Where There's Smoke...: Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man, a Memoir (20 page)

Like a bee to a flower I have always been drawn to universities and university life. A world unto itself, a university campus, with its quiet streets and walkways, its trees, its classical architecture, is so often a haven removed from the rumble of modern life. Bishop’s University was no exception. A tiny campus, really, a student population in the hundreds, Bishop’s University was not so much an ivory tower as a sheltered bubble on the edge of a small provincial town. Two delightful anomalies about the university served perhaps to mislead students about the realities of the larger world. One was that the university was completely English-speaking in a French-speaking province. The other, and the reason I was there, was that the building at the centre of the campus, much as a cathedral might have anchored a campus in earlier times, was the sparkling new Centennial Theatre. Built five years earlier in 1967 in honour of Canada’s Centennial, the 550-seat theatre, with its well equipped flexible stage and small rehearsal space, was plunk in the middle of the campus. One might almost be led to believe theatre was at the centre of the civilized world.

Remembering those long ago discussions of the meaning of life from my undergraduate days, and more recently a wonderful evening in St. John’s, Newfoundland, when the writer Michael Cook hosted a small group of academics and I again felt the thrill of mental challenge, I was excited to return to a university, to be stimulated and challenged on a wide range of topics. Yes, well. It seems the faculty common room at Bishop’s had more pressing concerns, such as the deficiencies of the current president, or the food in the cafeteria, or which faction was currently in favour. While life at the university would have many rewards, intellectual discourse did not turn out to be one of them.

Still, the small village life of Bishop’s had its charms. I did not know then that humans have evolved to thrive in small villages or bands. Most elements of the community intermingled, without the usual separation into smaller groups. Football players acted in drama productions, drama students went to football games, and everyone, faculty and students, went to the G, the decaying Georgian Hotel with its bar that served beer in quart bottles as was the custom in Quebec. And being a backwater, Bishop’s was still in the Sixties when the rest of the world had moved on; these were a kinder, gentler Sixties, and some students took to mentoring me on the music and mores of the time.

We were still in the era when faculty and students were all people together. We drank together, partied together, and sometimes slept together. Some faculty, me for instance, seemed to get on better with students than others, but there was no moral nor official sanction regarding the interaction. I didn’t give marks in my courses so it would be hard to charge favouritism. Stephen Mendel, an actor and a student at the time, became a lifelong friend. He told me many years later how one of the male teachers brought in to teach in the acting program tried very hard to sell him on the joys of homosexual sex. Stephen was not alarmed because he was a student at the time, but only because he himself is a raging heterosexual. For some years when I was still in Toronto we would have occasional gatherings of what we affectionately called the Bishop’s Mafia, a group of former students and faculty. In truth it’s hard to imagine what faculty life at Bishop’s must be like now. If students are removed from your allowed circle of friends, your circle must shrink to a pretty tiny dot, both the university and the community being so small.

Judith had another year to go at NTS and moved into an apartment in Montreal with fellow students R.H. Thompson and Hardee Lineham, but she came to Lennoxville on weekends and holidays. For the first few months I lived in an apartment in town, but later found a house for rent in the country near the small town of Sawyerville. About thirty minutes east of Lennoxville, the region was a different economic world. A local doctor had renovated an old farmhouse and divided it into two units, believing no one could pay the $90 a month rent ($900 in 2010 dollars) he wanted for the whole building. On my associate professor salary, $90 was quite within my means. I took the whole house, thirteen rooms on 130 acres of land leased to local farmers. Of course, living alone, I did not really need thirteen rooms. After a time I found nine rooms an appropriate number for my needs, leaving four rooms mostly unused.

There were two strands to my engagement at Bishop’s, one clear and one anything but. 1971 would be the first year of a new Drama Department, for the first time separating Drama from English. David Rittenhouse, a tall and forceful young man, was Chair of the Department and would deal with drama as literature and direct a production in the theatre. I would be responsible for developing the actor training component of the program and would also direct a production. Tom Lytle, the third member of the faculty, would direct another production. The murky part of the assignment had to do with the vague notion that the university would like to have a professional company perform in the theatre during the summer months when the theatre was not being used by students. They really had no idea what that company might be or how it might happen, just that it would be nice if it did. And, of course, they didn’t have any money to contribute to the venture. Still, David suggested I see what might be done though I would be on my own, if a theatre company did emerge, as he was going back to Oxford for the summer to finish his PhD.

So how does one start a theatre company? And what kind of company would be appropriate to both the theatre and my own ambitions? Not a summer stock theatre similar to the Straw Hat Players; there was already one of those playing down the road in North Hatley. No, something more ambitious was required. For one thing, the local community was too small; we would need to draw an audience from at least as far away as Montreal, a two-hour drive away. And I wanted to stretch my wings. If Stratford didn’t want me to be their Artistic Director, maybe I could create my own Stratford.

The first step was to test the community, to see what support might be out there. To that end, with David’s help and others with contacts, we arranged a meeting of business, financial, and legal people from the wider community. While the first such meeting was inconclusive, there was enough interest to schedule a second meeting from which a Board of Directors was established, with Peter Turner, a local lawyer, as President. The second step, or it might have been the first step — I don’t remember the sequence exactly — was to establish an artistic purpose or mission for the company. At the time, some might say, still, there was a gaping hole in the Canadian theatre firmament. Existing Canadian plays were simply not being performed and, in my view, there were some good ones no one was able to see. Theatre companies would obligingly do a new Canadian play from time to time and new companies, in Toronto in particular, were being established to develop Canadian plays, but one production was about the best a Canadian play could hope for at the time. There was no place to see the repertoire. Our mission came to be the presentation of high quality productions of previously produced Canadian plays, to assist in establishing a Canadian repertoire. As we moved forward we realized that most of these plays needed further work. In the absence of the out-of-town tryout period that helped American plays be honed in preparation for Broadway, Canadian plays could benefit from the experience of a second production and perhaps find their way into a permanent Canadian repertoire.

Did we succeed? Is there now a Canadian repertoire? A few of the plays we nurtured have had a continuing life, but fair to say, most have not. Mind you, economics have squeezed the repertoire to the smallest of casts in recent years and some of the plays we did required a fair number of actors.

But how did we get from a Board and an idea to a full summer season of quality productions with some of the best actors and directors in the country, an audience prepared to visit for two or three days, and attention from the national press? With very great difficulty. I get tired just remembering those few months. That said, we had a lot of help. Thanks to the prestige of the university and the members of the Board, private foundation money was raised. And thanks to my old colleague and now Theatre Officer for the Canada Council, David Gardner, definitely not making a monkey of me this time, the Council broke from tradition and awarded us an operating grant in our first season.

Many challenges remained. What would we call this theatre? Many fancy names were debated but a journalist advisor kept insisting we call ourselves by our geography, “Lennoxville.” To us though, Lennoxville was a scrawny town with one traffic light, hardly a symbol for the major theatre company we hoped to be. But he assured us that the name would take on the lustre of the theatre rather than the reputation of the town. Think Glyndebourne, Malvern, even Stratford. Of course he was right. The company was christened Festival Lennoxville, and no one associated the name with the town, which has since become a major home for the Hells Angels.

It’s all very well to have a name, but how do you persuade A-list actors and directors to come to a theatre they have never heard of? Fortunately many had heard of me. That was a start, but what would they be getting themselves into? Trying to figure us out, they asked all sorts of questions. One even asked the size of the costume department. How could they be sure this wasn’t a fly-by-night operation with more ambition than resource, or that they would be supported by professionals of equal calibre? ‘If she comes, I’ll come.’ Once we got a few on board it was easier to get others. Remarkably we ended up that first season with Frances Hyland and John Hirsch as directors as well as me, and Douglas Rain, Donald Davis, Roger Blay, Ted Follows, Ron Hastings, Nancy Beatty, Sandy Webster, Mia Anderson, and Claude Bede, among others, in the acting company.

Michael Eagan was our designer, as well as our cultural marker. Always ahead of his time, he wore his hair long before anyone else and he cut it very short years before the rest of the world followed. “Long’s wrong,” he informed us. He made excellent use of the Centennial stage for several seasons. Production management was more problematic. I hired a person who had been production manager at Centaur, largely on the strength of Maurice Podbrey saying, “What would I have done without her?” A good person, but out of her depth in this job; in fairness, it was a very challenging job since we were a repertory company in its first season. But months later, Maurice asked me in astonishment, “Why did you hire her?,” completely forgetting his earlier accolades. Or had I misheard him in the first place?

Upper management was equally challenging until later years, when first Thomas Bodanetsky took the position of General Manager, and later, Christopher Banks. Despite completely contrasting styles, both Thomas and Christopher were excellent general managers. A European by manner and tradition Thomas would say, “Thank you” at the end of every discussion, even heated ones, though those were rare. With a clean desk and an organized mind, Thomas was in touch with every detail of the operation. He had help; he introduced me to an electronic gadget I had not yet seen. We now call it a calculator. I was still adding columns of figures on paper. Imagine if we had had a computer. Chris was the opposite extreme, lazy, and always finished in time for a beer after work. But lazy is not bad in a manager; Chris knew how to delegate and the operation ran just as smoothly under his management style.

No, the management problem lay elsewhere. Once we had a Board and a mission we needed an organizational structure. Following the pattern of most theatres in the country, I drew up a plan with an Artistic Director and Administrative Director at the top. Since I had been asked to create this theatre I put myself down as the Artistic Director. I had imagined that we would hire someone like Thomas as the Administrative Director. And slow to learn as ever, somehow having lobotomized my Dundee experience, I had not made it clear that the Artistic Director would be number one on the flow chart and the Administrative Director number two. David Rittenhouse said that he wished to be the Administrative Director. What could I say? What about the PhD, the summer in Oxford? For the sake of this opportunity he would postpone the PhD; he never did finish it. It’s not for me to say, of course, but I think that was a pity.

A popular teacher and strong academic, David’s theatre background was limited. Educated at Harvard and Oxford, David had excellent academic credentials, had directed a number of undergraduate productions, but just what were his qualifications to be Administrative Director of a major theatre company? A talented man in the wrong job? Hadn’t I just seen this movie at the National Theatre School?

“Raise the stakes.” How often has one heard that refrain in an acting class? I used the phrase myself many times until one day when an acting student seemed unable to get untracked in a particular scene. His character in the scene was trying to persuade a doctor to put his dying wife on a list for a liver transplant, but because of her poor prognosis she was ineligible. I tried many things to help him come to grips with the emotional power of the scene, but nothing worked. Finally, I suggested he think of the doctor as a veterinarian, and imagine he was pleading with him to save the life of his dog. Well, the emotions flowed, fully and unbidden. “Lower the stakes” can prove as effective as the converse. If the stakes are too high our resistance may be too high as well. In an acting scene, and perhaps in life as well, we need to find a path with as few obstacles as possible. It is lovely to see someone doing a job they are good at and want to do, and so disappointing to see someone grapple with something out of their reach.

Is that why I became an actor even though it was a career I did not seek? In the end, was that the path to which I was always more suited? I’m not sure I am ready to admit that yet. I still think I was, am, a very good director. The British director Peter Hall talks in his memoir of his constant fear of “being found out.” I think he should relax. But me? One always wonders.