Theatre and Society: Theatre for the People

by Patrick McDonagh

“The established theatre had a group of people they always used,” said Frank Glenfield. “Young people never got a chance to perform.” With Jack McCreath and a group of other people looking for a bit of stage time, Frank and Mary Glenfield helped found the Edmonton Theatre Associates. The year was 1958. Today, the company, now the Walterdale Theatre, named after an early residence, is an established force in Edmonton. In the past year, it has produced romps like Rocky Horror and classics such as The Doll House and the contemporary Canadian Footprints on the Moon by Maureen Hunter, among others. Previously, the company has championed the work of George Ryga and Brad Fraser — before they became theatre icons.

Walterdale productions are created entirely by volunteers. Actors, directors, technicians, and designers — as well as box office staff and ushers — come from all walks of life, and range in age from high school students to senior citizens. In addition to creating their own productions, they form a healthy chunk of the audience for professional shows. Indeed, until the 1960s, community theatre was one of the main thoroughfares to a professional career in Canada.

Building Theatre Communities

“People get involved with community theatre for myriad reasons,” says Nancy Waddington, president of Theatre/Théâtre Canada, (formerly the Dominion Drama Festival), an umbrella organization that today provides a national voice for community theatre and drama education. There are currently no records on the number of community or amateur theatres in the country, nor of the number of participants. However, it seems a safe bet that if enough people are clustered together in a community, they form a theatre group. Given just a bit of a nudge, people want to act up.

Take Cliff Tyner, for instance. A forensic engineer in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Tyner was conscripted by his wife Valerie in 1965 to help with the lights for a Dartmouth Players production. “I’ve been involved ever since,” he says, “doing everything: acting, directing, lights, sound, sets, and cleaning up after.” This spring, he directed a production of Cash on Delivery, by Michael Cooney; Valerie also acts and designs for the company. Dartmouth Players, founded in 1958, moved from one venue to another before settling in their current home, an old school house which they bought from the city in 1986. The space gives the 150-member company enough room to rehearse one play while performing another.

Multiple Roles

But community theatres do more than produce shows: they run classes, host workshops, organize festivals, and sponsor competitions. Ottawa Little Theatre, which traces its history to 1913, offers a theatre school and sponsors the Canadian One-Act Playwriting Competition. The Dartmouth Players run four levels of theatre classes, for children and adults. Theatre BC, an umbrella group for community theatres in British Columbia, offers the National Playwriting Competition, and provides two $1,000 scholarships for students accepted into a Canadian theatre school or post-secondary theatre program, in addition to hosting annual festivals, conferences, and workshops.

While the labour that goes into making a play is donated by the participants, running a theatre still costs money. Some acquire funding from municipal or provincial governments, or the odd private donor; others rely almost entirely on box office receipts, with tickets usually priced at around $10-$15. “One of our biggest attractions is that we provide an affordable season”, says Tyner. “Typically, we get between 1,200 and 1,500 people for each three-week run.” Ottawa Little Theatre boasts a healthy 8,000 subscribers for a season, each paying $75 to attend eight productions. And, because their performers and crew are all volunteers, community theatres can mount large-cast productions that would bankrupt many a professional company.

The Professional Route

When many of the nation’s older community theatres were established — in the days when the annual Dominion Drama Festival was the focal event of the season for little theatres and amateur groups across the country — community theatre was one of the more-traveled routes to what few professional careers existed in Canada. Traffic in this direction has shrunk, but not disappeared. Mary Glenfield has acted in both worlds in Edmonton, appearing with the Citadel, Phoenix, and Shadow Theatres, and, she notes, the two communities are in constant exchange. “Everybody is entangled with everybody else here,” she laughs. Glenfield is an authority: in 2001, at the age of 79, she received a University of Alberta MA for a thesis on pre-professional theatre in Edmonton from 1920 to 1965. Her research shows that the local community theatres can claim a fair portion of the credit for making Edmonton the theatre-friendly town it is today.

While some people still pass through community theatre en route to professional careers, this is rarely the goal of participants. This summer, the International Amateur Theatre Association (IATA) held its annual festival in Halifax from July 13-23, bringing together troupes from thirteen countries. While members of the Dartmouth Players supported the event, they didn’t perform; they were, however, an important part of a collaborative effort and a creative community. “People love working together and taking on challenging plays,” says the Walterdale’s Frank Glenfield, explaining the appeal and importance of community theatre. “We need art in our lives.”

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