Our Kind of Work

There was a recent article in a national Canadian newspaper about Montreal's Theatre du Nouveau Monde turning 60 and how it had managed to stay afloat through scandals, protests and fluctuating finances.

The main point of the article seemed to be that the various artistic directors over the years had to balance their own artistic visions - sometimes quite controversial - with the need to appeal to a wide enough audience to put people in the theatre and pay the bills.

This article captured precisely what Saskatoon's 25th Street Theatre was up against through its "glory days" as laid out by University of Saskatchewan drama professor and actor Dwayne Brenna in his book Our Kind of Work.

If you remember such plays as The Sibyl, A Virus Called Clarence, If You're So Good, Why Are You in Saskatoon, The Ziggy Effect, Cold Comfort and, of course, Paper Wheat, to name a few, and if you remember attending plays at the big house at the corner of Clarence Avenue and Eighth Street, in Saskatoon, and eventually at the Saskatoon Theatre Centre at 20th Street and Avenue H, then you will recognize many of the names, actors, plays and critics in this account of 25th Street's years from 1972 to 1983.

In his introduction, Brenna declares that the "creation of a theatre of popular culture is, in essence, a political act. It assumes that there are other valuable forms of entertainment besides those which appeal to an educated elite. It gives power to the grassroots population by giving it a voice." He then points out that Canada in the '60s and '70s was "inundated with the theatrical entertainments of their colonial masters in Europe and the United States," giving examples from Edmonton's Citadel Theatre and the University of Saskatchewan Greystone Theatre in 1970 that show scarcely a Canadian presence.

Onto the Saskatoon scene came Andras Tahn, a talented graduate of E.D. Feehan High School who enrolled in the U of S drama program. He watched a group of actors who were "[d]issatisfied with the local theatre scene," and who had "decided to create their own theatrical entity and to produce work that interested them." This group, Theatre Project, produced one play, a translation of Woyzeck, and Tahn saw its hard work and short run as emblematic of "the sorry state of theatre in Saskatoon."

Tahn and a local folk musician named George Elder decided to from a collective of local artists of all stripes and came up with the name 25th Street House. They got off to a rocky start, actually renting the Centennial Auditorium (now TCU Place) to put on Tahn's three-act play Miklos and Kristina, and from that misfire falling back onto traditional fare and alienating their radical anti-colonialist supporters, then working into gradually growing seasons of Canadian plays.

Various hits and misses culminated in the unqualified success that was 1977's Paper Wheat, a play that, with its local research, local voices and collective creation, gloriously fulfilled Tahn's mandate of a grassroots artistic expression.

"The phenomenon of Paper Wheat catapulted 25th Street Theatre into the national consciousness," but that wasn't enough to ensure it long-term success. It couldn't find a permanent theatre space, eventually and uneasily sharing a building with the upstart professional company, Persephone, with which it also had to compete for grants. The company tried subscription series, it scrapped them; it tried controversial subjects, it tried to replicate its success in Paper Wheat and it fought huge battles with its funding agencies, with the critics and within its own tent.

Through all these storms, Tahn, either at the theatre's helm or taking a brief break, held to his vision of a Canadian theatre producing Canadian plays, even when quality plays just couldn't be found and the company was digging itself into a huge deficit. Boards of directors quit, plays were cancelled, the Saskatchewan Arts Board threatened and Tahn, through the early '80s, held his ground. In 1983 he resigned.

With Gordon McCall taking over the troubled theatre, Brenna signs off, but not without a salute to Tahn's vision, a company that provided "a much-needed forum for writers"; the creation of "a body of acting and directing talent that would have a resounding effect on Canadian theatre"; and a company that "provided a response to the mainstream theatre that had become entrenched in many Canadian cities."

Brenna's history is minutely detailed - complete with dates, attendance figures and individual critic's responses - and lovingly written by a man who cares about theatre in this city. As both an acute history and a cautionary tale, Our Kind of Work is instructive and entertaining as it casts a light on that crucial balance needed to sustain a theatre. — Bill Robertson