The Citizen-Blyth Festival, 1999-06-23, Page 33PAGE 14. BLYTH FESTIVAL SALUTE, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 23, 1999.
Ted Johns takes another look at education
Johns interviewed 18-20 people
at all levels of the education
system, read 20-odd books and
sampled newspapers and magazine
articles — though he says the press
seems to be “the weak slat under
the bed of democracy”.
There seem to be three theories
of the current government’s
education policy, he says. One
theory is that it’s a satanic plot to
dismantle public education by a
government that likes anything
with the word “public” in front of
it because nothing done by the
government can be as efficient as
something done by private
business.
There’s a second theory that the
government really has no idea
what it’s doing in education except
to cut the cost and has made up
policy as it goes along — that
decisions that would affect the rest
of people’s lives are being made in
the back of limousines.
The third idea says the theories
behind all of the reforms have been
floating around for years, even
during the days of the David
Peterson and Bob Rae
governments and it would have
been easy enough to implement
them if the government hadn’t
been “totally, ham-fisted about
doing it”.
Having done the research, Johns
had to turn it into a play. Two of
his favourite characters from The
School Show, Miss Heartwright
and Old Nip will be back along
with a cast of new characters. Old
Designer Flood and Johns
have teamed-up often
Nip, who harangues his silent,
papier mache buddy, was the “eyes
and ears of the world” in the
original play. In the new version he
is the kind of misfit today’s world
deplores. “In the great race of life,
Nip started out going in the wrong
direction,” Johns says.
That’s the kind of humour Johns
weaves into his look at serious
subjects in plays like the Great
School Crisis of '99. Don’t expect
any definitive answers to where all
the changes in education will lead.
“We’re still discovering what all
this means,” Johns says. There
could be a “Great School Crisis” of
2000, and 2001 and 2002, he says.
That may be a distressing idea for
those involved in the education
system but seeing sequels to the
current play would delight many
Ted Johns fans.
Back again
Ted Johns has delighted Festival audiences with his humour
and sharp observations since the original School Show in
1978. This year he takes another look at education in the
nineties.
ByKeith Roulston
Citizen staff
Twenty-one years have gone by
since Ted Johns created and
performed the character of Miss
Heartwright in his one-person
show The School Show, and when
the crusty former teacher takes to
the stage again in July, she, and
everyone else, will discover much
has changed in the education
system.
Miss Heartwright will return in
The Great School Crisis of '99, the
popular performer/playwright’s
look at (he education system today
following the disruptions of the
last few years.
The biggest difference over the
two decades, Johns says, is the
politicization of the education
system. The 1978 teacher strike in
Huron County, which was the
basis of The School Show, was a
small, local, personalized event, he
says. Everybody knew one another
and had strong opinions one way
or another. Today the issues are
bigger involving the entire
province.
In researching School Crisis, he
found it “astoundingly difficult to
pry facts out of anybody”. He was
trying to find out if funding
changes really had evened the
resources of rural school boards
with city boards but discovering
how much the local school board
spends per student proved
impossible. One board employee
and two auditors, he said, told him
’99 season should
create memories
Continued from Pg. 11
The kind of excited buzz that
makes people want to stay and stay
at the post-show opening night
reception, was evident with Quiet
in the Land, Anne Chislett’s story
of conflict in an Amish family
brought on by the stresses of
World War I. The audience was
right in guessing they’d seen
something very special. Quiet in
the Land went on to win the
Governor General’s Award for
drama and be performed in most
major theatres in Canada as well as
in New York.
it was much more difficult than
just adding up expenditures and
dividing it by the number of
students enrolled in the system.
The funding system for schools
has been changed in such a way
that ordinary people can’t
understand it, he says. Since Huron
County used to have the lowest
per-pupil spending in the province,
it should have been most blessed
by the new funding formula but
three sources, Johns says,
unofficially told him the county is
getting less than before.
“What’s wrong with this
picture?” he asks.
Johns, who grew up near
Seaforth, laments the fact school
board amalgamation has led to less
representation.
“There was a time when trustees
actually were from your area and
at the commencement exercise
they would actually come and
congratulate the students and be
proud of the accomplishments of
that community.
“And now we have a huge area
where trustees are closing down
schools which they have never
been inside of. That strikes me as
not wise.”
ByKeith Roulston
Citizen staff
Just as Ted Johns is taking a
fresh look at education after first
tackling the subject in his first play,
The School Show in 1978, designer
Pat Flood is also revisiting old
territory.
It was Flood who designed that
show 21 years ago and she has
again been picked by Johns to
design The Great School Crisis of
'99.
In fact working with Johns at
Bly th is one of the few attractions
that lures Flood back to theatre
now that she spends most of her
time designing for television and
movies. This is the first stage
production she has designed since
Ma Belle Mabel in 1997, in which
Johns starred as Alexander Graham
Bell.
After years of designing for all
the major theatres from Halifax to
Calgary, Flood turned in a new
direction in 1986 when she began
teaching theatre design at
Concordia University in Montreal,
a position she held until 1992. Next
she worked for CBC television
(shows such as Side Effects and
Kids in the Had) and now serves as
a freelance art director for movies.
Television and movies are more
realistic than theatre. There’s a lot
more money available for a movie
art director than for a theatre
designer, she says. “You get to do
some big things.”
In one movie she got to construct
the entire front of a New York-
style brownstone house. For Kids
in the Hall she designed a giant
sausage machine.
But theatre offers more
opportunity to be poetic, she says.
When Johns asked her to design
The Great School Crisis of '99, she
Continued on Pg. 15.
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