Table Of ContentCOLLECTIVE ENCOUNTERS:
DOCUMENTARY THEATRE IN ENGLISH CANADA
Alternative theatre has been one of Canada's strongest cultural institutions
over the past twenty years. Coinciding with a major revival of nationalism in
Canadian culture during the late 19605, this strength was in evidence through-
out the country, and provided fertile ground for the growth of an important
dramatic genre: the collectively created documentary play. Typically inspired
by a distinctive community or a political issue, these plays are created
through a process that begins with a group of actors researching a specific issue
or community and ends with a performance aimed at a specific audience. Some
of the works thus created represent the most popular plays ever staged in
Canada.
In this study of the genre as it has developed nationally, Alan Filewod
examines six landmark examples in terms of their impact on their respec-
tive theatres and their role in Canada's cultural development generally. The
plays include Theatre Passe Muraille's The Farm Show, Toronto Workshop
Production's Ten Lost Years, Globe Theatre's No. i Hard, 2jth Street
Theatre's Paper Wheat, The Mummers Troupe's Buchans: A Mining Town,
and Catalyst Theatre's It's About Time.
Each of these six plays represents an aspect of the documentary genre.
Together they evoke a period of unprecedented activity in Canadian theatre
and the wide range of social, political, and cultural issues that have driven it.
ALAN FILEWOD is assistant professor in the Department of Drama, University
of Guelph, and editor of Canadian Theatre Review.
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ALAN FILEWOD
Collective Encounters:
Documentary Theatre in
English Canada
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
University of Toronto Press 1987
Toronto Buffalo London
Printed in Canada
ISBN 0-8020-2633-8 (cloth)
ISBN 0-8020-6669-0 (paper)
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Filewod, Alan D. (Alan Douglas), 1952-
Collective encounters
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-8020-2633-8 (bound) ISBN 0-8020-6669-0 (pbk.
1. Experimental theater - Canada - History.
2. Historical drama, Canadian (English) - History
and criticism. 3. Canadian drama (English) - 2oth
century - History and criticism. I. Title.
PN2304-F55 1987 792.i'4'o97i 087-094126-7
Cover photo: A scene from Ten Lost Years, 1975, courtesy of Toronto Workshop
Productions.
Photos courtesy of Catalyst Theatre, Chris Brookes, Globe Theatre, Theatre Passe
Muraille, Toronto Workshop Productions, 2jth Street Theatre.
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation
for the Humanities, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanties
Research Council of Canada.
Contents
PREFACE Vll
1
The Evolution of Documentary Theatre in Canada 3
2
Documentary and Collective Creation: The Farm Show 24
3
Documentary and Popular History: Ten Lost Years 50
4
Documentary and Regionalism: No. i Hard and Paper Wheat 80
5
The Political Documentary: Buchans: A Mining Town 112
6
Documentary and Audience Intervention: It's About Time 152
Conclusion: Canadian Documentary Theatre in Context 182
NOTES 189
BIBLIOGRAPHY 199
INDEX 207
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Preface
In this book I have attempted to define in historical and critical terms one of the
most important developments of modern English Canadian theatre. In Canada,
as in the rest of the western world, the 19605 and 19705 saw a widespread revival
of political and experimental theatre. In little more than a decade Canadian
theatre experienced an unprecedented revolution as hundreds of new troupes
emerged, introducing new playwrights who legitimized Canadian drama. In
1965 there were fewer than a dozen professional theatres in English Canada; ten
years later there were well over a hundred (and as many again in Quebec). This
development was the result of a complex intersection of historical forces, among
them the revival of nationalism that was so crucial in all sectors of Canadian life
in the 19705; the large scale injection of government funding into the arts; the
maturing of the post-war generation and its rejection of traditional artistic
conventions; and a world-wide revival of experimental theatre that challenged
traditional forms of theatrical production.
These factors came together in what critics called the 'alternative theatre
movement' because it was perceived to oppose the system of publicly subsidized
civic theatres established across Canada in the late 19503 and early 19603. The
development of the alternative theatre was an important stage in the evolution
of Canadian culture from colonialism to cultural autonomy. For that reason I
refer to the alternative theatre as 'post-colonial,' not in the constitutional sense
but because of its explicit rejection of foreign models and standards. A colonized
culture is one that defines itself in terms absorbed from a dominating power. In
that sense, the experience of theatre reversed the historical evolution of
colonialism in Canadian society. If English Canada in general moved from a
colonial allegiance to the British connection in the early years of this century to
an increasing assimilation into American cultural hegemony in the post-war
decades, in the theatre the reverse was the case.
viii Preface
At the turn of the century almost every theatre in Canada was owned or
contracted to the giant American touring syndicates. Fearing (correctly, as it
turned out) that this would retard the growth of independent Canadian theatre
and drama, critics of the day argued for a 'theatrical declaration of indepen-
dence' from the United States. They advocated instead the new British idea of
subsidized civic theatres. It was this vision, promoted initially by men whose
artistic sensibilities and cultural loyalties were those of a British Canada, that
was realized in the regional theatre system established after the Second World
War. Not suprisingly, these new theatres looked towards Britain for expertise,
artistic standards, and repertoire. Consequently, to the emerging, fiercely
nationalistic generation of the 19605, the regional theatres exemplified what
came to be criticised as a colonial dependence on Britain. This attack on
established theatre as colonial was fuelled by the disproportionate number of
British directors in the large theatres and by the extreme caution and frequent
scepticism with which they greeted Canadian plays.
In its repudiation of 'colonial' structures of thought and methods of
theatrical creation, the alternative theatre sought to discover authentic,
indigenous Canadian dramatic forms. The quest was successful: one of the
major results of the movement was the introduction of a unique dramatic genre
in the collectively created documentary play. From the late 19605 to the present,
Canadian theatres have produced hundreds of collective creations, created by
the actors through research and improvisation, and documentary plays,
compiled from research into communities and historical issues. Typically these
two features overlapped: collective creation was the most common means of
creating documentary theatre, and documentary plays were usually created
collectively. There was, however, enough of a divergence to suggest that the
two cannot be understood as synonymous. Consequently it is necessary to
consider collective creation as a process, and documentary theatre as its most
common result. It is because documentary theatre can be analysed as both an
historical phenomenon and a genre of performance with its unique formal
characteristics that I have chosen it as the focus of this study.
Because it investigates the documentary theatre in both of these terms, this
book is at once theatre history and dramatic criticism. An understanding of the
conditions out of which the documentary plays emerged, the methods used to
create them, and their subsequent effect on the theatre as an institution is
necessary to an appreciation of their dramatic form. Unlike the literary drama,
which I suggest is essentially antithetical to documentary theatre, the
documentary play rarely survives as a 'final' text.
The decision to examine the documentary theatre in both historical and
analytical contexts was necessitated in part by the fact that this is the first
ix Preface
in-depth study of the theatrical forms emerging out of the English Canadian
alternative theatre. Instead of attempting a broad survey, I have looked at six
representative plays, of which only three have been published. Most of the
documentary plays produced in Canada have already disappeared; those that
survive do so as typescripts or tape recordings to be found in theatre files,
private homes, or, more rarely, in archival collections. Consequently any
discussion of the form must contain enough description to acquaint the reader
with the plays even as they are analysed.
The plays discussed in this book have been selected for their representative
value, providing a cross-section of the range of Canadian documentary, and as
individual models of specific aspects of the form. They include some of the most
celebrated of Canadian plays as well as some of the least known. I have included
Theatre Passe Muraille's The Farm Show because it was the prototype of the
most common form of Canadian documentary; it also raises the issue of
documentary form and collective creation. Ten Lost Years by Toronto
Workshop Productions provides the opportunity to examine the relation of
documentary structure and original source material. To accommodate the
regional impulse behind much of Canadian documentary, I have included plays
from the prairies and Newfoundland. In the first case, a comparison of two plays
about the Saskatchewan grain industry, Globe Theatre's No. i Hard and 25th
Street Theatre's Paper Wheat, examines the apparent authenticity of documen-
tary theatre and the collectively created revue. In the second case, the
Mummers Troupe's Buchans: A Mining Town exemplifies the political
documentary devised as an active intervention in a community struggle.
Finally, Catalyst Theatre's It's About Time, an interactive 'theatre forum,'
questions the limits of the documentary idea.
My analyses of these plays rest on the critical assumption that the
documentary theatre must be considered a genre of performance rather than a
form of literary drama. For that reason I have chosen to examine these plays as
they were performed in their historical contexts. The descriptive analyses of the
plays are contained within more general discussions of their place in the
development of their respective theatres. I hope that this approach will lead to a
fuller understanding of the relation of dramatic form and performance structure
to the society upon which both reflect. As 'non-fiction'plays, they also deserve
to be considered in terms of their subjects. In the course of such discussions I
have tried to refrain, not always as successfully as I might wish, from passing
judgment on the issues and controversies behind the plays.
A few words are in order about the critical standards by which I evaluate the
plays. Documentary theatre tends to put the process by which it is created into
the fore by including references to that process within the performance itself. In
