A

Manifesto for
Manifestos

by Natalie Alvarez
and Jenn Stephenson

Canadian Theatre Review, Volume 150, Summer 2012, pp. 3-7 (Article)

We had stayed up all night, under the cracking plaster ceilings of our not-so-ivory
tower offices, under the blue glow of our screens, screens shining with the spirits of
men and women of the theatre in this our cold, rocky land. Unspoken words in
embryo flared like a million stars, whispering their encouragement, their
chastisement, their urging, their hope. The cris du coeur from the stage, from the
house, from the dressing room and from the front office, from the lobby and from
the street, reached our ears, at first a whisper but then louder and LOUDER. We
could let them be ignored no longer.

On this occasion of the 150th issue of CTR, we, the representatives of this
opinionated constituency, have seized the opportunity to propel ourselves to the
fore. As the editors of the Views and Reviews section, we refuse to be relegated to
the back pages of this illustrious publication. We have thrown off our bonds. We
have escaped our traditional confines after page 80, and have moved swiftly to
occupy the prime real estate in the first eighty pages. Occupy CTR.

Our coup has been successful! CTR 150 is constituted entirely of VIEWS!
On the occasion of this anniversary issue, as we cast our gazes fearlessly forward
into the future of Canadian theatre, we anchor our declarations in the rich ground
of our progenitors and pay tribute to the past. 1974 marked the year of CTRs
conception by our founders who provided a hearth for the rebellious spirits of the
theatre in their relentless pursuit of freedom from old forms and independence from
the shackles of the colonial Father. It was in the pages of its first issues that an
unapologetically nationalist vision of Canadian theatre came to life in the form of
quiet susurrations and defiant shouts.

The truculent ghosts of CTRs past haunt the pages of this anniversary issue,
pages that are drunk on the esprit de corps of our forebears, their unflinching
convictions and pioneering visions. We have trawled the provinces, from the
snowcapped peaks of British Columbia to the salty shores of our Newfoundland,
for beacons to guide our way forward.
Together, the proclamations contained in these pages are ciphers inscribed in the
Canadian theatrical landscape revealing the current cultural moment and the future
yet to unfold. THEREFORE:

1. We have enjoined our spokespersons from sea to sea to ASSERT WITH

CERTITUDE their rants and their raves. It is NO LONGER SATISFACTORY to
allow ones beliefs to take the form of quiet kvetching over coffee, or
inconsequential carping over carp and wine and cheesebourgeois feed. In the
words of our comrade Tzara, We have thrown out the crybaby in us.

2. We have demanded that our contributors dispense with the considerate logic of
the essay, pitch polite prose, and reject the laws of grammar that structure our
consciousness. DOWN WITH THE STYLISTIC DICTATES OF SCHOLARLY
PUBLICATIONS AND ACADEMESE!

3. We have urged our contributors to THINK about where they stand (when it
seems that too many have stopped thinking altogether) and to stand bravely by
their beliefs in the hopes that others, by their example, will have THE
COURAGE TO THINK in turn about their commitments, their allegiances, and
WHY IT IS THEY DO WHAT THEY DO.

4. And so, we call upon our readers to stand witness to these performative
utterances as they call into being the individuality of their artistic selfhoods in the
unbridled form of the MANIFESTO.

The manifesto genre is

To launch a manifesto you have to want: A.B. & C.,
resolutely about what is new
and fulminate against 1, 2, & 3. Work yourself up
and what is now. It is from the
and sharpen your wings to conquer and circulate
point of this fulcrum,
lower and upper case As, Bs & Cs, sign, shout,
balancing past and future, that
swear, organise prose into a form that is
the manifesto hurls itself into
absolutely and irrefutably obvious, prove its ne
the unknown, into history yet
plus ultra and maintain that novelty resembles life
to be written. Exuberant,
in the same way as the latest apparition of a
playful, passionate, the
harlot proves the essence of God. ... I am writing a
manifesto genre is bigger than
manifesto and theres nothing I want, and yet Im
life. Rude and forceful, the
saying certain things, and in principle I am against
manifesto sweeps away
manifestos, as I am against principles. Im writing
all that came before. It is fast
this manifesto to show that you can perform
and it is loud. Superlatives
the very best ones, CAPITAL
contrary actions at the same time, in one single,
LETTERS and a plethora of
fresh breath; I am against action; as for continual
exclamation points [!!!] are the
contradiction, and affirmation too, I am neither
tools of manifesto writers,
for nor against them, and I wont explain myself
because I hate common sense. deployed liberally to convey
the insistent demands of
Tristan Tzara Dada Manifesto (1918)
these visions and
vituperations. The manifesto
is an act of dmesure, going past what is thought of as proper, sane and literary.
Its outreach demands an extravagant self-assurance. At its peak of performance,
its form creates its meaning (Caws xx).

Highly caffeinated, manifestos are resolutely activist. They demand change,

leaping off the page and into the middle of the street. They itch to translate their
ideals into reality, to be, to become, to make themselves manifest.
A MANIFESTO WANTS SOMETHING FROM YOU.

THEATRE WANTS SOMETHING FROM YOU TOO.

Indeed, in this respect the theatre and the manifesto are not strangers to each
other. In etymological terms, both manifesto and theatre share a common root,
referring to the act of making visible. Manifesto from Latin manifestare to bring into
the open and theatron from Greek, of course, a place of seeing (Puchner 449).
The goal of the manifesto (and of theatre too for that matter) is not merely to show
things as they are but to shape the public view.

Manifestos are not visionary only in their political inclinations, but are also often in
themselves a visual declaration, taking the form of posters, flyers, handbills, maps,
and diagrams. Engaging our ears as well as our eyes, the manifesto
demands to be heard. It is a shout, it is a cry, it is a call to arms in the most
passionate language one can summon. Setting out the terms of the faith toward
which the listening public is to be swayed, it is a document of an ideology,
crafted to convince and to convert (Caws xix).

The manifesto is inherently performative; its aim, through its enunciation, is to bring
a future vision into being. But its a form that also betrays a malaise about its own
limitations. As Martin Puchner writes in Manifesto=Theatre,
the manifesto struggles to reconcile its performative drive to actualization with its
bold theatrical style. It teeters on the border, fearing the dissipation of its activist
potential as mere stagecraft, as only pretend, while at the same time
embracing the vibrancy of theatre to broadcast its message.

Caught as they are between the performative and the theatrical, manifestos have a
performance genealogy of their own, receiving their first recitations in the raucous,
smoke-filled quarters of the Cabaret Voltaire. In the tradition of manifestos made
public in performance, some of our contributors have performed
their manifestos at sites of their choosing and recorded these for the online version
of the issue (visit our website!).

In this vein, the twenty-eight writers (or teams of writers) of the manifestos
launched here have bravely stepped forward to publicly declare themselves.
Declaring that there is no other but only a multiplicity of autonomous subjects,
Beatriz Pizano and Trevor Schwellnus, coartistic directors of Aluna Theatre
(Toronto), commit themselves to a core honesty in their practice, being true to
oneself and to the world at large. Their company name Aluna derives from the
Kogi word that refers to an inner world of spirit and memory through which the
world around and outside of us is kept in balance (http://alunatheatre.ca/english/).
This concept informs a creative process that is deeply committed to a sense of
social responsibility. Rather than simply putting something on stage, their work
attempts to convey the life experience of the process of its creation.

For Waawaate Fobister the telling of ones own stories is central. Just as theatre
ignited a fire in him as a teenager, so too he hopes that it will ignite the same fire in
the youth of Ogokia remote fly-in reserve in Northern Ontario where Fobister has
been spending time working with DAREarts. As he writes, these kids need
inspiration These kids need heroes. And perhaps they will find them on the
stage just like he did. Nina Arsenaultself-described theatre maker, writer,
speaker, media artist, aesthete, transsexual, cyborg (http://ninaarsenault.com/)
takes the mission of telling ones own stories to the limit in her performances of
living self-portraiture. Here she articulates the motivations behind her meticulous
performative documentation of her transsexual transformation in a quest for an
ideal feminine beauty.

In the current post-manifesto eragone is the Golden Age of the Manifestowe

are sadder and wiser, more circumspect and more divided. In these times of doubt
and worry, there is naturally some discomfort with the heroic
voice of the manifesto. The manifesto declares with an authoritative swagger by
fiat that this is so and must always be so. Some of the contributors here have
registered their suspicion of the manifesto form, with its unfettered enthusiasms
and aggressive self-confident assertion of truths, and have entered into
negotiations with the genre by attempting to subvert the manifesto, passing off anti-
manifestos (and hoping we wont notice). Is this movement a transformation of
the genre or its outright rejection?

This is not a manifesto begins Edmonton artist Kristine Nutting, before asserting
that the theatre died a long time
ago and so there is no need for a manifesto to raise our outrage. It is too late.
Rather than bewail its passing, Nutting says Let it die. A theatre of mediocrity, a
theatre of pacification, a theatre that is pretty and inoffensive is not worthy
of the name. Daniel Brooks, artistic director of Necessary Angel, grabs the
manifesto by the tail declaring To Hell with Manifestos. Acknowledging his own
uncertainty, he eschews the manifesto for himself, looking instead to the as
yet unwritten manifestos of a mad girl or a bad boy that will one day change
everything, but until then he urges our patience and perseverance. We must
accept not knowing all the answers, and to hell with manifestos.

Like Brooks, Steven Hill and Michele Valiquette struggled valiantly with the siren
song of the manifesto. The manifestos imperious imperative to put up or shut up,
to lay it all on the line, demands some unblinking soul searching. Hill and
Valiquette document that dark night of the soul in a series of photographs of their
Post-It note collage cum manifestoin- progress. Ravi Jain (Why Not Theatre) and
Michael Wheeler (Praxis Theatre) with illustrator Jody Hewston also
tackled the manifesto in a highly visual form, harking back to the poster as
manifesto, pasted defiantly to a wall tagged defense dafficher (Post No Bills).
Presenting the often conflicting goals of theatre, Jain and Wheeler engage in a
contest of opposing fragments in a bid for SYNTHESIS.

Award-winning producer Naomi Campbell offers rules, platitudes, advice, and a

prayer for her fellow producers of theatre. Bridging the divide between the front
office and the backstage, Campbell considers how producers beset
with myriad practical restraints can continue to kindle their love for theatre.
Administrative concerns are the bane of Montreal-based playwright Olivier
Choinires creative life. Here he issues a cry of frustration on behalf of artists who
are corralled into administrative tasks and squished by myopic administrative
thinking.

Glitter is sparkle. Glitter is magnificent. Glitter, unlike chalk, does not wash away.
Listing the kaleidoscopic qualities of what glitter is and is not, grassroots artist and
activist T. L. Cowan imagines a utopian performance credo here
in her Glitter-festo. Glitter is an aestheticized politics of action. Gritty and at the
same time shiny, glitter revels in its street cred and in its sequins. Glitter is a
homemade all-night carnival. Also advocating for a DIY-theatre is the
artistic director of Newfoundlands Artistic Fraud, Jillian Keiley. Keiley does not
want to displace design and designers outright but invites us to return to an
aesthetic and mode of creation that places actors bodies at the visual centre.
Scenography emerges from the actors, from the shapes and sounds that they
generate. Keiley challenges designers to make an environment not to contain or
frame the actors, but one that is interactivea stage that is not played on, but
played with.

In his manifesto, Alex McLean of Zuppa Theatre (Halifax) exhorts us to seek

electricity. McLean imagines a space in which performers and audience are
connected on a continuous path, a circuit, through which the energy flows,
creating both light and heat. This circuit (and the visions and friction it generates) is
of vital importance. This circuit feeds on the friction it generates. It needs
contradiction and dissent. It needs to be multiple. dbi.young anitafrika,
creator of the acclaimed sankofa trilogy, advocates for the deep intertwining of
theory in action and action in theory. Here, she documents her performance
practice grounded in the sorplusi method. Emerging from the dubpoetry work
of her mother, Anita Stewart, sorplusi represents in acronym: self-knowledge,
orality, rhythm, political content and context, language, urgency, sacredness, and
integrity.

The mission of the theatre of Ondinnok, a First Nations theatre in Quebec, is

articulated here by Yves Sioui Durand. Durand believes that the cultural survival of
First Nations people, not just in Quebec but across North America, relies
on the propagation of the founding myths. Through theatre, the attempt is made to
translate the loss, the erasing of knowledge connected to territory, to the ancient
ways of life, to the ancestors, to their myths, to our myths with the ultimate goal of
spearheading a cultural reconstitution. The work of multidisciplinary performance
artist Claudia Bernal (Montreal) is also driven by an instinct for survival. In
response to the transnational impacts and effects of exile, dispossession, social
and political violence, Bernals performance installations call for an end to
complacency and open up new conditions of possibility for action. As ordeals that
spectators survive together, her performances serve as
acts of reparation, generating a commonality of experience and, in turn, a sense of
cultural intimacy and community.

Nicholas Hanson of the University of Lethbridge calls us into the classroom and
requires us to sit for a final exam/ manifesto in Theatre 101. The rubric of the exam
challenges the biases that marginalize theatre for young audiences within the
larger realm of theatrical attendance and scholarship. Hanson calls on us to accord
these sophisticated and significant works the high level of respect that they
deserve, and to imagine a world where TYA shines as a bright cultural reference
point. Madeleine Blais-Dahlem also demands our eyes and ears on behalf of a
marginalized theatre tradition. Saskatchewan is booming and so are the fortunes of
a Fransaskois theatre companyLa Troupe du Jour. Taking this company as a
model, Blais-Dahlem lays out instructions for the survival of theatre by and for
communities of linguistic and/or cultural minorities.

Invoking the Goddess Kali, born to fight the demon of ignorance, Anand Rajaram
wades with his singing bowl into the discomfiting waters surrounding issues of
casting. Seeking to change the nature of the discourse, Rajaram wants to shake us
out of our easy assumptions. The default term for actors becomes actresses and
if we have a group called artists of colour what do we call the rest?
The manifesto of Rebecca Singh is as bright as a summer day. This manifesto, like
a bouncing trampoline, cheers us on: Take up space! Ask for what you want!
Lets triple arts funding and save the world! Far from nave, Singh buoys up
theatre practitioners to work together and seek out the positive. Believe in
theatre. Celebrate it.

Alex Lazaridis Ferguson, a Vancouver-based writer, actor, and director, takes

issue with the growing niche carved out by dramaturges. In this passionate
outburst, Ferguson decries what he sees as the hijacking of the autonomy of
playwrights by institutionally supported dramaturges. He urges artists to break free
of this insidious control, to learn more about their craft, and to run faster and jump
higher on their own two feet. Suitcase in Point Theatre Company of St. Catharines,
Ontario reduces the manifesto to its poetic minimuma sip of strong coffeeto
honour the local roots of a theatre for everyone and anyone.
The precarious position of the artist-scholar is on the mind of Louis Patrick Leroux,
himself one of these two-headed creaturesas a director/playwright and associate
professor at Concordia University. Leroux asks how these roles
are to be balanced practically in terms of time and money, but also philosophically
in managing the potential conflict of interest arising out of opposing concerns in the
world of research-creation. Kathryn Harvey, head of Archival and
Special Collections at the University of Guelph, is also concerned with spanning
the divide between performance and research. As Harvey admits, in the heat of
creation, few artists have the leisure to be concerned with preserving the
materials of their work. Increasingly, governments have retreated from collecting
private sector (non-governmental) documents. And so in the face of this gap,
Harvey calls for archivists and curators to band together in a formal
association to support each other in the cause of conserving our valuable legacy of
performance in Canada.

The theme of failure floats around in several of the manifestos published here.
Sarah Garton Stanleydirector, teacher, and current graduate student in cultural
studiesconfronts failure head on, grabbing it with both arms and clutching
it tight. As she writes, Success gets a party, its time to give failure a wake. To
begin that celebration, Stanley offers a thirteen-point manifesto on the necessity of
failure. Hand in hand with failure and its heart-stopping bravado, comes
its quieter cousinconfusion. For the manifesto genre, which radiates certainty
well beyond the point of good judgment into the blind obsession of the ide fixe, a
manifesto about confusion appears to be a paradox. Nevertheless,
novelist and co-artistic director of the interdisciplinary group PME-ART Jacob Wren
tackles the manifesto on its own terms, encourages us to accept not knowing, to
accept ambivalence, to be humble in our confusion.

Vancouvers Marcus Youssef, artistic director of Neworld Theatre and member of

the COPE (Coalition of Progressive Electors) executive, is not writing about theatre
at all, but about what theatre-artists bring to the political arena. Not
by making political theatre but by directly participating in politics. We possess skills
that Youssef catalogues as our marginality, our dexterity in the moment, our
willingness (curse) not to know. Also looking around at the world
outside the confines of the theatre proper, David Yee, artistic director of fu-GEN
Asian Canadian Theatre Company and tweeting under the handle @halfchink,
takes issue with the casual racism, libel, bigotry, and outright idiocy in public
social media forums. Yee encourages netizens to practise citizenship: to engage
those with whom we disagree and not to let discussions be hijacked by anonymous
hate; to create safe spaces where ideas can grow. We are called upon to
moderate comments and to practise moderation in all things.

Multidisciplinary creators Stephen Lawson and Aaron Pollard of Montreals

2boys.tv invite us to resist the quantification and commodification of art, reminding
us that it cannot be caged but must be allowed to soar free. Published here as
an extra insert (with instructions), their manifesto requires some participation from
you, the reader, before yielding what we hope will be a delightful surprise. The
manifesto will take flight, but in a manner more elegant than that of
the traditional projectile manifestoa crumpled page tied to a rock and thrown
through a window.

The writers of these manifestos have taken the vanguard. You are now called upon
to follow their lead. To be more assertive. To be more bold. To be more demanding
of others and of yourself. You, the CTR faithful, you are called upon
to take more risks, to try new things, to think new thoughts, to open your eyes, to
hold hands, to be better, always to
be better.

Works Cited

Caws, Mary-Ann. The Poetics of the Manifesto: Nowness and Newness.

Manifesto: A Century of Isms. Lincoln and London: U of Nebraska P, 2001. xix
xxxi. Print.

Puchner, Martin. Manifesto = Theatre. Theatre Journal 54.3 (Oct. 2002): 449
465. Print.