John Ralston Saul
Culture and Foreign Policy
Republished with permission

Theatre is one of the most vibrant areas of culture in Canada and one of the most successful outside. And this in spite of the complications and costs of exporting productions. Canada, not France, has become the centre of new and revolutionary French-language theatre. Montreal is, indeed, the only alternative metropolis to Paris for the French-speaking world. What's more, this theatre has a great success in translation in English Canada and in Europe. The quantity of Canadian theatre companies of various shapes and sizes is startling. Using approximate figures to compare Canadian and Australian cities of comparable size, Toronto has some 150 theatre companies, Sydney has 20; Vancouver has 40, Perth 1.

There are many ways in which we can take advantage of these strengths. A few examples:

a) Festivals

Festivals again are the natural focus for international exposure. In collaboration with the theatrical community, Foreign Affairs should identify the key festivals and make a concentrated effort. In some of them - Edinburgh, for example - Canadians are already major players. In others there is a great deal of work to be done. But again, the point is not to get a play invited. It is to develop long-term relationships in which there is always a Canadian invited.

b) Exchanges

It is more the playwright than the play that must be sold Theatre like literature is a career and the public develops lifelong interests. Once they identify with a writer they want to see every play, read every book. So exchange programs must be developed with that long view in mind.

Given the cost of moving theatre companies, festivals cannot be the basis of more than a selective policy. On the other hand, a great deal could be accomplished through long-term relationships between theatre groups here and abroad, based on exchanges of playwrights (playwrights-in-residence for a year, for example). lt might make sense for this to be concentrated on young playwrights.

Exchanges of this sort must be based on where we think we can make an impact and build allies.

c) National Theatre School

These proposals are, however, the product of underlying themes which could be summarized as follows:

The National Theatre School is unique because its English and French strands represents the two greatest international theatrical traditions. It would make sense for us to have a healthy contingent of foreign students in the school - again, long-term friendships for the future in other countries. This might be part of an exchange program with theatre schools elsewhere.

To make the most of this and of the school's uniqueness, we need more co-operation between the two strands. I don't mean by this that they should be integrated. But there is a great advantage in each strain working with the other if we are interested in building a state-of-the-art school which looks for the best in each tradition by playing them off against each other. It is the two strands, working separately and together, which make it unique by international standards.

John Ralston Saul is an essayist and novelist. He is the author of many books, including The Doubter's Companion - A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense, Voltaire's Bastards: the Dictatorship of Reason in the West, and Paradise Eater, which won the Premio Letterario Internazionale in 1990. Mr. Saul has a Ph.D. from King's College, London.