths of history can be viewed from many different angles. The play has some of the elements of agitprop, yet the main intention is to celebrate human endurance in the face of adversity. The self-referential quality of the 'showing' is certainly justified both artistically and thematically. When the actors address the audience directly - to explain what went into the research of a certain episode, to give a brief lecture about the cooperative movement, or to praise the fluid symbolism of the setting - we feel the simple pleasure that comes when our stories are being told through a play which is meant to be performed for us. Intellectually the play is very honest, for as a result of its frankly presentational style we can understand how (and why) it tries to mediate between the two extremes of history and of art.
Far As The Eye Can See, a docu-drama developed by novelist Rudy Wiebe in collaboration with Paul Thompson and Theatre Passe Muraille, tells the story of a group of Alberta farmers from the Dodds-Roundhill area near Edmonton who struggled for three years in the mid-seventies to save their land from Calgary Power. This play has the potential for being very misleading. As an example of quasi-illusionistic theatre as much as of docu-drama, it proceeds on the assumption that what is being created is not merely an interpretation of history but rather an accurate transcription of history in every single respect. It seldom encourages us to be sceptical enough to ask how legitimate this really is as a recreation of a complex social problem. Which characters, for example, are based on real-life models? Which are composites of several characers? [sic] And which ones are entirely fictional?
Despite these reservations, the play succeeds in recreating the distinctive qualities of a specific locale. The landscape itself is a central character: we are made to feel that we want to protect it from corporate, government, and agricultural interests. During the ambiguities of the mock-heroic deus ex machina (in which Premier Lougheed comes down 'from above' in a gigantic coal bucket, to announce that the land is safe - for now) the play makes it clear that the land should have the right to remain inviolate. However, even here the play avoids too much propaganda and ideology: it does not take any sides but tries to give clear expression to every viewpoint.
The same spirit of fair play informs much of Rex Deverell's Medicare!, which is described by the author as a 'one man collective.' What does this mean? In an introductory essay which alone is worth the price of the volume, Deverell explains that 'it employs methods and techniques which have been developed by collective docu-dramas over the last twenty years ...' (p 178). but that it departs from that tradition because he alone, without the assistance of an acting company, 'improvised' the play on the basis of thorough documentary research. As in The West Show and Far As The Eye Can See, the real political orientation of the play is hard to pin down. To be sure, the doctors are sometimes caricatured as unthinking, unfeeling, and self-aggrandising villains in the spirit of agitprop; but the final impression is of a playwright struggling to do justice to every contrary attitude in the debate. Yet, as readers, we are granted a privilege which would never be granted to audience members. In his introductory essay Deverell lets us in on his methods and along the way raises a number of troubling questions. He thinks of himself as taking a responsible approach to both history and fiction. On the historical side he explains that his concern is 'to isolate my prejudices,' and to discover why and how the medicare controversy came about (pp 178-179). In a telling footnote he declares: 'Unless otherwise indicated the speeches of the historical characters are based on primary documents or reassembled from newspaper accounts' (p 186). On the fictional side he observes that he nonetheless had to shape the material in order to make it dramatic, a strategy which he admits 'involves some artistic (or at least crafty) decisions' (p 178). He even admits that he reconstructed, through 'a perception of the imagination' (p 179), conversations for which there is no reliable extant source material. Deverell's essay is refreshingly candid about his attempt to have it both ways. But surely this is not possible. At a certain point the historical narrative will be supplanted by fictional interpretation, and in a play which purports to be getting at the social truth, the audience has a right to know when this change is in fact taking place. Is the audience expected to carry out its own exhaustive historical research before it sees the play? What of those audience members (the majority, probably) who will not do so: will they be misled into believing that this is not merely a playwright's view but rather an empirical record which is necessarily correct?
Fortunately there is an Afterword in which the actors step out of their roles to explain how touchy it is to create a play from an issue which still divides people in Saskatchewan. Yet this Afterword is so brief and sketchy that it does not lead us to question the validity of what we have just witnessed. The play, in a sense, is a form of propaganda for the liberal attitude that as long as all aspects of the struggle are clearly represented, the result will be a satisfactory approximation of what really took place. It seems to me that the only intellectual safeguard is the one that occurred during the original production at the Globe Theatre in Regina. Some of the participants in the original medicare debates were in the audience: afterwards they could stand up to grill the playwright about his view of history. But this sort of inquiry is clearly the exception rather than the rule.
The word docu-drama itself is a tidy summary of all these problems. These plays suggest, to my mind, that more often than not the 'docu-'part is largely a pretext. For it is the 'drama' part which receives more of the real attention from theatre artists and audiences alike.