Mentor Of The Month

Can you tell us about your career path: how did you get to where you are today in the arts community?

OK, your very first question is a big one. I’m from India, I came here in 1976. By 1981 I had formed a company called Teesri Duniya Theatre with a group of friends in order to address the needs of actors of South Asian descent who were living in Montreal. A couple of years later we made the company more multiethnic, and eventually it became completely culturally inclusive. Our own experience told us that we needed to use all talent that existed in this country, from various cultural communities. We were keen to bridge gaps between artists from a variety of cultures living in Canada.

Now this was different from how the existing scene was up until then, and even is today. Theatre here was divided into two groups: you had a theatre that was by the Anglophone, or so-called “Rest of Canada” community, and then the francophone theatre, from Quebec, whatever is outside of the “Rest Of Canada”. Anytime any other individual or groups wanted to integrate into it, they were either marginal, or stereotypically eclipsed from any detail. Primarily the arts scene was very Eurocentric: it did not acknowledge any other art form than what was Eurocentric with a European aesthetic. I realized that my experience of having done theatre in India was not recognized here. So that if I would approach a foundation such as Canada Council, or Quebec Arts Council, or Montreal’s Art Council, I would not even be allowed to make an application for support of any kind. From 1981 until the mid-90s, I survived in the arts without any professional funding from any of the funding bodies. The only opportunity for artists of colour to gain some support was through a federal program of multiculturalism, and this was more for some kind of variety show: it was a food festival, it was a fashion show, it was a beauty pageant, or simply inviting the ministers to come and taste the food of racial communities.  Those things were fun, but they were not arts. And the arts are a means of gaining a sense of cultural identity for newer Canadians.

This all changed due to a tremendous amount of lobbying , a tremendous amount of political mobilization and political activism on the part of artists of colour from all across the country. When the Canada Council implemented its policies of racial equality, this opened up the opportunities for artists like myself. I think that I received my first writing grant somewhere in 1995, but by that time I had already written and produced 6 or 7 award-winning plays. Up until that time I used to be anything and everything: I would do writing, and I would do directing, and I would also recruit the actors wherever I could find them, and beg them not to ask for money. And that was to build the organization. So my growth is tied to the growth of the company that I represent.

Institutional support has been slow coming. We’re doing better now, but still not enough. I think the work that we have done has offered the opportunity to many artists who otherwise did not see themselves on the stage. I say this because you have to have a company whose mandate is committed to reflect the country on the stage in the same way the country is constituted on our streets.

Did I answer your question?

That’s a very good start. Can you talk about professional hurdles you’ve encountered?

The idea was that if Teesri becomes stronger, and more visible in the eyes of our peers, and the funding bodies, then its work will be respected correspondingly. So that’s the reason I tie my own personal growth with Teesri’s growth.

Now how do opportunities come for our various artists in the work Teesri does? If you take a cursory look at what kind of theatre has been produced in this city, you’ll hardly find, with few exceptions, an artist of colour ever on the stage, unless some companies such as mine, or Black Theatre Workshop (link), but for every one else the actors of colour are an exception. For us, they are rule.

In our company generally we hire emerging artists at the end of our season that have yet to be hired by anybody else. This requires that we identify them, judging them not on the basis of how they do their audition, but also on the basis of what potential do they offer. We are then making the Canadian arts scene richer by integrating artists of colour who otherwise would not get this opportunity. So we are a little pro-active. We are making the larger arts scene more interesting by bringing people who otherwise would never have a chance.

Teesri Duniya is a multi-faceted company: you have professional mainstage productions, a large community-based theatre component, and a new-play development program. Why your investment in all these different areas, and what responses have you had from participants involved?

Our professional productions are very important as we strive for artistic recognition, and quality of production. We also then subscribe to the criteria set up by ACTRA, which allow you to pay the artists a fair salary. And finally professional productions tend to garner the most media coverage. This is essential to connecting to our communities who do not typically come to the theatre. So the idea of a professional theatre is integral to making the arts scene more diverse than what it is now.

Our new play development program is the only one in the Montreal area that I know of which is again culturally inclusive. It is open to aboriginal artists, to artists of colour, it’s open to Francophone as well as Anglophone artists. And here we take great liberty: we don’t hesitate if say a white artist is writing a play about South Asian people. That idea doesn’t bother me, as long as they have done their homework and their research is good.

Our community projects are more multi-faceted as they offer opportunities for professionals and non-professionals to work together. They have a strong linkage with the communities we work for, work with, and work about. The themes that we take up are very diverse: in the example of the theme of violence against women, we weren’t solely focused on the production, but also the workshops, and what this means to any given community. We also wanted to know how to talk to someone who is a victim of violence, how do we not infringe their privacy and how will they relate to the subject once it is presented on the stage. This needs social skills which require more open artistic criteria than what professional theatre gives you. It takes more than one approach to produce this kind of theatre.

Do you ever find the lines between community theatre and professional production become blurred, and how does this affect the company vis-à-vis audience development and funding concerns?

Theatrically the lines don’t blur. More often than not, anyone who trains in a community theatre setting will go on to do professional theatre. There is a bridge from one activity to another. Now how do the funding bodies relate to that, and could that be damaging? Yes, it could be. For example, the Quebec Arts Council does not even want to hear the word community. To them it’s out of the question. Montreal Arts Council simply doesn’t know how to handle that. These are all just trying to figure out really what diversity is. 50 years of research and they are probably at the beginning of what diversity is. To them artistic diversity and cultural diversity are the same. The sense of how the political ‘other’ has come to represent a culture and a history of certain communities, this concept is completely lost on Quebec and Ville de Montreal politicians. And therefore despite some efforts, they have not been able to really acknowledge communities as art-practicing communities, they still exoticise them.

But at the federal level with the Canada Council of the arts, the Artists in Community fund actually encourages artists to go out into the communities and work with and about them. Now this is something new and certainly many professional artists have found it very enticing to reach out to communities with programs for them. My criticism of these artists is that until this program came to exist, they never thought of these activities. They only thought of the audience. We need more community engagement. Social marketing is something very natural to Teesri Duniya, and I think very new to other groups. But Canada Council is very respectful of the relationship between communities and the artist. This is a good development.

How would you describe your experience as an artist promoting cultural diversity in the Quebec of today?

I wish there was a polite answer. There is none. Quebec is so far behind in understanding cultural diversity it’s not funny. It’s sad because it’s a province that boasts all the time about cultural sensitivity, but this is only true for one half of the colonizing culture. It completely fails to see that there are other people with whom it is sharing this land. There is a tremendous effort from Quebec politicians of all stripes to promote cultural assimilation. You lose yourself and therefore you become part of the culture.

I tend to feel that the recognition of ethnicity, of gender, of the political powerlessness is important in order for us to move forward equitably. If we don’t acknowledge that women were deprived of the very basic things that men took for granted, we would have never corrected the situation, and to date we have not corrected the situation. So how do they think that the cultural communities, that people of colour, who have been deprived and have experienced colonization would simply be elevated to the same level as the dominant culture without having made pro-active steps implemented into the system? This is a fantasy Quebec lives with.

If it was smarter, then it would give up this French model of assimilation, and it should acknowledge that recognition of ethnicity, of race, of gender, is an essential part of equitable growth. Then we can maintain part of our culture, and also connect with others. That’s what our company does; we very carefully maintain specificity of our culture and yet reach outwardly with the rest. And our model is working for us. It’s working quite wonderfully. In our theatre company, from administration to the arts, people of all variety and of all cultural background are working together, and this is working perfectly well. And none of us are willing to give up our cultural backgrounds. We’re maintaining it, and connecting at the same time. This model is OK for me. But the assimilation model that Quebec promotes is a big downer for me.

Thank you for being so candid with us. Lastly, do you have any advice for emerging artists and professionals entering this field?

One of the things is to contact my company. We are always open to hear from artists and share with them our experience. And actually make use of their energies and their availabilities. Other than that, it’s important for them to look into some of the more successful models. Our company is one, Fireworks is one in Vancouver, Cahoots Theatre in Toronto. We have accumulated certain experiences where artists of colour and culturally diverse artists can gain some hands on experience in terms of making headway into the mainstream arts scene.

I think that we have to understand one thing: that Canada is a very good country, and it is one of the relatively better countries in respecting and even expanding its cultural diversity. But in order to make use of this creatively, we need to understand this, we need to read literature, we need to hold our politicians responsible, and we need to be more critical and less exotic. I think we must integrate the details of diversity into our educational system, where we study it from the grounds up, rather than when an opportunity comes along and we debate what is culturally diverse or not.

Am I making sense? (laughs).