One staff member left the school to set up a utopian group in rural Quebec and took two of our best students with him. Fortunately, one of them, now known as Chapelle Jaffe, returned to the school and has had a distinguished career as an actor and administrator. Nothing was ever heard of the utopian theatre group.
Meantime, I continued to direct in theatre across the country as well as in Vermont where I directed A Winter’s Tale for the Champlain Shakespeare Festival. I returned to Vancouver in 1967 to direct another play with Frances Hyland, and then had a wonderful time in Halifax directing The Subject Was Roses at the Neptune with Ron Hastings, who would later become a stalwart in my company at Lennoxville. These outside gigs were a breath of fresh air for me. Was there something stifling about the School? Whatever the reason, I always returned to the School after these projects with a renewed sense of purpose and confidence.
The academic year 1969–1970 was a pivotal one for the School, for me, and for marriage number two. As I indicated earlier, when Jim Domville left the school, to glowing praise and ceremonial send off, we did not replace him. The School would be run by a triumvirate consisting of the directors of the two acting sections and David Peacock, the Director of the Production Section, who would chair the committee. There would be no Director General. I was delighted with the plan; the artists would be running the school, as so they should. However well it worked, it didn’t last; I should have been suspicious when David moved into Jim’s large office. After a time he proposed to the Board (curiously all three of us never reported to the Board, only David) that he be made Director General, and they agreed.
David, another Englishman, for whom “the army never did me any harm,” was, I imagine, an excellent stage manager. He might well have been a good teacher of stage management and related production techniques. We got on well, travelled across the country together each year on the audition tour, but I couldn’t say we ever shared a sense of artistic purpose. The book The Peter Principle came out around that time, the central idea being that people keep getting promoted until they arrive at a job in which they are incompetent and there the promotions stop. So, almost by definition, most people are in jobs for which they are not suited. David said he found this ‘the most frightening book he had ever read.’ Unfortunately, he did not let that observation affect his career path. Nor, I have to admit, did I.
If you dropped in on the Sixties from the twenty-first century you might think you were on another planet, and not just because there were no cell phones. The Sixties must have been one of the strangest eras in Western social history. It is not my role here to endeavour to explain it or even to describe it, but I am trying to come to terms with my role in it, how I dealt with it, and how it dealt with me. Separation of faculty and student, so jealously protected now in the twenty-first century, was challenged by students in all institutions. Students demanded a voice, a loud voice, in how their schools were run. The further removed faculty were from the students, the greater the dissension. I remember Fred Euringer, then running the Drama Department at Queens, saying the location of the coffee was critical to a successful department; it needed to be located where faculty and students would mingle. And yet, at this very time, the National Theatre School was planning a new building, its current location on St. Denis, and the design called for the faculty to have separate quarters on a floor where no student would go unless invited. I insisted that if the School proceeded with this plan, it might not survive. In 1970, I was probably right. By 1972, I was wrong. And I’m still wrong as the school survives to this day. That historical moment flared out as fast as it flared up.
But while it was in flare-up phase, educators everywhere were challenged. Most of us, raised in the fifties when everyone ‘knew their place,’ struggled to find common ground with this strange generation of students, who demanded new original thinking, but had no agreement among themselves about what that thinking should be. I was young enough to have one foot in their world, but too old to be one of them. I was almost thirty, after all. For me, it was an opportunity to examine the creative process itself, to experiment with ways to enhance a student’s potential, to make the talented actor more talented, not simply more skillful. Among the experiments was a marathon encounter group — marathon encounter groups were all the rage at this time — conducted by the noted cognitive psychologist Albert Ellis. In retrospect, was this an appropriate activity for a first-year class at the National Theatre School? Well, the class did agree to it in advance and the work they did afterwards was astonishing. Efficacious or not, a national theatre school, established to serve all students in the country, may not be a place for experiment.
A glimpse of the times. Earlier that year, 1969, one of the first year students, Judith Hodgson, whose family had a farm in the Eastern Townships south of Montreal, invited the class and some faculty to a party one weekend at her farm when her parents were not going to be there. Veronica and I drove up from our cabin in Vermont and walked into another world. I think Judith was the only one not completely fried on some kind of drug and with whom we were able to have a conversation. Maybe they weren’t all stoned, maybe we just arrived too late, but we soon excused ourselves and left. We probably didn’t need to excuse ourselves; I’m not sure we were even noticed.
Another glimpse. Three of the students invited me to a Janis Joplin concert at the Montreal Forum. Joplin, high on Southern Comfort, gradually stirred up the crowd, high on other things, and urged everyone sitting higher up to come down to the floor, maybe to dance, I don’t remember. So we trekked down the stairs and attempted to enter at one of the lower entrances only to be blocked by some of Montreal’s finest. Others might have challenged them, but I wasn’t going to. I turned my back and started out when one of the cops followed me and gave me a huge shove even though I was already leaving. Now I understood why they were called “pigs.”
On this other planet, this 1969 planet, personal relations between staff and students were very different than they are today. So far as I know, no one worried whether a liaison between a student and staff member might affect his or her marks, not relevant in a theatre school anyway as there were no marks. Married people tried to keep liaisons secret as they do now, but single people felt no such inhibition. Students are people. Faculty are people. Why shouldn’t they interact as people? Sex too was very different on this planet. It was an era of breaking down barriers. People slept around. A lot. But it was not like now; sex was not a recreation as it seems to be now among the young, it was a serious connection with another person. Sex between staff and students was not only not surprising, it was expected. Or so I comfort myself by thinking.
Not that I had sex with that many students at the School, only two, one of whom became a very serious relationship that might have ended in marriage had our timing been better. Heck, even old-school teachers were getting it on with students. Years later, a woman told me how Michael MacOwan, when he was a guest instructor at the School and she was a student, would smuggle her into his apartment. I don’t think David Peacock was having sex with students, only wishing he was. He made up for it, apparently, when as Theatre Officer for the Canada Council he is reported to have traded favours. Now that I don’t approve of.
While the larger world was flying off in unpredictable directions, my personal world was in equal confusion. Everyone seemed to be demanding more of life. Something in my life felt incomplete. Was it? Who knows? Veronica was now working mostly in Ottawa, returning on weekends. We continued to do things together that we both enjoyed — ski, birdwatch, play bridge. But we didn’t really talk to each other, share thoughts or ideas, and we both seemed to be looking for something more, feeling some quiet dissatisfaction.
I had always liked first year student Judith Hodgson; I had taught her in an evening class before she came to the School. She was attractive, with long blonde hair, a mild manner (quite unlike Veronica), young for me, but with a university degree. By the time we had worked together at the School for a few m
onths we fell in love. Really. For a time we kept our relationship a secret from her class, but at the conclusion of the encounter group, many secrets now revealed, Judith felt the time right to tell the class. In keeping with the era, they seemed delighted and toasted us. And some of her class remained friends with us for the next few years of our on again, off again relationship.
As breaks go, the break with Veronica was not a bad one. I may have suppressed some memories here, but she was absorbed with her new career in Ottawa and may well have looked forward to a new freedom herself. There were few assets to divide. Our one car, a used E-Type Jaguar, was more a liability than an asset, in the repair shop more often than on the road. We actually had quite a nice weekend together in Vermont after the split had been agreed to. Eventually, Veronica would marry my brother Tim’s best friend, move to Colorado, and have two children, something we had been trying to have without success.
No, the real problem was my mother. We were in Muskoka, I believe, when I gave her the news, sitting across from one another in the living room in front of the fire, my mother reclining on her homemade bed/sofa and I on a chair opposite. I doubt that I was too hesitant; I fully expected her reaction to be similar to her reaction when Cathy and I separated: something like, ‘Well, it’s about time’ or ‘I never thought she was the right person for you.’ To my surprise she was personally upset, reacting almost as if I had kicked her in the stomach. I had been remembering the early days of my relationship with Veronica, when she had first come to visit in Muskoka before we were married and my mother had been quite cool about Veronica and my relationship with her. I thought she would see that I had now come to agree with her insight of the time. But, no, in the intervening years she had more or less adopted Veronica, made her the daughter that she had never had. And now I was turfing Veronica out of the family.
But at least my mother continued to talk to me and our close relationship survived. Not so my cousin Murray who, having also befriended Veronica, would not speak to me for years. He never relented; I was never forgiven. His reaction seemed unfair to me. After all, I had not spurned him when he broke up with his long-standing lover, Bill Job. Cousin Donald, on the other hand, always more relaxed and gregarious than his brother, seemed to make no such judgement and we continued to be friends and colleagues. And in a short time he and Hutchison Shandro, Judith’s friend and teacher, my former assistant, became lovers, and we were all one happy family — for a while.
For all the personal turmoil, some of the work at the School was pretty good. I directed a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream involving the English acting students from all three years. In a terrific set designed by Alan Barlow, the head of the Design Section, and created with 2,000 green garbage bags, the third year students played the lead roles, the second year students the supporting roles, and the first year students, vegetation. I know it sounds odd, but trust me, it worked. Influenced by Jan Kott’s dark view of Shakespeare on the one hand, and the Elizabethan seven stages of love on the other, the arc of the lovers went from the stilted self-love of the early scenes, through the primal earthly love in the forest, to self-discovery, and finally to a deep unified connection to the universe. The set could be lit from the front to appear dark and menacing, or from the back to look benign, almost divine, following the emotional progression of the characters. The magic potion placed in the lovers’ eyes only appeared magical; it actually took the characters to their natural place. The production succeeded both as a realization of the play in terms more profound than the light comedy versions one often sees, but also in actor training terms that allowed each class to work with the elements appropriate to that stage of their development.
I was pleased with the reaction to the production, though surprised when it was being praised to a group of us and David Peacock replied, “I’m very proud of it.” I couldn’t help wondering what it was he had to do with it. Why had he not said something like, ‘I thought Bill did a great job’? I was standing right there. I didn’t understand at the time that I was being removed not only from his consciousness but also from the School.
In the dying days of my tenure, David Peacock assembled the first year class and me in the staff room and asked each student individually if they believed I was providing them with a coherent program. Of course, he was paving the way to firing me, but what a terrible burden to place on both the students and me. I knew there were students in the class who supported me and my work — Judith, if no one else — and some that had concerns with some of the work, but David framed the question in such a way that a positive response was almost impossible. Why was he doing this? Why was he putting us all through this truly embarrassing ordeal? I can only conclude that he needed to be able to say to the Board of Governors that I did not have the confidence of the students.
He didn’t ask me if I thought the acting program was coherent; he only asked the students. Some of the students struggled to say positive things, others were more circumspect. Why was my opinion not relevant? My answer would be similar to the students’ answers. No, it was not a coherent program. How the hell could it be? If a coherent acting program is what was wanted, one had to give the artistic director the tools to do it. It’s not rocket science; it’s pretty simple in retrospect. The English Acting Section needs to be its own school, located in Toronto, with access to English-speaking theatre and professional artists, free of compromise with the French Section and free of supervision by a “Director General.” Needless, to say, forty years later, that has not happened.
It only remained for David to hand me a short letter a few days later informing me that my contract would not be renewed. I often heard him say that was the hardest thing he ever had to do.
Cry me a river.
Moving On
The National Theatre School had been my life for five years. Now what? It’s a little late to go back to England and work with Albert Finney. But then another opportunity presented itself. Or did it? I have never been sure.
My tenure at the school finished with the summer expedition to Stratford, Ontario, where Jean Gascon, the former head of the French Section of the school, was now the Artistic Director of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Gregarious, as so many Quebecers are, and knowing that I was looking for new opportunities, he and I had a meeting. Well, if you can call sitting on the stairs beside the bar a meeting. At any rate, we had a discussion. Certainly I was interested in working at Stratford. Five years earlier I had been an assistant director at Britain’s National Theatre; I felt I was ready for more. Jean invited me to come and work at Stratford — I think. He suggested that I join the company and we would see how things worked out. He didn’t say what I would do in the company while we were ‘seeing how things worked out’ nor what he expected to happen if things did work out. Was he just trying to help me, knowing I was soon to be unemployed, or did he have hopes that I could make a real contribution to his theatre? It was all rather murky.
I imagine it was up to me to follow up on this discussion though I was not even sure of that. Whatever was supposed to happen, it didn’t. I stayed in Montreal for the next year. That was as close as I ever got to working in Canada’s major theatre company. Needless to say my ambition to be Artistic Director of Stratford by age twenty-nine did not come to fruition. Why did I stay in Montreal? From a career point of view, I imagine I should have pushed the Stratford possibility and failing that, should have moved to Toronto, the centre of English theatre in the country. Why didn’t I? What can I say? My usual two failings. Women and skiing. Judith was going into second year at the School and I still had my ski cabin in Vermont, two hours from Montreal.
There were still a few directing gigs: The Importance of Being Earnest for the St. John’s Players in Newfoundland, The Death of Bessie Smith for Maurice Podbrey’s newly formed Centaur Theatre in Montreal with the wonderful Dana Ivey (Legally Blonde 2), and the aforementioned A Long Day’s Journey into Night at Neptune Theatre in Halifax with Ken Pogue.
&
nbsp; Skiing challenged my directing career in another way that year. In those years, I loved to ski untracked snow and would go almost anywhere to find it. One day, well away from the official run, I am making some nice turns through the woods at Jay Peak when the tip of my ski digs into a snowdrift and I hurtle over the front of the ski, landing on my butt. When I try to stand I know I have done some damage: I can’t put weight on my left leg. What do I do now? While not officially out of bounds, I am skiing alone in the woods where no other skiers or patrollers are likely to find me before spring. I simply have to get back to the main run. Fortunately, the run is not too far away and I find I can limp my way through the woods to the edge of the trail where skiers are whizzing by. Now what? Do I lie down and pretend I got hurt here so patrol will take me to the bottom on a toboggan? That seems pretty dumb so, skiing on one leg, I make my way with some difficulty to the bottom of the mountain and get myself into the ski patrol office. I explain my symptoms to the patroller on duty and he declares I have likely strained my Achilles tendon and advises me not to ski too hard for the rest of the day. But if I want to get it properly checked out he suggests I could go around to the doctor’s office on the other side of the mountain. And so I limp my way to my car, drive around to the other side, hobble into the doctor’s office, and wait to see him. Finally, the doctor takes one look at my tendon and says, astonished, “How did you get here?” It seems I had snapped the tendon in two; the surgeon in Montreal who later repaired it said it was the worst break he had ever seen. And he was surgeon to the Montreal Canadièns hockey team.
Where There's Smoke...: Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man, a Memoir Page 19