Theatre in Nova Scotia has a serious problem and if something isn’t done about it, it will go the way of the cod fisheries.
Theatre, like many arts disciplines in Nova Scotia, is dominated by white, straight, cis men.
Desperate to attract audiences, theatre companies will go to any lengths except for honestly representing the communities they live in. Specifically, larger commercial theatres completely ignore the voices of black, Indigenous and persons of colour in Nova Scotia.
A shining example of this is the use of the term “eskimo” during a scene transition in Neptune Theatre’s A Miracle on 34th Street. The disregard for Indigenous voices is apparent—of the multiracial children’s chorus, only white children spoke, and there were no adults of colour, completely erasing racialized families. When you do that, what you communicate to potential audiences is that this is an institution for white people. What I also want to see is women’s stories on the main stage. The discussion around female-centric storytelling is steeped with the assumption that no one will watch it. Women aren’t a niche audience, we’re 51 percent of the population.
Of course, indie theatre isn’t immune from this either—Noun by Brandon Lorimer at the 2016 Atlantic Fringe Festival depicted a post-racial world in which there was no concept of black people. In student theatre, Izzy Patterson’s Salt for the King’s Theatrical Society was disgustingly appropriative, using an Indigenous character as an object for white characters to perform actions around and dismissing the trans experience as a phase.
That’s not to say we don’t have some incredible exceptions—DaPoPo Theatre is the closest thing Halifax has to a formal queer theatre comparable to the legendary Buddies in Bad Times theatre, and is currently developing a full-length musical, KAMP, about the experiences of gay males in concentration camps in the holocaust. DaPoPo took a chance on Jacob Sampson’s Chasing Champions before Ship’s Company or Eastern Front Theatre saw it as profitable.
2b Theatre Company, through its current playwright-in-residence Shauntay Grant, is actively developing and scouting talent from black communities in Nova Scotia. It’s a welcome change from the overstuffed, intellectual to the point of being inaccessible writing of past playwright-in-residence Michael Mackenzie.
LunaSea Theatre is the only women’s theatre in Halifax, telling stories by women, with women, for the entire city since 2006. It unfortunately remains an all-white institution.
San Family Productions brought an incredible show to Halifax this year— Walter Borden’s The Epistle of Tightrope Time brought audiences perspective of gay black men before all the white folks started gushing about Moonlight. Audiences were wowed again at the Atlantic Fringe Festival with Voices Black Theatre Ensemble’s ONCE: Africville Stories. Of the theatre companies in Nova Scotia, these are the only ones to be run by African Nova Scotians.
Villain’s Theatre advertised their production of The Spanish Tragedy as all-female, before amending it to acknowledge members of their cast and crew’s non-binary identities. Finally, representation—and proud representation at that—of diverse gender identities on and off stage. This is the kind of theatre that makes sense to be in a Pride parade—what did Shakespeare By The Sea do to take up our space in our community?
Finally, I’d like to gush a bit about Keep Good Theatre Company. It’s a fledgling company run by three incredible women committed to making quality work. It’s not just entertainment for Keep Good, it’s art. It’s principles (though admittedly it falls into the same pitfalls of whiteness as LunaSea).
More people of colour, more women, more queer stories, more original works, more representation of these communities in administrative, decision-making positions, and more overall tact would be really swell for 2017. I’m optimistic, but have never been much of a realist. Make the world around you better.
Lara Lewis is an advocate for the arts, a member of Glooscap First Nation and a member of the LGBTQ community. She is a graduate of the Fountain School of Performing Arts and is currently a journalism student at King’s.
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This article appears in Dec 15-21, 2016.
Maybe if you actually saw Salt you would know, a) its a gay character, not trans, b) what the play is actually about, and c) her name is Issie.
For the record, Noun only had TWO characters in the whole play, except for a very brief appearance by a third at the end. They just happened to be white. To say he made a play where “there was no concept of black people” is insulting and ridiculous. He wrote the play with his friend, what was he supposed to do? Refuse to write the play because he needed to find a black guy instead? How is he supposed to be inclusive of all races when theres only two characters in the whole play? You are clearly looking for controversy where there is none, and smearing peoples names in the process. Oh and if you didn’t notice, the characters in Noun were also gay, but I guess that doesn’t matter cause they were gay white people
If the writer had braved a couple of ferry trips over to the Dark Side this Fall, she could have caught the Alderney Landing Theatre productions of two World Premiers dealing with the African Nova Scotian experience: “The Green Book” by Nova Scotian Playwright Juanita Peters and Anthony Sherwood’s “The Colour of Courage”. Both excellent.
It’s a shame the writer didn’t actually see Salt.
It was the only play I’ve EVER seen in Halifax student theatre with an indigenous lead actor, and all of the the main characters (more than one of whom were people of colour) were portrayed with real depth and attention to the experiences of racialized minorities. The writer spent a lot of time interviewing indigenous people in the arts community before finishing the script, and the play was accompanied by a talk-back with members of the local indigenous community. The project brought a lot of awareness and conversation to the (extremely white-dominated) Kings and student theatre communities I certainly feel far more aware of indigenous issues because I saw it.
There also wasn’t a trans character in the play. One character was gay, and talked about considering changing her name (mostly for artistic reasons), but none of what she said could have been interpreted by someone in the audience as playing around with being trans. Obviously this doesn’t solve the issue of trans visibility in theatre, but Salt was hardly appropriative of the trans experience, given that it wasn’t relevant to the play.
I would urge the writer to stick to criticizing shows that she has seen. The issue of racial, female and LGBTQ visibility and appropriation in Halifax theatre is very real (does anyone remember the Black Dragon Mountain debacle?) and the community as a whole needs to be much more conscious of the diversity of its audiences. But attacking a play intended to combat the white- and straight-washing of student theatre (quite successfully, I think the broad consensus would agree), for me, takes away a lot of credibility from this article.
The problem I have with this article is its reliance on anecdotal, ad hominem arguments. It cherry picks a few local plays, calls out individuals, then calls it a day. Bashing plays that don’t meet your criteria for inclusion is weak. Yes, absolutely, some plays aren’t inclusive or make tasteless jokes or rely on cliched stereotypes. But labeling an entire work or a community racist, transphobic, homophobic, etc., because it doesn’t include every single minority is insanely reductive. A broad label restricts you from seeing nuance in a piece of art. Based on this article, I get the sense that no art can be acceptable if every perspective isn’t acknowledged. Art doesn’t exist in vacuum, but it also can’t shoulder every problem we have with society.
The musical “KAMP” is not being developed by DaPoPo Theatre but by composer Garry Williams (who happens to be the artistic director of DaPoPo and is an artist who is gay) and playwright Jamie Bradley (a straight guy) under the partnership name “BradleyWilliams Musicals”. That said, DaPoPo Theatre has been very supportive of this project, as well as Playwright’s Atlantic Resource Centre (PARC) and Arts Nova Scotia.
We should be opening the conversation instead of hitting out at companies who are doing their best to stay afloat in the live theatre game. Everybody is somewhat marginalized and the radical inclusion idea is topmost in most artists’ minds…! You ask what did Shakespeare by the Sea do? The answer is it opened up the idea of attending theatre that you might have been afraid of, with the aim of keeping people going to live events. Let us communicate and find out how we, as a sector (live theatre) can become something that everyone MUST SEE.