WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF CANADIAN THEATRE?
Less than a year into his job as CEO of the National Theatre School, Gideon Arthurs aims to reform Canadian arts culture, one grad at a time
Gideon Arthurs spends almost our entire conversation leaned in close, an eager little smile tattooed on his face, cheery and eager even in thoughtful repose. But he leans in closest, and reserves his biggest smile, for when he starts talking about Toronto Fringe — and specifically one of his last official moments as the festival’s director.
“I went out on the dance floor of the new Fringe Club that we’d set up in the Honest Ed’s parking lot,” he explains, smile turned up to beam. “I’d just come up from the end of a 52-hour production of Waiting for Godot in the bottom of that parkade, and 200 people walked up the ramp, and they counted down the end of the Fringe like it was New Year’s. I was like: this is what theatre should be about!”
That Arthurs would point to a booze-soaked dance floor as a high point is certainly some indication of the general isolation of the arts administrator, though true to the form of someone who’s been running some of the country’s premiere theatre institutions since his mid-twenties, it’s not the party that caught his attention — it’s what the party represents. It’s people, coming together, to celebrate theatre, feeling not just engaged but like a genuine part of the theatrical community — an experience that, as any sober-minded artistic director or general manager will tell you with a shake of their head, is not the most common in today’s Canadian theatre scene.
“To me, when you go to watch a play, you’re part of a community, you’re in a shared event — a truly shared event: no play exists without an audience. They can perform, but it’s not a play,” Arthurs offers as an explanation for loving that dance floor. “That democracy, for me, is what all arts institutions need to be pursuing. You need to be fundamentally connected with the people you’re talking to — and give them a role to play in the conversation. Many, many of our arts institutions right now, you get the sense that, if you weren’t there, it wouldn’t matter. They like your laughter, they like your ticket fee, but they don’t necessarily say, ‘You need to be here.’ ”
Recounting the 35-yearold’s history, that imperative is something of an organizing principle for Arthurs, from his founding of constantly outreaching Groundwater Theatre to his two-year stint pushing the boundaries as general manager of Tarragon Theatre; it found its purest ex- pression at the Fringe where, besides expanding the postshow party, he also created the spin-off Next Stage festival and the creation lab, which specifically focused on drawing in new voices and ears to hear them.
Central as it is, it’s maybe not the most obvious requirement for his latest job, started last August, as CEO of the National Theatre School — the primary training ground for Canadian theatre, in both official languages, for the past 55 years. Having produced talents as diverse as Allan Hawco and Wajdi Mouawad, Sandra Oh and Sheila Heti, it’s regarded as a finishing school for the bright lights of the next generations. Which is a designation that was only half-attractive to Arthurs.
“What I said to the staff when I came in was, what we can offer to students is be- yond any other program in the country,” Arthurs says. “But the result, sometimes, is a bit like an officer’s school: very well trained, with a top-level view of the battlefield. But when the bombs start blowing up, when the trenches are running over, when the rain makes it muddy, they don’t always know where to go.”
Comparing the Canadian theatre scene to a war zone may be slightly overstating it, but it’s not full-blown hyperbole. The conditions have been similar, and similarly lamented, for what must be close to decades, so feel free to add institutional inertia to the list of them: audiences refuse to grow, or get considerably younger; funding goes every which way but up; nothing, from rent to salaries to technological necessities, gets notably cheaper.
These problems beget, or at least do nothing to lessen, further ones. For a community that prides itself on progressive values, the boards, back stages and seats at your average theatre company are as white and well-heeled a demographic as you’re likely to find outside a corporate board room; faced with oblivion, companies tend to rally around the audiences they have, rather than reaching out to new ones, with all that entails. At the worst of times, Canadian theatre can feel like a collection of institutions beset with troubles whose only solution seems to be complaining about them.
Arthurs, of course, wouldn’t put it in quite those stark terms, and certainly understands the bunker mentality — “In this situation, to take a risk is to risk everything,” he points out, “and it’s hard to ask people to do that” — but he nevertheless sees the NTS job as a chance to change that a ground level, to “fiddle with genetic manipulation” as he puts it.
What he would like to install, then, is not just rigorous training, but a mindset that’s — well, honestly, a bit more like his. He wants NTS grads ready not just to deliver stirring soliloquies, but to be actively engaged in making audiences actively engaged, of actually making sure that they are speaking to people, not just reciting lines at them.
“If you are to save theatre, if we are to regenerate theatre, we have to — even an actor, even at the individual level, has to be able to answer the questions, ‘ Why are you doing this? Who are you doing it for?’ ” Arthurs says, with a bit less of a smile, but a lot more of a lean-in. “No one actually thinks of an actor as a kind of civil service now, but it should be. It should be a thing where you say, ‘I have this great, great privilege to do make believe for my entire career in front of an adoring public.’ We should give something for that privilege.”
That is bi g , thought-changing talk, and so far it is not just idle: we spoke in the midst of a cross-country tour Arthurs was conducting, polling and probing theatre companies in a gaggle of cities about what they needed from Canada’s next generation. Listening, and then talking, and then listening some more has to start somewhere, it seems, and Arthurs figures his position is a pretty good jumping off point: who better to take a risk, after all, then someone in a safe space.
“There’s a lot of anxiety, a lot of fear in theatre communities now, because there’s no margin. If they risk, and fail, they’re f--ked. And that’s not creative ground,” he says. “Right now, NTS is an amazingly healthy, stable institution. Which is exactly the moment it should change.”
‘No play exists without an audience. They can perform, but it’s not a play’