A month ago in our issue of
Jan, 22, we published an open let-
ter to Writers’ Union chairman
Margaret Atwood from B.C. au-
thor Dorothy Livesay which pro-
lested another letter, written by
B.C. Writers’ Union representa-
five Jan Drabek to the Vancouver
Sun, /abelling Livesay a “dupe of
Moscow”? because of her advoca-
cy of Canada-USSR cultural ex-
change. Atwood issued the fol-
lowing reply to Livesay, forward-
Ing it to the Tribune for publica-
tion. It is printed here with a re-
Sponse from Canadian Tribune
reviewer and author Oscar Ryan.

Margaret Atwood, chairman,
Canadian Writers’ Union, writes:
Ireceived your letter of Nov. 24,
1981 and must confess I was
Somewhat taken aback by the
lack of awareness of democratic
Procedure implied therein.

Like yourself, I was at first un-
der the impression that Jan Dra-

k was way out of line. How-
€ver, when we discussed it at the
Meeting of the national executive,
Out came the constitution and the
} Minutes of previous meetings. It
Is beside the point that the resolu-
ton in question was made several
years ago. The point is that it was
Made by the organization as a
whole and has never been rescind-
ed. Ergo, it still stands, and Dra-

k — although his choice of
words could be questioned — was
Well within his rights.

The Writers’ Unionis nota dic-

“LETTERS

tacorship and I am nota dictator.
The Union elects officers who are
then empowered to carry out its
wishes as embodied in the consti-
tution and resolutions. That is my
role as chairman. I am not em-
powered to enforce my own views
and whims on membership. If I
were, I’d have us all marching
around in support of Amnesty, El

’ Salvador’s struggle, whales and

fresh water fish. But for better or
worse this is still a democracy and
majority rules. (Incidentally, it’s
hardly the time, in view of Po-
land, to whip up a lot of indigna-
tion about Drabek’s stand!)

Of course we should all be in
favor of nuclear disarmament.
I’m sure Jan Drabek is in favor of
it too. The question is, as Alice
said, who is to begin?

Atwood states Writers’ Union stand

Trust this clarifies the Union’s
position and my position in rela-
tion to the Union.

Oscar Ryan replies: The reply
by Margaret Atwood to Dorothy
Livesay’s open letter concerns it-
self mainly with Livesay’s objec-
tion to a Vancouver Sun Oct. 21
letter from Jan Drabek assailing
her (Livesay) for painting ‘‘exact-
ly the kind of picture that Mos-
cow wants her to transmit.”’

Atwood is wrong on several
points. The issue is not whether or
not the Writers’ Union constitu-
tion gives Drabek the right to con-
demn Livesay. The issue is that
Drabek spoke in the name of the
Writers’ Union, that he indulged
in character assassination against
a distinguished Canadian poet,
and that the Writers’ Union, in-

J. Lewis, Vancouver, writes I
write in response to a very strange
letter you printed from Don Lar-
son (“‘B.C. Place debts grow,”
Tribune, Jan. 22, 1982) concern-
ing the new stadium being built in
B.C. Place. Larson, contrary to
most sports fans, seems to believe
that a 45,000-seat stadium would
be best, not a 60,000-seat facility.
He also implies that this is now
65,000.

\__ If he would read the ‘‘useless

{ About those seats. . .

=

insert”? published by the Crown
corporation of B.C. Place (I refer
to another letter on the same
page) he would realize that the
stadium has always had 60,000
seats.

It’s small wnder that we, the
general public, are thought of as
fools when, not only do we be-
lieve everything we read in the
press (and mistakes are often
made) but sometimes we seem
unable to read at all. y,

stead of repudiating him white-
washed him. Atwood also writes
that it is ‘‘hardly the time, in view
of Poland, to whip up a lot of in-
dignation about Drabek’s atti-
tude. Are we to assume that this is
a time when one should acquiesce
to the arrogant outcry of an anti-
socialist gang-up?

Atwood’s letter sidesteps the
Livesay appeal for writers to op-
pose nuclear annihilation. “‘Who
is to begin?’’ Atwood asks. (Do
we therefore remain silent and in-
active?)

Her letter avoids criticizing our
government’s break in cultural
exchanges with the Soviet Union
and other socialist countries, nor
does she consider the Writers’
Union at fault for accepting this
policy.

Livesay’s open letter raised the
question which should be of
prime concern to Atwood and the
Writers’ Union:

What about those dissident
Canadian writers blacked out by
“the persecution of silence?”’ I
am one she listed. Seventeen
months after its appearance my
novel, Soon To Be Born, remains
unreported and unreviewed by all
but a handful of publications.
Has the Writers’ Union no obli-
gation to us? But Atwood does
not mention this central issue rais-
ed in the Livesay open letter: the
blacklist — made in Canada.

The drama of Canadian workers’ theatre
relived in Toby Ryan's book Stage Left

STAGE LEFT: CANADIAN THE-

ATRE IN THE THIRTIES. By Toby

eae Canadian Theatre Review

Chelcations, 1982. Downsview.
Oth $15.95, paper $8.95.

in ‘Amemoir on Canadian theatre
. he thirties? It doesn’t sound like
Vely reading to me,”’ a young dele-
ae tothe recent UFAWU conven-
a Said dubiously when I recom-
ended Toby Ryan’s Stage Left to
sn But he bought a copy anyway
an the next day he needed no con-
k cing. ‘I stayed up half the night
es it,”” he admitted. “It was

. What makes Stage Left so fas-
R ting is the facility with which
Pia tells the story of a unique

Ovement in the context of the
ioe Umes out of whichit arose; so

her work is at once the story of

Catre created largely by working

ple themselves and a history of

pebression years.

Om its origin in Toronto at the
ees hing of the thirties, the Pro-
conve Arts Club soon had its
Deg terparts in Montreal, Winni-

and Vancouver, bringing to-

€t some of the finest artistic

talents of a young generation which
refused to be silent about the hun-
ger and misery inflicted by govern-
ments whose only solution to eco-
nomic crisis was to counsel re-
straint and sacrifice.

They found a way to speak out
— from the stages of workers’ and
community halls. Most of the plays

pix)

af
[Soe .
they wrote themselves, drawing
their actors from the unemployed,
their directors from the rare men
and women who recognized in this
theatre an opportunity to bring
new vitality and innovative meth-
ods to the stage.

The response from audiences
was enthusiastic, much too enthus-

iastic for the liking of governments.

‘When Eight Men Speak, inspired

by theimprisonment of eight Com-
Beis eas: was produced by
the Workers’ Theatre in Toronto,
it had only one theatre perform-
ance — the police threatened. the
theatre with loss of its licence ifit al-
lowed a second. In Winnipeg the
police did not wait for the play to

open before cancelling the theatre’s
licence. 4S:
Waiting for Lefty, based on the
1934 New York taxi drivers’ strike,
got the same reception from police
when it opened at the Ukrainian
Hall in Vancouver in 1935. After it
played to packed audiences for five’
performances, the hall was inform-

Books

ed that its licence would be cancell-
ed if the play were performed there

again.

But Waiting for Lefty went on to
play to audiences across the coun-
try. Garfield King, the civil liberties
lawyer who produced it, entered it
in the Dominion Drama Festival,
winning regional honors and high
praise from the adjudicator, and
forced Vancouver city council to
allow a tag day to pay the group’s
way to Ottawa, where it took sec-
ond place.

Readers in this province can be
expected to have a particular inter-
est in this section on the Vancouver
Progressive Arts Club and Theatre

of Action. Perhaps the most amus-

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ing of the many personal accounts
of those days recorded by Ryan is
Harry Hoshowsky’s story of the re-
ception given for the players at the
Chateau Laurier by Premier R. B.
Bennett.

If Bennett wondered how Eight
Men Speak had been allowed even
one performance in Toronto, he

must have been livid when Percival :

Price, the carilloneur at the Peace
Tower, played what ostensibly was
Maryland, which has the same tune
as The Workers’ Flag.

In retrieving this vital but ne-
glected period of our cultural heri-
tage, Ryan confutes the academics
who write interminably about the
search for a Canadian cultural
identity and look everywhere ex-
cept where it is to be found —
among the working people.

Drawing on the working
people’s own struggles for their
material, Canadian writers and act-
ors showed then — and are contin-
uing to show — what they can pro-
duce.

Although the plays that won the
honors, Clifford Odets’ Waiting
for Lefty and Irwin Shaw’s Bury
the Dead, were by progressive Am-
erican playwrights, the largest part
of the work produced was by Ca-
nadians, some of whom have pro-
ven since the worth of the literary
apprenticeship they served in those

hard depression years.
—Hal Griffin

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PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEB. 19, 1982—Page 7

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