One night early this week, after a performance of Macbeth at the St Lawrence Shakespeare Festival, the cast gathered at the pub to hear one of its own share a reading of a one-man play. Daniel Giverin is the sort of fellow who loves reciting poetry in public, and about a decade ago he turned his love of W. B. Yeats‘ poems into a fascinating play about Yeats’ life and loves. It’s a beautiful work that he is in the process of revisiting, and I hope to see more of it. One of the topics he addresses in the play is Yeats’ love of the theatre, and his desire to create a national theatre for Ireland; and one of the events that forged this theatre was the 1907 riot that took place at the Abbey Theatre, during the opening night performance of J.M. Synge‘s “shocking” three-act work, The Playboy of the Western World.
12 hours after hearing about Yeats and The Abbey in Ireland, I awoke to a new controversy, here in Canada, over a play called Homegrown. The Sun newspaper chain reported that the play would present a “sympathetic portrayal” of one of the convicted members of the “Toronto 18″ — a terrorist cell that was intercepted as it prepared to bomb targets in The Big Smoke. Predictably, journalists asked the Prime Minister’s Office what they thought about this, and a spokesperson for Overlord Stephen Harper said “We are extremely disappointed that public money is being used to fund plays that glorify terrorism.” Predictably, bloggers and web site commenters all over Canada trotted out their tired view that the arts shouldn’t be funded. Predictably, the arts community got defensive. Predictably, all of this took place before the play had even opened.
I’m thrilled. When was the last time Joe Q Public in Canada — nationwide — got angry about a play?
I feel a bit of the excitement Yeats must have felt after Synge’s play ignited Dublin in 1907 — and I have nothing at all to do with Homegrown. I very likely won’t even get to see it. The play has now opened and is mid-run; reviews are out that illuminate what is actually said and not said in the script; and people are having a discussion about the appropriateness of the subject matter and the issues the play raises. They’re talking about the value of contextualizing and humanizing a convicted criminal. They’re talking about Canada’s anti-terror legislation. They’re talking about victims of terrorism confronting plays about architects of terrorism. They’re talking. They’re talking because of the play.
I don’t care much if you agree with the PMO. I don’t care much if you think all arts should have it’s already-abysmally-small funding cut. I don’t care much if the play is terrible. I care very deeply that so many people have been caught up in forming an opinion — any opinion — about a piece of art. And it is only because this piece of art was created that any of this is happening.
So. NAH na na NYAH nah. Art wins.
