John Greyson and Tarek Loubani: Redux

As I previously wrote here, filmmaker and York University Professor John Greyson and medical doctor Tarek Loubani have been in prison in Egypt without charge since August 15th. Now the Egyptian government, despite repeated entreaties from Canadian consular officials, says they could be detained for 45 more days. The two men have been on a hunger strike for two weeks and the situation is getting perilous. 

It is time for Prime Minister Harper to intervene directly. The more pressure he receives to do so, the better. 

Please consider sending an email expressing your concern to stephen.harper@parl.gc.ca, copying Foreign Minister John Baird (bairdj@parl.gc.ca).

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John Greyson and Tarek Loubani Arrested in Egypt

So events in Egypt just got a whole lot more personal with news this past weekend that friend, filmmaker and York University professor John Greyson (right, above) had been arrested in Cairo along with Dr. Tarek Loubani, a medical doctor from London, Ontario. The two men had been en route to Gaza, where Dr. Loubani regularly travels to train physicians in cardiac and trauma support as part of an initiative sponsored by the University of Western Ontario; Greyson was accompanying him in connection with a possible documentary project about the al-Shifa hospital in the region. For the latest developments in the case, see the following Globe article.

There is no indication yet why the two men have been detained, although they have been in touch with family and Canadian consular officials and have stated that they are both being well-treated. Still, our government must do everything in its power to secure their immediate and safe release. An on-line petition urging just this has so far collected more than 5,000 virtual signatures. Consider adding yours here.

Also, use social media to write/prompt Stephen Harper and John Baird, and to keep the pressure on both the Canadian Embassy in Cairo and the Egyptian Embassy in Ottawa. Here are the relevant contact details:

John Baird – Minister of Foreign Affairs Canada
Phone
1-613-990-7720
Email: bairdj@parl.gc.ca
Twitter: John Baird @honjohnbaird
Twitter: Department of Foreign Affairs Canada @DFATDCanada

Stephen Harper – Prime Minister of Canada
Phone
1-613-992-4211
Email: stephen.harper@parl.gc.ca

Canadian Embassy in Egypt: cairo@dfait-maeci.gc.ca

Egyptian Embassy, Ottawa, Canada
Phone:
1-613-234-4931
1-613-234-4935
Email: egyptemb@sympatico.ca

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Yeah Beverley!

As Beverley McLachlin is set to become the longest serving Chief Justice in the history of Canada's Supreme Court, an interview in today's Globe and Mail reveals why we should applaud her announcement that she has no intention of retiring before the mandatory age of 75 (she is 66).

Among other things, it ensures a woman remains at the helm as Prime Minister Stephen Harper attempts to roll back gender parity on the country's highest bench. And, as McLachlin reveals in her carefully chosen words about the Tories' Bill C-54, which proposes to rewrite the Criminal Code regarding the rights of the accused with mental illnesses, her judicious presence on that bench is a welcome check against our government's increasing ideological imbalance.

Congratulations Beverley. We look forward to the next nine years.

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The Grade on Guns

Following the performative posturing that was yesterday's photo op between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Toronto Mayor Rob Ford on gun violence in Canadian cities, a salutary intervention by my colleague, David Chariandy, into the recent shootings in Scarborough and those who would seek to dismiss or de-complexify the politics of disenfranchisement and the economics of disadvantage that are always part of the equation of crime and/in racial minority communities. Click here to read more.

Then, too, following upon recent events in Colorado, and especially President Obama's rote platitudes and outright refusal to open up a conversation about gun control in the US, made me think how prescient a recent episode of Aaron Sorkin's amazing new series, The Newsroom, was. In it, the recently re-galvanized prime time anchor, Will McAvoy (played by the brilliant Jeff Daniels), decides to take on the gun lobby and their political and media pundit apologists. He does so by excerpting a series of clips in which people like Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh decry the limits that Obama is surely going to place on Americans' right to bear arms; this is then followed by a scorecard from the Brady Campaign (an initiative begun by the wife of Jim Brady, the White House Press Secretary shot during John Hinkley's assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan) tallying the Obama administration's performance on a number of key issues related to tighter regulation of guns. On all counts, as McAvoy, points out, Obama receives a failing grade.

Michael Bloomberg, a mayor several thousand times smarter (and thinner and richer) than Rob Ford, tried to open up and honest and enlightened debate by suggesting that gun control become a major issue of the upcoming presidential campaign. But Obama refused to bite. I don't get it. Would alienating the gun lobby really lose him that many more votes? And how many more might he gain? I don't know if Sorkin, whose series is so-far pulling its plots from real-world headlines (most recently the Arab Spring), will catch up to or plan to intervene into this fall's presidential campaign. But thank heavens he's back on television and giving us, as with The West Wing, an imagined political discourse we might one day aspire to north and south of the 49th parallel.

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Performance Publics, Public Discourse

Three newspaper articles--one international, one national, one local--that I've read over the past two days draw attention, in different ways, to ideas of performance publics and the performance of public discourse, ideas which I also consider a crucial animating aspect of this blog.

First, in yesterday's New York Times, an article on what an exiled Syrian playwright in Lebanon, Mohammad al-Attar, is trying to accomplish through theatre where international diplomacy has so far failed.

Next, in today's Globe and Mail, a piece from J. Kelly Nestruck about tonight's Wrercking Ball performance in Toronto, which is partly pitched as an homage to Edward Bond (a festival celebrating his plays is running concurrently in the city), but which also features a 10-minute piece from Brad Fraser rehashing the brouhaha a few months ago at Tarragon about AD Richard Rose's decision not to stage then playwright-in-residence Michael Healey's new satire about Stephen Harper. Fraser sees the issue as one of troubling self-censorship in the face of a federal government hostile to the arts. But this is based soley on Healey's side of the story. What if Rose, who has so far (and to his inestimable credit) refused to comment on the issue, just thought the play was bad?

Finally, in an op-ed piece in today's Vancouver Sun, my university President, Andrew Petter, and Chancellor, Carole Taylor, officially launch SFU's Public Square, an initiative to engage the community in dialogue about issues of pressing local and global concern. Although the square, per se, is neither materially located nor expressly linked to performance, it is hard not to see SFU Woodward's as playing an instrumental role in any such public platform, not least in terms of its own role within, and responsibilities to, the Downtown Eastside. Hence my inclusion of this story alongside the other two.

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Relief x 2

So I didn't throw up yesterday evening during the premiere of my monologue at the Solo Flights Emerging Playwrights showcase. In fact, no one did. Which I take as a sign that it wasn't complete shite. Actually, I had some very nice words of congratulation and encouragement--some from people I didn't even know! Of course, Kerry did an amazing job, and now I'm cursed for ever conceiving of anyone else in the role. Not that the piece is likely to be reprised anytime soon...

And who would have thought that coincident with my tiny performance feat last night on Granville Island Alison Redford would be weaving her own magic trick by snatching victory from what just about every poll and political pundit had predicted was almost certain defeat in Alberta's provincial election? Indeed, who would have thought that progressive types inside and outside the province would be hailing yet another Conservative majority? Almost certainly we have to thank the legions of undecided voters who were alienated by some of the homophobic and racist comments made by Wildrose candidates in the last weeks of the election, as well as the traditional left-leaning voters who likely held their noses in strategically deciding to transfer their allegiance to Redford and her party from the Liberals and the NDP in order to stop the Danielle Smith juggernaut. Strange political times, to be sure. But this election almost surely holds some cautionary lessons for BC (facing a provincial election next year, and with a new Conservative party on the ascendant in chasing the right wing vote), as well as Canada as a whole (is there any way to stop Harper other than with a Liberal-NDP merger?).

For now, I suppose, we take our relief wherever, and in whatever form, we can get it.

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Happy Birthday Charter!

Thirty years ago today, on a wet and blustery morning in Ottawa, Betty Windsor sat at a table flanked by a nattily dressed Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and Justice Minister Jean Chrétien, and signed into law Canada's new Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

While the event is not being marked in any significant way owing to the churlishness of the current Conservative government, two articles in yesterday's Globe point to the Charter's immense significance, not just in terms of Canadian law, but also in terms of its global significance. In an op-ed piece, former Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbour looks at three aspects of the Charter initially derided--including the notwithstanding clause--that in retrospect have become key elements of the successful work that it does. And another article cites a forthcoming study by two American law professors examining how Canada's Charter has now superseded the American Bill of Rights as the go-to document for emerging democracies seeking a model on which to base their own legal statutes.

That's definitely worth celebrating. And so while Prime Minister Harper pursues oil contracts in South America and dodges the question of why no official marking of the Charter by hiding behind the lack of consensus on the accompanying repatriation of the Constitution (in fact, the above Globe article also cites the fact that the majority of Quebeckers overwhelmingly support the Charter), I will quietly be raising a glass to what, along with a Supreme Court tasked with interpreting it, might be the last defense against a government wishing to undo much of what it has accomplished.

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Foresight on Insite

Kudos to the Supreme Court of Canada for unanimously recognizing what the Harper government (note how I'm following the PMO's preferred designation) has steadfastly denied in trying to shut down North America's only safe-injection site for IV drug users: InSite saves lives.

Read about the decision here.

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SummerWorks and the Ongoing Conservative Cultural Chill

Anyone who doubted that a Conservative majority under Stephen Harper would be anything other than benign business as usual--particularly where arts and culture are concerned--should take careful stock of the recent announcement that Canadian Heritage has, after five years of providing federal funding for the SummerWorks Festival in Toronto, rejected the Festival's most recent grant request of $47,000, representing a 20% shortfall in the organization's budget just weeks before the 2011 Festival is to open on August 5th.

Folks may recall that SummerWorks was rebuked last year by Herr Harper himself for staging Homegrown, a play that dealt--a little too sympathetically in the eyes of the Prime Minister's Office--with the friendship between playwright Catherine Frid and a member of the Toronto 18. That this year's withdrawal of funding is tied to last year's programming is abundantly clear, and such blatant ideological intervention into cultural content on the part of the government should cause all in this country significant alarm.

As Guy Dixon notes in today's Globe and Mail, the decision also has consequences beyond the chill it sends to other arts and cultural organizations dependent on federal funding. SummerWorks is an important testing ground for new theatrical work in this country, as well as a venue visited by ADs, curators, and cultural programmers at other festivals across the country looking to partner on daring and provocative productions. This could have consequences not just for what audiences get to see in Toronto, but what the rest of us don't get to see.

Then, too, we should listen carefully to what's being telegraphed by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, who is quoted at the end of Dixon's piece as stating that ALL cultural groups should be on notice that they cannot necessarily depend on continued public funding from the federal government, no matter their track records in the past. Because, of course, those of us who appreciate and support arts and culture in our society are just a bunch of snobbish elites who don't vote the right way.

Prove Flaherty and the Conservatives wrong, Canada, by writing to the Prime Minister and Heritage Canada protesting their funding decision regarding SummerWorks. And, as importantly, consider donating to the Festival to help them with this year's shortfall. You can do so here.

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Harper Watch #1

So it didn't take long. After introducing his new cabinet to the public and then absconding into the Ottawa afternoon, the newly major Stephen Harper had his staff quietly issue a press release announcing three new appointments to the Senate.

Here's the kicker: all three were defeated Tory candidates in the last election. What's more, two (Larry Smith and Fabian Manning) had resigned seats they previously held in the Senate in order to run in the election. They now join Josée Verner in being rewarded with a patronage appointment from the PM in lieu of being duly and democratically elected by the people.

I guess that means Harpy has given up on that promise of an elected upper chamber altogether. Mark my words, there will be more such shenanigans to come.

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Canadian Realpolitick

I guess the head-in-the-sand attitude I'd adopted in the immediate aftermath of the May 2nd federal election results will no longer hold. The new political landscape has been brought home to me by three separate events this week:

1. At their annual march on Parliament Hill, pro-life activists looked newly emboldened, despite what Harper said during the campaign about not reopening the abortion debate. Apparently several of his bankbenchers haven't yet received this memo, because several of them were there making speeches about what was now possible for their movement with a Tory majority.

2. The Supreme Court began hearing arguments in the case surrounding InSite, Vancouver's safe injection site in the Downtown Eastside. The city and the province want the clinic to remain in operation, backed by overwhelming statistical evidence on how many lives have been saved since its doors opened. Ottawa is arguing that the clinic's special dispensation to operate outside the Criminal Code is untenable, especially as that Code is administered federally. According to their lawyer, however, that doesn't necessarily mean that the Tories would shut InSite down, despite what previous cabinet ministers have stated.

3. And speaking of the Supreme Court, the announcement by Justices Ian Binnie and Louise Charron that they will take early retirement from the bench, combined with the mandatory retirements at 75 of three other Justices (Morris Fish, Louis LeBel and Marshall Rothstein) over the next four years, gives Harper the opportunity to recast what he has previously decried as an overly activist judiciary in profoundly conservative ways. Making the Court subservient to a Parliament whose democratic principles Harper has already proven he's more than willing to cast aside at whim would of course entrench his authority even further.

If most of the voters who chose the Conservatives this time around did so on the basis of their economic stewardship, they may be in for a very rude surprise in the coming years.

Just saying.

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Performing Apology

Word has it that Prime Minister Stephen Harper will issue an official apology to families of the victims of Air India Flight 182 at a special ceremony commemorating the 25th anniversary of the deadliest terrorist attack in Canadian history (and, until 9/11, the deadliest instance of global aviation terrorism) in Toronto this evening.

It will be interesting to compare the substance of Harper's apology to the one recently issued in parliament by UK Prime Minister David Cameron to the families of the victims of Bloody Sunday in Derry, Northern Ireland--and not just because of Flight 182's explosion off the coast of Ireland. After all, the Harper apology, like Cameron's, is prompted by a damning official report (by retired Justice John Major) placing the blame for the tragedy squarely on the shoulders of the government and its law enforcement and intelligence agencies (the RCMP and CSIS). And yet whereas Cameron manned up in soberly acknowledging the role the British state played in whitewashing the truth regarding the events of January 30, 1972, the text of Harper's apology that has been sent in advance to the press performs its own exculpation, tacking "we're sorry" onto abstract statements about terrorism being "an enemy with a thousand faces" and the "wounds [that] are too deep to be healed even by the remedy of time."

There is a great deal of critical work being done on our current "culture of apology" (including by a very smart PhD student in the English Department at SFU, David Gaertner) and the "rhetoric of sincerity" and/or "deferral of responsibility" that may or may not accompany official state apologies. A contested marker of how we measure the "materiality" of sincerity/responsibility in this context has become financial restitution. With the report by Major in fact making this very recommendation, it will be important to see whether or not Harper, either this evening or in follow-up legislation, puts money where his mouth is.

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Ali and Ali 7 at the Cultch

Those hilarious Agrabanian showmen and shrewd foreign policy analysts Ali and Ali are back. Five years after skewering George W. Bush and the war on terror in a biting piece of political theatre--Ali and Ali and the aXes of Evil--that was also drop-dead funny, co-writers and co-stars Camyar Chai (Ali Hakim) and Marcus Youssef (Ali Ababwa), along with fellow co-writer and director Guillermo Verdecchia, are taking on Bush Jr.’s successor in the White House, you know, the black dude with the Muslim-sounding middle name.

But audiences attending the Neworld Theatre production of Ali and Ali 7: Hey Brother, Can You Spare Some Hope & Change (on at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre’s Historic Theatre until April 24th) expecting to see Barack Obama ripped into on the housing crisis, or health care, or climate change, should be forewarned. Despite its title, the play is only tangentially concerned with the reconfigured American political landscape since November 2008. Having said this, Obama’s election does occasion two of the show’s wittiest and most expressly theatrical sequences: a Bunraku-inflected domestic scene that pokes fun at Obama as a beacon of hope to all the “brown” peoples of the world; and an expletive-laden, projected shadow puppet sketch involving Obama, his collective “revolutionary conscience,” Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, and Stephen Harper in a rap about keeping the White House black.

Stephen Harper’s image here and elsewhere in the show, including its opening—and of course requisite—video tribute to Muammar Gaddafi, provides the clue as to the real subject of Ali and Ali’s political satire this time round: Canadian foreign policy, and in particular the country’s very American-style use of “security certificates” to detain—often in solitary confinement—or deport mostly Muslim men without charges and without providing the men or their lawyers access to the evidence against them. This is precisely the situation Ali and Ali find themselves in when a “rabid fan” of their work (the always wonderful Laara Sadiq) reveals herself to be an undercover RCMP officer, one Sukhvindar Dhaliwal. With but a brief wave of her ever-handy taser, Dhaliwal transforms the space of the theatre into a government tribunal and conscripts Ali and Ali’s all-purpose Chinese sidekick, Yogi Roo (Raugi Yu), to serve as their counsel.

Thereafter the play juxtaposes the legalese of Dhaliwal’s trumped-up and misappropriated evidence (much is made of their obsession with the movie A Few Good Men) with Ali and Ali and Yogi’s playing out of the “fictional reality” of their suspicious behavior (most of what shows up on the RCMP’s radar turns out to be “research” for the boys’ latest television pilot or newest idea for a play). In this way, Ali and Ali 7 succeeds in making some very interesting formal parallels between theatrical performance and juridical performatives, with the court of law’s precedent-based structure here revealed to routinely—and rather undemocratically—circumscribe who gets to be named a citizen and who a refugee, or a terrorist. However, in terms of overall tone, the play is also rather schizophrenic, with the gravity of the situation facing one of the Alis (I won’t say which one) leading to some very intense moments of high dramatic pathos that don’t always work alongside the more ribald and satiric sketch comedy scenes.

Then, too, I’m not sure if Canadian domestic and foreign policy (which, don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly not defending under Herr Harper) lends itself to the sort of political satire that worked so well re the USA in the first Ali and Ali show. This Hour Has 22 Minutes is not Politically Incorrect and Rick Mercer is not Bill Maher. I fully support the production of topical political theatre in Canada, and I generally eschew overt earnestness on stage. But it seems to me that, this time around, Ali and Ali haven’t fully figured out what they want to say, and how they want to say it.

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Should Old Acquaintance, or, For Naught

Hard to believe how quickly the end of this year snuck up on me, let alone the end of an entire decade. I can get quite maudlin on such occasions, so I'll keep my comments in this final post of 2009 as terse as possible.

Images on the news last night reminded me how this decade began--with the manufactured panic over Y2K and the mass computer meltdown that never happened. Of course, here on the west coast of North America, where we're virtually the last to ring in the new year, the story was already old news by the time fireworks exploded without a hitch over Sydney's Harbour Bridge.

I think I had forgotten about Y2K because, as I'm sure is the case with most people the world over, I really mark the start of the past decade with 9/11. Fitting, then, that we should be leaving it more or less the way it began, the recent attempted terrorist attack over the skies of Detroit on Christmas Day having sent airport security around the world into full lockdown mode.

As for Canada, while we politely declined to join George W's "coalition of the willing" in Iraq, we were soon enough embroiled in Afghanistan, deploying our first combat troops since the Korean War, and fighting an insurgency for the first time since the Boer War! Yesterday turned out to be one of the deadliest days of the mission so far, with four soldiers and one journalist killed by yet another roadside IED--bringing this country's total war dead in Afghanistan to 138.

Meanwhile, back at home our benevolent dictator of a prime minister, Stephen Harper, has prorogued parliament for the second time in less than a year, the better to avoid more embarrassing and probing questions about the Afghan detainee scandal, no doubt. Has anyone noticed? Our government has effectively absconded with democracy, and won't be back until after the Olympics, in March.

Speaking of the Olympics, while the event itself will technically be registered as belonging to the next decade, for Vancouver, and for better or worse, this past decade has largely been about preparing for a certain five-ring circus. Readers of this blog know by now my own position on this interminable exercise in place promotion (and my conscience is clean--I voted "no" in the referendum back in 2003), and the promises (such as ending homelessness in the city) as yet lived up to from the original Bid Book and the flurry of official "agreements" signed in conjunction with it. Come tomorrow I will be laying off the slagging somewhat and concentrating--hopefully together with some of my students in a related blog--instead on simply reporting what's going on Olympics-wise in the city over the next three months. And I'm sure some of that reporting will even be laudatory--I mean Laurie Anderson's coming to town, for heaven's sake!

Still, as the final 17 hours tick down on this decade, it's hard not to feel cynical. And I haven't even mentioned the environment yet. The recent toothless deal brokered in Copenhagen at the last minute by an increasingly concessionary and compromising President Obama seems to me symptomatic of the opportunities lost during the past 10 years (from using our shared grief over lives lost to violence to forge bonds across religious and ethnic and economic difference, to using the recent financial meltdown to rethink our dependence on automobiles). It's also a slap in the face to the victims of the devastating tsunami that struck Southeast Asia almost exactly five years ago, not to mention those killed and displaced by Hurricane Katrina less than a year later. The oceans will rise, and while I'm not saying I subscribe to certain recent theories divined from the ancient Mayan calendar, I am saying that's it's not too difficult to predict, climate skeptics and University of East Anglia researchers notwithstanding, what the next decade will bring weather-wise.

As of yet, this first decade of the second millennium is without an official catchy shorthand name, media pundits unable to decide what to come up with from its zero-sum middle digits. I say leave it that way. These past 10 years have been for naught.

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A Miscellany

In the spirit of gearing up for the holiday season, here is a miscellany of thoughts based on recent local and global headlines that have grabbed my attention:

1. “I wonder if Carla Bruni can get me a walk-on in Woody Allen’s new film?”/ “I bet Nelson Mandela will be pissed.”/ “What’s everyone so worked up about? It’s not like I head-butted anyone.”: Possible thoughts running through French football captain Thierry Henry’s head following revelations he committed a handball violation in advance of the winning goal in a World Cup qualifying match with Ireland.

2. With friends like these…: Poor Richard Colvin—nothing like going from a respected high-level diplomat to a government pariah overnight. PM Harper and his various minions were lining up to outdo each other in heaping scorn on the former point man in Afghanistan for testifying before a parliamentary committee that his emails warning that Taliban detainees transferred from Canadian to Afghan custody faced likely torture were ignored. And how would we know anyway, given the mostly blacked-out versions of those emails that have been provided to the committee, and to the media? (Actually, the resurfacing of the detainee issue, coming on the heels of Henry's World Cup imbroglio, reminded me a lot of my chapter on David Beckham and Tony Kushner in my forthcoming book with Manchester UP. I'd say more about how, exactly, I connect football with Afghanistan in the context of my larger argument about performance, place, and politics in the book, but I'd rather you buy a copy instead! It's out at the beginning of February, but you can pre-order--apologies for the exorbitant UK academic pricing--here.)

3. “Okay, I’ll go. But I’m not going to have fun, and I’m not going to talk to anyone.”: Stephen Harper commits to attending upcoming climate talks in Copenhagen after Barack Obama and China’s Premier, Wen Jiabao, announce they’re going. Unlike Obama and Wen, however, Harper will arrive with no concrete pledge from Canada to cut carbon and greenhouse gas emissions. One doesn’t hold out much hope for some sort of universally ratified post-Kyoto protocol emerging from the Copenhagen meetings, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Harper will at least be shamed into coming on side with Obama. (As a side note to this item, one wonders if our famously grumpy PM is even more out of sorts these days because of the rumours swirling that motorcycle-riding wife Laureen may be about to dump him for her RCMP boy-toy. They have not been traveling together recently, and she has been spotted sans wedding ring in several recent photos…)

4. What Mayor Gregor giveth with one hand, he taketh away with the other: Okay, so City Hall has backed down on its ridiculous proposal regarding the ratio of food and alcohol pricing in Vancouver restaurants. And it has also amended its anti-Olympic sign bylaw to apply only to commercial properties. But the same municipal government that is spending feverishly to gussy up the city in advance of the Olympics is also slashing public library budgets (forcing several branches to slash hours and one perhaps to close permanently), and closing popular amenities like the petting farm in Stanley Park and the Bloedel Conservatory atop Queen Elizabeth Park. Meanwhile, the nearby Little Mountain social housing community is officially no more, razed by bulldozers (with a little help from a freak blaze that erupted one afternoon) this past month. What happens next is anyone’s guess because BC Housing, the provincial agency mandated to ensure a provision of replacement subsidized housing in the redevelopment of the site, claims that a confidential non-disclosure agreement prevents it from releasing details of the contract of purchase and sale that is being negotiated with private partner Holborn Properties. With the official Olympic curling venue only a block away, and all available space around Nat Bailey Stadium already spoken for, who says that they can’t—at least in the short-term, pave paradise and put up a parking lot?

5. Yeah, but only until the end of March: My reaction upon reading that VANOC CEO John Furlong topped the list of Vancouver magazine’s Power 50 issue.

6. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet: I was sorry I couldn’t get to the Wrecking Ball event at the Vogue on Monday (work and life conspired to intervene). But I was please to hear—courtesy PuSh Managing Director Minna Schendlinger at a Board retreat last weekend—that Kevin Krueger had received so many emails protesting the cuts to arts and culture in the province, that his ministry account had recently crashed. Apparently his staff has quietly put out the word, via the Alliance for Arts and Culture, asking members of the community to stop sending emails, that the message has been heard. Of course we’ve all interpreted this as license to send even more!

That’s it for now. Back next month (which is Tuesday!) with what I hope will be more performance reviews. The new Murakami play; Headlines Theatre’s After homelessness…; EDAM’s new program; MachineNoisy at the Dance Centre: all things I want to see.

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Political Theatre (and Theatre Politics)

I had initially intended, with this post, to focus on more explicitly performance-related (i.e., theatre-related) topics, but it's been two weeks of high drama on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, and so politics once again intrudes.

As any sentient being in the country well knows, Canadians have just passed through a constitutional crisis unprecedented in our history, one that has unfortunately resulted in an even bigger, and potentially more dangerous, procedural precedent being set, and that has seen Prime Minister Stephen Harper narrowly--and temporarily--retain power in a manner that, to turn his own language back upon him, is an egregious affront to democracy. 

It all started with a high-stakes game of political brinksmanship following the passing of the minority Conservative government's throne speech less than a month ago. Despite a chastened Harper's professed statement that his party would adopt a new spirit of cooperation in the House of Commons following his failure to win a desperately sought after majority in last October's election, the week after the throne speech (which the other parties voted to support), Finance Minister Jim Flaherty delivered an economic update that bore all the classic hallmarks of the PMO's mean-spirited, hit-them-when-they're-down approach to politics. Specifically, the Conservatives, in addition to fudging the numbers to make it look like Canada actually was heading into a potentially debilitating global recession with a small surplus rather than needing to worry just yet about deficit spending on infrastructure in order to stimulate the economy, proposed as one of their cost-cutting measures the elimination of public-financing for federal political parties. This financing, brought in by the Liberals under Jean Chretien, is based on a formula that sees all registered parties fielding federal candidates receiving a percentage of taxpayers' money based on the number of votes they captured in the last election. The Conservatives have the highest percentage of private and corporate donations among any of the major parties, and so don't really need the additional public financing. But the Liberals, still struggling to pay off lingering debt following a series of costly leadership contests, and having seen their fundraising abilities plummet alongside their approval ratings, very much need this money to remain competitive in any upcoming election. Ditto the NDP and the Greens, who especially as smaller, more-left of centre parties that appeal to an electoral base that doesn't have as deep pockets as the core Conservative constituency, rely on this money to field candidates and run ads and pay staff and criss-cross the largest country on the planet. With the Bloc Quebecois things are a bit more complicated, because as a party that campaigns solely in one province, they are less beholden on money to cover major travel expenses etc. No doubt Harper was counting on public outrage at the BQ, a party committed to the breakup of the country in his lingo, receiving taxpayers money at all (more on Harper's BQ-bashing in a bit).

As I mentioned earlier, this is classic Harper political strategy: basically, use every opportunity you get to crush your opponents into the ground. But the would-be autocrat's mistake was that he forgot he didn't have a majority. No doubt he was relying on the fact that the Liberals, with a lame-duck leader, Stephane Dion, who had led his party to its worst electoral showing in several decades, and a convention to choose his replacement not scheduled till May 2009, would cave once again, and he would get his way, thereby ensuring Conservative party dominance for some time to come. But this time the Liberals didn't blink, and neither did the NDP or the Bloc. Instead, they got together and formed a Liberal-NDP coalition, with Bloc support, and declared their intention of bringing down the government in a non-confidence vote on Flaherty's economic update. 

While coalition governments in Canada, unlike in many European parliamentary systems, are rare, they are not unprecedented. And this proposed coalition was counting on the fact that, the country having so recently been to the polls, this parliamentary session being so young, and with no perceived direction regarding the economy, the Governor-General would seriously consider calling on them to form a government rather than acceding to Harper's likely wish for her to dissolve parliament and call another election. Time for the Conservatives to blink.

And blink they did, quickly postponing by a week the confidence vote, and withdrawing from what was to be voted on the controversial removal of public party financing, as well as another bone of contention for the opposition parties, the removal of the right to strike by public sector employees. They also agreed to move up the date of a proposed budget that would see a major economic stimulus package. But the coalition was not backing down, and with everyone apparently (and fatally, as it turned out) rallied behind the resurrected Dion as replacement Prime Minister, it was time for Harper to really sweat.

Which brings us to the truly appalling part of this mess. For, when Harper is cornered it is not his habit to show any humility or adopt a statesmanlike persona and own up to his mistakes; instead, he goes on the attack, in this case accusing the "unelected" coalition (somebody voted for them) of trying to hijack leadership of the government undemocratically, a desperate power grab that sees the Liberals willing, in these trying economic times (suddenly we go from a surplus to utter doom), to get into bed with "socialists" and "separatists." All of this was a lie, of course; a parliamentary system is all about having a viable opposition, and our constitution allows for another party or parties to have the opportunity to form a government (at the G-G's discretion) should the governing party lose the confidence of the House. And the Bloc were not part of the coalition, but rather agreed to support it for a fixed period of time. (Indeed, Harper and the Conservatives had themselves previously strategized about working with the Bloc to defeat Paul Martin's minority liberal government back in 2005.) But Harper has a habit of playing fast and loose with the truth, and appealing instead to the emotions of his core base, most of whom fastened on to the Dion-Bloc alliance as anathema. 

With a media blitz ensuring that public support (especially in the west) was firmly behind him, Harper then played the only card left to him, choosing to run away from the fight rather than face the consequences of a loss of confidence in the House. Specifically, he asked the GG to prorogue, or temporarily suspend, parliament until January 26th, at which time a new throne speech would introduce a new budget. Constitutional experts weighed in on all sides, many saying that the GG, Michaelle Jean, shouldn't grant the request, as it sets that dangerous precedent that I mentioned at the outset of this post--what's to prevent all future governments from doing the same? Just shutting down the House because you might lose a vote is about as undemocratic as things get, Mr. Harper. At the same time, the GG was in an impossible situation, especially as a Liberal appointee from Quebec with a husband whom many accuse of having his own separatist ties. To defy Harper's wishes, and to go against public opinion would have opened her up to accusations of political interference, and potentially have lead to an even greater crisis. Still, the word is that Jean made Harper work for his request (he met with her for more than 2 hours).

Then, too, Harper could it seems count on the cracks within the coalition starting to form, and above all on the well-meaning but unfortunately grossly incompetent and inept Dion screwing up. Which he did royally (no pun intended, Madame GG) with his televised address to the nation trying to explain why a coalition was a viable option. Dion, who has never been the most articulate of politicians at the best of times (especially in English), forgot Marshall McLuhan's cardinal rule, that the medium is the message. In short, he was done in by poor production values, with an amateurishly cropped and out-of-focus 5-minute clip that arrived late to broadcast networks, and without a separate French-language version (in the end, they dubbed his voice).

And so we do find our way back to the performative after all, although this is hardly my preferred kind of political theatre. Nevertheless, the curtain has dropped for now, and Harper will get his second act. I predict that before that the coalition and the Liberals in particular will have their own entracte/contretemps, perhaps a little something from Julius Caesar, with the dump-Dion-sooner-rather-than-later chorus growing steadily and a leadership vote moved up from May. I suspect whoever wins that vote (Michael Ignatieff or Bob Rae) will quickly rethink the viability of the coalition, especially if he wants to seriously challenge the Conservatives in the next election. Which now Harper will be more emboldened to seek, based on the latest poll numbers. And while I refuse to cast him as the tragic hero in all of this, the one potential upside is that in classic hubristic fashion Harper may have forever scuttled his chances of achieving a majority by so alienating Quebeckers with his anti-separatist rhetoric (they themselves go to the polls provincially on Monday, and while there was initial fear that the Parti Quebecois would benefit from Harper's trash-talking, it appears Jean Charest's Liberals will win a third straight term, possibly a majority). The problem is that there's as much hubris on the other side and, as they did during the last leadership review that disastrously elected Dion as a compromise candidate, Ignatieff and Rae might, in refusing to put aside their enormous egos, further imperil their party. Et tu Brute?

Amidst all this madness, and despite Richard and my difficulty in tearing ourselves away from Peter Mansbridge and the sexy talking heads on the "At Issue" panel of the nightly newscast of CBC's The National, there has been some time for theatre. Most recently we went to see The Drowsy Chaperone, the Bob Martin/Don McKellar/Lisa Lambert/Greg Morrison musical that began as an improvised vignette at Martin's stag party in Toronto and eventually made its way to Broadway, where it won Tonys for Best Book and Best Original Score (though, oddly, given these awards, not Best Musical--that went to The Jersey Boys), among several others, in 2006--yet more evidence of stealth Canadians taking over the US's entertainment industry (you can have Celine Dion). It's a delightful bagatelle of a show-within-a-show, at once an affectionate parody of and homage to classic American musicals of the 20s and 30s, all presided over by the endearing Man in Chair, a show tune fanatic who prefers the wacky but predictable course of true love in musicals to the mundane, troubling reality of daily life. Jay Brazeau gave a wonderful performance as Man in Chair, and this production at the Vancouver Playhouse (the first independent production to be licensed post-Broadway and the ensuing national tour) was exuberantly and imaginatively staged. This was also Max Reimer's first production since assuming the helm at the Playhouse from Glynis Leyshon, and although he's a money-conscious populist, his work here (he directed as well) gives me hope that the institution might turn its programming around. 

It also confirms my opinion that Leyshon has been a major problem in terms of what I and others have bemoaned as poor programming at the Playhouse over the past several years. The first production of this season, for example, was her last (she and Reimer overlapped), and though Frost/Nixon came with the same impressive Broadway and Tony-winning pedigree as Drowsy, in this case the results were a disaster. Though, to be fair, it wasn't all Leyshon's fault. Her star, Len Cariou (of the original Sweeney Todd fame), was all over the place in his performance as Nixon, including dropping several lines, and the play itself is structurally very weak, relying on a clunky narrator/expositor device (for the politically amnesiac, I guess), and failing to exploit the full dramatic potential from its central David and Goliath conceit. Building up to the final payoff of Nixon's admission of guilt is one too-long tease, and when the moment does come, it's over in a manner of seconds. Perhaps with a titan like Frank Langella in the lead role this would all work, but my suspicion is that first-time playwright Peter Morgan (screenwriter of The Queen, with Helen Mirren) is more comfortable in the television and film idioms. So perhaps the just-released Ron Howard movie version is worth watching for comparison.

But, to allude to a point I raised in an earlier post that I have yet to explore more fully, I think there is a larger structural crisis at work here in the one-act play as a genre. I was also disappointed with the Arts Club production of Doubt back in September/October, and could not understand why it had received the Pulitzer for John Patrick Shanley. The idea is a good one, and the did-he-or-didn't he question at the core keeps us guessing, but there seems to me to be a failure of will in Shanley's unwillingness to explore the questions he raises about religion, sexuality and race, let along faith and doubt, to their full potential. And the lead character of the head nun is too broadly drawn, leading to scenery chewing. That's what happened with Gabrielle Rose in the production I saw. And, to judge from what I've seen of the upcoming movie preview (also directed by Shanley), that's what's on offer in Meryl Streep's performance as well.

Again, there's more to say here, and hopefully I'll continue this discussion in future posts (and get back to Christopher Shinn and Harley Granville Barker as well). But for now I must sign off--Amber Funk Barton and her new company, The Response, are performing her first full-length dance work, Risk, at the Firehall Arts Centre tonight, and Richard and I have tickets. Then it's off to New York next week for research at the NYPL (wink, wink) and theatre-going aplenty. A full report when I return.

P