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The Citizen, 2019-08-15, Page 5Other Views Reverence Lost: The Blyth Festival story Why seek a past that never was?Shawn Loughlin Shawn’s Sense As I attended the opening night of The Team on the Hill at The Blyth Festival, I was reminded that the reverence I feel for the Memorial Hall stage, and the play’s cast and crew isn’t always held by those around me. Just a warning: this could be a full-fledged, old-man, get-off-my-lawn kind of column. I grew up taking in plays in Blyth and, like many other Huron County institutes, my parents instilled in me a respect for the proceedings of the Festival. If you’ve ever been to a season-opening show at the Blyth Festival, you’ll know what I’m talking about: people dress to the nines, for the most part, and watch attentively and respect the other audience members. More importantly they respect the actors on stage. Unfortunately, not every play is a season- opener and the Aug. 2 opening of The Team on the Hill and the Aug. 9 opening of In The Wake of Wettlaufer were two mid-season premieres. The Team on the Hill hit all the hallmarks of a Blyth Festival play: it was funny, heartwarming and Layne Coleman was incomparable leading his cast. Go see it and hope you have a better-behaved audience than I did. In the Wake of Wettlaufer was a rare, but welcome look at a tough subject matter that offered an interesting view of a family dealing with an untenable situation. Again, go see it, and hope you’re not taken out of the story by inattentive audience members. Don’t think I’m painting everyone with the same brush: like me, many sat quietly and watched, laughing where appropriate and keeping quiet the rest of the time. There are always some people, however, who don’t pay the proper respects: the people on their cell phones after the lights have gone down, or who decide to open those cellophane-covered candies during the show; you know, all the things that the artistic director asks the audience not to do before the show. There are also the zipper-fiddlers and the water bottle crinklers. In The Wake of Wettlaufer elicited a lot of what I’m assuming was uncomfortable laughter: people not wanting to feel the emotions being presented, so they laughed, drowning out the lines from the actors. The worst transgressions, however, come in the form of the running commentary. Before I explain, let me offer the most heartfelt apology to my parents and all my teachers because, over two decades later, I see how annoying my running commentary was. Theatre relies on immersion: feeling like you’re a part of the story. In The Team on the Hill, for example, you can feel like you’re sitting on a family’s front porch, taking in a conversation between the characters. You can feel like you’re in a kitchen watching a father and son fight over the cost of soybeans. Good theatre makes you experience that right up until the wisenheimer behind you comments loudly on the soybean discussion, saying, “Well that’s pretty cheap.” Good theatre can have you feeling morose because a character has just passed. You feel, in that moment, that someone you’ve known personally is no longer there. That feeling can last days if unspoiled, or moments if the guy a few rows behind you asks his wife to explain what’s going on. A few years back when St. Anne’s Reel opened, the show started with Canadian theatre icon David Fox portraying his character’s trouble playing his violin. It was a quiet scene: just Fox, a chair and the instrument. It was a joy to watch, but so many people were so uncomfortable with the silence that they tapped their toes, shuffled their feet or talked to their seatmate, ruining the moment for those invested in it. Each one of these situations reminds me of a discussion I had with a family member when I was much, much younger. I asked why someone, an older gentleman, would wear a Sunday suit on a plane. It was explained to me that, once upon a time, flight was given the reverence it deserved. The fact that we earthbound mortals were shaking loose the bonds of gravity in a giant metal bird soaring across the sky was treated as the near- miraculous occasion it should be. Flying wasn’t just a means of transportation, it was an occasion to be marked and remembered. People dressed well and were on their best behaviour. That certainly can’t be said of many travellers I’ve met. I’ll admit that when my wife and I travelled to Scotland, I dressed more comfortably, but still respectfully. Seven hours is a long time to wear a suit in a confined space. Every other flight, however, I at least aimed for a professional look. I guess, just as we forget how amazing the advent of flight is, we are now forgetting how amazing an experience quality theatre performances can be, and are therefore not treating it with the reverence it’s due. With that lack of reverence comes the candy-openers, the cell-phone checkers, the wisenheimers and the unwelcome comments showing a total lack of respect for the cast, the crew and their fellow audience members. It’s a disservice to everyone taking in the play and one that society shouldn’t allow to continue. Denny Scott Denny’s Den THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, AUGUST 15, 2019. PAGE 5. Dinner is served After a week and a half touring around Newfoundland, Jess and I saw plenty, walked a lot and ate just about everything the island had to offer. We ate everything from your standard fish and chips to oysters to every part of a cod you can imagine – including the tongue (the fish’s actual tongue) and the nape (kind of like the cod’s equivalent of a chicken wing), both of which were absolutely delicious. As we dined in all types of restaurants, from dive bars famous for their fish and chips to fancy fine-dining restaurants (Raymonds in St. John’s has several times been named the best restaurant in Canada), I cherished the food we were able to eat, but I most enjoyed the chance to connect with my wife over a great meal. Over the trip we’d be flying, driving, hiking or kayaking (indeed, it’s true), but when we ate, we were able to slow down, take it all in and talk with one another. Unfortunately, not everyone we shared a dining room with took that same opportunity. Sure, you’d catch yourself gazing off at the scenery every now and then, but too many people just sat there silently or, more commonly, stared into the glowing box of a super computer we all carry. As we ate at some of the best restaurants in the country, the chefs, cooks, sommeliers and serving staff were all working their tails off to create a memorable experience, but we have to look inwards sometimes and ask if we’re doing our best to do the same. In an episode of Parts Unknown, the late Anthony Bourdain’s fantastic show that aims to travel to and celebrate the lesser-known corners of the world, he dined with David McMillan and Frédéric Morin in a small ice- fishing cabin in Quebec. Morin and McMillan are owners of Joe Beef, a celebrated restaurant in Montreal, and while they have dedicated their lives to curating a one-of-a-kind dining experience, on the ice in that fishing cabin, the three men discussed the importance of being a good dinner companion. McMillan said that before he goes to dinner with someone, he prepares in order to be the best dinner mate he can be. He told Bourdain that he takes great pride in being a good dinner companion and that meant coming prepared with stories to tell, questions to ask and turning his phone off – not simply on vibrate. At the time, Bourdain kind of chuckled off McMillan’s work to become a fantastic person with whom to share the dinner table, but the more I think about it, he’s on to something. With our phones in our pockets, it’s all too tempting to simply pull it out during a lull in conversation for a quick check into Instagram or Facebook or your e-mail account. Do that and your dinner companion will likely do the same (unless she calls you out for being rude, which you are) and you’re on a freight train destined for a silent dinner as both of you stare at your phones. Your phone isn’t going anywhere – nor are the numerous pictures of food and people on vacation you’re missing by not checking it every 30 seconds – but your dinner is and, one day, so is your dinner companion. It’s been said before, but face-to-face human interaction is on the wane and it’s unfortunate because there is really nothing like it. As you share a meal with someone or spend an evening together it’s important to experience it with your senses, rather than through a screen so you can show your friends. Take pictures, remember the concert, the hike, the vacation, but always experience it first through your own eyes. There is no substitute for being there with someone you love. With a federal election looming this fall, it’s hard to know where public sentiment might take us, but for now, Canada seems thankfully free of the trend to glorify a non-existent past. Our neighbours to the south have been divided by President Donald Trump’s campaign to “Make America Great Again”. Great Britain’s Brexit crisis also seems to be fueled by a sense that Britain has lost something it had before it decided to join the European Union in 1969. So far, Canadians have not become obsessed by nostalgia for a better past. In his book My Parents, Aleksander Hemon traces the lives of his parents who fled the former Yugoslavia when their country erupted in civil war. They landed in Hamilton in much- reduced circumstances. Hemon writes about the danger of glorifying the past. “A homeland cannot be constituted without nostalgia, without retroactively establishing a past utopia. Nationalist nostalgia is thus the source of insidious fantasies without which any Make X- land Great Again ideology is impossible, providing excuses for genocidal operations needed to restore imaginary purity.” Clear-eyed Americans or Brits might recognize that the past is not all that it’s cracked up to be, but a significant portion of the population of both countries recalls a more glorious past that usually included fewer immigrants. Canadian national myth-making, on the other hand, generally concludes that we are a country on the way up, like a young adult leaving our parents’ world behind and carving out a new life for ourselves. Evolved from a British colony, dominated for decades by American culture, we’re at a stage where we’re just beginning to find our feet. I’m at an age when nostalgia for the past often shapes a person’s thinking but though there are things I look back on fondly, in general life is better today than it’s ever been. Certainly, I wish the main streets of our towns could be the bustling community hubs they were a half-century ago and, perhaps, long for the day when there was a family on every 100- acre farm, but otherwise over my lifetime there has been a near-constant progression toward individual and national security and prosperity. Diseases that still plagued the population in my youth, like polio and tuberculosis, have virtually disappeared due to advances in medicine. If a family member contracted those or any other affliction in those days, the entire family’s financial future could be endangered by the medical bills that would result. Today our government medicare program will guarantee care without financial worries, although we still might have to pay for expensive drugs. I believe I was the first person on either side of my family to get a university degree, thanks in large part to a student loan program that was created just as I needed it. Otherwise, I’d probably not have considered going to university. Today it’s routine for graduating high school students to go to a college or university to further their education. One of the problems young people face today is that many can’t afford to buy a house, particularly people who live in cities. But even here, part of the issue is that the houses we’ve been building in recent decades are mansions compared to the houses build in the 1950s and early 1960s. Prosperity raised expectations about what we needed to make us happy. I think part of the reason that there’s little nostalgia in Canada for a rosy-hued version of the past is because Toronto is our cultural capital and the people shaping perceptions there are, if anything, a little embarrassed about their “Toronto the good” past. The media and cultural leaders in Toronto seldom dwell on the time, say, before the city started to boom and blossom in the 1960s. The old WASP (white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant) era of Toronto is something to be lamented, not celebrated. The influx of immigrants who brought food and traditions from their far-flung lands to make modern Toronto one of the world’s most diverse cities is something to be rejoiced, not regretted. This diversity can bring tensions. Sometimes older immigrants want to recreate their homeland in a new and prosperous place and resent the younger generation wanting to blend in with the rest of the population. Sometimes some youth feel alienated and violent youth gangs have become a problem. Perhaps these troubles have contributed to concerns expressed by some people that Canada is accepting too many immigrants, too fast. The polls that testify to those concerns are tempting for politicians looking for an issue on which to rally support. In general, though, Canadians realize that the present and future are when Canada is most likely to be great, not the past. We have little to gain by returning to a past that wasn’t that great. Keith Roulston From the cluttered desk