cover / acting its age

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/10/2007 (6806 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Manitoba Theatre Centre launches its 50th season tonight with Thornton Wilder’s

Our Town. In keeping with the theme of community, our voices tell the story of our theatre

in their own words, spoken then and now.

1958 — The semi-professional Theatre 77 and the amateur Little Theatre merge to form the Manitoba Theatre Centre, Canada’s first regional theatre.

“You absolutely had the sense something big was happening,” said Babs Asper, whose name appears as part of the publicity department in the first MTC program for A Hatful of Rain. “I don’t know if the city thought they needed MTC; John Hirsch thought that they needed it. I think it was a perfect storm. John Hirsch was there and the amateur groups had been building towards this.”

October 20, 1958 — MTC’s first production, A Hatful of Rain, starring Gordon Pinsent, opens at the Dominion Theatre at the corner of Portage and Main.

“Gordie Pinsent was so good in A Hatful of Rain,” said MTC co-founder Tom Hendry. “People were regularly coming out of the auditorium throwing up, because he was so graphically suffering as a junkie kicking the habit. I told Gordie to tone it down or that I’m going to have to charge him for carpet cleaning.”

1960 — Winnipeg actor Len Cariou debuts at MTC in Mr. Roberts.

“John put me on salary at MTC and told me to come tomorrow and he’d put me to work,” said Cariou. “When I got there he told me I would answer the phone for the season ticket campaign. I thought I was going to be an actor.

“He told me I had to pitch in because it’s a community theatre. He said Kathleen Richardson had given us the theatre for $1 a year and that was her contribution. He said everybody has got to do something. My first job at MTC was selling subscriptions.”

January, 1963 — The legendary Toronto Star critic Nathan Cohen comes to town to take his first look at MTC and its presentation of Mrs. Warren’s Profession and left shaking his head.

“How is it possible in such a strangling and chilling atmosphere for an institution like the Manitoba Theatre Centre to appear, and sink roots. More importantly, what is it about the MTC that has made it succeed, when in more flourishing, and outwardly responsive cities, like Montreal and Toronto, efforts to create a professional local theatre have foundered or are unable to extend their original base and focus of appeal,” wrote Cohen in the conclusion of a long report.

February, 1963 — Winnipeg police make their first official visit to MTC to watch Pal Joey and a 22-year-old red-headed dancer whose costume amounted to three strategically placed roses, a G-string and black mesh stockings.

“I designed the costume myself and I don’t think there’s anything scandalous about it,” said Marilyn Stuart. “It would be fun if they took us all to jail but I wouldn’t want to go alone.”

1964 — John Hirsch directs Bertolt Brecht’s antiwar drama Mother Courage, a towering production that brought critics from as far away as New York and placed MTC in the theatrical spotlight in this country.

“(Actress) Zoe Caldwell gives us a Mother Courage to remember and cherish,”‘ wrote Free Press drama critic Christopher Dafoe.

“In achieving the scale of this remarkable stage work, it establishes the scale of the Manitoba Theatre Centre,” wrote the Globe & Mail.

1966 — Hirsch resigns and is succeeded by his associate director Eddie Gilbert.

“I took this sabbatical for two reasons. One is to establish myself as an international director,” said Hirsch. “The second is to get Winnipeg theatre used to the idea that it can exist without me.”

Late ’60s — “Opening night then was a real celebration,” recalls Prairie Theatre Exchange general manager Cherry Karpyshin, who worked at MTC from 1965 to ’70. “All the staff got dolled up in long gowns. All the women would be allowed to go home early to get our hair done. It was very glamorous.”

1968 — Dominion Theatre is levelled to make way for the Richardson Building and MTC relocates to the Centennial Concert Hall to await the construction of a new home on Market Avenue.

“This will be the best theatre in Canada for a resident professional company and there are very few in North America that compare,” said Gilbert.

1969 — Eddie Gilbert resigns over a dispute with the MTC board about the secrecy around negotiations with the Manitoba Centennial Corporation about a new theatre. Kurt Reis succeeds him.

“I’ve inherited the most successful theatre in Canada,” said Reis, 34.

1970 — Reis resigns after a stormy one-year term, charging that the board was interfering with his choice of plays and actors. Keith Turnbull, the 23-year-old who had been director of MTC’s second stage, Theatre-Across-the-Street, takes over.

“I’m resigning because I was never really given a chance to do my job and there is too much censorship of my freedom to allow me to go on,” said Reis. “My stay is the shortest in the history of MTC.”

1970 — Brecht’s A Man’s a Man, opens MTC’s new $2.8-million, 785-seat concrete and glass home designed by Allan Waisman.

“The kindest thing I heard was that it looked like a prehistoric comfort station,” said a local lawyer.

1971 — Actors union concerned about MTC’s importing of American performers.

“In February, when Hobson’s Choice was running and War and Peace was in rehearsal, the Manitoba Theatre centre was employing almost 50 per cent of the American actors working in Canada,” said Winnipeg actress Evelyne Anderson, who added 21 of the 44 American actors working in Canada at the time were employed by MTC.

1972 — Turnbull is dismissed by the board, who re-hire Gilbert.

“My contract wasn’t renewed,”‘ said Turnbull. “I was replaced.”

1974 — Hirsch returns with his original adaptation of the famed Yiddish drama The Dybbuk, which becomes an international hit, touring Canada and the United States.

“Mr. Hirsch has created out of Mr. Sholem Ansky’s play a beautifully woven fabric of emotion, mysticism and tradition,” wrote Free Press critic Peter Crossley.

1975 — Budding Broadway star Len Cariou agrees to come home and succeed Gilbert as artistic director.

“I was surprised but I thought it made some sense to me, because I was in the middle of a blooming Broadway career,” recalls Cariou. “I was pretty high profile then.”

1976 — Cariou leaves to be in a movie and Arif Hasnain is the board’s quick fix as new artistic director.

“I find it very stimulating to be part of a theatre which is so warmly appreciated in this city,” Hasnain said.

1980 — Hasnain takes flak for ignoring local actors, bringing in unknown American performers such as Kathleen Turner and Tom Hulce in The Seagull, and is let go in favour of the flamboyant, ever-quotable Richard Ouzounian.

“Richard was the boy wonder, the rising star of Canadian theatre,” says Zaz Bajon, who arrived at MTC as general manager a few months after Ouzounian. “He is one of the smartest people I have ever met. He put us back on the national scene. It was an exciting time to be here.”

1982 — Ouzounian re-sets The Taming of the Shrew (1982) to contemporary Winnipeg in a Tuxedo backyard swimming pool, around which actors play their parts as local celebrities, such as Nancy Drake portraying Manitoba Lieutenant Governor Pearl McGonigal.

“I played her as much as I could,” said Drake. “I had a wig done by her hairdresser. I had her blue ultrasuede suit. I studied her voice.

“The show was just a hoot and everybody had so much fun. I think everybody missed the play. I don’t think they understood the Shakespeare part at all.

“I remember all the actresses who went in the pool got a rash. They had all these red spots all over their bodies because there wasn’t enough chlorine in the pool.”

1982 — Actress Maggie Askey breaks her hip at home the night after opening in The Important of Being Earnest and Ouzounian becomes her substitute.

“So I went on as Lady Bracknall in a costume they put together for me,” says Ouzounian. “Thank god we were in Winnipeg, where it wasn’t unheard of to find size 12 women’s shoes.”

1984 — The restless Ouzounian gets a better offer and leaves for Toronto; MTC hires the more reserved James Roy from the Belfry Theatre in Victoria.

“I left when an even bigger theatre in an even bigger city called,” said Ouzounian. “I was a very ambitious man in my mid-30s.”

1986 — The MTC board opts not to renew Roy’s contract and his tenure ends with bad blood and a wrongful dismissal suit. Calgary’s Rick McNair is brought in as artistic director.

“The board felt he was doing too many Canadian plays and might lead MTC to an all-Canadian season,” said Bajon.

1988 — MTC establishes the Winnipeg Fringe Festival.

“Rick McNair was very grassroots and community-oriented so it is not a surprise he founded the fringe festival,” says Larry Desrochers, the festival’s first executive producer.

1989 — A $431,000 deficit costs McNair his job and his associate director Steven Schipper from Montreal replaces him.

“I know when the board needed to know, John Hirsch recommended I be appointed MTC artistic director,” said Schipper. “I feel in some ways he has passed the torch to me.”

1995 — Movie star Keanu Reeves as Hamlet breaks all MTC attendance records by selling out every performance.

“He told me, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been this scared in all of my life,'” actor Richard Hurst said Reeves told him prior to the curtain rising on the opening night of Hamlet.

2001 — MTC launches master playwrights festival, beginning with BeckettFest.

“It was a craving I felt,” says Bertram Schneider, who conceived the festival. “There is this canon of works by 20th-century avant-garde playwrights like Beckett, Brecht, Pinter, Albee, who don’t get produced a lot. There’s a whole generation who didn’t see Godot the first time around.”

2007 — MTC opens 50th season with Our Town.

“It celebrates community,” said Schipper. “We wanted a great vehicle for Len Cariou and many of Manitoba’s finest artists.”

BIG FIVE

Mother Courage (1964): Legendary presentation of the Bertolt Brecht drama starring Australian-born Zoe Caldwell, the four-time Tony Award winner who created an indelible image dragging her cart across the Dominion Theatre stage. It was seen as the pinnacle production of artistic director John Hirsch’s reign at MTC.

“I remember being blown away by the strength of that production,” said Roland Mahe, artistic director of Cercle Molière. “There are moments from it that stayed in my mind to this day.”

“To this day I can picture that production,” says Babs Asper, who has attended an MTC production in every one of its 50 seasons.

The Dybbuk (1974): A decade after the triumph that was Mother Courage, Hirsch returned with this Yiddish folk tale. It was vintage Hirsch and the reception here was so laudatory that the production headed out on a 14-week tour that included stops in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Los Angeles and Washington D.C.

“It was a beautiful piece of theatre,” recalls Zaz Bajon, whose Toronto theatre hosted The Dybbuk. “Visually, it was stunning and because John did the translation it was very cerebral.”

Cyrano de Bergerac (1975): Native son and Broadway star Len Cariou returned home as MTC artistic director and re-introduced himself in the title role as the legendary long-nosed lover.

“Len Cariou’s Cyrano broke my heart,” says actress Miriam Bernstein. “I was weeping at the end of it when he died. There were moments where you just wanted to get up and shout.”

Not Wanted on the Voyage (1992): The most ballyhooed Canadian production of the 1991-92 season was the premiere of Timothy Findley’s fiery feminist spin on the biblical story of Noah and the Ark. The religious subject had lots of people on edge, including the police department’s vice squad, who was responding to accusations of blasphemy.

“It was one of the most shocking nights at MTC,” said Gail Asper, a major MTC patron. “It was a very hard-hitting and completely different take on these characters from the bible. It was incredibly original and daring to do.”

Hamlet (1995): No show ever created as big a stir as the suddenly famous movie star Keanu Reeves when he came to MTC to play the melancholy Dane in Hamlet. Keanu-maniacs from as far as Australia, China, Japan, Sweden and Germany shelled out $170 for season subscriptions to ensure they could hear him utter ‘To be or not to be.’ The heartthrob received 240 floral displays during his stay.

“It’s the one that people will remember for a long time as MTC’s excellent adventure,” said Steven Schipper. “What I’ll never forget is that when Keanu was offered millions to be in a another movie, he kept his word to perform at MTC.”