Читать книгу Re: Producing Women's Dramatic History - D.A. Hadfield - Страница 15

In the Toronto area, one of the most committed companies with a specific mandate for developing uncommissioned and unsolicited new work is Tarragon Theatre, a theatre that works explicitly and implicitly within the model of single-authored, script-based productions. Tarragon’s reputation for “success” makes it a desirable model for many theatres engaged in the process of new play development. Former dramaturg/artistic director Urjo Kareda described Tarragon as “a playwright’s theatre. Nothing happens here until a script or a writer walks through the door” (Cottreau, “Writing” 5). As Kareda himself admitted, the writers who were most likely to attract his attention when they walked through the door exhibited “a voice that is muscular, that leaves a lot of air, that asks more questions than it answers, that is interested in various kinds of form, that has a nose for the theatrical. . .. I think I’m probably much more friendly toward plays with gaping, interesting holes, rather than nice, neat constructions” (Cottreau, “Writing” 7, 8), qualities that are at least potentially congenial to feminist representation at the level of script. Moreover, for feminist writers working in this mode, being involved at Tarragon increases the odds of materializing on both stage and page. Kareda stressed that “it is the giving of time, continuity and commitment from a theatre to a writer which represents the most crucial currency” (Kareda 9), and was prepared, if necessary, to wait a year or more for the playwright’s vision and voice to manifest itself. Such a commitment from Tarragon brings with it the increased likelihood of arts council grants, an essential source of funding to allow a playwright to develop her new work (uncommissioned playwrights, unlike other theatre workers, are normally paid only from a percentage of box office receipts, another way the system implicitly endorses product over process). Moreover, a developing playwright at Tarragon is virtually guaranteed an eventual production there: having waited sometimes years for a script to materialize, Kareda would do everything in his power to make sure it achieved some sort of embodiment on stage. At times, as Kareda noted (10), his commitment to a playwright extended to mounting productions of scripts developed prior to her/his arrival at Tarragon.

Just as important, a production at Tarragon increases the likelihood of allowing the play to complete the passage from page to stage and back again, inscribing its mark into Canadian theatre history. Reviewers regularly attend and publish on Tarragon productions, and Kareda’s development and production records are preserved and publicly accessible through the University of Guelph archives. Moreover, Kareda has been known to venture into the process of historiography to ensure the survival of a work beyond Tarragon: “I have pursued and hounded publishers to see that new plays, once performed, can also be printed so that others can experience them; I have entered the dreaded world of marketing to make sure that the wonderful new plays by Judith Thompson or Don Hannah or Colleen Murphy . . . find homes beyond their premières at Tarragon” (Kareda 10). Tarragon plays, with their predominantly logocentric structure, offer relatively few challenges to the traditional processes of theatre historiography, making it easier for them to endure as a visible part of a Canadian feminist theatrical tradition. Writers such as Carol Bolt, Sally Clark, Margaret Hollingsworth, and Judith Thompson, whose names are by now a relatively well-known part of Canadian theatre, have all benefited from working with Tarragon.

It must be stressed, however, that Tarragon offers a congenial home for a very specific type of feminist theatre, those plays that are concerned with unravelling or exploring the representation of women at the level of script, rather than within the broader context of producing structure; or, in Ann Wilson’s terms, those that are more concerned with “what is represented” rather than “representation itself.” (Some critics might argue that plays following this structure are not “feminist enough” for consideration, but I think this is an unfair and overly simplistic dismissal.) While Kareda’s choice of texts left room for non- or anti-hegemonic feminist scripts, and while he acknowledged the contributions of designers and actors, and “the resonances that [these] collaborators will eventually add” (Kareda 7), the play, and its Tarragon production, emphatically revolved around the absolute authority of the individual playwright: “The first production of a new play—the culmination of the development processes—has to be the writer’s production, presenting the writer’s vision of the play as interpreted by the most gifted collaborators possible” (Kareda 8). In addition, Kareda’s philosophy of new play development implicitly reinscribed the separation between “public” and “private” experience that much feminist theatre seeks to combat. Kareda’s ideal playwright may have personal or emotional baggage, but he did not see the playwrighting process as the place to confront or deal with it. In 1986, Kareda described his role as dramaturg as supportive, but not strictly personal: “[I]t is vital, in this context, not to be tempted to trespass from dramaturgy into therapy. Sometimes what blocks a work’s creation is the writer’s own emotional state, but one mustn’t pretend that one is equipped to deal effectively with the psyche in order to obtain a second act” (Kareda 9), a position that he reiterated in 1996: “The danger of dramaturgy, of course, is that sometimes the work will never be better unless the life can be fixed. You’re not there to try and fix the life” (Cottreau, “Writing” 8). While this was very much a responsible stance for someone in Kareda’s position to take, it also circumscribed a particular type of theatre experience, one which drew a careful distinction between the private, personal life of the playwright and the public life of her play. Tarragon’s centring on the presence of the playwright-as-function results in the absence of the writer-as-individual, evacuating her personal-ity in the name of creating an artefact for public consumption.

Tarragon’s reputation for “success” in new play development offers an implicit endorsement for this logocentric model,² in turn reinforcing the validity and prevalence of theatrical productions that venerate the primacy of the script. Script-based productions are also most congenial to history, since the “core” of the event is a document that can be easily published, preserved, and reproduced. A script that can be printed or distributed by either the playwright or the Playwright’s Union, preserved in an archive, or—better yet—published in an anthology, has a much greater chance of establishing its presence onstage through subsequent productions and/or in classrooms as the subject of academic inquiry. As Ric Knowles points out, “[t]heatre structures and modes of production shape what audiences experience, but it is the publication of scripts that dictates what is read and preserved and enters school curricula” (“Voices” 109). Plays based on a textual model have built-in easy historiographical access that makes them more visible to audiences beyond those who ever attended a particular theatrical event.

Moreover, plays identified as the work of “the author” create fewer difficulties for the actual processes of mounting a production run. When an author is relatively well-known or has a particular reputation, a marketing campaign can cash in on the celebrity cachet, even if the play is a new and unknown work. An ad can offer a short plot synopsis or other description of the “product” it is selling. Advertisements for plays also often feature short (favourable) quotes from reviews, either from the specific production being advertised (if the ads appear after the run has opened), or from previous productions or previous plays by the same playwright, with the implicit assurance for potential audience members that the production they will see is essentially the same—and will have the same merits—as the production to which the reviews refer.

Reviewing itself is a crucial factor in the production life of most plays, a concurrent and supplemental textual practice which can have serious economic ramifications for a particular production. Bad press can keep audiences away, forcing a theatre to cancel or curtail production runs.³ And the traditional processes of reviewing have been entrenched, not surprisingly, with the scripted production as a model, allowing critics to pass judgement based on how well a production serves to illuminate the meaning apparently innate in a particular text. “Because Canadian schools and universities usually classify drama as a genre of literature, most Canadian theatre critics have been nurtured as literary critics,” with the result that most mainstream critics “still doggedly insist that the performance event is best regarded as primarily an expression of a transcendent meaning—the script” (Leonard 6). The script, as a tangible text, can easily, even comfortably, be situated at the centre of a production by critics more used to reading texts than assessing performance practice. When the writer of the script already has a reputation as a playwright, so much the better: critics can demonstrate the scope and breadth of their knowledge by positioning a particular script within the already established “tradition” of a particular playwright’s work, and passing judgement on how well it “fits” there. In some cases, like Sally Clark’s Jehanne of the Witches, for example, the availability of a visible and discrete author allows critics to condemn a production without condemning the playwright. Given the reality that “theatre critics are working journalists whose primary responsibility is not to theatre as an artform, nor to criticism as a discipline, but to newspaper publishing as a business” (Leonard 10), it is hardly surprising that critics should take the path of least resistance and most “newsworthiness,” preferring scripts to “performance events.”

Even feminist playwrights who offer critics a script-based drama, however, must contend with the likelihood that the (non-feminist) reviewer will be unfamiliar with or unsympathetic to any departure from the Aristotelian dramatic principles that he has been taught. Banuta Rubess explains one of the most immediate problems that surfaces in the gender gap between theatre practitioners and critics:

Women often write in waves, repeated climaxes, collages. It’s true that often male critics will then complain about a lack of build or something. I hate to single out male critics, but the consistency is uncanny. I think my work, collective or solitary, has almost only received raves by women—understanding, perceptive assessments. Male critics have also liked my work at times.. . . But it’s the consistent understanding on the part of female reviewers that makes me believe there really is a difference. (Rudakoff and Much 68)

Joan MacLeod echoes Rubess’s discontent with the level of misunderstanding evident in reviews from male critics. Specifically, she recounts the frustration of having a generally positive review written by a male critic that “was such a bizarre interpretation of the play, and so incorrect, that we couldn’t use it to promote the show” (Rudakoff and Much 205). A good review can have real economic function within the network of theatrical production, but if it fails to connect with an understanding audience, it becomes useless in terms of this function. In this case, MacLeod identified the type of message she hoped to convey with her production, and would not risk endorsing an interpretation that would compromise the horizon of expectations her audience might bring to it.

While there are definitely benefits to be derived from the kind of script-based process practiced at Tarragon and other theatres working to Tarragon’s literary example, the advantages might not always outweigh the disadvantages. Easy historiographic visibility may carry with it a hefty price. For feminists committed to politicizing the personal, the Tarragon model offers no solution to the problem of lives left blank because of the way it maintains a strict separation between the author-function and the individual who writes. For feminists concerned with dismantling the monologic system authored and perpetuated by men, it offers no real challenge to the representational status quo. Even for feminists determined to validate women’s stories and experiences equally with those of men, there is the tremendous likelihood of miscomprehension by the literary critics whose own supplementary texts will characterize and qualify the play’s status in the historical record.