A Past-Perfect Future?:Performing the Past as the Future of Theatre in Atlantic Canada
Atlantic Canada has often been cast in the past as a place of the way things used to be with its stereotypes of being anti-progress where back-to-the-landers flourish and where everyone knows each other. These sentimental, anti-progress, environmentalist portraitures abound on Atlantic theatre mainstages with works like David French's Leaving Home trilogy set in the 1950s about a Newfoundland family stuck in the past and struggling to move to the city and into the future; Robert Chafe's stage adaptation of Wayne Johnston's novel Colony of Unrequited Dreams that tells the story of soon-to-be Newfoundland Premier Joey Smallwood in 1949; and the longest-running annual musical Anne of Green Gables set in late 1800s that tells a story of the nature-loving orphan that has become synonymous with Prince Edward Island culture. As Glenn Nichols notes, "Acadian history" and "Acadian nationalism" have "been so closely allied with a mythologized past" (41). Ironically, however, this historical past-ness about Atlantic Canadian theatre is what makes it such an ideal setting for imagining the future. In this way, a paradox lies at the heart of any consideration of the future in Atlantic Canada: the "preferred" element of futurity (or the quantity and quality of a future) is the past. Embracing the past as a performance of the future is not backwards thinking, and many revisionist works are reclaiming the past from a more diverse perspective (like Hamilton). I wonder, can we reclaim narratives of a "mythologized past" and "revisionist past" as strategies for a theatre of the future?
Atlantic Canada, theatre, East, Future, futurity, revisionist, Atlantic Canadian theatre, climate, environment, nation
If we are thinking about the future, then we are necessarily thinking about cultural heritage and the past. Atlantic Canada has often been cast as a place of the way things used to be with its stereotypes of being anti-progress, where back-to-the-landers flourish, where everyone knows each other, and where education happens on lobster boats rather than in a classroom. These sentimental, anti-progress, environmentalist portraitures haunt Atlantic theatre mainstages. Renowned Atlantic Canadian playwright David French sets his play Leaving Home in the 1950s and dramatizes a Newfoundland family stuck in the past but struggling to move to the city and into the future; Robert Chafe's 2015 stage adaptation of Wayne Johnston's novel Colony of Unrequited Dreams tells the story of soon-to-be Newfoundland Premier Joey Smallwood in 1949; and the longest-running annual musical Anne of Green Gables, set in late 1800s, tells a story of the nature-loving orphan that has become synonymous with Prince Edward Island culture. It is precisely this (often stigmatized) historical past-ness about Atlantic Canada that makes it an ideal setting for imagining the future. Even the 2013 World War Z film adaptation turns to Nova Scotia as a safe haven in a dystopian future, beating out major cities and holy meccas. In this way, a paradox lies at the heart of any consideration of the future in Atlantic Canada: a "preferred" element of futurity (or the quantity and quality of a future) is the past. I argue that Atlantic Canadian theatre offers a place of refusal, or at very least, a problematization, of futurity itself—a past-perfect future.
Changes Rooted in the Past Drive the Preferred Future
The important provocations for this special issue ask, among other things, "what are the changes that will drive the preferred future"? The changes that will drive the future are rooted in the past. Because embracing the 'past' as a performance of the future risks reinscribing heteronormative and racist power structures, many political and revisionist works are reclaiming the past from a more diverse perspective (like the musical Hamilton). These revisionist adaptations show us a future that takes conscious care of its past. As I have argued in Political Adaptation of Canadian Theatre (2020), Canada is a nation of political and literary adaptations, and Canadian theatre often stages adaptations of older works with a renewed political message. Shauntay Grant (Nova Scotian) and George Elliott Clarke (Africadian) take stories and poetry from the past in order to remind audiences of the history of slavery in Nova Scotia—a history all too often overlooked. At the Canadian Association of Theatre Research's 2023 Performing Shores/The Shores of Performance conference (Barker, Davis-Fisch, Wright), Grant performed a spoken word piece that began with a historical document about a runaway slave; one by one, she blacked out a series of words and transformed them into a new story. shalan joudry's (Mi'kmaw) KOQM also reaches back into the past with a story about "forgotten and silenced historical L'nu women" (Robbins). KOQM takes its viewers into an ancient forest and traces a Mi'kmaq lineage back in time; as we watch the [End Page 31] play, joudry prompts the audience to consider the past stories of the land we live in from an Indigenous perspective: a place where Mi'kmaq families were forcibly separated and had to fight to keep cultural songs alive. These playwrights are ushering in changes to what and how stories are told on stages in terms of playwrights, performers, language, and subject matter, but they are also notably creating change by way of the past. In this way, imaginings of the future of theatre are working with the past. I wonder, can we examine narratives of a "mythologized past" and "revisionist past" as strategies for a theatre of the future?
Rejecting Futurity
In keeping with this argument about the pastness of the future, let's look back at the two CTR issues on theatre in Atlantic Canada from 1986 (Knowles) and 2006 (Burnett), Theatre Research in Canada's (TRiC) two volumes on "Shifting Tides: Atlantic Canadian Theatre" (Barton, Alvarez, Devine) published in 2005, and the special volume on Theatre in Atlantic Canada (Burnett), published as part of the Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English series in 2010. The 1986 CTR special issue, entitled Atlantic Alternatives, responds to Canadian nationalism at the time, and Knowles cites Diane Bessai in his reflection that no one seemed to question the organizing principle of Atlantic Canada as a region despite the fact that Atlantic Canada is "a purely bureaucratic construct" (Knowles 4). In the special issues from 1986, 2005, 2006, and 2010 there was an overt, sustained effort to demonstrate the current, innovative performance-based work in Atlantic Canada. Playwright Wendy Lill reflects that:
In the East, I find, as with everything else, a sense of reticence. It's not insecurity, because there's certainly a great deal of pride here: people who are here want to be here. It's more a feeling that's been drummed into Easterners for decades that historically … their stories aren't as interesting as those from the West. At least not to anyone who isn't an Easterner.
This repeated struggle to articulate Atlantic Canada's theatre contributions to current theatre and performance struggles puts an emphasis on future-leaning work and responds to the dominance of theatre in central Canada and major city centres (Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal). Can we reframe our approach to a preferred future of theatre in Atlantic Canada by rejecting these measuring sticks of urbanity and even futurity itself?
In the introduction to CTR's 2006 issue on Theatre in Atlantic Canada, Linda Burnett immediately addresses the myth that "East is Least" (4) and examines the changing theatre scene in Atlantic Canada. Burnett discusses the many theatres, festivals, playwrights, and artists in Atlantic Canada that have achieved national and international renown. As a testament to the theatrical riches in Atlantic Canada, CTR's 2006 issue included a profile on Robert Chafe, a conversation with Lill, an interview with Kent Stetson, a history of Nova Scotia's Mermaid Theatre, a review of the Magnetic North Theatre Festival in St. John's Newfoundland, and scripts by George Elliott Clarke (Trudeau—Long March / Shining Path) and Michael Melski (The Fly Fisher's Companion). In her 2010 introduction, years after the bursts of special issues on theatre in Atlantic Canada, Burnett wonders, "why is it that"
In the final moments of the 2013 film adaptation of World War Z, the hero (played by Brad Pitt) arrives at a beach in Nova Scotia to find his family safe from the zombie apocalypse; the establishing shots of the Atlantic Canada location are images of water and a vast green landscape with farms.
Photo credit: World War Z, directed by Marc Foster
[End Page 32] the "important playwrights" from Atlantic Canada are continually "disregarded by scholars and critics" (Theatre in Atlantic Canada xiv)? All four special journal and series issues (1986 and 2006 CTR, 2005 TRiC, 2010 Critical Perspectives) take a historical approach by at once reflecting on the history of Atlantic Canada and how it has been perceived in the context of Canadian nationalism and the rest of Canada.
When I sat down to write about "preferred futures" of theatre in Atlantic Canada, I expected to be writing about the dazzling productions I have recently seen by 2b theatre, Neptune Theatre, and Festival Antigonish in Nova Scotia—much like Burnett's impetus to share exciting, innovative productions from the East Coast. I expected to extend the work in CTR's earlier special issues on Atlantic Alternatives (1986) and Theatre in Atlantic Canada (2006) with reflections on the 2023 Canadian Association of Theatre Research conference that celebrated innovative artists in Nova Scotia. Instead, I find myself questioning the very values implicit in discussions of the future of theatre in Atlantic Canada, namely the value of futurity.
Anxiety of the Future
If we are contemplating the future by talking about the past, then are we acknowledging that there might not be a future? Does any imagination of the future necessarily also imagine the possibility of no future? Of no futurity? Judith Butler complicates the issue of the future of the humanities and arts by exposing the haunting premise of this inquiry. Butler, in a piece on "The Public Future of the Humanities" (2022), asks a series of interrelated questions about whether a future exists for the humanities and what it looks like; Butler's line of questioning comes to a halt with the question of "whether there is a future at all":
Thus, if one asks what future there is for the humanities or for any other set of institutions and practices, the assumption is that there will be a future and we just do not know whether the humanities will be part of it. This presumes, however, that the social and climactic conditions for the future will persist, and yet we can no longer make that assumption. Whether or not there will be a future for the humanities depends, of course, on whether there is a future at all.
(41)
Butler here exposes the underlying anxiety of the imagined future: the ominous question of whether there will be a future at all. The past-ness of futurity in Atlantic Canada is a bit more nuanced in that it questions the value of futurity. I argue that using the past to imagine a future calls into question whether there is a futuristic future. Theatremaking in the east asks us to re-evaluate not only our preferred future but the assumed preference for futurity. In presenting a past-perfect future, there is an underlying refusal of futurity itself.
shalan joudry performing KOQM.
Photo by Dan Froese
Kailin Wright is an associate professor, Jules Léger Research Scholar, and award-winning teacher at St. Francis Xavier University (in Nova Scotia). She is the author of Political Adaptation in Canadian Theatre (McGill-Queen's Press, 2020); the critical edition of Carroll Aikins's The God of Gods; and articles in Theatre Journal, Canadian Literature, Theatre Research in Canada, Canadian Theatre Review, and Studies in Canadian Literature. She is also Associate Editor for Canadian Theatre Review and Fiction Editor for The Antigonish Review.
