Nonprofessionalized Theatre in Canada's Professional
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Un/Disciplined Performance: Nonprofessionalized Theatre in Canada’s Professional Era by Robin Charles Whittaker A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Centre for Study of Drama University of Toronto © Copyright Robin Charles Whittaker 2010 Un/Disciplined Performance: Nonprofessionalized Theatre in Canada’s Professional Era Robin Charles Whittaker Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Centre for Study of Drama University of Toronto 2010 Abstract The discourse of Western theatre practice is founded on, and maintained as, a legitimizing struggle between the terms “professional” and “amateur.” This study moves beyond the traditional signifiers of Canadian amateur theatre—the Little Theatre Movement, the Dominion Drama Festival and connotations of “inferior” and “dilettantish”—to examine two nonprofessionalized companies that have witnessed the professionalization of Anglo-Canadian theatre in order to argue for the relevance and vitality of contemporary “nonprofessionalized” theatre practices. By drawing from Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory and Michel Foucault’s discourse theory and theories of formations of disciplines, this study argues that theatre professions seek to discipline, delegitimize and exclude nonprofessionalizing practices in order to gain capital (economic, social and cultural) at the expense of the creative freedoms inherent in nonprofessionalized work. It also considers the ways in which theatre scholarship omits critical discussion of amateur practice and how the term “amateur” is co-opted as a clouded pejorative ii signifier and erased by the contested term “community” within theatre discourse (institutions, practices and the Canadian imaginary). Following a case study approach based on archival documents, the study provides the foundation for a social history of Alumnae Theatre Company (1918- ), beginning with its early years as part of the University of Toronto’s University College Alumnae Association, by examining the relationship between amateur theatre practice and campus philanthropy, followed by Alumnae’s impact on Toronto’s professionalizing theatre scene in the context of alterity in Canadian theatre discourse. It then examines Walterdale Theatre Associates’ (1958- ) relationship to the emerging theatre profession before and after the opening of Edmonton’s Citadel Theatre in 1965 to argue that Walterdale benefits the profession and its professionalizing artists while negotiating complex concerns over institutionalization. Their longevity is explained, in part, by the fact that both companies operate “as if” professional, yet outside of professionalized disciplinary regimes. iii Acknowledgements I am indebted to Bruce Barton, Alan Filewod and Heather Murray for their insight, guidance, careful reading and adroit judgment during the past five years. Anne Nothof’s detailed eye as external has provided an expanded perspective on my work going forward. This study has benefited from three Ontario Graduate Scholarships and a University of Toronto School of Graduate Studies Travel Grant; the latter allowed me to do archival research in Edmonton in June 2007. Of the seven conferences at which I have presented material from this study, partial travel funding was provided for five by ACSUS, Thompson Rivers University (a CURA grant), MANECCS/SACS and the Graduate Centre for Study of Drama (twice). Archival research is hardly the solitary business it is purported to be. Lance Dittrich and Kent Sutherland of Walterdale and Catherine Spence of Alumnae granted me open and convenient access to their respective holdings. The staff at the Provincial Archives of Alberta, and Harold Averill and Loryl MacDonald at the University of Toronto Archives, provided infinite assistance. Richard Rose kindly forwarded his unpublished adaptation of Tempest-Tost. Richard Plant, David Staines, Chris Eaket, Barry Freeman and James McKinnon (who first suggested we see a play at Walterdale in 1999) have framed my way of thinking about this work, as did the two anonymous readers of my Walterdale anthology (Athabasca UP 2008). I must thank Mr. Maslan, my grade eight teacher, for instilling in me a fearlessness of the over-forty-page paper. I am, as ever, grateful to my father Brian and my late mother Marlene for convincing me at a very young age that writing is vital. And to my wife Amy, who has seen the best and the worst of graduate education, I owe a readiness for the regime, an awareness of the pitfalls, a sense of the sensible and the ridiculous, and the meaning of love. iv Table of Contents Abbreviations......................................................................................................vi Introduction: Un/Disciplined Performance ...........................................................1 Part I: Discourse, Practice, Mythologies and the Field of Cultural Production...........................19 Chapter 1: Methodology.....................................................................................21 Chapter 2: “Non/Professionalized”: Framing the Divide.....................................45 Chapter 3: Discipline Issues: Three Familiar, Contested Terrains.......................63 Part II: Two Nonprofessionalized Theatres and the Field of Cultural Production.......................95 Chapter 4: “Intellectual Theatre”: Purpose and Programming at Toronto’s Alumnae Theatre Company..................97 Chapter 5: Professionalization and Its Discontents: Edmonton’s Walterdale Theatre Associates in the Professional Era..................160 Conclusions: Toward a Historiography of Nonprofessionalized Theatre...........229 Works Cited.....................................................................................................240 v Abbreviations Archive Locations ATCA Alumnae Theatre Company Archives (not indexed). Accessed Nov-Dec 2004, Feb 2009, July 2009. PAA Provincial Archives of Alberta. “Walterdale Theatre Associates.” Accessed June 2007. UTA University of Toronto Archives. Accessed July 2009. WEMM Walterdale Executive Meeting Minutes (at PAA and WPA). WPA Walterdale Playhouse Archives (not indexed). Accessed June 2006 and June 2007. Groups and Institutions AEA American Actors’ Equity Association (1913- ) ACTRA Association of Canadian Television and Radio Artists (1943- ) CAC Canadian Advisory Committee of AEA (1955-63) CAEA Canadian Actors’ Equity Association (1976- ) CEC Canadian Executive Committee of AEA (1963-76) DDF Dominion Drama Festival (1933-71) LOCT League of Canadian Theatres MTC Manitoba Theatre Centre (1958- ) PACT Professional Association of Canadian Theatres (1976- ), previously League of Canadian Theatres TA (Edmonton) Theatre Associates (1958-70), then WTA (1970- ) TC Theatre Canada (1971-78), formerly DFF UADC University Alumnae Dramatic Club (1942-72), previously the Dramatic Club of the University College Alumnae Association (1920-42), later the Firehall Theatre (1972-78), then Alumnae Theatre (1978-90) and Alumnae Theatre Company (1990- ) U. C. University College, University of Toronto (1853- ) U. of T. University of Toronto (1850- ) WDC Women’s Dramatic Club of University College, occasionally referred to as the Women’s Dramatic Club of the University of Toronto (1908-21) vi Introduction Un/Disciplined Performance I don’t think there is any connection between amateur and professional at all. I can’t conceive of any bridge. — Emrys Jones qtd in Lee, Love and Whisky, 301, 1973 [I]t’s hard to tell when the professionals leave off and the amateurs take over. — Chris Anderson, The Long Tail, 6, 2006 Acting, as a profession, is still in its infancy in Canada. — Robertson Davies’s Trueman, “A Dialogue on the State of the Theatre in Canada,” 375, 1951 Canadian theatre criticism has unflaggingly traced the history of the field of theatre in Canada as if it were in a perpetual state of maturation.1 Embedded in this mythologizing discourse is the presumption that maturation is analogous to professionalization. A nation, this narrative implies, seeks to define its cultural identity by drawing its artistic practices “up” from amateur to professional status. To achieve cultural maturity—diagnosed from the symptoms of quality, skill and right-headed attitude—selfless artists, administrators and activists form associations that rally specialist, public and state attention to their cause. But simultaneous to this narrative is the socio-cultural impact of diverse amateur practices that continue to constitute and redefine the field of theatre. Anglo-Canadian theatre, for all of its awards banquets, state-funding initiatives, degree- conferring drama departments and conservatory training schools, is hardly a self-sustaining 1 On the maturation myth in Canadian theatre discourse see Alan Filewod Performing and “Erect.” 1 2 cultural resource. Each year, barely 15% of all Canadians set foot in a theatre.2 Arts managers are hired to spend their time trawling for new and sustainable audiences and writing grant proposals, and they can rarely allocate grants beyond a one- or two-year plan. Moreover, “Canadian theatre” is largely an assortment of happenstantial and fitful individual, group and government initiatives which, during the twentieth century in English-speaking Canada, are normally enumerated to include the Dominion Drama Festival (DDF) (1933-783), the Stratford Festival (1953- ), the Manitoba Theatre Centre (1958- ) and subsequent regional theatres, the Shaw Festival (1962- ), the National Arts Centre (1969- ), the four so-called Toronto “alternate