2017 Uno Festival Keynote Address from Daniel MacIvor
There are a lot of things I don't know. It's humbling to admit that. Before today I didn't know, for example, anything about Daniel MacIvor.
But I'm reviewing the UNO festival as a CFUV correspondent (I love theatre even if I've never studied it) and so I did a little research. After a cursory search on my little hand-held encyclopaedia I deduced that Daniel is a man consumed with the mystery of death. He had recently become fascinated with Spalding Grey's death leap from the Staten Island Ferry (another respected artist I'd never heard of), and there was a pivotal moment in his life when he realized the spark of life (or spirit, or soul, or whatever you want to call it) is not the same thing as the body it inhabits.
That's what I held as knowledge about Daniel MacIvor. Oh, and that he's an award winning Canadian theatre icon whose works have been translated into many languages. I went to WTF anticipating a philosophic, perhaps existentialist, exploration of the history of theatre. "The Greeks went to the theatre to learn valuable life lessons, whereas in Shakespearean times ..."
Daniel's presentation, as any theatre student would likely have told me, would be nothing like that.
I learned that Daniel stumbled into his life's work after his libido took him to Dalhousie where he found himself auditioning for "Our Town" rather than pursuing journalism, the only "talent" anyone had ever identified in him. I learned that Daniel doesn't really separate his work from his life. His friends are his colleagues, they share life and art together. I learned more about the stories of death that influenced him, and that he describes the spark of life (or spirit, or soul) as "the thing in the body."
The person known as Daniel MacIvor, it turns out, is an entertaining and delightful "thing in the body," able to reflect on his life with the kind of humour that only the distance of age can provide.
Daniel talked a bit about theatre offering the possibility for communion between the people on stage and the people in the audience, and the possibility for transformation that this relationship allows. He described theatre (writing, directing, acting) as a job, he also talked about it as something spiritual. He explained theatre as a process through which we can touch God as we discover our own ability to control Time and Space. He said it's something intentional, he also said it's completely spontaneous. At one point he described theatre as "pretending with a bunch of people and then going out and drinking beer."
During the Q and A an audience member suggested that theatre is about compassion. We learn to walk in the shoes of another, to see and experience the world from their perspective, and that awakens compassion in us. (If you hear Daniel incorporate that idea into a future WTF presentation, know that he already told its author that he'd be stealing it from her.)
I got the feeling that Daniel MacIvor isn't really certain What Theatre's For, and that his presentation was as much about trying to figure that out as it was about trying to explain it. Maybe the purpose of Theatre is, ultimately, indefinable.
No doubt we'd all be a lot worse off without Theatre, so whatever you think it's for, get out there and see an UNO show or two. All the preview nights are Pay What You Can. Check out the schedule at intrepidtheatre.com. Uno Fest runs May 17-27, 2017.
There are a lot of things I don't know. It's humbling to admit that. Before today I didn't know, for example, anything about Daniel MacIvor.
But I'm reviewing the UNO festival as a CFUV correspondent (I love theatre even if I've never studied it) and so I did a little research. After a cursory search on my little hand-held encyclopaedia I deduced that Daniel is a man consumed with the mystery of death. He had recently become fascinated with Spalding Grey's death leap from the Staten Island Ferry (another respected artist I'd never heard of), and there was a pivotal moment in his life when he realized the spark of life (or spirit, or soul, or whatever you want to call it) is not the same thing as the body it inhabits.
That's what I held as knowledge about Daniel MacIvor. Oh, and that he's an award winning Canadian theatre icon whose works have been translated into many languages. I went to WTF anticipating a philosophic, perhaps existentialist, exploration of the history of theatre. "The Greeks went to the theatre to learn valuable life lessons, whereas in Shakespearean times ..."
Daniel's presentation, as any theatre student would likely have told me, would be nothing like that.
I learned that Daniel stumbled into his life's work after his libido took him to Dalhousie where he found himself auditioning for "Our Town" rather than pursuing journalism, the only "talent" anyone had ever identified in him. I learned that Daniel doesn't really separate his work from his life. His friends are his colleagues, they share life and art together. I learned more about the stories of death that influenced him, and that he describes the spark of life (or spirit, or soul) as "the thing in the body."
The person known as Daniel MacIvor, it turns out, is an entertaining and delightful "thing in the body," able to reflect on his life with the kind of humour that only the distance of age can provide.
Daniel talked a bit about theatre offering the possibility for communion between the people on stage and the people in the audience, and the possibility for transformation that this relationship allows. He described theatre (writing, directing, acting) as a job, he also talked about it as something spiritual. He explained theatre as a process through which we can touch God as we discover our own ability to control Time and Space. He said it's something intentional, he also said it's completely spontaneous. At one point he described theatre as "pretending with a bunch of people and then going out and drinking beer."
During the Q and A an audience member suggested that theatre is about compassion. We learn to walk in the shoes of another, to see and experience the world from their perspective, and that awakens compassion in us. (If you hear Daniel incorporate that idea into a future WTF presentation, know that he already told its author that he'd be stealing it from her.)
I got the feeling that Daniel MacIvor isn't really certain What Theatre's For, and that his presentation was as much about trying to figure that out as it was about trying to explain it. Maybe the purpose of Theatre is, ultimately, indefinable.
No doubt we'd all be a lot worse off without Theatre, so whatever you think it's for, get out there and see an UNO show or two. All the preview nights are Pay What You Can. Check out the schedule at intrepidtheatre.com. Uno Fest runs May 17-27, 2017.
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