Growing Up: The School's Story

by Alexa Topolski

"And you may say to yourself, ‘How did I get here?"
— Talking Heads, Once In a Lifetime

Born on November 2, 1960, the National Theatre School of Canada is a baby boomer. Like many boomers, it was idealistic in the sixties, counter-culture in the seventies, and, to its own surprise, now finds itself part of the establishment. The NTS had a VW Bug in the sixties (Martha Henry’s "tour bus" for the class of 63’s Winnipeg tour) and more than its fair share of love affairs, and it’s probably safe to say that it did inhale. At forty, it still clings to its belief that openness, original talent and individuality will win out over conformity, authority, and privilege. The School is also, more particularly, a Montreal boomer: it quietly cherishes its memories of its adventurous youth in this unique, theatre-loving city, where stage actors are beloved stars, recognized on the street. Each year a new generation of students think they’re discovering its cafés and characters for the first time.

Just as the baby boomer generation was a result of the social and political patterns of the fourties and fifties, it took years of growth and education before the climate was right for a national theatre school. Canadian theatre was still in its first flower when it became clear that there was a need for a national training institution.

Once theatre had started to take root in English Canada through the efforts of companies like the Dominion Drama Festival and the Canadian Players Limited, it didn’t take long for those involved to realize that the practice of importing English, French, and American techniques and styles into their productions created a certain amount of alienation for the Canadian companies and their audiences.

Speech production teacher, Eleonor Stuart, with one of the first students of the school, Diana Leblanc, in 1961.

There was a need for actors and designers who could see plays through the lens of their Canadian upbringings and sensibilities. In 1952, a highly respected and charismatic French actor and teacher, Michel Saint-Denis, became the catalyst that would bring those ideas to life. Saint-Denis was uniquely suited to spearhead the founding of a bilingual theatre school. The child of a French mother and English father, Saint-Denis spent his childhood and young adulthood in France, where he co-founded the influential theatre company Compagnie des Quinze, and subsequently moved to England, where he founded the Old Vic Theatre School.

With Saint-Denis’ guidance, and the desire, insight and commitment of a group of high-profile Canadian arts lovers, critics, and theatre artists, a committee was formed with the purpose of establishing "a professional theatre school of the highest standard, serving Canadians from coast to coast and bringing together both French and English-speaking students under one roof." Together the committee members formed a theatrical "Who’s Who" of the day.⁽¹⁾

Michel Saint-Denis. Photo: Archives La Presse.

Committed and idealistic, the committee expressed its beliefs this way: "To meet the needs of Canada’s growing theatre, this country must train its own professional artists and workers. To achieve a national expression through theatre, it is essential that comprehensive training of the highest standard and in the two cultural traditions of our country be given, nourished by the talent drawn from across the nation."

Drawing on the combined wisdom of the three wise men — Saint-Denis, his former student Powys Thomas, a gifted, poetic Welsh actor, and Jean Gascon, the director of Montreal’s Théâtre du Nouveau Monde — the committee established the School’s mission and the fundamental principles that still lie at its heart 40 years later. As defined by the committee, the School’s five aims were to provide "practical conservatory-type training, training based on a ‘humanistic’ approach, training able to meet individual needs and mindful of changes within the profession and society, multidisciplinary training, and training in a national co-lingual institution." Informing the entire statement was Saint-Denis’ core belief that: "Such training [that is, theatre] is different from most other professional training in that the instrument of the training is the human being itself — the body and soul of the actor — and that the work is done from the inside out rather than from the outside in."

When the School finally opened its doors in 1960, with 17 Anglophone students and 9 Francophone students, its campus consisted of three rented rooms in the Canadian Legion Building at 1191 Mountain Street. The School’s first Director General, Jean Gascon, simultaneously ran the School and his theatre company from a cramped office in the rundown building, where he would switch from one side of the desk to the other depending on which project he was working on, or so the joke went. There were rats in the stairways and the performance space was the tiny stage of a seedy cocktail club the School rented in the afternoons. But none of that mattered — the longed-for child had finally arrived.

Childhood lessons

As it took its first shaky steps, the School made up in passion and enthusiasm what it lacked in stability and experience. Money was a constant worry. Gradually, through experimentation, rebellion, and the test of time, the School’s character evolved and became more defined. Looking back, many milestones stand out. There is the evolution of the Acting Program, the move to the School’s present quarters on St-Denis Street, the acquisition of the Monument-National, the creation of the French Playwriting Program, the struggle to establish and maintain a Directing Program, the Technical Production Program’s advance into the era of software technologies, the decision to have the Acting students perform the Playwriting students’ plays in their final year, and the constantly shifting proportions of craft and aesthetics in Scenography, to name a few.

In spite of this flux, what stands out for Joel Miller, Director of the English Acting Program from 1977 to 1986, is the remarkable continuity and adherence to the School’s underlying principles. "The National Theatre School, unlike other educational institutions, is unique in the sense that the fundamental philosophy informing curriculum, methodology and goals has for the most part remained unchanged throughout its history," says Miller. "There is a direct line from the School’s founders to the present-day staff and leadership. Powys Thomas, the first Artistic Director of the English Acting Section, was a protégé of both Michel Saint-Denis and Pierre Lefèvre, who taught mask work to both the French and the English students at the School for 24 years and who at one time in his career acted for Michel Saint-Denis. I received an important part of my own training as a teacher from Powys."

"When Douglas Rain, who was then an actor and director at the Stratford Festival, became Artistic Director in 1974 — I was his assistant — Michel Saint-Denis’ widow, Suria, moved to Montreal with the specific purpose of offering herself as a resource to us. Pierre Lefèvre began teaching at the School on a regular basis, and even agreed to be on full-time staff during my first year as Director. And Perry Schneiderman was my assistant during my tenure in the post. Now, Brian Dooley, who was trained in part by Pierre Lefèvre, has taken over Pierre’s mask classes. In fact, the School has a long tradition of engaging its former students as teachers, which helps guarantee continuity."

Adolescence

As the School hit its teenage years in the post-Beatles era, experimentation was the order of the day. Brian Dooley attended the School in the mid-seventies, one of its more turbulent periods. "When I was a student, we rarely had formal ‘acting classes,’ that is, in the American tradition," recalls Dooley, an ebullient man who bristles with energy. "We were often introduced to a variety of components that we were then expected to insert or integrate in different projects. But the actual ‘acting’ remained intangible. Early in my second year, we lost both our movement and voice teachers in one fell swoop, which was obviously very disruptive. They were quickly replaced, but what we had started out with was now no longer de rigueur. The extremely disciplined but slightly stodgy approach that was drummed into us was starting to unravel...

"Then Nick Hutchinson⁽²⁾ came along," Dooley continues. "What Nick may have lacked in pedagogy he more than made up for in enthusiasm and passion. Nick’s tenure was chaotic, but he did manage to inject a notion of laboratory. Performance training began to flirt with other components and disciplines like movement. Nick also tried to develop a fledging directing program with his limited resources."

Finally the School took on a new level of maturity, incorporating the best elements from both its strict childhood and its rebellious adolescence. "When Perry Schneiderman came on board in 1976, it appeared to me that the School was a hodgepodge of components. What Perry finally brought to the School was a sound administrative and pedagogical foundation which had been sorely lacking. I think that Perry’s tenure was a major turning point in the School’s development. He managed the place at its busiest and most exciting time. There was a hell of a lot going on, and the place buzzed with activity and imagination. The Self-Start Program was a great innovation because it gave students a forum for experimentation and ignited their interests in performance and writing," says Dooley.

While the School’s pedagogical guidelines are a bedrock, a director’s personality inevitably seeps into his or her program in both practical and intangible ways. Former Director of the Acting Program Perry Schneiderman, who observed his last semester last spring after 24 years of teaching and directing at the School, recalls the changes he made. "There wasn’t an acting class here, per se, when I first arrived. There was improvisation and there was text, a lot of exposure to Shakespeare, but it was all done through rehearsal, and really the only acting classes that were given were mask class and improvisation. So I started doing ‘zone of silence’ work, the whole idea of finding moments of interaction between individuals, which was the psychological work that I had done at [the French acting studio] Lecoq in 1977.

Director David Latham works throughout Canada and Australia. He has been teachning at the School since 1996. Photo: Maxime Côté.

And then I added the kind of work that Carol Rosenfeld⁽³⁾ does where you are seeking the psychological connections and the text is the tip of the iceberg of that type of work of playing and of ‘actioning’ things the way Allen MacInnis⁽⁴⁾ and David Latham⁽⁵⁾ work.

But for Schneiderman, the biggest change he made was the increased emphasis on writing. "When I visited Toronto just before I took over the Acting Program, the major criticism of the School was ‘yes, the students come out classically trained, but they haven’t got a clue on how to work on new plays or what new writing is about...’ And then we hatched a plan to bring in writing for the English actors. That was the beginning of a major shift which has borne tremendous results," Schneiderman says, with satisfaction. "It really started something that is now ingrained in the texture of the English section, which is the whole self-start stream, the developing of new work and sending out kids who can handle all kinds of work now. That was major."

Few, if any, schools in North America and England offer a playwriting program that includes writing not only for their playwriting students, but for their actors and the technical students as well. The School’s innovation in this regard fits with its mission to create a Canadian voice. Today, a good number of new Canadian plays are by NTS graduates, not only Playwriting graduates, but Acting graduates as well. The success of the Self-Start Program has also helped change the theatre community’s confidence in NTS graduates’ abilities to handle new work.

Adulthood and beyond

Though maturity has brought a measure of stability to the School, some concerns have been constant through the years, among them the ongoing scramble for funding, debate over whether the English students would be better served if the School were based in Toronto, and the need for a directing program.

At long last, it seems the last concern will be laid to rest. After a sputtering series of fits and starts, directing is once again part of the NTS curriculum. Maureen LaBonté, a dramaturge and the former Co-ordinator of the two-year pilot Directing Program conducted by the NTS from 1994 to 1996, is now Co-ordinator of the Playwriting Program. She is thrilled that the Directing Program is being resurrected for the 2001-2002 semester. "From my point of view within the School, and personally as a teacher, those years were really pivotal pedagogically," says the articulate and dynamic LaBonté. "It’s very, very exciting as a teacher to be able to be part of that. The Directing Program really brought about a very tangible change in the School. Its goal was to train not just directors but presumably leaders, and when I say that, I mean the people who will one day presumably go out there and make theatre happen, raise the money and find the venue."

Norberts J. Muncs, the School’s affable and dedicated Director of the Technical Production Program, concurs. "The proof of the pudding is, when you look at all the directors who went through the Program, they’re all great and they’re all working."

Indeed. The same proof holds true for all the programs. The School’s impact on Canadian theatre has been profound. Its developments and growth have reflected, and sometimes led, the evolution of repertoire and companies across the country. Reading through the lists of the past forty years of students and teachers at the School is like reading a history of Canadian theatre. If the state of the School is any indication, theatre in Canada is in a very good place.

At forty, the School is in its prime, embarking on a fit middle age. Its finances are finally in order, it’s got a nice house. It may be older, but it’s also wiser. And like every self-respecting boomer, no matter how established and respectable it may become, it will always be a little wild at heart. Long may it live.

1. The committee members included: David Gardner (Chairman), Colonel Yves Bourassa, Donald Davis, Jean Gascon, Gratien Gélinas, Michael Langham, The Honourable Pauline McGibbon, Mavor Moore, David Ongley, Tom Patterson, Jean Pelletier, Jean-Louis Roux, Roy Stewart, Powys Thomas, Vincent Tovell, and Herbert Whittaker, along with Michel Saint-Denis, the senior advisor

2. Nick Hutchison, Director of the English and Playwriting Program 1986-1990; Founder and Director of the Caravan Farm Theatre in Armstrong, British Columbia.

3. New York-based acting teacher.

4. Artistic Director of the Prairie Theatre Exchange in Winnipeg and freelance director.

5. A director working throughout Canada and Australia; former Co-ordinator, Vancouver Playhouse acting school.

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