In This Issue
The Play's the Thing
Canadian theatre is entering new stage of confidence, says award-winning playwright
BY TERESA PITMAN
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| The U of G campus is a new stage for renowned Canadian playwright Daniel MacIvor, who is this semester's writer-in-residence. Photo by Martin Schwalbe |
“Being a writer is a way of looking at the world,” says playwright Daniel MacIvor, the University's writer-in-residence for the winter semester. “Whether you're writing a play or a novel, the challenges are similar.”
You may know him as a performer, as a director of theatre and film or as one of Canada's most-honoured playwrights, but MacIvor considers himself a writer first.
“I'm a writer even before I'm a Cape Bretoner,” he says. That's saying something because he still feels a strong connection to the Nova Scotia island community where he grew up, even though Toronto is now his home.
According to family lore, his love of writing surfaced early on.
“Apparently, even before I could walk, I would crawl around with a pen in my hand. We weren't a very bookish house — the only two books out on display were the Bible and a dictionary, and the dictionary was used mostly to settle arguments. But in a bottom drawer in the kitchen were some old textbooks that had belonged to my sister, and I would crawl over and take the books out and scribble in the blank areas. Never where there was any text — only in the blank areas.”
Whether that's proof positive of an early passion for writing or not, by the time MacIvor was a teenager, he was writing poetry and short stories. He soon felt the pull of the theatre, however, and studied acting and voice.
“I have plenty of training as a performer but none at all as a writer,” he says. “When it came to writing, I learned by failing.”
What drew him to theatre as the place to tell his stories? “Theatre is a strange thing. We construct these artificial invented stories, then have people dress up and get on a raised platform and act out the stories for another group of people. If aliens were watching this, they'd think it was very strange. That's one of the things I love about it.”
As an actor, MacIvor found he was best doing his own work. “When I'm performing other people's plays, I'm not particularly special.”
It was only natural, then, that he would start writing plays. And he's been very successful at it, earning numerous honours for his work. Most recently, he received the 2008 Siminovitch Prize in Theatre. Canada's richest theatre award, it provides $75,000 to the winning playwright and $25,000 to a protégé selected by the recipient.
MacIvor also received a Governor General's Literary Award for Drama for a collection of five plays called I Still Love You, a GLAAD Award and Village Voice Obie Award for the play In on It and a New York International Fringe Festival award for Never Swim Alone. For his films, he has won Genie awards, a Citytv Best First Feature Award and Atlantic Film Festival awards.
Awards are important, but playwrights still need to live while they produce their work, says MacIvor, who praises the Canadian government for its support of the national theatrical community. That has allowed this country's playwrights to develop plays with longevity and depth, he says.
“In the United States, the goal is always to have theatre be commercial, but in Canada, we can take our time and develop. I think Canadian theatre is entering a new stage of confidence where we don't have to justify ourselves. We're looking back and seeing what we've accomplished.”
If MacIvor's plays are what we're looking back at, the accomplishments are significant. His stories touch on the universal themes of love, death, family and relationships. Often his plays are written to be performed on nearly empty stages or minimalist sets, and they rely on the gradual revelation of character and incident for their impact. He has been lauded for his realistic and sympathetic female characters, something he attributes to growing up in “a world of women.”
“I was raised by my mother and my sister, and my grandmother was very involved. My father was absent. So what I understand of men, I understand from myself, and what I understand of women comes from the world I grew up in.”
Although his plays are widely popular in Canada, MacIvor's work is earning recognition in other countries, too. In 2007, his play You Are Here was translated into Japanese and produced in Tokyo. His experience in Tokyo has inspired one of his current projects, a play called Deshita.
“I love Japanese culture,” he says, “and they have a great love for Canadians and our culture. Part of my creative process with this play is to discover what that attraction is all about.”
The Japanese word that provides the play's title comes from a phrase that means “thank you for working hard with me and now goodbye.” The story is a tale of tragic love between a Canadian ESL teacher working in Japan and a Japanese woman who works as a translator.
MacIvor believes he needs a deeper understanding of the Japanese way of life for the play to succeed, so he's doing research with a Japanese translator. He notes that when You Are Here was performed in Japan, it had to be revised.
“I had a woman talking about her life at length, and a Japanese woman in that situation simply wouldn't do that. They made the character Canadian so it would be believable.”
Another project he's working on is Communion, a play for four women that will be produced in Toronto next season.
MacIvor also does “performance-based writing,” which evolves as a play is acted out. “Plays based in acting don't follow the same rules as other writing,” he says.
And there are rules to writing — and to leading a writer's life, says MacIvor, who warns that writers need to be careful that objectivity doesn't become isolation.
“We tend to observe our experiences rather than live them. I struggle with this myself. We have to find ways to discipline ourselves to do the work, and we have to be willing to write the bad stuff out. You have to write a lot of crap to get to the good stuff.”
MacIvor will give a reading from his work Feb. 5 at 4 p.m. in lower Massey Hall. He is available Mondays and Thursdays to meet with students and other members of the University and local communities to discuss their writing. Although he acknowledges that theatre is the language he understands best, writers should feel free to submit other kinds of work. “I can certainly offer my opinion on poetry and fiction.”
He has his reasons for loving theatre, though.
“I like that theatre is time-based. When you're at a play, you are actually having the experience in the time that it happens. A novel you can pick up and read and put down and read later. A movie is nostalgic — it's something that was filmed at some earlier point and edited and shaped into what you see now. But live theatre is happening now, and you're living in the experience.”
To book an appointment with MacIvor, call Michael Boterman at Ext. 53147.