Where There's Smoke...: Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man, a Memoir (19 page)

Not that I had sex with that many students at the School, only two, one of whom became a very serious relationship that might have ended in marriage had our timing been better. Heck, even old-school teachers were getting it on with students. Years later, a woman told me how Michael MacOwan, when he was a guest instructor at the School and she was a student, would smuggle her into his apartment. I don’t think David Peacock was having sex with students, only wishing he was. He made up for it, apparently, when as Theatre Officer for the Canada Council he is reported to have traded favours. Now that I don’t approve of.

While the larger world was flying off in unpredictable directions, my personal world was in equal confusion. Everyone seemed to be demanding more of life. Something in my life felt incomplete. Was it? Who knows? Veronica was now working mostly in Ottawa, returning on weekends. We continued to do things together that we both enjoyed — ski, birdwatch, play bridge. But we didn’t really talk to each other, share thoughts or ideas, and we both seemed to be looking for something more, feeling some quiet dissatisfaction.

I had always liked first year student Judith Hodgson; I had taught her in an evening class before she came to the School. She was attractive, with long blonde hair, a mild manner (quite unlike Veronica), young for me, but with a university degree. By the time we had worked together at the School for a few months we fell in love. Really. For a time we kept our relationship a secret from her class, but at the conclusion of the encounter group, many secrets now revealed, Judith felt the time right to tell the class. In keeping with the era, they seemed delighted and toasted us. And some of her class remained friends with us for the next few years of our on again, off again relationship.

As breaks go, the break with Veronica was not a bad one. I may have suppressed some memories here, but she was absorbed with her new career in Ottawa and may well have looked forward to a new freedom herself. There were few assets to divide. Our one car, a used E-Type Jaguar, was more a liability than an asset, in the repair shop more often than on the road. We actually had quite a nice weekend together in Vermont after the split had been agreed to. Eventually, Veronica would marry my brother Tim’s best friend, move to Colorado, and have two children, something we had been trying to have without success.

No, the real problem was my mother. We were in Muskoka, I believe, when I gave her the news, sitting across from one another in the living room in front of the fire, my mother reclining on her homemade bed/sofa and I on a chair opposite. I doubt that I was too hesitant; I fully expected her reaction to be similar to her reaction when Cathy and I separated: something like, ‘Well, it’s about time’ or ‘I never thought she was the right person for you.’ To my surprise she was personally upset, reacting almost as if I had kicked her in the stomach. I had been remembering the early days of my relationship with Veronica, when she had first come to visit in Muskoka before we were married and my mother had been quite cool about Veronica and my relationship with her. I thought she would see that I had now come to agree with her insight of the time. But, no, in the intervening years she had more or less adopted Veronica, made her the daughter that she had never had. And now I was turfing Veronica out of the family.

But at least my mother continued to talk to me and our close relationship survived. Not so my cousin Murray who, having also befriended Veronica, would not speak to me for years. He never relented; I was never forgiven. His reaction seemed unfair to me. After all, I had not spurned him when he broke up with his long-standing lover, Bill Job. Cousin Donald, on the other hand, always more relaxed and gregarious than his brother, seemed to make no such judgement and we continued to be friends and colleagues. And in a short time he and Hutchison Shandro, Judith’s friend and teacher, my former assistant, became lovers, and we were all one happy family — for a while.

For all the personal turmoil, some of the work at the School was pretty good. I directed a production of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
involving the English acting students from all three years. In a terrific set designed by Alan Barlow, the head of the Design Section, and created with 2,000 green garbage bags, the third year students played the lead roles, the second year students the supporting roles, and the first year students, vegetation. I know it sounds odd, but trust me, it worked. Influenced by Jan Kott’s dark view of Shakespeare on the one hand, and the Elizabethan seven stages of love on the other, the arc of the lovers went from the stilted self-love of the early scenes, through the primal earthly love in the forest, to self-discovery, and finally to a deep unified connection to the universe. The set could be lit from the front to appear dark and menacing, or from the back to look benign, almost divine, following the emotional progression of the characters. The magic potion placed in the lovers’ eyes only appeared magical; it actually took the characters to their natural place. The production succeeded both as a realization of the play in terms more profound than the light comedy versions one often sees, but also in actor training terms that allowed each class to work with the elements appropriate to that stage of their development.

I was pleased with the reaction to the production, though surprised when it was being praised to a group of us and David Peacock replied, “I’m very proud of it.” I couldn’t help wondering what it was he had to do with it. Why had he not said something like, ‘I thought Bill did a great job’? I was standing right there. I didn’t understand at the time that I was being removed not only from his consciousness but also from the School.

In the dying days of my tenure, David Peacock assembled the first year class and me in the staff room and asked each student individually if they believed I was providing them with a coherent program. Of course, he was paving the way to firing me, but what a terrible burden to place on both the students and me. I knew there were students in the class who supported me and my work — Judith, if no one else — and some that had concerns with some of the work, but David framed the question in such a way that a positive response was almost impossible. Why was he doing this? Why was he putting us all through this truly embarrassing ordeal? I can only conclude that he needed to be able to say to the Board of Governors that I did not have the confidence of the students.

He didn’t ask me if I thought the acting program was coherent; he only asked the students. Some of the students struggled to say positive things, others were more circumspect. Why was my opinion not relevant? My answer would be similar to the students’ answers. No, it was not a coherent program. How the hell could it be? If a coherent acting program is what was wanted, one had to give the artistic director the tools to do it. It’s not rocket science; it’s pretty simple in retrospect. The English Acting Section needs to be its own school, located in Toronto, with access to English-speaking theatre and professional artists, free of compromise with the French Section and free of supervision by a “Director General.” Needless, to say, forty years later, that has not happened.

It only remained for David to hand me a short letter a few days later informing me that my contract would not be renewed. I often heard him say that was the hardest thing he ever had to do.

Cry me a river.

The National Theatre School had been my life for five years. Now what? It’s a little late to go back to England and work with Albert Finney. But then another opportunity presented itself. Or did it? I have never been sure.

My tenure at the school finished with the summer expedition to Stratford, Ontario, where Jean Gascon, the former head of the French Section of the school, was now the Artistic Director of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Gregarious, as so many Quebecers are, and knowing that I was looking for new opportunities, he and I had a meeting. Well, if you can call sitting on the stairs beside the bar a meeting. At any rate, we had a discussion. Certainly I was interested in working at Stratford. Five years earlier I had been an assistant director at Britain’s National Theatre; I felt I was ready for more. Jean invited me to come and work at Stratford — I think. He suggested that I join the company and we would see how things worked out. He didn’t say what I would do in the company while we were ‘seeing how things worked out’ nor what he expected to happen if things did work out. Was he just trying to help me, knowing I was soon to be unemployed, or did he have hopes that I could make a real contribution to his theatre? It was all rather murky.

I imagine it was up to me to follow up on this discussion though I was not even sure of that. Whatever was supposed to happen, it didn’t. I stayed in Montreal for the next year. That was as close as I ever got to working in Canada’s major theatre company. Needless to say my ambition to be Artistic Director of Stratford by age twenty-nine did not come to fruition. Why did I stay in Montreal? From a career point of view, I imagine I should have pushed the Stratford possibility and failing that, should have moved to Toronto, the centre of English theatre in the country. Why didn’t I? What can I say? My usual two failings. Women and skiing. Judith was going into second year at the School and I still had my ski cabin in Vermont, two hours from Montreal.

There were still a few directing gigs:
The Importance of Being Earnest
for the St. John’s Players in Newfoundland,
The Death of Bessie Smith
for Maurice Podbrey’s newly formed Centaur Theatre in Montreal with the wonderful Dana Ivey (
Legally Blonde 2
), and the aforementioned
A Long Day’s Journey into Night
at Neptune Theatre in Halifax with Ken Pogue.

Skiing challenged my directing career in another way that year. In those years, I loved to ski untracked snow and would go almost anywhere to find it. One day, well away from the official run, I am making some nice turns through the woods at Jay Peak when the tip of my ski digs into a snowdrift and I hurtle over the front of the ski, landing on my butt. When I try to stand I know I have done some damage: I can’t put weight on my left leg. What do I do now? While not officially out of bounds, I am skiing alone in the woods where no other skiers or patrollers are likely to find me before spring. I simply have to get back to the main run. Fortunately, the run is not too far away and I find I can limp my way through the woods to the edge of the trail where skiers are whizzing by. Now what? Do I lie down and pretend I got hurt here so patrol will take me to the bottom on a toboggan? That seems pretty dumb so, skiing on one leg, I make my way with some difficulty to the bottom of the mountain and get myself into the ski patrol office. I explain my symptoms to the patroller on duty and he declares I have likely strained my Achilles tendon and advises me not to ski too hard for the rest of the day. But if I want to get it properly checked out he suggests I could go around to the doctor’s office on the other side of the mountain. And so I limp my way to my car, drive around to the other side, hobble into the doctor’s office, and wait to see him. Finally, the doctor takes one look at my tendon and says, astonished, “How did you get here?” It seems I had snapped the tendon in two; the surgeon in Montreal who later repaired it said it was the worst break he had ever seen. And he was surgeon to the Montreal Canadièns hockey team.

Okay, so four weeks in a hip cast and another two in a lower leg cast. One slight problem, I did this on a Saturday and I was due in Halifax on Monday to start rehearsing
A Long Day’s Journey into Night
. The operation in Montreal was delayed — people kept having car accidents — but finally I was able to get on a plane Tuesday in time for a first rehearsal Tuesday evening. Unfortunately it didn’t occur to Lynne Gorman, playing the mother, to spend any time on Monday or Tuesday working on her script, and even though we still had nearly four weeks to rehearse she never was able to learn her lines. A technique that works for Judi Dench doesn’t work for everyone.

The injury presented another challenge when I went into rehearsal at Centaur right after the play in Halifax opened. I was still on crutches, but since the cast was on my left leg I was able to drive. One day it is snowing quite heavily when I leave home and more snow is forecast. I have the good sense to park in an indoor garage and hobble to rehearsal rather than park on the street and risk my car being snowed in. We have a good rehearsal, but when I leave the theatre at the end of the day the city has ground to a halt. Three feet of snow everywhere. How, in god’s name, do I get home? Still on my crutches I manage to get to the garage where the car is parked and it seems one lane of that street is more or less open. The attendants are helpful and push me out of the garage into the barely passable track. To get home I know I am going to need to go up a hill, but I am hopeful that the main street, University, will have at least one lane open. Wrong. Nothing on University except cross-country skiers. The image of having to ditch my car and climb through three feet of snow on crutches is coming frighteningly into focus. Ah, up ahead I see a car go up Guy Street. I, too, turn up Guy and manage, thanks to a touch of gravel at the top, to make it on to Dorchester. I am getting closer. But the side street I need to take is full of snow and my street is one way the wrong way. Never mind the niceties. I turn into St. Marc, going the wrong way, still wondering how I will possibly get the car into the garage when — why would the gods look kindly on an atheist — the wind has blown the snow clear of the garage door. I press the button to open the door and let out a shriek as I drive the car into the dry garage. That night, nothing could be heard on the streets of Montreal but snowmobiles.

Even if I could get enough freelance directing jobs, it was very hard to make a living in Canada as a freelance director. The fees were simply too low, an issue we addressed a few years later when I was on Equity Council. I needed to find a job. There weren’t many jobs out there for a director/teacher — I still didn’t see myself as an actor, not that there were any jobs for actors in English in Montreal at that time. I did actually do one brief acting gig for television, foreshadowing my future perhaps. I remember just two things about the interlude: in one scene I had to fire a gun from the back seat of a car and, in another, after sitting waiting for the take for what seemed like hours, I had to leap from the car and run for my life. But I had been sitting so long my leg totally cramped as soon as I started to run. I don’t remember any offers after that.

I think I interviewed for the job of Artistic Director of the Manitoba Theatre Centre three times, but it was not to be. I applied to theatres and universities across North America, always a bit concerned about how a successful application might affect Judith and skiing. As it happened the most interesting offer came from Bishop’s University in Lennoxville, Quebec, just two hours southeast of Montreal and only an hour from my cabin at Jay Peak. The day I went to interview was one of those beautiful winter days with crystal clear skies set off against clean white snowbanks. I was hooked before discussions began. Sweetening the offer was that not only would I have an interesting teaching position in the small theatre department, but they wanted someone, me, to start a professional theatre in their lovely new theatre. Who could say no?