Vol. 6 No. 1 (Spring 1985)

THE NATIONAL ARTS CENTRE: FIFTEEN YEARS AT PLAY

[Please note that endnote #27 in article does not have a corresponding entry in list of endnotes].

James Noonan

This article reviews the history of theatre, English and French, at the National Art, Centre, Ottawa, since its opening in 1969. It examines the terms of reference for theatre as set out in the National Arts Centre Act and concludes that the Centre has been only partially successful in fulfilling its mandate to become a national theatre.

Cet article raconte d'histoire de théâtre, en anglais et en français, au le Centre national des Arts d'Ottawa depuis son inauguration en 1969. Il éxamin les terms de référence pour le théâtre dans l'Acte du Centre national des Arts, et conclut que le Centre n'a que partiallement succédé à aquitter son mandate d'être un théâtre national.

Since it opened in 1969, the National Arts Centre has come to dominate the cultural life of Ottawa. It has also become an important institution to Canadians outside the capital city. In addition to staging the shows of its resident French and English companies, it has hosted theatres, both French and English, from every province; indeed, no cultural centre in the country has had so many Canadian companies perform there in the course of a single year. It has also taken its own performances to other parts of Canada. And so, the NAC is in part a reflection of the state of theatre in Canada as a whole.

The NAC has become the focus for professional theatre in Ottawa just as the Ottawa Little Theatre has been and remains the centre for amateur theatre. No doubt it would be useful to examine the relationship to the NAC of professional and semi-professional theatre groups in Ottawa: those that preceded the foundation of the NAC - the Canadian Repertory Theatre, the Theatrical Foundation of Ottawa, the Towne Theatre - and those that began after the NAC opened - Penguin Theatre, Theatre 2000, and The Great Canadian Theatre Company. Only the last remains in operation now. But I would like to concentrate here on the NAC itself and, in particular, on the presentation of Canadian plays there. I will examine both visiting and in-house productions, the formation of theatre companies, touring by the Centre, the expansion to other facilities in Ottawa and Hull, and the people who have directed these various developments. I have confined myself to original Canadian plays with dialogue written for the general public and performed at the Centre or one of its facilities. (There are four theatre spaces in the main building: the Opera 2372 seats; the Theatre 969 seats; the Studio 350 seats; the Salon 150 seats). L'Atelier, a warehouse theatre and La Maison du Citoyen (in Hull) have also been used in recent years.) I have not included children's plays, revues, mime, adaptations of plays, or rental performances at the Centre. Nor have I included the plays and adaptations for young audiences produced only for touring by its young companies, especially the French group L'Hexagone. Building such audiences for the theatre has been one of the NAC's priorities but this work has been so important that theatre for young people at the NAC merits an article by itself.

The mandate of the Centre is stated in the National Arts Centre Act, which was given Royal assent on 15 July 1966, and may be found in the first NAC annual report in 1967-68. Its objects are outlined in Section 9 as follows:

to operate and maintain the Centre, to develop the performing arts in the National Capital region, and to assist the Canada Council in the development of the performing arts elsewhere in Canada.... In furtherance of its objects ... the Corporation may a/arrange for and sponsor performing arts activities at the Centre; (and) b/encourage and assist in the development of performing arts companies resident at the Centre.¹

The first thing to note here is the responsibility of the Centre for developing the performing arts across Canada as well as in the Ottawa area. The second is the emphasis on performance; there is no mention of the content or authorship, Canadian or otherwise, of the works to be performed. So when we examine Canadian drama at the Centre, there is no question of quotas to be met or even objectives to strive for in presenting the work of Canadian playwrights.

Also notable is the mention of 'the development of performing arts companies resident at the Centre.' This is an objective the NAC has striven for from the beginning, in different ways and with differing results for the French and English theatre sections. In its statement of Theatre Plans in that first Annual Report, we read: 'From the autumn of 1969, the NAC will have two resident theatre companies, one of English expression and one of French expression.' ² The Report then goes on to announce:

After lengthy negotiations an agreement was reached between the Stratford Festival Foundation and the NAC to create the Stratford National Theatre of Canada ... Its normal summer season will be performed in the Festival Theatre and the Avon Theatre in Stratford. During the remaining six months of the year a substantial element of the company will be quartered in the National Arts Centre.³

It was a union that was short-lived though, and as in the case of many separations, the wife retained her new name for some time after the break-up of the marriage. The Stratford Festival performed as a resident company for only the first two seasons of the NAC operations and has returned intermittently since as a visiting company; it was still called the Stratford National Theatre until Robin Phillips took over in 1975 and dropped the word 'National.' However, settling the Stratford troupe at the NAC was too simple a way to reach the objective of 'developing a company resident at the Centre' and in fact proved burdensome for the Stratford company itself. The English sector would not develop its own company for another nine years, after Donald MacSween, Director of the National Theatre School, was appointed in 1977 to succeed Hamilton Southam, the first Director General of the NAC. Mr MacSween's background, it was hoped, would give stability to the theatre operations.

The French theatre section took a more logical first step and appointed Jean-Guy Sabourin, a young Montreal director, as artistic director of a new French company for the NAC one year before it opened. His responsibility was 'to develop the philosophy, structure and repertoire of the French company ... with its first performance being given autumn of 1969.' ⁴ Accordingly, Sabourin formed a company of six actors to make up the Théâtre du Capricorne, and directed them at the NAC in a production of Durrenmatt's La Visite de la Vieille Dame in the fall of that year. However, this auspicious beginning was shattered by what the Annual Report calls 'internal difficulties ... as a result of which most of the company resigned during or at the end of the season.' ⁵ Sabourin himself resigned during that first year of operation and the NAC announced that 'in the next season the French subscription series should, like the English series, consist of six plays by visiting companies.' ⁶ Thus, plans for resident companies in both English and French did not work out in the Centre's early years, and it had to rely largely on visiting troupes for its Canadian content for some years to come.

There were three plays presented during the opening festivities in June 1969. The first was Aristophanes' Lysistrata, adapted by Michel Tremblay and performed by Montreal's Théâtre du Nouveau Monde under the direction of André Brassard. Jack Winter's Party Day was the first play produced in the Studio, and George Ryga's The Ecstasy of Rita Joe, directed by David Gardner and performed by the Vancouver Playhouse, was the first play in English at the theatre.⁷

However, these Canadian plays included in the opening celebrations were not followed by many other Canadian works during the NAC's first regular season. For the subscription series of six plays, Stratford presented two works from its past season, Hamlet and The Alchemist, two from its next season, The Merchant of Venice and The School for Scandal, and two new productions, Behan's The Hostage and Vian's The Empire Builders. It also presented short plays by Van Itallie and Mrozeck in the Studio as well as James Reaney's The Easter Egg. The only other visiting English-speaking company was the Shaw Festival with Molnar's The Guardsman.

In French theatre during the first season Canadian plays were presented by the Théâtre Populaire du Québec and the University of Ottawa-based Comédie des Deux Rives. These were respectively, Françoise Loranger's Encore Cinq Minutes, and Elkerlouille by a professor of theatre at the University of Ottawa, Jean Herbiet. A year later Herbiet became Associate Director at the NAC and began to form a company to replace Sabourin's ill-fated Capricorne.

In 1970 it was announced in the Annual Report that in the Studio 'the Centre should do its own thing next season, rather than inviting other companies in rather random fashion to try their hand there.' ⁸ Shortly afterwards Michael Bawtree was brought in to do experimental theatre and to set up a group called Centre Studio. In its brief existence, this group presented only two works, neither of which was noteworthy as Canadian drama or well received by the public. One of its planned productions, an experimental version of Pericles, was cancelled and replaced by Joel Miller's experimental work, The Evanescent Revue. That title proved to be prophetic, for Bawtree and several members of the group resigned at the end of January. Jean Herbiet worked more successfully with the French component of Centre Studio that same season and directed two Canadian plays. Incidentally it was in September of this season that the only production by the Ottawa Little Theatre was given at the NAC - Noel Coward's Hay Fever.

At this point the Board of Trustees took the belated step of creating a Theatre Department and giving it full responsibility for English and French theatre productions, whether mounted by visiting companies or by the NAC itself. Jean Roberts was chosen in 1971 as Director of the Department, and Jean Herbiet named Associate Director responsible for French-language drama. This was a structure that should have been established when the NAC was being planned - at the same time that Jean-Marie Beaudet was appointed Director of Music two years before its opening, or when Mario Bernardi was appointed conductor of the National Arts Centre Orchestra one year before its opening. This lack of planning and foresight for theatre at the NAC is surely one of the major causes for the troubles that plagued its operations in the first two years.

With this reorganization we begin to see an awareness at the NAC of the importance of Canadian plays. However, as it looked ahead to the 1971-72 season we read an amazing statement in the Annual Report:

Another of the Centre's theatre plans is to present at least one new Canadian work on each series (English and French) if possible .... This is easier said than done .... Bearing in mind the interest of the public, whether English or French, the work in question must be judged by the Centre as having a certain measure of appeal ... Also, the work must be ready on time.⁹

The Report goes on to explain that Michel Tremblay's adaptation of The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the Moon Marigolds was brought into the series at the eleventh hour in 1971 to replace a new Canadian play being written by Marcel Dubé. 'Unfortunately,' the Report adds, 'M. Dubé fell ill and was unable to complete his work.' ¹⁰ Dubé was up to this time the most prolific and popular dramatist in Quebec, yet the Arts Centre felt it had to have a new work to present to the public; it was not until the 1978-79 season that a play by Dubé was presented at the NAC - Un Simple Soldat, which had been its first performance in Montreal twenty years earlier. One other Dubé play, Zone, was produced by the NAC for touring in 1980 by its French young company, L'Hexagone.

The somewhat grudging attitude towards Canadian plays reflected in these comments on the unfinished Dubé work manifests itself again in the next Annual Report where, for the first time, a specific statement of policy for theatre at the NAC is established:

... the Centre has three major responsibilities: 1/ it must allow Canadian companies to show their wares to as wide an audience as possible; 2/ it must initiate productions on its own; 3/ it must, whenever possible, present Canadian plays.¹¹

At last we have a (perhaps typically Canadian) statement on the production of Canadian plays - Canadian plays if possible. The Report goes on to chide Dubé indirectly again for becoming ill the previous year. Speaking of presenting Canadian plays, the Report adds: 'Though as we remarked in last year's Annual Report, this last responsibility is easier to state than it is to fulfill,' and goes on, 'last but not least, it must be ready on time.' ¹²

The subscription series, both English and French, for this 1971-72 season contained no Canadian plays, though Tremblay's Les Belles Soeurs was brought in from Montreal in the summer and the NAC mounted a successful production of Reaney's Colours in the Dark in the Studio. The English subscription series was entitled 'Theatre from Coast to Coast' and included visits by Neptune, Manitoba Theatre Centre, Vancouver Playhouse, Shaw Festival, and two plays from the Stratford Festival, which had given up its affiliation with the NAC after doing only four plays as a resident company the previous year. But not one of the six plays by these subsidized companies 'from Coast to Coast' was Canadian.

Under Jean Roberts the 1972-73 season showed a marked change in attitude towards Canadian drama and an increase in the number of Canadian plays at the NAC. For the first time, encouragement was given to Canadian playwrights in the Report:

There are more policies than one for a national theatre and the program which the Centre is developing is an excellent one for Canada. For instance, priority is given to - presenting plays selected from the rich and classic heritages of the French and English theatre; - plays from Canadian playwrights, both English and French.¹³

No mention is made here about Canadian plays ready on time. The Report goes on: 'To this must be added the encouragement of new playwrights.' ¹⁴ The 1972-73 season, especially in English theatre, showed evidence of this. Five plays by well-known Canadian playwrights were produced, two of them, Michael Cook's Colour the Flesh the Colour of Dust and Eric Nicol's Pillar of Sand, in the subscription series. But neither of these was especially popular with Ottawa audiences, and the following season no Canadian plays were included in the main series, either English or French.

The Annual Report for 1973-74 gives an explanation: 'We regret that neither series this year included a Canadian play. In part this was due to budgetary pressures.' ¹⁵ One wonders what budgetary pressures have to do with a decision to produce a Canadian as opposed to another play. Are Canadian plays more expensive to mount? Is it more expensive to bring You Never Can Tell from Niagara-on-the-Lake, as the NAC did that year, than it is to bring from Toronto Of the Fields Lately, which was produced at the Tarragon Theatre and won the 1973 Chalmers Award? The Report goes on:

We have made sure, however, that 1974-75 will be different, with the English series inlcuding [sic] John Coulter's Riel and James Reaney's The Killdeer. The French season will include the world premiere of a new play by Michel Tremblay, Bonjour la, bonjour! and Charbonneau et le chef by John Thomas McDonough.¹⁶

And so it was. All four plays came in on schedule and were presented in the Theatre; the two in English were produced by the NAC itself. The production of Coulter's Riel, with French-Canadian actor Albert Millaire in the title role, was one of the finest productions of a Canadian play in the history of the National Arts Centre. The English plays were supplemented by shorter runs in the Studio of Toronto Workshop Production's Ten Lost Years and Centaur's On the Job by David Fennario. The French audience saw La Sagouine, the first of several works at the NAC by Antonine Maillet, who, after Tremblay, is its most produced French-Canadian playwright.

By this time there was a growing awareness of the distinctive role the NAC could play in developing Canadian theatre and playwrights. The 1974-75 Report reflects this when it says:

Theatre at the NAC is really not like theatre we know anywhere else .... We consider the national theatre to be made up of all the theatres throughout the country and of all the people who work in them. This pattern reflects Canada in all its cultural and regional diversity. We want to be a leading force in this movement. We have not set out to dominate it.¹⁷

Here we have articulated the special role the NAC had been trying to play for some time. This is an ambitious and sensible goal for a federally subsidized theatre in the nation's capital. However, some questions might be asked about the involvement of other theatres across the country. Is this a role they feel the NAC should be playing? Have they been consulted on their belonging to this 'national theatre'? Or are they simply being co-opted into a role the NAC has taken to itself?

This same year the NAC reported on a new dimension of its involvement in Canadian theatre, the development of new Canadian plays. It states:

We want to do more Canadian plays and, in fact, to help with the creation of new works, giving them the extra care they need. During the past year we had our first playwright-in-residence, Timothy Findley, and we will produce his play next season. We must be able to undertake more projects of this nature.¹⁸

Can You See Me Yet? was one of eleven French- and English- Canadian plays at the NAC in 1975-76, including its one and only English play by a local playwright, Clive Doucet's Hatching Eggs, about life in the civil service. The playwright-in- residence program continued, and James Nichol's Sainte-Marie Among the Hurons was part of the 1976-77 season. This growing awareness of the service it could offer to playwrights was reflected in the fact that over 100 unsolicited manuscripts and an equal number of purchased plays were read by the Theatre Department in what the Report calls 'a continuing effort to provide Ottawa- area audiences with the best in theatre and to foster the development of playwrights across Canada.' ¹⁹

That same year the NAC had both a writer-in-residence, William Whitehead, and a playwright-in-residence, Sheldon Rosen. Whitehead, we are told, 'continued to read and to send detailed comments to the authors of hundreds of unsolicited manuscripts.' ²⁰ The play on which Sheldon Rosen was working did not materialize, and the playwright-in-residence program was abandoned for a time. This highlights another problem at the NAC. The constant change and abandonment of plans and programs have not helped its development of Canadian theatre. Indeed, one wonders whether its Theatre Department should concentrate more on producing work by established Canadian playwrights than seeking to develop writers itself. Nevertheless it resumed a similar program in 1982 when Playwrights' Circle was established to bring together writers from across the country 'to broaden their skills as play-wrights and to share knowledge gained through professional experiences in the theatre.' ²¹ The program was run by Paul Hanna and Sharon Pollock, the NAC's artist-in- residence for 1982-83. The playwrights brought in for the four-month program in 1982 were René Aloma, Gordon Pengilly, David Rimmer, and Paul Gross.

Another development that took place in 1980-81 was the acquisition of L'Atelier, a renovated warehouse to be used as further performing space. This space has allowed the company to do more experimental work and to set up an apprentice program for young actors. Six of the seventeen productions there to date (1984) have been Canadian. Besides performing at L'Atelier, the French group began in 1981 to use a theatre in La Maison du Citoyen, the new City Hall in Hull.

New directions in theatre were taken again in 1977 when Jean Roberts resigned as director of the Theatre Department after six years, and the new Director General Donald MacSween brought into the organization Jean Gascon as Director of Theatre and John Wood as Artistic Director of English theatre. The presentation of Canadian drama at the NAC was then established and the Gascon-Wood-Herbiet era saw the continuation of that practice. There was a greater number of Canadian plays in English than in French in these years, as can be seen from the list at the end of this article. In fact, from 1977 to 1981 the NAC presented only one Canadian play in French each year while the English sector presented several Canadian plays, including two each by John Murrell and Sharon Pollock.

However, the 1981-82 season saw only one Canadian play in English at the NAC - a return engagement of Billy Bishop Goes to War - and one at L'Atelier, Charles Tidler's Straight Ahead/Blind Dancers. Not one of the plays in the English subscription series was Canadian, yet one of the plays was Geoge Kelly's The Torchbearers, a play about theatre life in Philadelphia in the 1920s. It had a fine cast and was lavishly produced in the NAC Theatre. It is similar in theme and structure to David French's play Jitters, which has been very successful across Canada and at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven. (Ironically, a Broadway-bound production of the play closed in Philadelphia.) Neither Jitters nor any other play by French has ever been performed at the NAC. With a greater commitment to Canadian drama, the NAC might have chosen Jitters rather than The Torchbearers as a play on theatre life. The former is also more contemporary and comments astutely on theatre and culture in Canada.

This inconsistency from year to year in the presentation of Canadian plays suggests the need for a clear policy at the NAC. I would hesitate to recommend quotas, but surely we can expect more than one Canadian play from the English or French sectors of the NAC in any given year when the total number of plays runs from twenty to twenty-seven. We are not even given an explanation of these practices in the annual reports from 1979 to 1981, which contained only the bare information on NAC finances and programming. During these years the comprehensive review of artistic activities which always gave an interesting and lively account of the NAC's self-image and programming was eliminated, but was resumed again in the 1981-82 Report.

The most significant development in theatre in the last seven years was the formation in 1978 of a permanent resident theatre company, both English and French. For this purpose and for touring its plays the NAC received a special grant of 1.1 million dollars from the Secretary of State - much to the dismay of many theatre groups across the country and especially of Robin Phillips at Stratford, who had a spirited exchange in the press with Donald MacSween over the grant (see Ottawa Citizen, 1 March 1978, p 76; The Globe and Mail, 3 March 1978, p 18). Ironically, during the same fiscal year, the overall NAC appropriation from the federal government was reduced by nearly $900,000.

Wood and Herbiet were thus able to develop their companies and mount productions which they took across the country in 1978-79. The English company toured twenty-one cities with Hamlet, Waiting for the Parade, and William Schwenck and Arthur Who?, the last two Canadian works, while the French troupe travelled from British Columbia to New Brunswick on two separate tours with four plays - Arlequin, Le Cid, Madame Filoumé and Un Simple Soldat. At the end of the year Jean Herbiet rhapsodized in the Report: 'The 1978-79 French theatre season will be remembered by me as the finest and most exhilarating year of my many at the NAC; it was the season when all of my dreams suddenly came true.' ²² And, of the tours themselves, he remarked, 'They showed us the extraordinary vitality and sense of cultural identity of the French-speaking community beyond the borders of Quebec.' ²³ Of the one Canadian play on the French tours the Report for that year stated:

September 28, 1978 will remain a milestone in the history of Canadian theatre; on that day the NAC opened its season in Vancouver, in French, with a performance at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre of Marcel Dubé's Un Simple Soldat. ²⁴

Perhaps Dubé's long wait for an NAC production was worth it after all.

It was a triumphant year, and one which gave more validity to the NAC's claim as a national theatre. In the 1980-81 season it toured again with four French plays, including the Jean Herbiet-Felix Mirbt acclaimed marionette versions of Buchner's Woyzek and Strindberg's The Dream Play, as well as John Gray's immensely popular Rock and Roll; Woyzek had already toured France and Belgium in 1978, and The Dream Play was performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 1980. Unfortunately, the NAC found that the grant from the Secretary of State was insufficient to maintain a large permanent company and to continue touring. It has since confined its seasons to the Ottawa and Hull facilities, apart from the French young company, L'Hexagone, which until its demise in 1982 regularly toured with Canadian and other plays for young audiences.

The English theatre section had one of its busiest seasons in 1982-83. It presented thirteen plays, nine of which were produced by the NAC; four were Canadian, though only two of these it produced itself. (These figures do not include children's plays such as the elaborate remounting of the John Wood-Alan Laing version of The Adventures of Pinocchio for the Christmas season.) The two major Canadian works were the Newfoundland production of Joey and Sharon Pollock's Walsh; the other two were one-person plays starring Eric Donkin and Susan Cox respectively.

The French section of the resident company was less stable than the English group. Herbiet said it was too difficult to get experienced French-speaking actors to live in Ottawa. There was not enough French theatre produced at the NAC and opportunities for continuous work for actors was far greater in Montreal than in Ottawa. In January 1982 Herbiet announced he was leaving the NAC after eleven years to become head of the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris. His replacement was a coup for the NAC: he was André Brassard, who has directed all of Michel Tremblay's major works, including the NAC's first play, presented in 1969 -Tremblay's adaptation of Lysistrata. Brassard soon announced six shows for the 1982-83 season, which included Tremblay's A toi, pour toujours, ta Marie-Lou and Maillet's new play, La Joyeuse Criée. Brassard showed his commitment that season to French-Canadian drama by presenting five works outside the main series. Though most of them played short runs in the NAC's smaller facilities, they gave more exposure to new Canadian work than was usual under Herbiet. During the next year Brassard continued this combination of well-known French-Canadian plays - La Petite Déprime, a collective, and a revival of Tremblay's Les Belles Soeurs -along with lesser known ones - Marinier's L'Inconception and Nickel by J.M. Dalpe and B. Haentjens.

With the exception of Paul Gross's strong, new play Sprung Rhythm and Robbie O'Neill's Tigthen the Traces/Haul in the Reins, the English section showed little imagination in its choice of Canadian drama in 1983-84. Two presentations in the Opera were noteworthy - the English version of the enormously popular québécois comedy Broue (Brew), and the musical version of Mordecai Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. (After the Ottawa performances of Duddy, its projected Canadian tour and subsequent Broadway production were cancelled.)

In fact, during the last two years the attention of NAC officials has been more on survival than on development. In the wake of weakening government support and the recommendation of the Federal Cultural Policy Review Committee that the NAC cease to produce its own plays and concentrate on showcasing work from elsewhere in Canada, Donald MacSween vigorously defended its record in the 1981-82 and 1982-83 annual reports. Nevertheless, even though the government had not yet acted on the Applebaum-Hébert report, MacSween announced early in 1984 that the resident company of actors was being disbanded in order to cut the NAC deficit. Whether justified or not, this abandonment of one of the NAC's mandates ended its most promising effort to carry out its broader aim: 'to develop the performing arts in the National Capital region.' ²⁵ NAC officials insist, however, that a resident theatre company is still one of their goals.

In February 1984 Andis Celms, who had been the theatre administrator from 1972, was appointed Producer of Theatre. Jean Gascon's position as Director of Theatre was eliminated though he continued as special consultant to the producer. John Wood's term as Artistic Director of English theatre ended in 1984 and he was not replaced. André Brassard remained as Artistic Director of French theatre. Celm's position was described in the news release:

As Producer, Mr. Celms will be responsible for the development and presentation of English Theatre at the NAC commencing with the 1984-85 season, and for the overall management and administration of the Theatre Department (French and English).²⁶

Celms soon made it clear that the loss of the resident company did not mean the end of producing plays at the NAC. Not long after he announced the 1984-85 English subscription series of seven plays - all comedies, in an effort to attract larger audiences - he said that two of these would be produced by the NAC alone, and one co-produced with Toronto's Centre Stage. There is some irony in the fact that this co-production of John Murrell's New World was directed by Robin Phillips, one of the harshest critics of the money given the NAC for its resident company. And there is consolation that, though all seven plays are comedies, four are Canadian. The loss of the NAC company may mean - and there is more irony here - a greater number of Canadian plays at the NAC for English theatregoers.

Shortly afterwards, Brassard announced the forthcoming main series of French theatre. It proved to be more balanced between comedy and serious drama than the English one - six plays including Moliére's L'Avare, Genet's Les Bonnes, comedies by Neil Simon and Swiss playwright Benno Benson, and new Canadian plays by Tremblay and Garneau. Two of the six will be produced by the NAC, and one co-produced with the Théâtre du Rideau Vert.

The NAC struggles on, still trying to find its niche in the Canadian theatre scene. As it begins a new and uncertain phase of its existence, we might well recall its achievements:

- After little attention to a structure for theatre in its early years, it developed structures that enabled it to fulfill its mandate. Whether it can continue to do so within this present financial limitations is doubtful.

- It has overcome the condescension it once showed towards Canadian drama, and seems to have a genuine, if inconsistent, commitment to the presentation of Canadian plays. Looking down the list of Canadian plays presented one is impressed with the number and variety of playwrights - until one begins to ask about the playwrights, both English and French, who are not there.

- NAC theatre companies have ventured beyond their home theatres, both locally and nationally, to bring drama to Canadians in many parts of the country. We should hope that tours will be possible again in the near future.

- The NAC has brought many Canadian theatre companies to Ottawa. The most recent Annual Report points out that just over 50 per cent of its theatre presentations have been by visiting companies.²⁷ Yet again there are gaps here - several important companies have been at the NAC only once or not at all.

The mandate given the National Arts Centre at its inception was a lofty and desirable one. That the mandate only has been fulfilled partially is due as much to the financial constraints imposed on it by the Federal Government as to the difficulties of running a theatre operation unique in Canada. Though it has not been consistent or developed a clear policy on Canadian plays, it has presented an impressive number of them and many of high quality. As the NAC moves shakily into the future, we can only hope that it will remain firm in its commitment to hold a mirror up to us as men and women and as Canadians.

Notes

THE NATIONAL ARTS CENTRE: FIFTEEN YEARS AT PLAY
[Please note that endnote #27 in article does not have a corresponding entry in list of endnotes].

James Noonan

1 National Arts Centre, Annual Report, 1967-68, p 32. I would like to express my thanks to Anthony Ibbotson, archivist for the NAC, who kindly made his material available, and to his assistant, Dianne Plouffe, who helped locate information in the files built up since Ibbotson's appointment as first archivist in 1979. Unfortunately, the position of archivist was abruptly abolished in February 1985. I also want to thank Andis Celms, now theatre producer at the NAC, for helping me compile the list of NAC officials in Appendix Two.
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2 Ibid, p 12
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3 Ibid
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4 Ibid
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5 National Arts Centre, Annual Report, 1969-70, p 7
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6 Ibid, p 8
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7 Ibid, p 7. This moving production, with Frances Hyland and Chief Dan George, prompted the following comment in the NAC report: 'This was the first time the play had been seen in Eastern Canada. Its theme, the lostness [sic] of an Indian girl in a modern Canadian urban environment, aroused attention of Parliament Hill, where the Commons was debating the Government's white paper on Indian policy.' The Royal Winnipeg Ballet version of the play was performed in the Opera of the NAC in 1971 and again in 1972.
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8 National Arts Centre, Annual Report, 1970-71, p 7
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9 Ibid
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10 National Arts Centre, Annual Report, 1971-72, p 10
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11 Ibid
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12 National Arts Centre, Annual Report, 1972-73, n.p.
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13 Ibid
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14 National Arts Centre, Annual Report, 1973-74, p 22
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15 Ibid
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16 National Arts Centre, Annual Report, 1974-75, p 21
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17 Ibid, p 12
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18 National Arts Centre, Annual Report, 1975-76, p 16
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19 National Arts Centre, Annual Report, 1976-77, p 20
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