Canadian directors on the rise despite indifference to their craft

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It’s consistently disheartening how undervalued the role of director is in English Canadian theatre. One of the ways this is reflected is in how few places there are to study the craft of direction compared with acting schools.

The National Theatre School of Canada’s English side takes in just two directing students every two years. Beyond that there are a half-dozen small MFA programs at institutions of higher learning such as the University of Alberta and the University of British Columbia, where the focus is on stage direction.

Toronto, the alleged hub of English-language Canadian theatre, lost its main MFA program in stage direction over the course of the pandemic. In August 2020, the York University theatre department and Canadian Stage announced they were retiring their joint program.

Started during Matthew Jocelyn’s tenure as artistic director at Canadian Stage, and offering students an opportunity to direct a professional production at that Toronto not-for-profit, the York directing MFA attracted and cultivated artists who were interested in direction as a creative practice in its own right – and made space for auteurism in an area of the country off-and-on hostile to that idea.

In its short decade of existence (during which just 10 graduated), the York/Canadian Stage MFA was hugely influential in helping emerging directors elevate their craft, and in helping mid-career stage artists who had started in other areas of the performing arts cement a transition to direction.

Among its alumni, Estelle Shook is now artistic director at B.C’s Caravan Farm Theatre, ted witzel runs Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and Matjash Mrozewski is the head of directing at the National Theatre School. Graduates Alistair Newton and Severn Thompson both have shows at the Shaw Festival this season. (Newton’s production of Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Production opens for review later this week and runs to Oct. 13.)

The York/Canadian Stage MFA cancellation is old news, but I thought it was worth resurfacing as many people didn’t notice its end owing to there being, well, more pressing issues in the performing arts at that point in the pandemic.

It popped back into my mind this week, perhaps paradoxically, after I saw several very well-directed shows in Toronto.

It had been a long time since I’d seen a comedy as sharply staged as Women of the Fur Trade (now closed) was at Native Earth Performing Arts, in a co-production with Great Canadian Theatre Company and the National Arts Centre. Renae Morriseau’s direction (revived by Kevin Loring for the short Toronto revival) nailed the satiric tone of Frances Koncan’s Louis Riel-inspired comedy. The tight timing of the pop-culture-packed patter of the trio of leads (Kelsey Kanatan Wavey, Cheri Maracle and Lisa Nasson, all excellent) made me realize how much this popular play has in common with Tom Stoppard’s early play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead in its existential depiction of characters bantering while they wait in the wings as a major drama unfolds.

Then there was Sabryn Rock’s work on shaniqua in abstraction, actor/playwright bahia watson’s solo show (at Crow’s Theatre to April 28) that is a collection of scenes, satirical to poetic, about the perceptions surrounding and boundaries of Black womanhood.

In the one-act play, watson, who’s always worth spending 90 minutes watching, cycles through all sorts of characters, like flipping channels on a television. One moment, she’s a mild-mannered sweet-voiced actor ditching her Canadian accent to audition for a tough-talking character; then she’s a talk-show host moderating an unruly debate on colourism; then she’s a scabrous stand-up comic wrestling with stereotypes of “sistahood.”

These types of kaleidoscopic solo shows need a firm directorial hand to pull off. I was impressed with the pace Rock kept up, the playful way she handled the unwieldy space that is Crow’s Studio Theatre and how well-integrated the live performance was with Laura Warren’s vibrant video design. Rock’s becoming a go-to director for new work, having helmed the world premiere of Kanika Ambrose’s Dora-winning our place last season.

Then there was director Mitchell Cushman’s masterfully messy production of Lucas Hnath’s A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay about the Death of Walt Disney at Soulpepper, which I won’t rereview here.

Maybe seeing these shows would make other people worry less about the state of the craft, but I was reminded how often I see comedy flounder, design clash and single-layered productions that don’t aim high enough.

Three big world premieres this week in Winnipeg, Hamilton and Montreal

The Comeback, a new romantic comedy co-written by Trish Cooper and Sam Vint, opens on the main stage at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre this week (April 24 to May 18). Previously included in my list of eight world premieres to watch in 2024, it is described as being about a pregnant couple who must navigate “the awkward and sometimes hilarious relationship between their Métis and settler families as they face the idea of raising a child.”

Beautiful Scars, a new musical from Tom Wilson (and Shaun Smyth) inspired by the well-known musician’s book Beautiful Scars: Steeltown Secrets, Mohawk Skywalkers and the Road Home, opens at Theatre Aquarius in Hamilton, where it runs from April 24 to May 11. Brad Wheeler talked to Wilson in the fall.

Thy Women’s Weeds, a new metatheatrical Shakespeare mash-up from Erin Shields, premieres at Centaur Theatre in Montreal this week (to May 12). Back in 2022, I talked to Shields about her “Shakespeare phase,” which included the play Queen Goneril and her rewrite of Much Ado About Nothing for the Stratford Festival.

Three revivals and rentals opening in Toronto this week

Huff was playwright/performer Cliff Cardinal’s most successful solo show before As You Like It, or the Land Acknowledgement got Mirvish Productions and international festivals interested in this work. It’s at Crow’s Theatre just for the week (to April 28). You can read my nine-year-old review of it here.

Four Minutes Twelve Seconds is a play about consent by British playwright James Fritz, now getting its Canadian premiere from Studio 180 at Tarragon Theatre (to May 12). New artistic director Mark McGrinder directs and Megan Follows is in the cast.

Tyson’s Song, a new play by Peter N. Bailey about a reckoning between two young Black men, is getting a premiere from Pleiades Theatre at Factory Theatre from April 24 to May 19.