Alan Filewod
Professor Usmiani begins this somewhat breezy account of selected Canadian theatres in the 1970s with the caution that hers is not a reference work, but an analytic survey. We are in need of a good analysis of the past decade, but it must be approached with a more careful attention to historical considerations, and indeed to accuracy, than this book offers.
Was Canadian alternative theatre part of a larger international movement? The author argues that it was, and to that point she begins with a lengthy chapter detailing the familiar geneology of European modernism. But by the end of the study, the thesis remains an assertion; it has not been developed into an argument. If there is value in the idea of an alternative movement reaching into Canada from Europe and America, it lies in the new light this might shed on the Canadian experience. But having stated her thesis, Professor Usmiani abandons it in favour of a more conventional reportage. Nowhere are other models recognized. One looks in vain, for instance, for the suggestion that Canadian alternative theatre may in fact have been more closely related to the post-colonial experiences of Latin America and Australia than to the radical experiments of the U.S. and Europe.
According to Professor Usmiani, alternative theatre exists parallel to a mainstream theatre, but remains separate by virtue of revolutionary aesthetics and ideology. But if 'alternative' is a volitional stand, why was it institutionalized by the Canada Council and maintained by grant ceilings? Nowhere in this study do we find a consideration of the economic determinants on the small theatres of the 1970s. Professor Usmiani's concept of alternative suggests a dialectic that she does not develop. At one point we are told that Tarragon Theatre, once an alternative, is now a mainstream theatre. There is a suggestion of historical process here, but its actual workings are passed over.
This all suggests that Second Stage is built upon a weak argument that smacks of expediency. What makes it worse is that Professor Usmiani's research is inadequate to her purpose. The book is riddled with errors, both substantial and accidental. We are left with the impression that the author is not fully at home with her subject. In a list of alternative theatres in Toronto in 1975, she includes Theatre Plus, which is as mainstream as they come (by her definition), as well as Theatre in the Dell and Upstairs at Old Angelo's, both of which are commercial operations.
Aside from the prefatory chapter and overviews of Toronto and Quebec, the book looks at five theatres in detail. Any study of Canadian theatre must discuss Theatre Passe Muraille (called by the author Passe-Muraille) and the Mummers Troupe (called here The Mummers' Troupe). Tamahnous Theatre and Theatre D'Aujourd'hui both deserve their inclusion; in fact, these are the best chapters. John Juliani's Savage God, described as 'an ever-changing, ongoing experience of explosive multiple happenings', is a more eccentric choice, but not, as the chapter demonstrates, inappropriate. But these case studies do not amount to a coherent whole. Most of the information in the book is gleaned from readily available sources and occasional interviews. Professor Usmiani was apparently too willing to accept what she was told as truth, and this has led her to error and misconstruction.
It is not true, for example, that Paul Thompson and George Luscombe feel that 'the actor is reduced to the status of a reciting puppet in a traditional scripted play'; surely that is overstating the case. Nor is it true that Chris Brookes, while director of the Mummers Troupe, decided on the format and style of each show before the actors became involved. Professor Usmiani's failure to doublecheck so simple a fact is indicative of the research behind this book. Elsewhere we are told that Brookes took part in Memorial University's Fogo Project (he did not); that the Mummers' Company Town was not invited to play in the St. John's Arts and Culture Centre (it was); that the vision of oil riches satirized in Some Slick, again by the Mummers, has come true (ask any Newfoundlander!).
Other errors are simply frustrating. Names are misspelled: Eric Paterson for Peterson; Ernst Ederer for Eder; Ted Johnson for Johns; Cornerbrook for Corner Brook. Plays are misnamed: Steven Bush's Richard ThirdTime becomes King Richard Third-String. The absence of production data leads to confusion in the text. In an analysis of Company Town by the Mummers, we are told that 'The next episode presents Bembo, a sick miner ( ... )'Without a cast list there is no way the reader can know that this refers to Bembo Davies, one of the actors in the original collective. And then there are those errors that are simply perplexing. What is one to make of a statement like 'One might look upon the uproar caused by Futz as a repetition - Canadian-style and with the usual 'Canadian delay' of little over a century - of the scandal created by Ubu Roi in 1896 France.'? In its chronological confusion, editorial sloppiness and pretentious analogy, that sentence is all too typical of this book.
Alan Filewod