The death of a kind of theatre...

Rewind, CBC Radio’s achieve program (hosted by the fantastic Michael Enright – one of the few voices of intelligence remaining from the glory days of the network), is running a two part series on the history of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Part one, which aired last week can be heard as a podcast on the CBC website. Part two is on this Thursday afternoon at 2pm.

The most notable moment for me came about half way through the broadcast (at 11:20 of the podcast if you want to hear it for yourself). A youthful Robertson Davies: “Editor of the Peterborough Examiner and very well known Canadian theatre personality” gives his reactions to the opening night performance of the first ever Stratford, Ontario production. Here’s what Davies had to say:

What I hope and what I’m sure a great many other people who are interested in theatre in Canada do hope, is that it is has begun the death of a kind of theatre which we have had for too long in this country. A kind of theatre which isn’t adequately financed, which depends for its productions on whatever is cheap rather than whatever is good, which is consistently under-rehearsed and undirected.

It is sobering to realize that Davies' quote could be uttered today – word for word – and still be accurate.

With Stratford now a multi-million dollar business and, locally here in Vancouver, on the day of the Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards ceremony, there is no doubt that we have advanced tremendously since 1953. But, then, so has the Canadian music and literary arts. While those art-forms have flourished both nationally and internationally, Canadian theatre still struggles (as do, to a large degree, English-language television and cinema). Theatre remains financially under-resourced in this country and, although he didn’t say it directly, my sense is that Davies also wanted us to not just put resources into Shakespeare productions but also into plays (and by extension television programs and films) that tell our own stories.

We’re still waiting for the death Davies so longed for.