The notebook of the end of June

History-schmistory; Hedda Who; Leech gone from the COC

As regular readers will know, Toronto’s History Museums are a bottomless source of fascination for this newsletter. (Some of you will remember that last winter I wrote about the history museums pretzeling themselves in order to avoid using the word “Christmas” in their end of December programs, with some absurd results.) I didn’t really expect that they would avoid the word “Canada” on Canada Day 2024 — our large cultural institutions have been there, done that, 2020-2022—but I didn’t expect them to have regular, guilt-free Canada Day programming either.

So an interesting hybrid is on offer in three of the museums: yes, we will use the words Canada Day, the programming indicates, but the events will celebrate non-European ethnic minorities and/or contemplate colonization. So if you find yourself in Scarborough on July 1, “join Scarborough Museum for a vibrant celebration of Indigenous and Somali culture and heritage”, say the Scarb Museum page. “Engage in discussions about colonization and its impact on those who are Indigenous to Turtle Island as well as the Somali community, and the ways in which colonial rule has been and continues to be resisted.”

The event at Fort York is actually called “Proud to Be Canadian: Celebrating the Chinese Communities”. “Celebrate the vibrancy of Toronto’s Chinese communities at Fort York National Historic Site with programming co-created with community partners marking the 101st anniversary of the Chinese Immigration Act.” I’ve long given up on trying to understand the connection of the programming to the actual historical landmark. That’s been abandoned some time ago, don’t be mundane. Similarly, you can “Enjoy Canada Day at Gibson House with Persian carpet weaving activities led by Toranj Art Workshops,” and “create Korean floral arts with artist Charles Hong”.

But in fairness, the rest of the museums—Todmorden Mills, Spadina (poor Spadina has seen so much cray), Colborne, and Zion Schoolhouse—seem to be offering programming without expressed preference for any particular ethnic groups.

We’ll see where it all goes. The city, as you’ve probably heard, did see through its idée fixe to rename the Yonge-Dundas Square into “Sankofa”. It will be called that by exactly nobody, outside the confines of Chris Moise (he/him)’s office.

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Now I remember why I never take ROM Walks

Every year I stumble upon the web page for ROM Walks somehow or other, and every year I blank out on why I’d given up on them. So I go to one and am reminded.

Some weeks ago I joined some 40 people for a ROM Walk through Rosedale and realized I had better things to do within minutes. The Docents/Guides, I was immediately reminded, are enthusiastic but unpaid volunteers—ROM has many ways of exploiting your labour, if you’re a ROM fan. On top of that, they start the walk with a long land acknowledgement that tells us that “Native people have been on Turtle Island since time immemorial”.

How can you take seriously any organization that mouths those words? Even Toronto’s History Museums don’t use that embarrassing phrase any longer.

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Tom McCamus & Sara Topham in Hedda Gabler (Stratford, 2024). Photo: David Hou

Hedda What

So I went to see Hedda Gabler in Stratford (dir. Molly Atkinson) and I have no idea what that was. Was it a sit-com? Sarcastic repartee à la Everybody Loves Raymond would suggest so. Man, those goofy husbands, eh? Was it a lesson on how to recite lines, instead of bringing them to life? Some of the Act 1 dialogues between Sara Topham as Hedda and Joella Crichton as Mrs. Elvsted were so stilted, I wanted to get my phone out and scroll Twitter. What is with the no-set set? The set is literally two items: a furnace, and a chaise longue, surrounded with a lot of empty Tom Patterson space. (They are house-poor, geddit?) There was no dread. There was no tension. And the action that led directly to Hedda shooting herself was Judge Brack (Tom McCamus) indicating that he’d reveal to the police that she had given Lovborg the gun, unless she becomes his mistress. I don’t know, I prefer my Hedda tragic rather than sordid.

PS: The panels outside in the lobby explaining how women’s rights progressed over the last century and a half somehow did not make this production cohere. Yes, her inability to vote must have frustrated Hedda mightily.

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When do you shut down a theatre and redirect funds to a company that is keen to work

The other day, Tarragon Theatre 2024-25 season brochure arrived in the mail and you know - dare I say it looks good? There are virtually no plays about someone being oppressed on the basis of their identity. They also, most of the plays, look like they arrived from the normal times, when theatre artistic directors didn’t program to political requirements. (OK I promise I’ll stop using the word ‘Zhdanovism’.) And they are all new plays. And for the most part not American.

But the two other theatres on the Bathurst corridor — Passe Muraille and Factory — seem very much lost, at least since COVID. I’ve consulted some critic friends who see incomparably more theatre than I do and they agree. TPM in particular has been showing work developed by other companies and hasn’t had its own big thing in ages. What is their vision? What is their long-term goal? This still remains unclear for Buddies in Bad Times too, which during the volatile 2020-2022 did not produce anything other than DEI statements and acrimony. Its, purportedly, best minds, Ted Witzel and Erum Khan, with the help of Susanna Fournier, recently released… this. I don’t know what that is exactly. It looks like an Angelfire page from 1998. It reads like… it doesn’t, actually. It doesn’t read.

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Who and what next for the COC

Perryn Leech is out at the COC, which now has an Interim General Director in David C. Ferguson, former CFO of BMO Capital Markets who served as President and Chair of the COC board of directors. The predictable calls to “finally hire a Canadian” immediately started coming from the usual quarters, but nationality of the candidates for this challenging role (meanwhile made even harder by the consequences of the long Covid shutdown) should be far down the list of priorities for the hiring committee. Opera writer and friend of Long Play, Gianmarco Segato, has written some very good punditry on the topic over on Cannopy. Opera Rambling’s comment at the bottom of the piece also worth highlighting:

“Amid all the ballyhoo about hiring a Canadian I have yet to hear what problem hiring a Canadian is a solution for! Will a Canadian GD stem declining box office (down 1/3 since 2009/10)? Will a Canadian miraculously squeeze more cash out of government or donors? Will hiring a Canadian bring world class opera (as opposed to warmed over Chicago) to the Four Seasons stage? I'm not at all against hiring a Canadian if they can find one who can do a great job and is willing to join a (by global standards) rather small opera company.”

Onwards into July

Did I mention, Les Arts Florissants are doing Purcell at Koerner Hall on July 11? (Only three times, I hear you say.) I intend to write a little intro to Les Arts Flo in a future post, but here’s a recent clip from the very The Fairy Queen production that we will see later this month, with hip hop dancers from the Compagnie Käfig.