And, speaking for the opposition...

Coincidentally, a friend sent me a link to this Honda ad today, in which we're offered a vision of the beauty of "making things work" from the perspective of commerce. It easily might have been created as a rebuttal of sorts to what I quoted from Hardwick---though not enough to shake me loose from my agreement with her. At any rate, it certainly does make a good case for the delight of watching pure efficiency in action. The text that follows introduced the link:

"Read the info first, then watch the clip.

And you thought those people that set up roomfuls of Dominos to knock over were amazing. There are no computer graphics Or digital tricks in the film. Everything you see really happened in real time exactly as you see it.

The film took 606 takes. On the first 605 takes, something, usually very minor, didn't work. They would then have to set the whole thing up again.

The crew spent weeks shooting night and day. By the time it was over, they were ready to change professions.

The film cost six million dollars and took three months to complete including full engineering of the sequence. In addition, it's two minutes long so every time Honda airs the film on British television, they're shelling out enough dough to keep any one of us in clover for a lifetime.

However, it is fast becoming the most downloaded advertisement in Internet history. Honda executives figure the ad will soon pay for itself simply in "free viewings" (Honda isn't paying a dime to have you watch this Commercial!)

When the ad was pitched to senior executives, they signed off on it immediately without any hesitation - including the costs.

There are six and only six hand-made Honda Accords in the world. To the horror of Honda engineers, the filmmakers disassembled two of them to make the film.

Everything you see in the film (aside from the walls, floor, ramp, and complete Honda Accord) is parts from those two cars.

The voiceover is Garrison Keillor. When the ad was shown to Honda executives, they liked it and commented on how amazing computer graphics have gotten.

They fell off their chairs when they found out it was for real. Oh, and about those funky windshield wipers. On the new Accords, the windshield wipers have water sensors and are designed to start doing their thing automatically as soon as they become wet."

Click Here to Link to Honda Ad

Making Things Work

Here's a paragraph from the great American critic, and editor of the New York Review of Books, Elizabeth Hardwick, which I see as related to the question I was considering in an earlier post, "On Seeing More Than One Knows":

"Perhaps the worst thing our theater has done is to convince everyone that drama is the art of "making things work" on the stage. This is a legacy from commerce: The thing may not sell—that in the end is the Eleusinian mystery before which we are all silent—but it must work. From the top to the bottom, the most lavish to the dustiest little loft, they are all sharpening and shaping, maiming and taming. The disturbing sense we have of repetition, déjà vu, of having been there before: this is the pay for making it work. Things work because they are like other things that work. End Game [sic] and Happy Days by Samuel Beckett cannot be said to work at all, in the sense of our theater. Only a mind free of the obsessions of conventional forms could produce works of such formal beauty."

Sorry I Laughed

Laura Rocca, Lydia Wilkinson, Jenny Melo and Arianna Pozzuoli in a happier moment in the Queen's Unversity production of Les Belles Soeurs. Photo by Tim Fort.

My favourite response to create in an audience is to make them laugh and then make them sorry that they laughed. Perhaps this sounds sadistic, or manipulative, but in my view, it is where the best possibility lies for audience members to feel that they have grown or been changed in some way as a result of seeing a performance. Laughter usually implies a certain amount of detachment, and apart from the inherent good of how great it feels to laugh (“the best medicine” as I recall Reader’s Digest called their dismally unfunny humour column), it suggests the possibility of an ironic perspective. But, to then see something which makes one reassess one’s initial reaction, to regret the laughter, is, in my view, not to negate or withdraw the initial reaction, but to add another level of perspective to it, to grow inwardly, to achieve a "perspective of perspectives" (which I know was how Kenneth Burke defined irony, but please ignore the confusion). I suspect what I am saying here is comparable to Soren Kierkegaard’s argument about how irony provides a transition from the aesthetic to the ethical (though it’s been so long since I read him that I can’t be sure of that).

But, philosophical analogies aside, it’s really quite thrilling to feel an audience collectively amused and then appalled—the emotional equivalent of feeling your stomach drop or whatever as the roller coaster passes the crest and begins its descent. The first time I can recall encountering this phenomenon was watching Neil Munro perform in Trevor Griffiths’ play Comedians when I was a teenager. I was exhilarated by the experience at the time, and I suppose I’ve always kept my eyes open for genuine opportunities to recreate it. Perhaps the best chance I’ve had —or at least the one I recall most vividly— occurred during the university production of Michel Tremblay’s Les Belles Soeurs, just a few years ago. The character of Rose is loud, crude and somewhat funny, but Tremblay has given her a monologue in which she speaks of the suffering she endures in her marriage. It would be fairly easy to perform the monologue in such a way that the audience continued to laugh, and it would be relatively easy to perform it so that it was serious throughout. But the most powerful approach seemed to be to have Arianna Pozzuoli, the young actress playing the role, begin the monologue almost as if it were stand-up comedy, then, by breaking the timing, break off the laughter of the audience, only to suddenly reveal an inner pain that caused them to fall into a deeply aghast silence, as they found themselves plunging suddenly from amused condescension into nauseous empathy. I think it really was an existentially enlightening moment for many, if not most, of the people who saw it, the full depth of Tremblay’s intentions surging through their hearts and robbing them of breath. God bless Arianna, who nailed this trick perfectly night after night; because, over the last few years, this moment has probably been spoken of to me more than any other single moment in anything else I’ve done.

Ronald Bryden

My mentor and friend, Ron Bryden, died about two years ago last week. He was a great critic, and if you want to get some idea of exactly how great, take a look at Shaw and His Contemporaries: Theatre Essays by Ronald Bryden, ed. Denis Johnston (Mosaic Press/Academy of the Shaw Festival, 2002). Anyway, I came across a letter from him today, which set me thinking and eventually prompted me to to go in search of this piece which I wrote for his memorial service at the invitation of his daughters---two truly lovely women:

I first met Ron more than two decades ago when, as a young undergraduate, I was cast in some of the Drama Centre’s productions at Hart House Theatre. Ron had been teaching at UofT for a few years by then, but he had only just been appointed the Director of the Drama Centre, and naturally, there was a great deal of excitement about his appointment. People always seemed to be talking about what he had done and quoting certain things that he had said and written---probably with more enthusiasm than accuracy—--and the effect was that Ron had assumed a sort of legendary status in my mind before I ever met him.

When I did finally meet him, of course it was immediately clear what it was that people found so fascinating about him. I’m sure we’ve all found ourselves in awe, at one time or another, at that Miltonic mind of his, with its encyclopaedic knowledge not just of the theatre, but (as it sometimes appeared) all of Western Culture. And then there was the way he spoke: so beautifully, in well-formed prose, combining in conversation the same elements that characterized his writing: the raconteur’s gift for telling a story as vividly and succinctly as possible, along with that startling acuity of insight which made him such a brilliant critic.

But I think what most impressed me about Ron at the time—an impression confirmed again and again over the next twenty-odd years—was that, for a man so accomplished, he seemed to be so gentle, so warm, and so utterly lacking in any discernible pretension. It was surprising sometimes to discover over the years just how well acquainted Ron was with this or that famous person, because he gave little hint of this in his conversation. In fact, while he was always happy to speak warmly of his family, I seldom heard him talk of himself—and whenever he did, fleetingly, in any story he told, there was never any hint of self-aggrandizement.

On the other hand, neither was he guilty of false modesty. I recall one occasion, about fifteen years ago, when I was a Junior Fellow at Massey College and was sitting in the common room, alone, reading the newspapers after dinner. Suddenly the door to the Master’s lodging opened and out walked Ann Saddlemyer (then the Master of Massey College, and a distinguished professor), with a group in tow that included Ron, as well as Claude Bissell (the President emeritus of University of Toronto), Pauline McGibbon (the former Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario), Douglas LePan (winner of the Governor General’s Award for fiction and poetry), Robertson Davies and Northrop Frye. The next day I saw Ron in class and said to him: “You certainly were in august company last night!” And Ron looked at me and said (deadpan but with a touch of feigned indignation): “Well, so were they.” Ron was being witty, of course, as he so often was; but I think there was something of principle here too. He was, as they say, “no respecter of persons”; rather, he treated everyone with dignity.

One can see this idea cropping up all over his life. A number of years ago, I came across a piece that Ron had written on Peter Brook’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Eventually, this became a hugely celebrated production, of course, but at first, Ron was one of only a select group of critics who praised it warmly. As I remember, what Ron had loved about it more than anything else was the way the production broke down barriers—between the audience and the actors, among classes, among ages, even among cultures. And this same idea, essentially, was characteristic of Ron’s attitude towards the classroom. I think now of a graduate seminar in post-World War II British drama that I took with Ron, in which I am sure we students said many callow and fatuous things; and yet, notwithstanding that everything Ron said was so wise and so much to the point, there was never the sense that our views were of any less value to him, or that he suspected he would hear little of interest said by us about an area which he knew better, perhaps, than any other person living.

This gentleness and warmth seemed to be present in every other context I encountered him—whether as a writer, a director, a scholar or as a friend. Now, the way I speak of him comes, I know, embarrassingly close to hero-worship, though, naturally, I am aware that Ron was capable of being irascible or forgetful or so on. But those are qualities he shared with all of us. What was exceptional in him—the reason that I always have and always will regard him as my mentor—was his magnanimity of spirit; his immense erudition that always remained uninfected by any snobbery; his generosity and kindness; and his passionate engagement with the world.

I miss him very much, but my life has been immeasurably enriched by having known him.

The Waist Line

Attife, attife, ute ibe orfe
ouldntce etge oughthre uthre athroombe orde.
— Ezra Tonne

I. The Burial of the Bread.

April is the cruellest month, bringing
Bikinis out of cold storage, filling
The shelves with sun-screen,
Reminders of skimpy beachwear.
Summer exposed us, gut hanging over our speedos.

And the children were frightened . He said Merry
Christmas, and when he was done, he looked
At his mountainous belly, and felt fat.
“I feed much of the time and get stout in winter.”

Doctor Atkins, famous dietician
Died of a stroke, nevertheless
Is known to have the fastest fad diet on the internet.
Here, says he, is your plan:
Avoid the sign of the starch: potatoes, bread and rice
These you are forbidden to eat
Or you will want death when you’re by the water.

Unreal beach!
I had not thought gluttony had betonned so many.

You, hippopotamus manqué — tu resemble une pear!


II. A Pillow Chest.

The chair she sat in, furnished a groan,
collapsed on the marble, where her ass
smacked down, heavy with fruit pies
double the weight of seven average folks: abracadabra
resounding heaviness upon the table too
as the ripple of her flab rose to strike it.
‘Jugs, jugs!’ said those with dirty minds,
as her withered dugs of time
leapt out, leaping, no longer thus blouse-enclosed.

‘My hunger is bad tonight. Yes bad. Eat with me.
Eat with me. Why do you not eat. Eat.
What are you drinking, now? What drinking? What?
I never get offered what you’re drinking. Drinks!’

But
O O O O that Shake n’ bake bag
It’s so appetizing
so tantalizing.
What shall we do now? What shall I eat?
Shall I rush out as I am to the pub down the street?

If the kitchen’s not closed
we shall order nachos and beer.
HURRY UP, PLEASE, IT’S TIME.
I’ll have the buffalo wings
And I the cheesy garlic bread.
HURRY UP, PLEASE, IT’S TIME.
HURRY UP, PLEASE, IT’S TIME.
Good pies, though... Good pies at the diner
at the twenty-four hour diner, good pies
So, merrily we roll along, towards
Good pies, ladies, good pies.

(I wrote this a while back to amuse my friend Gabrielle, who is a T.S. Eliot scholar.)

Bilingual Cautionary Note

After watching the Liberal Party leadership convention for most of the day, I've got bilingualism on my mind, I suppose. I suppose, too, that if I were a real grown-up, I would not find this so amusing (although I have the consolation of knowing that my friend Jodi Essery, a woman of substance if there ever was one, does too):



Porc-epic



Porky Pig

On Seeing More Than One Knows

For various reasons, I’ve been thinking a lot over the last few years about the difficulty of audiences coming to the theatre prepared to see only what they know already, when all the time what one really wants, if one is serious about making theatre, is to get them to see something which they have never, up to that point, properly considered. This is, I suppose, a problem which confronts every artist of every type to some degree; but I suspect that the problem is tougher for makers of theatre because, being engaged in an ephemeral art-form, and usually requiring, for financial reasons, an audience of some size, theatrical practitioners have to worry more about being immediately apprehensible. It is perhaps easier, in these terms, to be innovative in the sense of providing a startling spectacle of some kind than it is to encourage people to see and ponder an idea which is truly new to them.

Perhaps the most dismal circumstances in which one may encounter this disinclination to see anything other than what one already knows is at the hands of a reviewer. The main job of theatre critics is (or should be) to foster the intellectual climate into which the work enters, and if there is an implicit suggestion that one needn’t disturb one’s preconceptions any more upon entering a theatre than one does in lazily allowing the most conventional sit-com to drift across one’s television screen, then the public discourse remains flat and arid; the theatre-makers are dropping their seed upon stony ground.

I think we (everybody who cares about theatre) need to look for more ways to stimulate public discourse, to insist that theatre matters. In short, I suppose I want more people to share my carping dissatisfaction with productions that are made merely to please the makers’ egos or to pleasantly divert the audience from the tedium of real life. To be sure, those aspects always have to factor into the work, but it would be nice for people to at least want, if not to expect, more. I can think of nothing quite so depressing as that feeling I have when leaving a dully conceived, unimaginatively written, ploddingly directed and indifferently performed production, and I realize that I am in the company of people who are actually incapable of having even wished for something better. All creativity begins, I suppose, with the observation: “this could be better.” And having people leave the theatre thinking creatively is what the art form is all about, isn’t it?