Regional Theatre Research Articles

The Regional System

As recently as 10 years ago, the small group of regional theatres that existed in Canada were considered to be new, daring, almost avant garde by audiences. Today, most of these theatres (and many of those regional operations that have developed subsequently) are considered to be The Establishment. Now, a new group of theatres have appeared (conveniently referred to as the Alternative Theatres) determined to do at least one of the things that the regionals either chose not to do or, for one reason or another, found themselves unable to do: develop original scripts. Perhaps this is as it should be and perhaps the regional theatres are right when they argue that their prime responsibility is to provide audiences with an eclectic selection of the world’s classics. But surely these two ideas do not contradict one another and two or more new plays can exist quite nicely within a production season of five to eight plays. This idea, in fact, has already been proven by some of the more “daring” regional companies (Montreal’s Theatre du Nouveau Monde, for example, includes several new plays on its schedule each year).

Calgary

Less than two decades ago, the Canada Council was envisaging the creation of a chain of regional theatres in major urban centres from coast to coast. The concept at the time seemed audacious — even unattainable — but the Council considered it vital to the development of a healthy theatrical climate. And the vision was realized. But not even the Council could have envisaged the situation in Canada today, a situation which sees additional professional theatres in the various centres clamoring for financial assistance and, in most cases, deserving it.

St. John’s

Government’s interest in the arts until very recently has been minimal. Reasons have been advanced for this, the most common one has been that in a society struggling for survival bread was more important than culture. As this idea was advanced in the main by a class whose philistinism was matched only by its corporate and political insensitivity, it didn’t hold too much water. With the exception of a few individuals, notably in the visual arts, the problem was left in the hands of a few dilettantes with social pretensions who saw, in the Dominion Drama Festival, not merely an opportunity for the amateur groups to exercise their talents, but an occasion at which to practise the dictatorial philanthropy so beloved .of that organization. Fortunately for Newfoundland, unlike the rest of Canada, no professional regional theatre was contemplated where those attitudes could simply be transferred from a comparatively harmless amateur preoccupation to a professional situation where they could effectively strangle the potential and creative energy of a people.

Calgary

The nation’s chain of regional theatres has taken quite a bashing over the past couple of years from the more militant of our Canadian playwrights. In the view of these vociferous nationalists, the big regional theatres have sinned greatly in declining to schedule more than a token amount of native material in a given season.

The Dynamics of Popular Culture: Regional Theatres in Kiangsu

The Dynamics of Popular Culture: Regional Theatres in Kiangsu

Regional Theater Board of Directors

Regional Theater Board of Directors

The current British regional theatre

The current British regional theatre

The Regional Theatre: Four Views

The Regional Theatre: Four Views

Competents and Dropouts

The fight for survival in the regional theatre begins and ends with a fight for quality. So far, on a trek to the West, Southwest, and Northeast, through 46 theatres in all the possible shapes of professionalism from one paid director to 50 non-Equity paid actors, from university to workshop, I have seen far too little of it. The country is crawling with competence. But from the adequately done Twelfth Nights through the passable Volpones, there is a great aching dearth: nothing is excitingly good or excitingly bad. Nothing horrified me; nothing delighted me. There is very little life out there at all, either generative or even reproductive — the kind of museum life that sends an audience out into the night visibly affected by some longdead playwright's world.

Federal Aid and Regional Theatre

Federal Aid and Regional Theatre

The White Man's Burden

When questioned about the audience at Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theatre, a man who ought to know said, “Well, we're working out a deal with New York. They're going to send us 300,000 Jews and Italians and we're going to send them 300,000 Swedes and Norwegians.” The Guthrie started because Sir Tony wanted a regional theatre and Minneapolis came up with the best bid. Like starting an industry or relocating a plant. Three years have passed since the missionaries arrived. Sir Tony is leaving and his associate artistic director, Douglas Campbell, is replacing him. The theatre has developed into one of the two best in the nation (Washington's Arena Stage is the other). But something is missing—dialogue with the audience.Sir Tony directed two plays last season, The Cherry Orchard and Richard III. The first was a museum piece of exquisite taste, the second a bold and bald exercise in condescension.

The Good Scene: Off Off-Broadway

Off Off-Broadway is theatre without theatres, but it accounts for the most adventurous and promising work now being done in New York. Half a dozen plays or more, most of them by new playwrights, are produced every month on Off Off-Broadway's four principal stages. Many of the actors and directors are amateurs, students, or novices trying their wings; others are trained professionals who, finding few occasions to work and almost no chance to develop as artists within the professional theatre, are opting out of the system. They can—and sometimes do—work in the new regional theatres. But New York is still the center of the arts in America: someplace has to be.Off Off-Broadway began as entertainment in coffee houses. The Caffe Cino was producing plays regularly as early as 1959, and various other Greenwich Village cafés had occasionally presented theatre to their customers.

Clowns in the Szechuan theatre

The field of the various regional theatres, ti-fang-hsi which represent a substantial part of the traditional Chinese theatre, still remains largely unexplored. It has always been outside the scope of the interest of Chinese and European scholars, who have paid most attention to Yüan-ch'ü the drama of the Mongol era, to the K'un-ch'ü theatre, and lately also to Ching-hsi or Peking opera. The Peking opera is in fact one of the regional theatres by origin, but it occupies an exceptional position because it is distributed throughout China and is not localized in a specific part of the country like other ti-fang-hsi.

The Regional Theatre: Some Statistics

The information contained in the following tables is only the rawest of raw material, to be approached with awesome cautiousness. They are by no means comparisons of theatres, since often the same figure will mean different things to different theatres. Salaries, for example, in one instance may include the pittance paid to non-Equity extras, in another there may be no non-Equity to pay. Foundation grants may throw box-office percentages off. A proper sorting job would have required a particularly active computor—and it is being done by the 20th Century Fund for publication next year.The figures have been gathered bit by bit from all over. In every case they have been checked with the director or business manager of the theatre involved, but only with imagination, intuition, and a certain amount of brashness can they be interpreted.