Where There's Smoke...: Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man, a Memoir (8 page)

Once again we were able to obtain accommodation for most of the company in Eden Lodge, Celia Sutton’s refuge for artists on Lake Rosseau. Regrettably there was a developing tension between the poor, young, and working artists — our group — and the more affluent vacationing artists; the arrangement was not repeated the following year. And still, true to the time, Cathy and I had accommodations two floors apart though since I did not have a roommate this time visits were easier to arrange. Well, somewhat easier. Our hosts did not approve of that sort of thing.

Birthing a theatre company is fraught with problems and, like a parent, years later I have forgotten most of them. But our first performance at Britannia Hotel was truly memorable. Karl had a family connection to the Huntsville area and a contact with a luxury hotel on Lake of Bays. He was able to organize that we would play there every second Monday night. Sounds pretty simple and the plan certainly helped our bottom line. But think of it. We closed a play on Saturday night. We opened the next one on Tuesday. And in between we went to Britannia Hotel, over an hour away, set up and performed and struck the play that would open on Tuesday. Our schedule was something like this: Saturday night strike play one; Sunday, set up and light play two; Monday, tech rehearse play two, strike key elements, load in truck, drive to Britannia, set up and brief tech, perform, strike, drink in the bar, drive back; Tuesday, begin rehearsal for play three and open play two in Port Carling.

Our first venture at the Britannia Hotel was my first production of that first season,
The Voice of the Turtle
by John Van Druten, with Fred Euringer and Judy McLeod. The single set has a living room filling the main stage and two smaller rooms at each side. We resolved the problem of the additional rooms at Britannia by small platforms at the front of the stage, one on each side. It was a scramble to get everything as ready as possible, but once the show began the nightmare unfolded. While some of the technical glitches were apparent only to the actors — misplaced props, phones that didn’t ring, once an actor entered one of the small rooms at the side, flicked on the light switch and the light for the opposite room came on — it was no longer possible to hide our lack of preparedness. And when the two actors entered the other side room and the platform collapsed, well, what can I say? Fred and Judy were troupers and made the best of it. But clearly the night is etched in Fred’s memory as he writes of it in his memoir. During my career as a director only one night’s technical cock-ups exceeded the torment of this one: the opening night of
Two for the Seesaw
in Chesterfield, UK, with Donald Sutherland and Jackie Burroughs. Fortunately, no real damage was done and we continued our regular performances at Britannia for the next four summers.

Would such a company be possible now? I doubt it. For one thing, our idea of a small cast play was five actors though occasionally we did a three-hander and once we did a two-hander. But a cast of eight or ten would not be unusual. Recent seasons at the Vancouver Playhouse often feature at least two solo performances, a couple of two-handers, and maybe a huge cast of four, not counting the one musical a year. For another, the talented actors we were able to employ would not now be undergraduates at a liberal arts university. For better or worse, they would be students in professional acting schools or making lots of money as juvenile actors on television and film. And then there is Equity.

Canadian Actors’ Equity Association is the actors’ union, an organization I strongly support, and yet . . . operating under current rules, our fledgling company would not have been possible. As I have said, we structured our costs to meet the lowest likely revenue. Had we paid people what they deserved we would have lasted only one season, as our predecessors had, and been considerably in debt ourselves at the end of it. Equity in Canada was in its infancy at this time and as our seasons progressed we had more and more issues with them, but so far as I recall we were ignored at the beginning. We had no other unions to deal with. Karl and I were as likely to be driving the truck or building the sets as anyone else. We distributed the likely revenue equitably. Everyone except apprentices received the same salary.

Critical to theatre companies of the time was the Acting ASM, who also acted. The job allowed the company to have a larger cast — small parts have to be filled somehow — and the job was a great opportunity for a young actor to learn by watching other actors as well as discovering how the production side works. For the budding stage manager, the job allowed the person to really feel what it’s like to be the actor on stage. It was a win-win situation for everyone. Now forbidden by Equity rules, its loss is a greater handicap than modern performers realize.

Low tuition fees were also in our favour. While some of our company had just graduated, others would be returning to university in the fall, Karl and I included. I don’t believe being in our company cost anyone money. I think they were all paid enough to survive, as long as the drinks were very, very thin, but no one could save for their next year’s fees. But in the fifties, university tuition was quite modest, as it should be. I should admit that most of our company came from middle-class backgrounds and had some family support. The exception to the rule was Bill Brydon, who drove a cab for a living when he wasn’t acting in plays. Bill was a terrific talent and went on to a good career in New York. And Ray Stancer reminded me recently that he turned us down; he needed to earn real money in his summer vacations from university.

And, believe it or not, we made a small profit. We repaid my father’s loan with a little left over. And I’m sure we could have gone on making a little money each year if our ambitions hadn’t grown with our success.

Flushed with our success, or survival at least, we made plans to expand for our next season. But first we had to continue with our sideline activity, getting an education. And then there were the sidelines to the sideline: being president of the University College student council, serving on a small committee planning a new Student Union building, a major production to direct, and getting married in January. And this was the year I was kidnapped.

Once again University College combined with St. Michael’s College to present a full length play in Hart House Theatre. No one seemed to find it odd that the most secular college was working with the most religious college. And once again I was invited to direct. Looking for a play that would take advantage of the large number of interested and talented women, we settled on
The Children’s Hour
by Lillian Hellman. The play is set in a boarding school for girls run by two single women who are accused by one of the students of being lesbians. In the temper of the times such an accusation proves catastrophic, forces the school to close, and one of the teachers to believe that deep down perhaps she did love her colleague ‘in that way.’ She finds the shame so overwhelming that she kills herself. Based on a true story, I don’t recall anyone in 1959 feeling that the play was dated or melodramatic.

This was my seventh production as a director, and I was still just twenty. The accomplished actors I had been able to cast and turn loose in previous productions had either graduated or were working with Gill in his productions. I had to find less experienced but hopefully talented performers that I could mould into a coherent whole. Eventually we found a strong cast that included Jan Hughes as one of the teachers and Nancy Keeling (later Nancy Helwig) as the wild child. But most interesting to me was a young woman with a dark mysterious quality who had caught my eye the year before when we did
A Hatful of Rain
. Sylvia, the daughter of a noted Catholic philosopher, was to be a producer of the show, but she was also ideal for the role of the other teacher. I cast her in the part and my life into danger.

Planning this production coincided with planning my marriage to Cathy, to say nothing of planning a Student Union building and an expanded theatre company. The wedding, a relatively small event, was scheduled for January, to be followed by a short honeymoon in Montreal. Time was limited; Cathy, having graduated, was now working for a publishing company, and I was soon to start rehearsals for
The Children’s Hour
.

In January, shortly after my twenty-first birthday, we wed. I have to say this about one’s own weddings. They really are fun. I had a wonderful time on all three of my wedding days. It’s the days, months, and years that follow that are the difficulty. For the honeymoon we flew from Malton Airport — we would call it Pearson or Toronto International now — to Montreal and stayed at the Ritz-Carlton on Sherbrooke Street. As I recall, it seemed to take forever to get from the Montreal airport to the hotel, the area highways not yet having been built. Maybe I just couldn’t wait to have legal, legitimate sex. But I would have to wait even longer. Tired and probably nervous, Cathy asked if we could wait until morning to consummate our marriage. We got along well for the three days but, left alone and not part of some other activity, we really didn’t have a lot to talk about, something I recall about my second honeymoon as well.

When we returned from Montreal we settled into our new apartment, well, rather old apartment actually, but new to us, off Danforth. I had never lived off campus before and while other commuters told me how lucky I was to be so close, just one streetcar ride away, it was not the same as being right in the middle of things. My father had given us a new 1959 Volkswagen Beetle as a wedding present, which Cathy used to get to work. Domestic life was peaceful enough but we had to get used to the novel idea of our working lives being completely separate. One less thing to share and gossip about.

I don’t know when I decided I was in love with Sylvia. I imagine it was during rehearsals for
The Children’s Hour
which followed all too closely after marrying Cathy. Still, there was nothing to be done about it but suffer poetic longing; not only was I married but Sylvia was Catholic, very Catholic, and the Church would never recognize a divorce if it came to that. If the timing had been slightly different, would I have called off the wedding? Would Sylvia and I have married? Who knows?

Whatever the personal vibrations, we did manage a pretty good production of the Hellman play. On the day after opening, I came downstairs, anxious as usual about reviews. Cathy had been up and gone to work but she left the
Globe and Mail
open for me on the dining room table, a picture of me beside the notice. Herbert Whittaker, Toronto’s lead reviewer, gave me a rave; he had seen me grow up as a child actor, but for him I had found my place. In his eyes as well as mine I was a theatre director. Just turned twenty-one, my place in the universe was confirmed. How much of Herbie’s enthusiasm had to do with my apparent skill as a director or his lack of enthusiasm for my acting, I don’t know to this day. He was a kind, oblique man, and reading between his lines was a constant concern for theatre professionals at the time. What could never be doubted was his devotion to theatre in Canada and the people in it.

Karl and I had decided we wanted to expand our Revived Straw Hat Players. Driving the desire as much as anything was the need to get out of weekly rep, to give ourselves at least two weeks’ rehearsal for each play. Since the market in Port Carling clearly would not support a two-week run, the only way to get two weeks’ rehearsal was to have a second location and a second company so that each company could play one week in each place, rehearsing their next play all the while. And so we began negotiations with Michael Sadlier to take over the Peterborough Summer Theatre. A television producer, Sadlier, the first husband of Canadian actress Kate Reid, was a pleasant, sophisticated man. He had been running the theatre for some years, quite successfully we believed, but now seemed ready to give it up. Why we never knew, possibly because Kate had given him up. He was very cooperative and offered to do several things for us as well as sign a contract with us. Unfortunately, he never did any of them until Karl wrote him a scathing letter months later and we at least got the contract we needed.

Much more helpful was the editor of the
Peterborough Examiner
, the minor Canadian author Robertson Davies. I say minor, as
Fifth Business
was still well in the future; as his wife Brenda would say, Rob didn’t really blossom until he was sixty, giving hope to late bloomers the world over. I first met Rob when he directed
Ten Nights in the Barroom
for the original Straw Hat Players when I was in my teens. A kindly man, I remember his only comment to me when he finally figured out who was singing flat during a full company song, “Are you comfortable in that tenor part?” While we were never able to persuade Rob to direct for us, Brenda did an excellent job in his stead, and Rob helped us integrate into the Peterborough community.

Through Rob we were able to make contact with a local women’s association, yes, they still had those in 1959. They were a volunteer organization that would turn out to be quite helpful to us. The chairperson took an interest in me personally and promised to introduce me to some of the ‘young marrieds’ in the town. ‘Young marrieds? Good God, is that what I am?’ Few of those introductions actually happened, which is just as well as I didn’t remain a ‘young married’ for very long.

Meantime, I was grappling with issues of logic and philosophy, writing essays, chairing the student council, and planning a Student Union building. I had a call one afternoon asking me to come over to
The Varsity
offices,
The Varsity
being the university newspaper. Imagining a lovely article about me in the next issue, I approached
The Varsity
building at the appointed time, only to be grabbed by two burly young men who dragged me into a waiting car and spirited me out of town. What the hell is going on? I’m being kidnapped!

I was taken to a farmhouse in the country, locked in a living room, and told I would remain there until their demands were met. Who knows what their demands were, of that I have no recollection. I’m pleased to report that I wasn’t tortured. It seems that an undergraduate organization was capturing some key campus figures in pursuit of some goal, or perhaps just publicity. Given free rein of the farmhouse, I was treated well and allowed a phone call or two to explain where I was, but still, they held me for a couple of days before returning me to the city. University pranks usually consisted of taking down the goal posts after a football game, or water fights in residence, or panty raids on the women’s residences, but kidnapping was new territory. It wasn’t the brutality of the occasion or even the restraint that was challenging for me, it was two days of enforced idleness. I’m a busy person. I have things to do. I can’t just sit around and do nothing for two days. Finally I gave in to the experience. I remember it with a certain fondness and did not pursue charges against my jailers as I imagine I could have.

But soon it was back to the real world, finish the year, pass the exams and put together season 2 of the Revived Straw Hat Players. Now we would have two companies who would alternate between Peterborough, playing in the same school auditorium that Sadlier’s company had used, and Port Carling, still in the Town Hall. The company in Port Carling would play each Monday night at Britannia and we began a search for a Monday location for the company when it was in Peterborough, finally settling on the small town of Cobourg. Now we needed two of nearly everything, acting company, technical staff, front-of-house staff, scenery, lights, residences for the company, etc. And we needed a way to transport the companies and the sets between the different locations. Here we made a decision that would come back to haunt us. We bought a used five-ton truck which we affectionately named Behemoth. I still owned the 1949 Mercury that I had originally bought with three other residents of Jeanneret House and over time took advantage of their various financial hardships to buy each of them out. Now that Cathy and I had the Volkswagen I donated the Merc to be the company car, a decision that sounded much better than it turned out to be.

Partly because of the numbers required and partly because we were becoming more ambitious, we needed to widen our search for actors and directors beyond the University of Toronto campus. Over the next three summers our acting companies included Gordon Pinsent, Nancy Kerr, Eleanor Beecroft, Colin Hamilton, Judy Sinclair, David Renton, Ted Follows, Dawn Greenhalgh, Nancy Helwig, Beverly Mackay, Timothy Findley, Fred Euringer, Mia Anderson, Jamie Mainprize, and Jackie Burroughs. Directors included Peter Dearing, Ron Hartman, Brenda Davies, Fred Euringer, George McCowan, and Hugh Webster, as well as me. As experienced professional actors came in to audition it usually took them a few moments to realize that this young kid inviting them in was actually the Artistic Director and not simply the casting assistant.

Helping us in Peterborough was David Helwig, the slim, wiry intellect who would later marry Nancy Keeling and become a successful writer. I was in awe of his exam writing technique. Once I was sitting near him in one of the large examination halls where we were assembled to write final exams. I imagine on this occasion I was writing a philosophy exam and he would have been writing an English exam. No sooner had I read the questions — usually there were five for a two-and-a-half-hour exam — than I began scribbling frantically hoping to impress my professor with my wide grasp of the subject. Occasionally I would look over at David. He was doing nothing. Looking off into space perhaps, making a note or two. Finally he would write for a few minutes and then repeat the process. What was he doing in those long idle moments? Thinking. What a novel idea during an exam. For two and a half hours I wrote incessantly while David actually took time, a lot of time, to think. He consistently topped his class in Honours English. For the next two summers we were fortunate to have him apply his remarkable brain to an array of problems, including housing and publicity.

Not only did we need to find living arrangements in Peterborough, but we had to find new ones in Port Carling; it seems we had outstayed our welcome at Eden Lodge. Karl located a house in Peterborough where many of the company stayed. In Port Carling some of us found a small cottage on the water near the centre of town. Hard to believe if one goes to Port Carling now, as the area is built up with commercial enterprises. But it was great to be on the water; we could swim in our brief breaks, or sometimes swim just to wake up after working late into the night building scenery or lighting or whatever. In Peterborough I shared a bedroom in the company house with Cathy who, now ensconced in the real working world, would come to Peterborough on weekends.

Just in case you are imagining this company through a modern lens, let me disabuse you of certain images such as a staff, offices, workshops, dressing rooms, vehicles that could be relied on to run when they were needed, and other desirable accoutrements of a professional theatre. Of course, there were places where these things were done, where the books were kept, the actors got dressed, and the sets got built, but all was makeshift. With the exception of the actors, everyone else played many parts; I might direct one play, stage-manage another, design and focus lights, build sets for another, etc., etc. I don’t think I ever drove Behemoth but I did most everything else except front of house at one time or another. Oh yes, and I played the lead in
The Mousetrap
. Well, who else could play it, the character arrives on skis.