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The Brussels Post, 1978-08-16, Page 6Actor is in Canada because there's more work -,here by Alice Gibb In Canada, about 60 per cent of the members of Canadian Actors. Equity Union are under contract, or to put it more. bluntly, are working for at least part of the year. In Britain, the average employment ratio for members of the British actors' union is about nine per cent. Sheer economics was one reason Tereance Durrant, who plays Tiger Dunlop in the Blyth Festival's production of The Huron Tiger moved to Canada from his native EnOand. But even making the move to greener pastures here, hasn't exactly made the actor a wealthy man. Durrant said, "The only actors maki ng anything like decent money are those people working consistently in TV or radio commercials." Durrant considers an annual salary of $20,000 very good for an actor in Canada and said most are making $10,000 a year or 'less. Freedom But money wasn't the major consider- ation in Durrant's decision to pursue acting as acareer. - "I like being an actor--I not only likingle work but also the freedom it gives me," he said. Durrant and other members of the Blyth company are spending the summer in a beautiful old brick farmhouse on first concession north of town, where they're sampling some of the joys of country living. Before coming to Blyth at the request of artistic director JameS Roy, Durrant had spent part of last year on the west coast. While some might find the instability of an actor's life disconcerting, Durrant said, "I enjoy the mobility and social intercourse and the mental stimulation." One problem Durrant has found in making the move to Canada is that many Canadian directors won't hire him since they're concerned about his .English accent. Terence Durrant This has proved paticularly true in the Canadian movie industry, where British actors tend to be hired only if they're already established stars. But Durrant has already had a taste of the Canadian movie industry when he appeared in Leopard In The Snow, an Anglo;Canadian production starring Keir Dullea, and Alien Encounters, with Christopher Lee and Robert Vaughan. First Movie Although working in the first movie, made in Collingwood and northern England,' was a pleasant experience, • Durrant doesn't mince words about Alien Encounters, a science fiction picture eventually released under another name. Encounter was a 'movie "with a bad script, badly 'handled by a bad director" and "made by a group of amateurs." Durrant's work in Canadian theatres has tended to be more in regional theatres across the c-Juntry rather than on the Toronto stage, although Tor a time he ran his own Toronto Repertoire Theatre in the city. • When James Roy invited Durrant to tackle the role of the fiery Scot' Tiger Dunlop, the first thing the actor did was to bone up on the period of Canadian history covered in the play. Durrant started his research by reading a general history on the growth of Upper Canada and then turned to The Tiger of Upper Canada by Graham, the book which formed the basis for playwright Peter Colley's research on. Dunlop. From the biography of Dunlop, the actor progressed to a collection of the fiery Scotsman's own writings and letters, including a collection Dunlop wrote while serving as a medical officer in the War of 1812. Useful Durrant found his research useful, since the play was still being re-written during. rehearsals and the actor wasable 'to provide Colley with a number of Dunlop quoteS he didn't have. Although Durrant had to master a Scottish accent for his part, he said he tried to find a balance between an accent that would be' accurate for the character and one which would be intelligible for the audience. The opening night of The Huron Tiger isn't one which the actor is likely to forget. With warm temperatures, the lack of air conditioning in the theatre'and swathed in yards of Scotch plaid, Durrarit said he was "soaked" by the end of his performance. The Huron Tiger, the festival's opening production, has won consistently good reviews from the critics. The second role Durrant is tackling this summer is in the play Gwendoline, a drama about an eccentric woman who lives in a small Ontario town in 1907. In Gwendoline, Durrant has a chance to play a Canadian- character - the middle- aged, stout Pork Easton, a lonely man .who runs the town's dry goods store. Durrant said, "James (Roy) has trusted me enough as an actor to say you can do a Canadian accent." Deserted In the play, Pork, deserted by his wife years before, is the only character in the town of Kingsforks who supports Gwendoline in her right to a life of her own. Durrant said the play, which deals with serious human passions and contains some explicit language, may cause some adverse reactions from audience members who expect a play full of laughs. But the actor has been pleased with the reaction to Tf li huron Tiger and said. Blyth patrons make up "one of the nicest audiences I have ever encountered." The actor said while they may not be as • sophisticated in the sense of a theatre audience and tend to take things on a more open level, "they're just as critical as anyone else." In. Toronto, where audiences are more sophisticated, Durrant said- they tend to challenge actors with "okay, come and entertain me!" Although Durrant feels some of Canada's best theatre is being produced by smaller companies like Theatre Passe Muraille and the Tarragon Theatre, he admits he would like to work at Stratford eventually partly because it's the only Canadian theatre doing a consistently classic repertoire. The actor said he hasn't worked in a Shakespearean play since coming to Canada and he feels classical plays have an important role in our culture. Unfortunately, most regional theatres just don't have the budget to hire and costume the large cast required in classical productions. When Durrant first came to Canada for a visit in 1967, .he said Toronto was still full of men in two-pieCe suits and ties, and there was little theatre but the O'Keefe Centre--"an artistic wilderness. Today, theatre is much healthier—a fact indicated by the number of new theatres which have started in western Ontario alone and Terence Durrant is one actor who welcomes the growth of homegrown theatre. THE liFIUSSEL.S OOST, AUGUST 16, 1978 Sugar and Spice by Bill Smiley Read Canadian A few years ago, I picked up a 'paperback novel entitled, I think, The Last of the Crazy People, written by one Timothy Findley. As usual, I turned to the back cover to find out something about the author. There was nothing, and I, a voracious reader and a teacher of literature, had never heard of him. I began reading the !level, and soon thought, "Oh boy, this is an excellent writer. Who the heck is he?" And that was the end of my curiosity. This year, I read 'in the paper that one Timothy Findley had won the Governor- General's Award for a novel called. The Wars. That suggested he must be a Canadian writer. Never heard of hint, but remembered the name and the other novel I'd thought so good. Since, I've read the Wars. It is powerful, sensitive, beautifully structured. Probably the best novel that has won the G-G's A. Some of-the other winners were sleate, Recently, Findley wrote a'newspaper article in which he pointed out the appalling ' lack of ability, arndng Canadian critics I don't blame him: was right on. With a few exceptions. I find our critics tO be narrow-minded, nit-picking ' people who approaCh anything new with pre-conceived' prejudices only exceeded by their desire to reveal how clever and witty they themselves Mr! But the point that interested me most in his articlelvas its concluding.one. He stated, unequivocally, that we are in the midst of Canada's golden age of writing, and suggested it was a pity that no one would say this until fifty or a hundred years front now. Well, he's wrong. This one small voice in the desert of Canadian critics agrees with him about 94 per cent. Not quite golden, there's some dross among the glitter. But absolutely high-grade ore, with the occasional diamond popping- up, and a lot of silver threads among the gold. Fair enough? what is a golden age? In writing, it's a time when a rich vein of talent is discovered, and mined, and turned into vessels and shapes and pieces that will delight and enhance life for many years. England had one in the late • 16th century, when Marlowe and Ben Johnson and Will Shakespeare served as lucid, brilliant witnesses to the vagaries( foibles, and magnificence of the human species, Russia had one in the 19th century, with Tolstoi, Chekhov, DoStoieVsky and a dozen others. America had its golden years in this century, with Willa Cattier; Steinbeck, DreiSer, HethingWay, Sandburg, Frost and a host of Smaller fish cruising' along in their wake. A golden, age in writing is not something planned. It cannot even be foreseen. It can only be backseen. It's a seemingly spontaneous outburst of literary fireworks, for which there seems no provocation. O.K. End of thesis. But, as I so seldom do anything useful in this column except expose the darker side of our national psyche — crazy wives, rotten kids, bewildered politicians -- perhaps today I can render a service. A little digression. I teach a Grade 13 course in contemporary literature First term, all Canadian; second term, all American; third term, all British. At the end of this year, I hld the kids write an assessment of the course; no names, no pack drill. About 80 per cent of them said the Canadian section was the! best, that they'd become acquainted for the first time with great Canadian writing, and that it should be extended for the full year. This was after rnieeting perhaps 20 Canadian writes in print. What does that tell you? First, our children don't know ur own WritersSecond, their parents don't have any. Canadian books in the hOuSe. Third, Canadian publishers are lousy prOmoterS. End of digression: It's sdnintertime, tittle for reading. Tithe for my public service bit: ity6ii Can 'take your eyes for arnOrtient off the golden shoulders of all those golden girls, check this list, when next you decide to pick up a paperback novel. If the store doesn't have it, demand why, hotly. If you like Western, read anything by: Jack Hodgins, Paul St.' Pierre, W.O. Mitchell, Robert Kroetsch, Rudy Wiebe, Margaret Laurence. Every one is a genuine artist, and I've missed others. If your taste is with the effete East (Ont. and Que.) read anything by Morley Callaghan, Hugh Maclenan, Alice Munroe, Margaret Atwood. And three dozen others, including Marian Engel (Bear). Not to mention, all front Quebec, 1Vloredechai Richter, Marie-Claire Blais and loch Carrier. And forty-four other like Yves Therriault. Way down east, Ernest Buckler, Alden. Nowlan, Ray Guy, and 14 more. The book will cost you a little more than that porno U.S novel with the cover of a girl being raped and whipped while she's stuffing pills down her lovely throat. That's because our publishers have a small market, because people like you don't buy their books, and have to charge more. But you'll be doing our writers, our country, and• mote iniportantly, yourself, a service that Will Make the Canadian Golden Age of Writing a fact, not a footnote in the Mint,