ACADEMIC WRITING: George F Walker - writing in Canadian Perspective

"A BLAZING, AMBIGUOUS REPRESENTATIVE FOR CANADA:
AN ANALYSIS OF GEORGE F. WALKER’S WRITING STYLE AND INVALUABLE CONTRIBUTION TO ALTERNATIVE CANADIAN THEATRE"
by Blair Kay, 2008
photo courtesy of CBC

(Abstract)

In 1971, he was a taxi cab driver in Toronto. He had never studied theatre, nor had he been involved in a professional theatre production. One day he happened to stumble across a sign from Factory Theatre Lab, advertising for new play submissions. So, he did. George F. Walker submitted his first written play, The Prince of Naples, which got his foot firmly into Factory’s door. Now thirty-seven years later, Walker is considered one of Canada’s most prominent playwrights of alternative theatre. With his own canon of just under thirty plays written in the last three and a half decades, all of which were nurtured out of Factory Theatre (Lab) in Toronto, as well as several that have been produced across the country, not to mention in the United States and Europe, Walker has contributed a great deal to Canadian theatre and to representing Canada on the world stage. Walker is unique as both a writer and director, and through an exploration of his creative process, this paper hopes to present the ways in which his contributions to Canadian theatre have shaped the Canadian theatrical collective, as well as literary and performance discourses.

Walker’s writing style and subject matter have evolved over his twenty-six year playwriting career. His first two plays, The Prince of Naples and Ambush at Tether’s End, have been described as ”absurdist”, and criticized for simply mirroring the themes and structures of Ionesco and Beckett, rather than bringing anything new or unique to the Canadian stage (Haff 75). However, Walker’s fifth play, Beyond Mozambique, illustrates his “progression towards themes of more widespread interest”, and is the first hint at his defined style (Johnston 38). Walker’s first few plays were merely his starting point; after a two-year hiatus from theatre in 1974-76, Walker returned with Ramona and the White Slaves, which marked his directorial debut, and the first of many plays that highlight his adaptive, inclusive style, which was more accessible to general audiences and mainstream theatres (39).

Written in 1974, at a time when people around the country were searching for the Canadian national identity, Beyond Mozambique includes themes and characters whose actions ultimately question ideas of Canadian post-coloniality and iconography. For example, the comic relief in the play is provided by the character Corporal Lance, a disgraced RCMP officer. Walker takes the reputed Candian icons - the institution that is the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Force, and its icon, the mountie - and subtly mocks them, although by means a very human character. Chris Johnson asserts in his article, “George F Walker: B-Movies and Beyond the Absurd”, the comic mountie “is a good example of Walker’s growing ability to manipulate audience expectation” (16). Beyond Mozambique’s mountie cannot understand “what is happening in the sophisticated world” of the play and is plagued by the petty fact that he has nothing formal to wear but his “scarlets” (16). Johnson attests that this “quintessentially Canadian joke . . . makes possible the uniquely Canadian pleasure of being self-deprecatory and self congratulatory simultaneously” (16). By satirizing the Canadian icon (the mountie), Walker both critiques and celebrates Canadian notions of pride, begging the predominantly middle class audience to question these notions.

Not only does Walker add a play hybrid with celebration-scepticism to the Canadian theatrical canon (a play which can be seen as representative of our ambiguous political and national identity), but his works contribute to an academic discourse on Canadian post-colonialism. A significant amount of critical and academic analysis has been written on Walker and his plays. An entire volume of the critical and scholarly collection, Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English has been published on George F. Walker; the fact that such a collection exists highlights the playwright-director’s impact on the practical and academic world of theatre.

. . .

In the Canadian post-colonial perspective, Walker’s contributions to building Canadian drama are important. His works present and help recognize a Canadian national identity: his plays incorporate the universal, are adaptable and ambiguous, and feature passionate yet subdued characters, who are able to stand up (or scream) for what the believe in, although not causing too much of a fuss outside of their locale (perhaps a motel). The plays are not specifically political, as they avoid attacking specific institutions, but represent the disenfranchised population of Canadians. Yet his themes and characters are universal, and postmodern: the plays can be read as “deconstructing [the] notion of bourgeois morality, through social injustice”, and can be applied cross-culturally (Maufort “A Passage to Belgium” 20). By critiquing forms and themes of the middle class, in a way that is accessible to that class, Walker is the subversive alternative Canadian writer, yet still marketable to the larger ‘legitimate’ Toronto theatres, and abroad. Presenting these ideas on stage begs the audience to question their (possibly privileged) positions in society; and although Walker may not want social change, he at least suggests talking about it. Whether studying or writing criticism on, reading or watching his plays, those passionate about preserving and building Canadian theatre should take a cue from Walker’s down-to-earth insight on the creative process: “the essential truth of theatre is trust and collaboration” (Wallace “Looking” 53).

WORKS CITED

Corbeil, Carole. “A Conversation with George Walker”. Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English. Vol 5. Ed. Harry Lane. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2006. 114-126.

Haff, Stephen. “Slashing the Pleasantly Vague: George F. Walker and the Word”. Ibid. 75-84.

Johnson, Chris. “George F. Walker: B-Movies Beyond the Absurd”. Ibid. 8-23.

Johnston, Denis W. “George F. Walker: Liberal Idealism and the ‘Power Plays’”. Ibid. 37-50.

Maufort, Marc. “A Passage to Belgium: George F. Walker’s ‘Problem Child’ in Brussels’. Canadian Theatre Review. 105. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. 20-23.

___________. “‘Some Kind of Transition Place Between Heaven and Hell’: George Walker’s Aesthetics of Hybridity in Heaven”. Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English. Vol 5. Ed. Harry Lane. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2006. 177-186.

Parisien, Aurèle. “Taking a Walker on the French Side”. Canadian Theatre Review. 105. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. 28- 32.

Wallace, Robert. “From ‘George F Walker’ in The Work: Conversations with English-Canadian Playwrights”. Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English. Vol 5. Ed. Harry Lane. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2006. 24-32.

___________. “Looking for the Light: A Conversation with George F. Walker”. Ibid. 51-60.

(For THST*3850, Canadian Drama and Theatre, for Patricia Flood, December 2008)