FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA, THEATRE ARTISTS OF CANADA GET THEIR WRECKING BALLS ON!

This October 6, the Wrecking Ball goes NATIONAL. That means there will be live events in major cities across Canada: All at Once, All on the Same Day, All Political, All New, All Written Expressly FOR the Federal Election. All thrown up by 100% Canadian actors, writers, directors and technicians in their gala niches from coast to coast.

Unprecedented? We like to think so…

Click on each city for details:

Victoria
Vancouver
Calgary
Edmonton
Winnipeg
Toronto
Ottawa
Montreal
Halifax

Stay tuned for details.

And now, a word from one of Canada’s finest theatre artists…

Opinion: Make Our Voices Heard

A speech delivered in Ottawa on September 24th by playwright, director, and Artistic Director of the National Arts Centre French Theatre, Wajdi Mouawad to a political rally, Vote Culture. Published in Le Devoir, on Friday, September 26th.

Not everyone is asked to be an artist, but an artist is asked to be unlike everyone else. This marginality is both envied and feared by those who exercise a certain kind of populist power, who seek, by whatever means, to promote hatred towards artists, with the goal of turning the solidarity between artists and the citizens who support them, to some political advantage. It is precisely this marginality, essential and inevitable, that now underscores the debate that the artistic community is attempting to have with the powers that be.

“Do you accept the difference the act of creation confers upon us? Are you prepared to support it? Do you accept that we insist upon this difference, out of which are born the works that we create? Are you prepared to recognise this?”

These are the questions, which, essentially, we are asking of our fellow citizens today. And these beg the larger question, what is it we want to give to Canada through this gesture of making art? What does this gesture mean? And, especially, do our artists, our citizens, and our politicians agree on the definition, and the meaning of creativity?

What is so wonderful about the passionate times we are going through now is that the discord has never been so clearly named, so clearly articulated. Never has the lack of understanding been so great between Canadian society and its artists, a lack of understanding that is expressed on one hand by the anger of the artists, and on the other by the indifference and cynicism of the political power and certain citizens.

But anger or cynicism aside, we are all, artists, citizens and politicians, the inheritors of a cultural history that has gradually set the table for an indigestible meal, one that our generation is being forced to swallow. Priests taught us to beware creativity and economists taught us to hate it.

Let’s make no mistake. The cultural politics of Canada are built on a contempt for intellectuals and a snickering at the words of artists; this is exacerbated today by the policies of a party with a police state ideology, alienated by the doctrine of might-makes-right, but then, all this is the inheritance of cultural politics that go much further back, and for which there is shared responsibility.

For what federal political party has ever had the courage to make known to the Canadian people the need for creativity, the choice of culture, the importance of its existence on an existential level? At best, this only gets done on the sly: in dribs and drabs; without saying it out loud, for fear of disturbing the base of the population in its convictions as to the uselessness of arts and culture; to not frighten it with the untamed beauty of creativity.

So today, when tongues become untied and we hear from many of our fellow citizens about their hate and their anger for artists, we mustn’t be surprised. Nor should we blame them for this bitterness, for just as we have encouraged them in this direction, so have they been educated into the rejection of art, of culture and of thought, thereby educating their children this way in turn.

Our blame should be directed firmly and clearly at the political party in power today, for exploiting that hatred in such a lamentable manner, all the while stoking it by repeating the most tired clichés about spoiled artists, in order to ensure its re-election and the reinforcement of the despicable footing upon which it will build its future cultural policies, none of which will improve the tendencies of the past.

Today, our duty is to speak together, as one, to make ourselves heard. Not to defend grants, but to stand up for what we believe in, not only for ourselves but for everyone.

However, we must realise that this will be difficult because to defend the common good, as artists, what we need to insist upon today, is our difference. That difference resides in the fact that we are essentially preoccupied with beauty. We must make our poetry heard, our sense of elegance; because we have a talent for elegance, which is why we are detested, we have a talent for poetry, which is why we are mocked, and we have a talent for speech, which is why we are feared.

Today, we must find a way to remind the world that our decision to be artists is accompanied by a deeper choice, which is to not lead the same life as the majority of our fellow citizens; our lot is different because the act of creativity rests upon principles that are utterly contrary to the prevailing view of society, the values of which are so strongly promoted. And in remembering that, in remembering our difference, we must run the very real risk of being detested, of not being heard, of being mocked more bitterly, and hated even more; but those who have loved us already will love us even more, those who stood behind us already will support us even more, and those citizens who need creativity will find great solace in seeing us so committed.

We must be bigger than those who will win, by proving in turn that there is a way of winning which lies in losing. Let us demonstrate not against cuts; let us rather demonstrate that we exist: let us show THAT, make THAT heard, wisely, wildly, by being utterly ourselves in our work, in the way we contest, in the way we speak not only of cuts, but also of what they signify. Let us demonstrate the unbearable – meaning let us show a different way of living, by simply saying who we are and what we do.

For my part, my name is Wajdi Mouawad, I am a writer and a director, and I am an artist.

– translation by John Van Burek

• 29 09 2008 - 21:14