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Village Squire, 1976-01, Page 33Commercialsim shouldn't be such a dirty word in the arts The whole artistic community is quaking these days, awaiting the hard facts of just what government cutbacks will mean. Our whole ,artistic community you see is on welfare. Somewhere in my files, I have a clipping from a paper about an arts magazine that has, or had, suspended publication because the government just didn't hand out enough money to keep it going. There were great crys from.many people involved in the arts at the clersing of the magazine. Somewhere I also have a clipping on the opening of a recent review show in Toronto in which it stated that Tom Kneebone, probably Canada's top review specialist and a regular performer at the Stratford Festival had never received a nickel in aid from any of the government arts funding agencies in Canada. Yet he went on producing review after review and though he may not be rich, he doesn't seem to have starved yet. In my own view, I'd like to see a few more Tom Kneebones and a few less people like the publisher of the magazine in question. Recently an article in one of the national magazines pulled to pieces ,the play Same Time Next Year by Bernard Slade. The article pointed out that just because the play was a big commercial success didn't make it a good play. In Canada it seems things are just the opposite. Just because it is a commercial success seems automatically to make it a bad play. We seem to have this reverse psychology working in the arts community. While we've groaned about how commercial the arts industry is in the U.S. with only the, money -making plays, movies and television shows being considered good, we seem to have built up a tradition that you have to` bomb out to be any good. Thus the extreme ' concern over government grants. Take away government grants and there's hardly an arts organization in Canada that could last for 32, VILLAGE SQUIRE/JANUARY 1976 more than a week. This is not tirade against government funding of the arts. I happen to sit on the board of an artistic group that would never have gotten off the ground without grants. Some forms of the arts will always require financial aid: But surely not all forams of art in Canada should be forever dependent on the tax dollar. Surely some organizations should be getting to the point where they can support themselves. The fact of life in the arts in Canada is that while in the U.S. they seem to appeal to the lowest common denominator, we aim only at a small portion of the population. While we expect the whole population to support the C.B.C, and our ballet and our symphonies and our theatre, only a small proportion of the population likes what they get for their money. Now why can't we devote part our artistic energies to the ordinary guy in the street? If he thinks Mary Tyler Moore is great art why can't we give him a little Canadian Mary Tyler• More. We're snobbishly trying to upgrade his mind so much that we turn him off altogether. Not only would we be showing him that Canadians can produce the kind of thing he likes, but we'd also be producing a kind of art that pays for itself, that doesn't need government funding because there's a broad enough base to support it (although given the artistic climate in Canada we'd' probably prove that even MTM could lose money). I'm not saying that we should turn our television over to entirely MTM -like programs, that we should give up on "uplifting" programing, but surely there should be room for commercial successes too. Neither should theatre be abandoned to the Bernie Slades and Neil Simons, but many many people would go to a theatre to see a Bernie Slade play that would never go to see Shakespeare so why not have at least some more of this kind of Canadian theatre? It would probably pay for itself or at least come closer to paying for itself than many of our present theatre productions. The other thing that burns me up about many people in the arts is that they insist on going first class despite the lack of money available. That's why I have a great admiration for people like Paul Thompson of Theatre Passe Muraille who with little money for sets of costumes present exciting theatre which also attracts a much wider audience than more traditional theatre, at least on its tours of rural areas. But then we have people like the publisher of the magazine in question who want to work on Time magazine's budget even though the money just isn't there. There are many things the staff of this magazine would like to do with this magazine for instance like running colour, using expensit,e paper or hiring more writers but we have to live with economic realities. A little more of that reality could be used in the arts world It seems that for better or for worse, that reality is going to be forced by government cutbacks. Let's.hppe, though, that the cutbacks are in the right places STOP FOR • A complete line of lumber \\I •Building supplies • Hardware Estimates on all types of buildings with no obligation. HAYS LUMBER Listowel and Pro Hardware P h . 291-2610