Accident of birth

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Interesting that we live in a social context that includes diverse, conflicting perspectives, coming out of different life experiences.  These dovetail with particular, normative patterns of enculturation.  Here we find this little conundrum of who gets to create theatre.

In brief:

  • One group aims to sustain a cultural identity that was shaped fifty years ago.  That state funding aligns with this vision is seen to be the norm:  a big company consisting of locals who can directly trace their pedigree and canon back to this founding moment.  In a sense, every creative act is in communion with the founding moment.  Each creative voice is to elaborate the founding moment into the world.  Speech is open to all categories [ i.e., there can be no self-censorship or voluntary exclusion] because it is a matter of understanding how this cultural identity is to fit with all that is in existence.  
  • The alternate group grew up in the present, with at best, second-hand contact with this earlier identity.  Contemporary experience, especially demographic circumstances, inform voices for whom a founding moment is currently building.  For this perspective, it is only normal that this emerging, new founding moment is funded; abnormal that support is almost exclusively turned over to a dated, restricted vision. The latter is obstructive to the full formation of a new founding moment that is reflective of life in a diverse, cosmopolitan city.  It is a matter of building a general identity out of the particular ones found in the current population.

Two visions, two projects, attached to people living lives committed to their particular vision.  Each has no doubt about their own sincerity and the moral worth of their vision, but morality has little to do with it.  Very hard to focus exclusively on one identity when you sustain the population and economy with diverse immigration.  The latter won’t stop.  It can’t without serious consequences to one’s own well-being. Doesn’t matter, because it is too late, anyways.  Can’t go back to a more singular time.  Conundrum, indeed.

 

My whimsical take: 

Raul might want to ease up.  I’m not sure this is his #MeToo moment.  Lip service can be served up while the messenger is taken down.

Lepage should have found some singers of colour.  Seriously.  What’s the big deal?  Win-win situation.  Good business decision, good creative decision.  No one would have said a thing.  It is the world we live in.  Everybody would have been in a position to check out whatever “insights” Lepage reveals in his work.  He would even have acquired a demographic he is now losing.  He would have been “their” theatre genius too.  Not a bad outcome for someone who represents, for many, a manifestation of the founding moment of French Canadian genius released upon the world.  In other words, how to bring your individual genius, personal perspective further into the world, as opposed to pushing a chunk of it away from you.  Paradoxically, it is also a way to update and put a shine on your fifty-year old identity.

But hey, if he wants it his way, cuz he knows he’s right……….  That’s his [pointlessly self-damaging] business.

 

The above is a response to chain below:

Fred:

just a further note about Robert Lepage. The singing star of his cancelled production forcefully speaks out in his defence in La Presse which was in sharp contrast to Jazz Festival organizers who had a special meeting with reps from the cities black community and realized, “there are some subjects we don’t get, the fest has to do better.”

Anyway the disputed show SLAV is returning and touring the province starting starting in Jan. 2019. Lepage has another show which
focuses on Canada’s First Nations people, residental schools, murdered Indigenous women, and more. Titled, Kanata, it played in NYC
last Dec. and moves to Paris, France for Dec. this year.
here is an article about the La Presse article in the Gazette:
here is a video of Lepage talking about his artistic process and goals:
an opinon piece by Lise Ravary in the same paper today mentions how the French language media in Quebec have absolutely no
interest in Trudeau’s grope incident which is all the rage in the English language media. She expalins that the French population
embraced the #MeToo tide and sent the founder of Just for Laughs packing for serial sexual abuse, along with top media celeb Eric Salvail.
Add to that a big TV chef and publisher and a top radio host. The problem with the Trudeau story is that it is very dull and loaded with cod liver oil (moral rectitude.) She mentioned that the incident happened when Trudeau was a young primary school teacher not a politician.
She states that ‘In the toxic jungle that political correctiness has become, many will equate rape with harassment. Of course, without consent, it is all bad but there are degrees of badness. The woman in question here only confirms some incident took place but remains silent and will not pursue it further. Frankly, there is not much to chew on 18 years later. Plus, no other woman has ever come forward with a similar story when most sexual harassers are repeat offenders. It’s a political sideshow launched by Trudeau nemesis Warren Kensela. Next?”
Cheryl’s take is that the story is overcooked.
Now I am wondering why I got so bent out of shape over it. At first it was amusing and then it just wasn’t.
me

to Chandra, Fred, Jesse

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Jul 10

Driving home last night was like a dream.  No such organization of space exists in Greece, especially Athens.  A degree of soothing green privacy, spaciousness, cleanliness, and harmlessness that is impossible there.  Driving home from anywhere in Athens is like a punch in the face.  The inequity is humbling.

Consequently, given the last month, what I see here is two little Kabuki theatre pieces that have all the portentousness of a kiddie pageant.  All the players with their varied self-absorbed grimaces needing to be recognized for their oracular astuteness.  Clearly, to live here is to lack a sense of immediate, material calamity.
…
Fred McSherry

to me, Chandra, Jesse

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Jul 12

Here is an update on the Robert Lepage dust up. At another more recent press conference the protesters underlined a wider qualification on appropriation in Lepage’s work namely to include the provincial and municipal grant giving agencies and venues and their prejudices in favour of white artists. This is a complaint I have heard personally from non white artists over the years. Rahul Varma has written about this problem, something he himself as a cultual producer has experienced:
https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/opinion-systemic-discrimination-and-cultural-hegemony-in-arts-funding
back to the press conference:

“The goal is to show people out there putting on shows like SLĀV that black artists exist,” Rose said, “that we’re talented and available.”

 

4 Comments

  1. I love the line drawing at the top. Nice sort of inducement to a gestalt Rorschach. Looks androgynous and race-neutral, but I’m sure some would see it as alien. I’ve been watching a history of the rise of Nazism from 1923 on. What a sad bunch of self-righteous opportunists. It seems to me all politics is identity politics, everyone clawing for a bit of power. I take Phil’s point about accidents of birth. I sometimes wonder about Henry’s sexual orientation, it’s a bit early but I’ll be okay with wherever he ends up. It would have been a struggle for someone from our parents generation.

  3. Author

    Imagine this: an English-Canadian theatre writer-director from Toronto creates a show about French-Canadian workers in a factory in 19th-century Quebec, and he casts only English actors from Toronto to play the franco workers. The actors just put on Québécois accents for the occasion.

    How do you think that would go down with the same franco pundits? Exactly. It would be blasted from every direction, and with good reason. I rest my case.

    Hard to disagree with this analogy. This still happens in a variety of ways today and it makes me wince as it always has.

    Among the commentators, they are part of the effort to promote the moral value of their perspective. Again, no issue about this moral argument, but it misses the empirical demographic reality. They live in a world that is increasingly being populated by folks who have a different vision with a compelling moral case of its own.

  4. Montreal Indigenous artists open letter criticizing Robert Lepage’s production, Kanata.

    https://www.ledevoir.com/opinion/libre-opinion/532406/encore-une-fois-l-aventure-se-passera-sans-nous-les-autochtones

    Iroquois Nationals criticized by Indigenous activists and Palestinians for plans to participate in Israel for the 2018 World Lacrosse Championship

    https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/iroquois-nationals-criticized-ignoring-israel-boycott-call

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