Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Christine Brubaker on break

One of the things I love about being out here in Newfoundland is the opportunity to work with actors and singers I haven't met before. The quality of talent out here is pretty stellar. There are really impressive musicians in this cast.

In our band of fourteen, there are only three of us from out of province. Soprano Mia Mansfield is playing Glynis (Daniel MacIvor's character) and she hails from Bridgewater, NS. She is a recent grad of the theatre program at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College and actually performed in the initial student production of FEAR OF FLIGHT while she was there.

The other mainlander (as we're called here) other than Mia and myself is Christine Brubaker. Though we've never worked together, I've been a big fan of Christine's for some time now. It's a delight being in a show with her.

Other than being an exceptional performer, what blows me away about Christine is that she's brought along her SEVEN-week old baby Arlo to St. John's. Jill Keiley's amazing mom Mary looks after Arlo while we're rehearsing. Believe it or not, this isn't the first time that Christine has toured with a newborn. Here's a short interview with Christine during a break.



And here's Arlo, the cutest member of the FoF family:

Authentic Canadian Theatre ... Continued

In Cahoots' January 2008 Newsletter, Jovanni shared his recent thoughts on cultural diversity and the Canadian soul, initiating a flurry of thoughts, opinions and new ideas from the community of friends it reached! Below please find Jovanni's initial message, this follow-up message, as well as a message from Beverly Yhap, Cahoots' founder.

Please join-in in this discussion by adding comments below! We'd love to hear and talk about what you think!
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From Cahoots' Newsletter, April 2008
By Jovanni Sy

In January, I wrote an article for our newsletter that suggested the phrase ‘culturally diverse theatre’ had become more limiting than empowering. Much to my surprise, the essay struck a chord with many of you; we received close to two dozen responses. First, thanks to all of you who took the time to respond. Your comments are very much appreciated.

The majority of the responses were short supportive notes. There were others, however, who disagreed with my thesis and explained why in well-reasoned terms. One of them was Beverly Yhap, the Founding Artistic Director of Cahoots. Bev kindly agreed to write a response for this newsletter which you’ll find here.

Words of support are always great; respectful dissent, even better. But there were a few responses I found disturbing. These letters of ‘support’ seemed to miss the point of what I saying and went something like this: “It’s great that Cahoots is finally getting past the whole diversity thing. After all, theatre is theatre.” Well, no, it isn’t.

Let me clarify something right off the top: Cahoots is by no means altering its artistic mission of creating theatre that reflects the rich diversity of our country. (So please don’t expect our next season to include a Rodgers & Hammerstein musical and some play with four middle-aged white people in a cottage in the Muskokas.) I was not suggesting that Cahoots’ mandate was becoming somehow irrelevant—the scope of my argument was limited to the language used to describe that mandate.

The point I was raising was that if the art Cahoots produces is consistent with one of Canada’s core values—namely, multiculturalism—why do we insist on qualifying what we do with nomenclature that sets us apart? In other words, if we are part of the mainstream, shouldn’t we act accordingly? And shouldn’t this transition begin with the way we describe ourselves?

The use of the term ‘culturally diverse’ began as much-needed celebratory language—a cool oasis in a desert of Eurocentric theatre. But as the work of Cahoots and our sister companies proliferates, has the term become a millstone? Has it become more marginalizing than celebratory?

In my January article, I used the example of the term ‘lady doctor’ as an illustration of how inclusive language can, with changes of time and circumstance, become exclusive. This time, I’d like to offer a more concrete example of how words confer or remove power.

In February 2007, Cahoots (with Modern Times and Theatre Passe Muraille) produced Bobby Theodore’s translation of Ahmed Ghazali’s The Sheep and the Whale, an epic drama mounted with seventeen performers. In keeping with the play’s themes, our cast’s ethnic origins spanned all parts of the globe. I found it quite thrilling to see them fanned out taking their curtain call at the end of each performance. Obviously I wasn’t alone. Three separate reviews pointed out how exceptional it was to see a show that looked like modern-day Canada.

At the same time The Sheep and the Whale was running, Tarragon mounted their outstanding production of Wajdi Mouawad’s Scorched (translated by Linda Gaboriau). Much of the play’s action takes place in an unnamed Middle Eastern country engulfed in civil war. To the best of my knowledge, the cast of ten had no actors of Middle Eastern descent.

Scorched was easily one of the best shows in Toronto’s 2006/2007 season and I’m delighted that Tarragon is remounting it. But while we were being praised for reflecting Canada’s pluralism, I never read a single word pointing out that Scorched, as excellent as it was, represented a bold experiment in cross-cultural casting. In other words, a predominantly ‘white’ cast portraying Arabs was so ‘normal’ that it didn’t even merit comment. Personally, I find nothing offensive in casting Caucasians as Arabs because, ultimately, I think theatre must be driven by imagination.

What I do find offensive, however, is that artists from visible minorities are held to a different standard. If I were to produce, for example, a Martin McDonagh play with African- , Native- , and Asian-Canadians, there would inevitably be some reviewer asking, “They’re clearly not Irish. What did they mean by this? What kind of political statement were they trying to make?” And, of course, the answer would be that I’m making the same political statement as with Tarragon’s casting of Scorched: none whatsoever. And yet I constantly get asked this question while other producers do not.

I point this out not as an indictment of any particular theatre company. Scorched is a good illustration simply because it was running simultaneously with The Sheep the Whale. There are dozens of other examples I could have chosen. The fault lies not with those exercising their free artistic expression, but with our own willingness to accept what is ‘normal’ and what is an exception to the norm.

Which brings me back to the point of language and how it defines what the default culture is. Often, it’s the absence of language that confers the dominant status. Even more ironic is the ability of language we think of as positive to effectively place an asterisk on something of worth. To diminish when it intends to augment.

As lovely as it was to be publicly praised for the United Colours of Benetton feel of The Sheep and the Whale, I would gladly trade places so that our show’s multiculturalism went unnoticed while Scorched got praise for its edgy and daring use of non-traditional casting.

One of the main principles of chess is that whoever controls the middle of the board controls the game. Culture is no different. And language has the insidious ability to define who controls the centre. The praise for The Sheep and the Whale was hollow insomuch as it complimented us for doing what everyone should be doing: representing the world as it is in 2008. How perverse is that? It’s like praising your dinner guest for not stealing your silverware.

My fervent hope is that we reject language that labels ourselves as ‘the other’. Let’s stop ceding the middle of the board. And, while we’re at it, let’s politely point out when other guests are pinching the silverware. Because our silence makes it acceptable.

Friday, April 11, 2008

Fear of Flight

Hi everyone,

I'm in St. John's, Newfoundland rehearsing a brand new show called FEAR OF FLIGHT. FoF is the brainchild of Jillian Keiley and Robert Chafe of Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland.

FoF is an a cappella opera for fourteen performers set on an airplane. The piece is woven around scenes and monologues written by—get ready for this—Robert Chafe, Denise Clarke, Marie Clements, Bryden MacDonald, Daniel MacIvor, Bernie Stapleton, Judith Thompson, Guillermo Verdecchia, and David Yee. Ninety-five percent of the show is underscored by a glorious score composed by Jonathan Monro.

I'm tremendously proud that Cahoots is a co-producer on the world premiere of this piece. And I'm equally excited to be performing with this amazing theatre company and with a visionary director like Jill Keiley.

Every now and again I'll be posting some video blogs of our journey. Here's a video from day four of rehearsal:



And here's the in-flight magazine prop I'm talking about:



Obviously, I'm not the only one challenged by the prop. Here's soprano Julia Halfyard:

Authentic Canadian Theatre ... Continued

In Cahoots' January 2008 Newsletter, Jovanni shared his recent thoughts on cultural diversity and the Canadian soul, initiating a flurry of thoughts, opinions and new ideas from the community of friends it reached! Below please find Jovanni's initial message, his follow-up message, as well as this message from Beverly Yhap, Cahoots' founder.

Please join-in in this discussion by adding comments below! We'd love to hear and talk about what you think!
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What We Talk About When We Talk About Diversity
By Beverly Yhap, Founder of Cahoots Theatre Projects


I would be the first to acknowledge I’m a product of colonialism. I was a child in Trinidad in the sixties. I remember the Queen arriving to grant Trinidad & Tobago independence. It was a big deal for a small island wannabe nation. I was eight or nine, but I have this memory of a motor car with royalty inside. The last time I was in TT in 2001, I found the words to the national anthem forming a lump in my throat in spite of myself. I stubbornly identify myself as West Indian against the evidence I am inescapably Asian.

What does this personal preamble have to do with diversity? Perhaps because of my tenuous grasp at monoidentity — in the form of white-washed Canadian federalism championed by the two solitudes conundrum — I was slow to enter into the painstaking process of self-discovery whose watchword is diversity. Case in point: when I started Cahoots back in 1986, my first and only goal at the time was to create Canadian theatre “that stretched the boundaries of theatrical form,” whatever that was. It never occurred to me to situate myself — to consciously deconstruct and articulate my identity as a woman of colour — within the company.

If, as Laurie Anderson observes, language is a virus, the diversity bug was just incubating in ’86 and there were many different varieties. In 1990, Cahoots held a conference called Write About Now! for and about playwrights of visible minority. Djanet Sears urged us to be “pig-headed.” Lenore Keeshig-Tobias challenged the right of a white woman to chair a conference for writers who weren’t white. Arguments around authenticity, equity, majority and invisibility led to the adoption of people of colour as a more self-defining touchstone, less an applied checkbox label.

In the 90s the diversity epidemic took hold. Not just forums and discussions, but aggressive outreach — recruitment of qualified “coloreds” to diversify the ranks of predominantly white organizations — became de rigeur. Diversity became the flavour of the 90s to the extent that it spawned a backlash against political correctness. Credentials were tilted at, insecurities about tokenism played upon, and general queasiness about inclusion as cornerstone policy began to set in.

In the new millennium, it’s fashionable to look back on the squabbles of the past few decades with a kind of smug ascendancy. To see the struggles of the near past — the missteps, doubts, tongue-tied articulation — as unseemly, deeply uncool. As if to say aren’t we past all that diversity crap? Do I still need to identify myself with a hyphen? Isn’t Sandra Oh a star and isn’t that Obama dude in the States preaching unity anyway, so what’s all the fuss with diversity already?

Wouldn’t we all like diversity to go away. Wouldn’t we all like to be just folks going about our business without having to point out the obvious visual or aural disclaimers? Can’t we give race and ethnicity a rest? Aren’t we — like the beer commercial used to claim — all Canadian?
Or are some more Canadian than others? Does having a hyphen to your existence make you more or less Canadian? Does dropping the hyphen make you lighter and brighter? Does it make you more of a phony, a sell-out? Or are you just opting to opt out of a discourse few Canadians of pallor outside Québec really have to indulge in?

Come to that, do you have to be Canadian, or can you just live here and work, keep your head down and basically just be an immigrant? (Or, better yet —if the moniker fits —in the words of a recent Toronto City Councilor, a “hard-working Oriental.”)

Me, I kept my head down for years. I was good and colonized. But Write About Now! and the collapse of my marriage broke down the studied erasure. By 1991 I finally came to trust, to feel grounded enough in this country that I could claim real citizenship. And that meant being fully Canadian: hyphens, masks, fears, accents, colour and all.

For me, diversity isn’t a choice. It isn’t some credo I espouse because I have to or because it’s expected of me, or because if I don’t do it no one else will, or because other people need to hear it from me. Diversity isn’t clothing, it’s skin. It doesn’t come off or wash out or go out of fashion. It just is. And we can argue about it, talk it down, wish it away or begin to recognize just what we mean when we say it doesn’t matter, that diversity’s passé, that it only applies to people of colour. When we talk about diversity, let’s please really yes talk about diversity.

Authentic Canadian Theatre ... Continued

In Cahoots' January 2008 Newsletter, Jovanni shared his recent thoughts on cultural diversity and the Canadian soul, initiating a flurry of thoughts, opinions and new ideas from the community of friends it reached! Below please find Jovanni's initial message, his follow-up message, as well as a message from Beverly Yhap, Cahoots' founder.

Please join-in in this discussion by adding comments below! We'd love to hear and talk about what you think!

---
From Cahoots' January Newsletter
By Jovanni Sy

Since I'm writing this on the Feast of the Epiphany, it seems appropriate to share a recent epiphany of my own.Last month, Cahoots took a group of artists for a wonderful playwriting retreat in Niagara-on-the-Lake. I met a number of people there who had never heard of our company before. And so, I gave the description of Cahoots that I recite by rote: "We develop and produce new Canadian plays that reflect our cultural diversity." I must have repeated this a dozen times but something about the thirteenth recitation just didn’t sound right.
For the first time, I wondered: why do I say “reflect our cultural diversity”? For the first time, those four words seemed strangely superfluous. I’m not that suggesting that cultural diversity isn’t important. Quite the opposite: cultural diversity is so intrinsic to the Canadian soul that my description felt tautological.In other words, doesn’t it make more sense for us to describe Cahoots simply as “a company that produces new Canadian plays”? In saying this, we are by definition saying that we are culturally diverse because Canada is culturally diverse. At least that’s what the most recent census and my own two eyes tell me.
Doesn’t it make more sense for, say, Unnamed Theatre to describe itself as “The place for Canadian theatre if Canada looked like Norway”? Or for Theatre Incognito to say “Our stage looks nothing like your life”? Perhaps the Redacted Festival should change its website to “Proudly celebrating the deceased white male playwright.”
Now, I don’t want to sound dismissive of these mandates. Indeed, many of my artistic heroes are Caucasian men mouldering in their graves. The point I’m trying to make is that these companies don’t feel compelled to describe their artistic missions in exclusive language. What do I mean by exclusive language? Let me share one of my favourite examples.

When I was growing up (and here I beg your indulgence: I’m turning forty this year so I may be prone to expressions like “when I was growing up” that make me sound like Grandpa Simpson), it wasn’t uncommon to hear people refer to “lady doctors”. Although there were a number of female physicians in the 1970s, they were rare enough that people felt obliged to add the qualifier “lady”. Thankfully, in the 21st century, if you were to say “lady doctor” people would look at you strangely, as if you had had a mind fart and forgotten the word OB-GYN. At a certain point, the term outlived its usefulness.

Which leads me to my New Year’s resolution. I think “reflect our cultural diversity” may have outlived its usefulness. I think its use may, in fact, undermine the bedrock notion that Canada is a land of many peoples. This year, I resolve that when people ask me what Cahoots does, I will say that we produce authentic Canadian theatre. I wish you a happy and creative 2008.