Maybe the blame lies on us. The follow article was sent to us by AABC board member Connie More.
We invite your thoughts.
Entire performing arts industry is to blame for the demise of the Vancouver Playhouse
March 17, 2012 00:03:00
Matthew Jocelyn
The Vancouver Playhouse announced on March 9 that, crippled by chronic deficit-related issues, it was closing its doors the very next day, a few months shy of its 50th anniversary. This was and is a day of mourning for Canadian theatre.
More significantly, it is a sign of the collective failure of all of us directly or indirectly involved in the performing arts industry in Canada, a failure to defend the indisputable need for strong, publicly funded theatrical institutions in our country.
Created in 1962, the Vancouver Playhouse Theatre Company was a forerunner of the boom of large regional theatre companies established countrywide throughout the 1960s, supported largely, at their inception, by the Canada Council for the Arts . Yet despite this generous support to create a network of centres for the performing arts, the intrinsic, lasting value of being an institution was never truly conferred upon them.
As with many such organizations, the Vancouver Playhouse remained a “company,” a rootless entity forced to rent its city-owned performance space and justify its existence through commercial success. The term “company,” though used widely in the theatre business, unwittingly and perversely infers a likeness to the private sector. Companies come and go, are bought and sold and in the end must turn a profit or die. Institutions, on the other hand, are part of the fabric of society, they give meaning while at the same time being engines for change, and for that reason are essential to preserve.
Which public school, which hospital, museum or university, which prison or military base, research centre or art gallery goes by the term “company” or is treated as one? Why then our country’s not-for-profit performing arts institutions, a fundamental part of our national identity, the home for the creation and transmission of our stories?
The bankruptcy of the Vancouver Playhouse is not a local problem — it is the failure of an entire system. It is a failure of the department of Canadian Heritage which, by allowing this disappearance, is depriving not only Vancouver but also the rest of Canada of a fundamental part of our national heritage. It is a failure of the Canada Council for the Arts, whose funding mechanisms are not attuned to the specific role of the country’s major performing arts institutions, forcing us to operate on an edulcorated commercial model as opposed to enabling us to fulfill the mandate of true creative licence and engaged public service that should be ours.
It is a failure of the province of British Columbia and the city of Vancouver. And it is a failure of the Playhouse’s board of directors, unwilling or unable to fulfill their charge as its guardians, or to actively rally support for its preservation.
It is also a failure of the performing arts institutional network of which I am a part, the large-scale not-for-profit theatres, each caught up in our own survival to such a degree that we have been unable to create a collective national voice. It is a failure of the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres (PACT), an organization representing all professional theatre in the country, yet incapable of defending a major institution at a critical moment for fear of internal criticism from a membership dominated by smaller independent companies, most of whom also struggle to survive.
It is a failure of the two principal unions in the performing arts sector: Actors’ Equity and IATSE. Both were created as defensive mechanisms against American touring productions long before not-for-profit theatre came into existence in Canada, and both continue to confuse purely commercial theatre with theatre that has a mandate for public service, exacting often crippling conditions for our productions.
It is a failure of the media because, in general, the media are uninterested in the arts, and of theatre critics in particular, too many of whom assume that venting their (often alarmingly ill-informed) opinion is more important than “mediating” the work they are writing about, that is, helping audiences understand and appreciate its nature, its successes and failings, thus helping foster the curiosity and appetite without which theatre dies.
Sadly, it is also a failure of the artists — and here again I include myself — unable to produce a body of work that makes theatre a truly necessary, truly integrated part of our modern world, and of the audiences, insufficient in number, insufficiently curious, excessively influenced by the above-mentioned critical inadequacies.
It is, in other words, the failure of an entire system. And in this failure, each of us has lost, no one gained.
As with all true tragedies however, some form of catharsis can ensue. The disappearance of the Vancouver Playhouse can and must serve a purpose, must help us attain a deeper understanding of our profession, of the work we are (or aren’t) doing, the role we play (or don’t) within today’s world. This collective failure must be seized as an opportunity to undertake an uncompromisingly critical evaluation of how not-for-profit theatre has evolved in Canada over the past 50 years, of what we are doing (or aren’t) to ensure an artistically vital, socially integrated, institutionally rooted industry for the 50 years to come.
Simply put, it is time for an audit, a detailed medical examination of our collective corps malade . And in the wake, it is time to pursue whatever measures are required, be they surgical or otherwise. Without such fearless self-analysis, our entire industry is potentially prey to the same fatal disease as that which got the better of the Vancouver Playhouse.
As the curtain closes on the Vancouver Playhouse, I can’t help myself from asking: Who’s next?
A more insidious question follows, one for which we are all responsible: Who really cares?
Matthew Jocelyn is artistic and general director of Canadian Stage .
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Thanks Connie for sending this sad story around. Strong words by Mr. Jocelyn, but it got me thinking about the business of Advocacy – and maybe we’re going at it backwards. Since I’ve been trying to Advocate For various organizations and causes, it seems that it’s always in reaction to some move made by governments over policy, or cuts to the BC Arts Council, or cuts in gaming funds to cultural organizations. My Canadian Oxford Dictionary defines Advocacy as 1. public support for or recommendations of a cause, policy, etc followed by Advocate: 1. a person who supports or speaks in favour” 2. a person who pleads for another. But we always seem to be trying to play catch up with changes that are foisted upon us. My question about the Vancouver Playhouse thing is, Did anyone see its demise coming? and were we all standing on the sidelines watching it happen? And the curmudgeon in me wonders, as Jocelyn says, Who’s Next? More important, however, is what can we do to put ourselves in a more positive position of Advocacy – i.e. gaining public support before it becomes necessary to shut the doors.
Sorry I don’t have any answers, but maybe this will spark some discussion. Anyone want to weigh in with a reply?
Cheers,
David Stewart in Argenta BC
David, you hit the nail on the head when you mentioned what can we do BEFORE there is a crisis. People have to know enough and care enough to do anything at all.
J
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John McLachlan
Hello All,
I posted this on Facebook as well, and a musician-friend had this to say:
Kenji Fuse
He makes good points, but it also has a marked anti-collective bargaining bias (Actor’s Equity and IATSE only get mentioned as ‘failures’; no mention of their positive contributions). Many orchestra managers are also loudly spouting this bias these days.
AFM locals and orchestra players’ associations are bending over backwards to accommodate crisis after crisis, making concession after concession. If current ‘free-market’ thinking was let rampant in our orchestra offices, they would all offer no concerts at all, and consider this the best cost-saving scenario!
The only free market slogan which really applies, is “Art is not free”.
I agree with him.
Comments, anyone?
Connie
Musicians (and any worker) should get paid as well as possible and not be derided for trying to be paid more/well. As a previous member of the AFM, I am all for paying musicians more.
That, however, is a separate issue in my mind, from the Vancouver Playhouse. Really, I think it should have been halted long before it was. There may have been a chance had that happened. Letting debt climb and climb and doing nothing about is the board’s fault, ultimately.
Perhaps the even bigger picture is how we (society) values what is produced and presented. The answer is, we don’t, at least as the Playhouse is concerned. What they produced was perhaps unique and challenging at one time, but not any longer. There are also many more theatre companies now than there were in 1962. There is MORE being produced today, not less.
The trains once ran in Canada and were vital. When they started shutting them down, we all kicked and screamed and said how critical it was to our nation. But, did we use the trains to get from BC to points east? No. Same goes for the Playhouse.
All this is to say, I agree with that piece. We are all to blame for its failure, really.
John