The CTR Anthology Page 7

  I move rapidly to the necessity of producing Norwegian drama. Since this vital question seems to demand a proof for the necessity of any drama at all and since there is no proof but what I have already offered in the name of civilization, I should like to pose a few pertinent questions on the subject after first defining the term “Norwegian drama.”

  There seems little doubt as to what is French drama or German drama or English drama; it is often what we see on the stage in France, Germany and England. (He fills the glass again.) And though it seems odd to me to raise the question as to what is Norwegian drama, it is not I who have raised it, but, even more oddly, those who claim it does not exist, thereby placing themselves in the rather untenable position of demanding a definition of nothing. Since I know that it does exist I shall not insult anyone’s intelligence by trying to define a self-evident term such as “Norwegian drama” except to observe that it may or may not portray sardines or fjords, may or may not transpire in Norway itself, even may or may not portray Norwegians; it is the sensibility that is Norwegian, not the cut of the maid’s apron.

  Other hysterics have prophesied that the production of new Norwegian drama will mean the demise of the classics and the best of contemporary foreign drama. Do they infer that once our new drama is widely produced, nothing can compete with it? Whatever their idiotic fear may be, it has been trumped up by those who know they are incompetent in dealing with new work. There is no precedent for these prophesies in 2,000 years of history. (During the following paragraph he dabs himself with his handkerchief)

  Why has the lie been propagated that there are no Norwegian playwrights who are any good? I think for the same reason that there are supposedly no women playwrights of merit. Well, there are very few Jews in the Vatican; if you want more you have only to advertise stipulating the salary.

  The Norwegian theatre is paid for by the Norwegian people in taxes yet it is largely run by Germans and Englishmen who are bent on giving the Norwegian people German and English versions (I refer here to an all-important sensibility) of German and English plays. I suppose we must be thankful they have sometimes bothered to have them translated into Norwegian.

  I must here timidly inquire as to the purpose served by performing Norwegian in an English accent. Am I supposed to be impressed by that air of rigid respectability? I find it odd to live a Norwegian life the way I do and enter a Norwegian theatre to find not a jot that is Norwegian. Why do we not simply tour entire productions from England and Germany 52 weeks a year? Better the real thing than a copy of it? Why is our largest theatre controlled by a foreigner? Why are many regional theatres, all subsidized as well by Norwegian taxpayers, similarly manacled? Why is this not tolerated in any other nation on earth? Why do these aliens overwhelmingly produce drama originating in any other nation than Norway? Why is their much touted genius not automatically used in the development of Norway? We, after all, are employing them at the disastrous expense of ignoring those who have consistently pledged themselves to precisely that indigenous labour which these carpetbaggers disdain. (He crumples the handkerchief violently in his fist.) Who is using whom? Why is government condoning this state of affairs with subsidy and indifference? Why not subsidize Drury Lane directly? Why is this intolerable in any other nation on earth? What is suicide? (He picks up the glass and puts it down again.)

  If the government were to heavily subsidize the importation of sardines and allow our own fishing industry to fend for itself as best it could, the nation’s economy would collapse. Do not think that art has no relation to politics. It is the barometer of the times. In a healthy society, art is a minister created by the people, answerable only to the nation and before whom kings and presidents tremble alike. Why is the barometer in Norway being ignored? The main reason, as I have stated, is that Norwegians are not able to see it since our stage is at present cluttered with the lords and ladies of other lands, whose glitter, ambience, and humour are irrelevant to Norway.

  Another reason is that the state of criticism here is even more unhealthy than that of the theatre to which it owes its keep. It is a sad fact that Norwegian criticism is irrelevant to Norwegian theatre because the critics themselves are yearning after something they will inevitably not see on the Norwegian stage since it is not the English stage or the German stage. Why this tautology should cause them so much anguish and confusion is beyond my modest powers of comprehension. I cannot pierce the darkness but a little stumbling about may be helpful. First of all, the criteria these critics use in diagnosing our indigenous drama are from other times and other places. You cannot find a liver ailment if you are looking for a broken heart. (During the next two sentences he takes out a number of old, tiny newspaper clippings and holds them up to the audience.) Again and again the critics rail against the fact that they can find no sentiment in my work, no honouring of mothers, no tender lament over lost daughters or aging loyal hounds. The answer is very simple. There is none in it and that is why they do not find it. (He puts the clippings away) Similarly they ruffle up considerable feathers when our modern playwrights, not only Norwegians, choose to deal with violent or sexual matters. Mr Strindberg has been constantly abused because his portraits of life are too violent, passionate, and despairing. Too passionate for whom? Too passionate for England, certainly, and hence for acceptable taste everywhere. Yet England, the most hypocritical society ever to deface the globe, is precisely where Mr Strindberg is needed most. Anton Chekhov is sending us a beautiful new drama of stasis and character exposition as has never been seen before in the world in such exquisite detail. But our critics are buried in mud at the bottom of the sea under 700 steam engines. They complain that there is no plot! No story. No sudden thrilling revelations at the end of the second act. Perhaps they have mistaken the titles. It is not the three bears but the three sisters, not the dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy but The Dance of Death. He is not Shakespeare, he is Chekhov, and Strindberg is Strindberg and I am Ibsen and that lady to my right is not the gentleman to my left nor the headwaiter at the Metropole. If the critics would rather be presented with Valhalla than Norway they should not address themselves to the public but to God.

  But the most important reason for the production of our own drama and at the same time for the lack of such, lies deeply within ourselves. You cannot invite locusts to dinner and expect them to eat like birds. Are we governing ourselves or are we not? You are either for independence when it is threatened or against it: there is no such animal as a “little freedom” for modern man. A nation must say who it is in a loud clear tone or it will be readily swallowed up by the milieu of those who are not doubtful of their existence. The much touted “identity crisis” which we in Norway are said to suffer is a foul and inane lie propagated by those who stand to profit by it. It does not exist. I certainly know who I am. If you do not know who you are then, according to the laws of psychiatry and the state, you are insane and have no rights in the affairs of Norway.

  Norwegian art is abundant and at this very moment is clearly defining Norwegian existence for those who choose to see: to remain deaf to it is the prerogative of any citizen: to claim its non-existence is either to be blind or wicked, but to oppose its legitimate growth and establishment is a criminal act against the people of Norway. (He removes his tie and stuffs it in his pocket.) Yet this is precisely the program of these powerful émigrés running our cultural institutions, who, curiously enough, have arrived here with a regularity that suggests they are somehow unacceptable in their own countries and while it is the perverse norm to deport one’s undesirables to one’s colonies, I should expect any Norwegian (no matter to what degree a toady he may be) to object to the establishment on his territory of an international garbage dump. (He unbuttons his collar.) These people are not content to populate the Norwegian stage with trivial manuscripts from bygone seasons in foreign capitals nor even with scoring a puny success by costuming Plantagenets in waistcoats or getting up Italianate Elizabethans as American Indians. They have been lauded
by critics from afar who see not Norway’s show but their own. They have fooled our own critics by reproducing third-rate ideas long since worn out in the countries from which these little foreign fish come looking for a little pond presumably because they can no longer swim in their own oceans. (He picks up the glass and holds it, continuing.) But our imported beribboned masters are not even content with this. They bring in their friends and acquaintances to play with yet another theatre, another gallery; any toy will do it seems in this eternal soirée given by an obsequious Norwegian government and boards of governors as culturally lobotomized as they are impressed and grovelling in awe of foreign titles. A veritable fiesta for everyone save Norwegians. (He puts the glass down.)

  No one is suggesting that some influence on the theatre from abroad is not necessary or beneficial; we do not wish to live in a vacuum. But we must control our own theatre for ourselves and give the main thrust of it to indigenous work.

  There is an easier solution. Why are we bothering with borders at all? Or for that matter with the tiresome pretence of self-government? Why do we not obtain in one bold stroke the most powerful army in the world, the most successful economy, and the proudest cultural heritage by voting ourselves out of existence as a nation altogether and seeking incorporation by either Germany or England? This would instantly solve all the problems to which we are heir. We must make up our minds. We cannot have it both ways. (He takes off his collar and stuffs it in another pocket.) We either are or we are not. (He drinks the glass of water.)

  I realize that in speaking here tonight I am to some extent preaching to the converted. Your invaluable organization, the Society for the Encouragement of a Norwegian Theatre is to be much admired for what it has accomplished so far. I think the time has come to review exactly what has been accomplished in the interest of what has yet to be done. I should respectfully like to point out that what you have established to this date is a small number of small institutions producing Norwegian drama on a tiny island in Norway. It will not do. It is not enough. If you think that this great enterprise has been solidly secured you are under an illusion and you had better think again. If you believe that you may work quietly in your little huts without being affected by those in the palaces across this nation then you are naïve. Is anyone that naïve? If you cannot see that what you have established in five or ten years can be as easily swept away in less than half that time, then look out your windows: while you have been snuggling comfortably, the laurels of your past have withered and throughout the land retrenchment is the order of the day. You are marching backwards into a bog because you are too self-satisfied to move forward and therefore cannot see that by staying where you are it is only a matter of time before you will be nowhere. (He dips the handkerchief right into the jug and dabs himself erratically.) And what do we see, as a lackadaisical farewell is bid to the eleventh hour? Bickering among you as to who is big and who is small: that is nonsense: you are all small. Who is best? Who is cleverest? You are all fools abdicating your potential. Who will grab the most scraps left by those who control the real resources in this country? It is lugubrious to consider a hierarchy among slaves. (He fills the glass of water full.) And yet none of you have surfaced without sacrifice, without fight. What on earth could lead you to believe you can get any further in any other way? Little schemes for self-aggrandizement will avail you nothing but soulless fat. Some of you have told me that you simply wish to work and be left alone, that you are artists and not politicians. Your sentiments are as irrelevant to the real situation as those of the critics are to your work.

  Do you think they will hand you a national theatre because that is your right? (He picks up the glass.)

  It is necessary to give it another push. It is necessary to look united to the problems of establishing on a national scale a system of theatres devoted to the creation of a significant body of dramatic literature with all that that entails: administrators, technicians, designers, directors, actors, and playwrights. This is necessary. You must take what you have started to every handful of this Norwegian earth, to newspapers and periodicals, to school-texts, to publishing houses, to painting, to dance, to music, and to whatever forms of human expression are yet to come, to those who administrate and control cultural subsidy, to their lieutenants, and to their secretaries’ children, to the grocers, the doctors, and the boardrooms of the nation, to the judges, to the ministers, to the very government and the people itself. (He pours the glass of water back into the jug and throws the handkerchief in after it.)

  I have dreamed of going to any Norwegian theatre across this land and seeing a plenitude of Norwegian drama from all regions, from all walks of life, in a multitude of styles, moods, and attitudes. I have dreamed of my grandchildren attending a theatre in which there is another kind of conflict, in which young playwrights will say of us – enough – the Norwegian theatre is sinking in the mire of its own aging – enough of Ibsen and all the old fogies – produce one a year if you like, but let us have a new Norwegian drama better than the old – yes, we can do better.

  We have embarked on nothing less than a fight for our own culture. I can think of nothing sadder than inaction now. We must be able to make our own mistakes. We will produce well and badly but we must produce. And in the same breath we must fight or become feathers in the wind.

  Voltaire has said that God is on the side of the strongest legions. In true Norwegian fashion let us take no chances: let us pray to God and gather our legions. Thank you.

  (He glares around for a long moment as if lost in thought, as if there was something crucial left out. He decides it would be pointless to add anything in any case and so he leaves. A very well dressed Man of 37 with slight greying at the temples comes to the podium smiling broadly. He speaks smoothly with a slight British accent, very polite, always smiling, dressed modern.)

  Man: I would like to thank Mr Ibsen for his most interesting and provocative opinions. I am sure his speech has given us much food for thought not only in the realm of philosophy but in his valuable hints for practical suggestion. I would like to welcome him to return again to speak to us whenever he wishes. I know that we are always ready to listen. Thank you. (He steps down, sharing a joke with a man at one of the tables nearby.)

  THE END

  Passion and Sin

  Hrant Alianak

  Born in the Sudan in 1950, Hrant Alianak moved to Canada in 1967, and studied at McGill and York universities. He has worked widely as an actor, writer and director in theatre, television, film, and opera. His plays, all produced under his own direction, include Lucky Strike, Night, The Blues, Passion and Sin, Christmas, Mathematics, and Tantrums. He has directed for Theatre Passe Muraille, Factory Theatre Lab, Buddies in Bad Times, and NDWT Theatre. As an actor he has appeared in numerous television dramas and films, and his performance in Atom Egoyan’s Family Viewing won him a Genie nomination.

  Passion and Sin was first produced at the Toronto Free Theatre on 4 March 1976.

  PRODUCTION

  Director / Hrant Alianak

  Designer / Ralph McDermid

  Lighting / Sholem Dolgoy

  CAST

  Diane Dewey / The Mother

  Miles Potter / The Military Man

  Booth Savage / The Son

  Allan Aarons / The Man on the Run

  Diane Lawrence / The Monkey

  Ann Lantuch / The Other Woman

  CHARACTERS

  The Mother, beautiful, listless, angry

  The Military Man, suspicious, brutal, slow

  The Son, spoiled, scared, restless

  The Man on the Run (The Man), violent, famous, betrayed

  The Monkey, innocent, fascinating, animal

  The Other Woman, hostile, suicidal, craving

  COSTUMES

  All clothes worn by all have been permanently marked with the dried stains of salt-soaked sweat.