eves ee | (ee TO For some in theatre, the lives of working people take front, centre stage One of the best things you could do in the new year, is go to some live theatre, especially Canadian plays. If you don’t go to the theatre often — and most working people don’t — reasons to go are moun- ting more as never before. — There are a number of Canadian playwrights and theatre groups who are drawing on working peo- ple — their lives, their struggles, their particular problems and con- cerns, for the material and raw in- spiration for their plays. Their productions have often been the unexpected artistic highlights of Vancouver’s predic- table theatre season, winning rave reviews from the critics and au- diences. Examples are plays like Highball, a play-musical written by Ron Weihs about B.C.’s early log- gers and the conditions which com- pelled them to fight for their rights in the then unorganized forest in- dustry; Jackie Crossland’s haun- ting play, Ruins of S-Permar, a vi- sion of the world after a nuclear holocaust, which translated into a powerful anti-war statement; and Jeremy Long’s play, premiered by Tamahnous Theatre, about the in- tertwined lives of three young miners coping in the desolate min- ing community of Levack, in nor- thern Ontario, Some Kind of Saviour. There have been failures too, like Touchstone Theatre’s Jap, a shallow, misleading play about the internment of Japanese-Canadians during World War II in Canada. These plays give a hint of what is being done, locally. The growth of popular, distinctively Canadian theatre, of course, is not restricted to Vancouver. We are treated periodically to original plays brought here by similarly- committed theatre troupes on na- tional tours. Newfoundland’s Mummers Theatre group a couple of years ago, took on the Greenpeacers in their home turf, with their hilarious revue, They Club Seals Don’t They?, exposing the politics and the economic realities behind the harp seal fishery, and in the pro- cess, giving a condensed history of Newfoundland — from the people’s point of view. The inventive Theatre Passe Muraille brought several shows to Vancouver, including The Farmers Show, which was full of insights in- to the prairie farming communities — where the members of the group come from. “It’s not a question of whether you want to be a political playwright of not,’’ Ron Weihs, playwright and founding director of Island Stage, Vancouver Island’s newest theatre company, said in an interview, commenting on the new development in Cana- dian theatre. “Tf you want to do experimental things which basically derive their inspiration from elsewhere, I’m Theatre Janice Harris not saying it’s a bad thing. Youcan do that. If you want to write spohisticated comedy, that’s alright too, but that is an imitation of another form that’s outside our country. : ‘But if you want to be a Cana- dian playwright, I don’t think you have much choice but to use material that relates to working people.” For Larry Lillo, director/ac- tor/member of Vancouver’s oldest experimental theatre company, Tamahnous, using material that relates to working people is not so much a given as it is a conscious choice at this stage in their develop- ment. They will probably continue to experiment with theatre which isn’t derived from working people, or immediately accessible to them. However, as Lillo put it, ‘‘we’re moving much more into theatre that deals with social issues and political issues, not necessarily theatre: that advocates a line, although we are all socialists ourselves.”’ Jackie Crossland, playwright, actress/director, who confesses to be ‘innocent of history’? and politics, is, in fact, an intensely PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JAN. 16, 1981—Page 10 political writer. In the case of The Ruins of S-Permar, which she directed with Tamahnous, she wrote about what to her is a deep concern — the threat of war. “People told me they didn’t even want to think of the possibility of a nuclear war, or World War ITI, and I understand that. But there are limits to how much you can shut the world out. ‘‘We have to figure out the news ‘together . . ., wecan’t be irresponsi- ble.”’ Although the theatre Weihs, Lillo and Crossland are involved in is different from the plays staged by larger, more “‘comfortable’’ com- panies, all of them pointed out that every kind of theatre must be look- ed at and judged on its own terms. “This kind of theatre (that relates to working people) has to be made by people who really want to make it,’’ Weihs said. ‘‘It can’t be made by people who are doing it for the money or because there’s a ready-made market for it.” It’s equally unrealistic to expect that the current audience pattern will fundamentally change. Work- ing people will continue not to go to the ‘‘hits from elsewhere’? — Neil Simon comedies and Tennessee Williams’ melodramas — and the middle class will continue flocking to them. ‘‘Right now, the Vancouver au- dience is basically a lightweight au- dience, composed mainly of pro- fessionals,’’ Lillo said. ““The work- ing class audience isn’t going to swallow the hits from New York, isn’t going to relate to them. “They can see it on television, so why pay $7 to see it on stage?”’ What will change will be when -working people realize, as some already are beginning to, that live theatre is a very powerful medium. “Working people were starting to come to Saviour, and I do not believe that they will ome to the theatre, except they are not used to coming,”’ Lillo said. “It’s a matter of finding the way into it and putting out a product that is consistently going to challenge that audience and keep it coming back.”’ Weihs is more pragmatic. ‘I don’t particularly like to think in. ROLLA AL) terms of political theatre or work- ing class theatre, because that sug- gests that is an intentional thing, that’s a deliberate turning away from all the other things you could supposedly write about in order to do a polemical thing. “‘That’s not the way I seeit at all. I think that Canada, that the history of Canada, if looked at with any kind of interest and in- telligence, is almost entirely the history of working people and what they did. “That’s why I did Highball. Not because I wanted to find some piece of labor history to glorify, but because everything else (regarding) the history. of B.C. and the west coast is really not very interesting.’ Crossland is currently resear- ching the story of two Finnish- Canadian labor organizers who ’ were murdered by the owners of the logging camps they were organizing in Port Arthur — where she grew up. - Theincident has summoned up a number of powerful images to Crossland, not only from her past, but from the present, including the acquittal of the Ku Klux Klan of the shooting deaths of anti-Klan demonstrators in Greensborough, North Carolina. “