He loved Toronto theatre; it loved him back
Critic John Kaplan did his job with kindness and generosity up until his very last review
Let’s face it: the words “beloved” and “theatre critic” are rarely mentioned in the same sentence. But since NOW Magazine’s senior theatre writer, Jon Kaplan, died last Friday after a struggle with cancer at the age of 69, the outpouring of love and grief from the Toronto theatre community has been extraordinary.
NOW’s Facebook posting announcing his death was shared more than 40 times. While Kaplan and NOW are most associated with the independent arts scene, it’s testament to his impact across the theatrical spectrum that Mirvish Productions dimmed the lights of its theatres on Tuesday night to honour him. Factory Theatre, the Theatre Centre, Theatre Passe Muraille and other venues symbolically reserved a seat in Kaplan’s honour on the weekend.
Here, the Star’s theatre critics reflect on Kaplan’s legacy. Karen Fricker: As a newcomer to the Toronto scene, I never met Kaplan personally (something I’ll always regret), but I’m inspired and provoked by his relationship to theatre and to the craft that we shared. He didn’t follow the unwritten rules of criticism of distance and the pose of objectivity (indeed, he didn’t like to be called a critic, preferring “reviewer” or “arts writer”) and he shared love and fellowship with many artists as a result.
On the back of those relationships, he played a huge role in developing and promoting the Toronto theatre scene over his 35 years at NOW.
Many of Toronto’s current theatre leaders, including Ravi Jain and Nina Lee Aquino, artistic directors of Why Not Theatre and Factory Theatre, remember him as the first writer to take an interest in their work: “He wanted to know who I was and to tell my story,” Jain says.
“We respected him because we felt respected back,” Aquino says.
“It was coming from a man with honour, dignity and no intention but to make the community shine.”
But can you be close to artists and still critique their work with rigour? For the Theatre Centre’s general manager, Aislinn Rose, Kaplan’s approach to reviewing was “all about wanting things to be good and to get better.
As opposed to kind of a top-down pronouncement, he was trying to work his way through what he saw.”
Buddies in Bad Times’ artistic director, Evalyn Parry, underlines Kaplan’s devotion to seeing shows in development and on the nights he wasn’t reviewing.
“If Jon didn’t see it, it practically didn’t exist,” she says.
His reviews, however, “would sometimes frustrate me,” Parry says. “The generosity of his commentary sometimes meant that things didn’t get called out in a way that was critical.
“But thank goodness for somebody inside of this community who had such a platform,” Parry says.
Asked if Kaplan’s feedback shaped his work, Jain pauses before responding. “I’d not go as far as that, because I could do no wrong in some way. It was like, ‘Keep doing what you’re doing; I appreciate what you’re doing for our community.’ He was like the mayor.”
NOW’s associate entertainment editor, Glenn Sumi, who worked with Kaplan for nearly 20 years, says he doesn’t have friends within the industry as Kaplan did, “but the spirit in which Jon approached things rubbed off. While he had a rigorous intellect, it was a production’s emotions that touched him the most. I have taken that away: how productions resonate with me.”
Kaplan was quoted as saying the following on CBC this week and it’s this I’m continuing to sit with, in gratitude, as I think about what he brought to our field: “It’s not a matter of liking everything I see, but actually caring about everything I see.”
Carly Maga: “Who do you write for?” can be a loaded question when posed to a theatre critic.
The desired answer doesn’t always have to do with the critic’s publication or broadcaster; there’s a deeper issue that’s being probed.
It’s really asking whom you think you’re serving, who you imagine reading your piece, what kind of role you endeavour to play in the space between creator and audience that the critic inhabits.
For most critics, including myself, the answer is complicated and hard to pin down.
But it wasn’t for Jon Kaplan. He saw himself as a conduit to funnel an artist’s message to the public, as one point in a triangle between the theatre community and the public at large. His job, as he saw it, was to engender excitement about Toronto theatre and its creators, and he did so with kindness and generosity up until his very last review, which he filed two weeks before his death.
He was such a rare person in theatre criticism, naming himself a supporter and filling that role without any hypocrisy seeping in — he avoided joining professional critical associations, he saw everything and the only award he would associate himself with was the NOW Magazine Audience Choice Award at the Doras, which he presented every year (to the biggest applause of the night).
There was no boundary between him and the people he covered, but this was the space Jon had carved for himself, a place that allowed artists to be vulnerable, scared or unready with him, and Jon would see beyond that to what was possible in the future.
A critical scene doesn’t work with 10 Jon Kaplans, or even two.
But his presence in the community and his work for NOW were revelatory learning for a young critic like myself when I was starting out. Write with compassion, love theatre and make time for another play. Karen Fricker and Carly Maga are Toronto Star theatre critics. They usually alternate the Wednesday Matinée column.