Robert Lepage and Cirque Du Solieil - this is how Canadian theatre translates for the theatre folk the world over. Not, though, for those residing in the English-speaking Canada, the US and, to a certain extent, Britain. There the phrase Canadian theatre automatically evokes other names: Stratford Shakespeare Festival, the Show Festival and, of course, Toronto. At around a two hour distance from each other, they form a sort of a triangle where the theatre talent, energy and money of Canada are focused. Not that there's no vibrant theatre happening on the stages of Ottawa, Vancouver, etc. However, nowhere else is the concentration so intense. Also, the very geographical location of the triangle in question - right next to the US - makes its status of a theatre trademark of the English-speaking Canada a truly remarkable fact. For to preserve and even nurture a national identity is not an easy task today at the other end of the world, let alone in such close proximity to the US.

Actually, the Canadian theatre folk have been familiar with the effects of globalization on the local cultures since much before the term was ever coined up and the rest of the world got to know it. Not by chance one of the most illuminating books on their theatre is entitled Establishing Our Borders and relates their two-century fight for marking the 49th parallel - the border between Canada and the US - on the cultural map of the continent. (For a long time it literally didn't exist on the maps in the offices of the Broadway impresarios and the owners of theatre empires spreading across the whole North America.) That's why until this very day 'nationalism' is not a dirty word for the Canadian theatre folk. A whole generation of champions for their stage's own face - distinctly different from that of the neighbors - proudly call themselves cultural nationalists. It's exactly that generation that in the 50's, 60's and 70's of the 20 c. created some of the major institutions of the nowadays Canadian theatre, the two Festivals of the triangle among them.

Actually, these are not Festivals in the common meaning but repertory theatres with constant companies (for a certain period of time) and specific seasons (from April to November). To become part of them is the dream of every local actor, for that means a perfect working milieu, enviable financial security (the stars' salaries reach 4000 CAD per week, plus many perks) audience that follows the Festivals' production for decades, and life standard that is as if taken out of a post card. In Stratford and Niagara-on-the-Lake (where the Show Festival is located) everything is so beautiful and immaculate that the newly arrived outsider gets overwhelmed with a feeing of having landed in a made-up place. 

                  The made-up Stratford or cats in a china store

Imagine a pastoral idyll: a lake, white and black swans, and all kinds of geese swim in couples or flocks; others lie or walk their small ones on the grassy shore; for the hatching swans there are special wooden houses, children squat around them; families, on motley blankets or wooden tables, have opened picnic baskets; smiling people walk or jog along the alley all round the lake; beautiful houses peep through lush greenery, looking like flowers in splendidly arranged bouquets, as if their inhabitants (30000) are in competition for the best garden design. Apart from one central road, crossing the town not far away, and several streets with small stores, the idyll continues. In the evening wild rabbits run across the lawns and the smell of animals from the nearby farms floats in the air. If at that time one takes a strolls along the quiet, nearly empty streets, he could feel with his very skin how this small town evenly raises its breast in its blissful sleep. During the day the serene happiness of Stratford is also palpable. And even in the center and at the several big parking lots that conspicuously fill in before 14h and 20h, the bustle is somehow anxiety-free, so to speak, with a relaxed smile, as if time for everything to be done there is specially calculated so that one does never need to hurry.

If the swan lake is a symbol of this town's beauty, a unique store for china and kitchen appliances embodies the special trademark of its tranquility. In the window there, among countless small and fragile objects, sleeps a big fat cat! One has to look at her at least several minutes to really believe she's not a toy. Three more cats of the same caliber are that store's inhabitants. Two of them could regularly be found sprawled on the main counter, purring under the caresses of visitors, while the fourth one goes round the basement also crowded with goods. How these four gigantic cats coexist, obviously peacefully, with the china is not clear to me but it's a fact. Many times have I seen the cat in the window wake up, stretch and then stride over the china figures around her in order to jump into the store and change the shift of some of her sisters on the counter. Without any victims left behind! In a typically Stratford manner: relaxed, serene and imperturbable.

You may say that there are many other such idyllic small towns around the world. True. Yet, you don't find there the biggest repertory theatre in North America. With its 4 stages in 4 separate buildings, with joint capacity of 3661 seats! With a personnel of over 1000 (28 are the ushers of one shift only at the biggest of the theatres)! With 8 performances daily (a matinee and evening one at each stage) during the summer months! With a budget of 60 million CAD in 2008! Finally, with an audience that arrives not only from all over Canada but from the remotest corners of the US as well (in 2007 one of the stars of the Show Festival moved to Stratford allegedly causing an audience drain from the first institution to the latter)! Enumerating the facts of the Stratford Festival may continue and they won't get less remarkable.

If one is not aware of all these details, though, one may not notice them. Here's where the strange feeling of this town being as if concocted stems from! And when one discovers them, one is swayed by another feeling: as if he has landed in a theatre set that has all of a sudden come to life. Oddly enough, this is exactly what constitutes the unique theatricality of otherwise totally non-theatrical at first sight Stratford. For, yes, in its current shape and looks, it has been thought-up as sort of a theatre set. In 1952. And it has been created and perfected in this manner up to this very day. 

                                        A Biography of a Dream

The idea belongs to the Stratford-native journalist Tom Patterson. After special consultation with the famous American director Tyrone Guthrie, he undertook a massive fund-raising campaign for founding a classic theatre. In 1953 there was already enough money and right before Shakespeare's birthday, on April 15th, the raising of a gigantic tent with 1500 seats in it began. Three months later, the first opening night of the new theatre took place there (Richard III with Alec Guinness). The first season lasted six weeks, with one longer than the initially scheduled, due to the huge interest. In 1956 the construction of a permanent building began, along with a national fund-raising campaign. A special invitation was extended to Tanya Moiseiwitsch to do the stage design. The theatre was ready in 1957 and was called The Festival Theatre - the main and biggest one of the future four. In 1963 the Festival bought its second theatre - Avon, also designed by Moiseiwitsch. In 1971 a third stage was added, later on called Tom Paterson (there's an island in the lake with his name too). It's actually a rented (till nowadays) gigantic barn and every November the flexible stage-and-seats construction gets dismantled, the premise goes back to the owners and turns into a hokey rink. In 2002, for its 50th season, the Festival made itself a present in the form of a fourth stage - the Studio Theatre, which has become the place for non-traditional and provocative productions.

Meanwhile the river crossing the town (of course, named Avon) was artificially enlarged into a lake, exactly next to the Festival and Tom Paterson Theatres. Every centimeter around the Festival theatre was turned into a luscious garden with pink water lilies and exotic flowers. The streets got names as Romeo and Falstaf, restaurants - 'Othello's', and the small town next by - Shakespeare. Also, a Conservatory for Classic Theatre Acting was established, plus an intense educational program.

The last general renovation of the Festival Theatre to its current looks - with a gigantic crown on the roof - was in 1997, when the Queen personally opened it. Since then two sculptures decorate the garden: of Shakespeare and of two men pulling up the first Festival's home - the tent, their faces and figures being modeled after two of the real pioneers of the endeavor - a stage-hand and a carpenter. Over their heads, from the second floor terrace, 5 minutes prior to every show and at the end of the intermissions, a small fanfare orchestra in historic costumes invites the audience in.

In the same hat-off-to-the-history spirit and of the same strict-following-of-the-tradition manner is the theatre offered by the Festival. In stage language that translated into: an untouchable status of the text, star acting, 'invisible' directing and unostentatious set-design. The text and the actor being the two pillars of the North American theatre in principle, Canada and its biggest show-case, Stratford, naturally do not make exception. Any directorial free-hand undertakings (such as text cutting, let alone rewriting or collages) as well as any other forms of the so called 'conceptual' theatre are rare to such an extent that a visiting European theatre critic can have at times the eerie feeling of having gone back in time - as if theatre-wise the 20th century hasn't ever arrived in Stratford. On the other hand, the actors are so magnificent that they deserve all possible superlatives put together.

Since 2008, though, Stratford is on the brink of a big change. After a successful 15-year governance of the late actor-director Richard Monette and a failed several-month attempt for establishing a 'power-share' (of a directors' trio), the Festival has a new leadership. Des McAnuff, a Canadain with an impressive directorial career predominantly in the US (in its regional scene and on Broadway itself), is an artistic director, while general director is Antoni Cimolino, a long-time Stratford cadre, director, actor and administrator with an extraordinary fund-raising experience. Since the 2008 season was to a great extent their brain-child, it's logical to pose the question:

                                 Is the new Stratford really new?

The answer is definitely 'Yes'! I can safely claim so, albeit having seen only several of last year's shows, because of the basis for comparison with the previous season (2007), when I had the chance to work as a dramaturge of a show there (Pentecost by David Edgar, directed by Mladen Kiselov) and consequently to see nearly the whole Festival production.

Most important: directing (in its modern shape and looks) has for sure already arrived in Stratford! Without shyly hiding behind the actors. Although still without any 'infringement' on the playwrights' 'rights' either. Which is to say: far cry from the continental European directing manner but already quite farther from the usual North-American one either. In other words: much closer to their golden middle - the modern British directorial approach, unsurpassable in making a well-known text sound and feel strikingly new not by 're-tailoring' it but by, so to speak, illuminating it from a new, unexpected angle.

Such is Hamlet of the guest-director Adrian Noble, ex long-time head of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Such is also Romeo and Juliet, directed by McAnuff, who has managed to intertwine our time and history via one of those so conspicuously simple and yet remarkable moves which make us wonder how it hasn't occurred to anyone earlier. The action in his show takes off today, in a modern café where a Mafioso brawl flares up, and continues on the same wave till the time for the carnival comes. Then the characters simply change into costumes and stay in them till the final moment in the tomb, where modern police bursts in after the fatal scene. In the end, whether everything in-between has been a regular carnival game, or a fairy night, or an instigated illusion with a tragic finale is left for us to decide. What's for sure is that this is a story not depending on the time when it takes place.

Along with modern directing, Stratford has another rare guest: the spectacular conceptual set-design. The Festiva; Theatre's stage, frequently used just as a decorated podium for pronouncing beautifully written words, in Romeo and Juliet and Cesar and Cleopatra, is unrecognizable. Together with McAnuff (director of the later show as well) the Broadway type of special effects have obviously arrived there. And in Cabaret (directed by Amanda Dehnert) there's a remarkable use of multi-media.

Finally, here's may be the most conspicuous proof for the big change: the season closed with Emilia Galotti of the Berlin Deutsches Theater! I.e. a par excellence European director's theatre, in German at that and with subtitles! This was the first ever foreign visit of a whole show in Stratford in its 56 history! Actually, during its first decades the Festival used to travel - around Canada and the world. Later, though, such undertakings proved financially unviable. Now, who knows, this may well be the next stage of the big change?!

Of course, the 'innovations' in Stratford have their seamy side as well. In the director's type of productions many actors sound and look, so to speak, disaccorded. In Romeo and Juliet, for instance. Again there some of the effects achieved via impressive mass scenes look like being apart of the show. Obviously time is needed for 'reconciliation' between the actors (used so far to having no competition) and a strong-hand star directing to work out.

A show which achieves this in a remarkable way and which, to me, is the most accurate example of the new direction where the Festival is heading is Cabaret. It's natural, of course, that this happens to be in a musical - the only genre where, since Harold Prince, the directorial type of theatre is a matter-of-fact in North America. From all Cabarets I had seen I used to love most the one by Sam Mendes (on the West End and Broadway). Now I can wholeheartedly say that the Stratford production not only is of the same class, it's even with a stronger impact! 

                              Cabaret or surpassing Sam Mendes.

On a square white screen, hanging above the front stage (of the classical proscenium Avon Theatre), black lines crack and burst at random, figures change: 5, 2, 1... As if we are about to see a very old black-and-white movie. Then the screen suddenly disappears and the 'movie' begins - colorful and three-dimensional. Clad in a bright red long coat and large top-hat of the same color, the most unusual MC is in front of us: fat, androgynous, wicked in a decadent way, he does his best to entertain us, but in a little while - when for a minute he gets out of the spotlight and, bent in pain, leans against a pillar to take his breath and pull together before going back to the front stage - we'll see that all this is just a mask. Such are the artists in that cabaret: tired, poor, desperate - people who pretend to be glamorous, irresistible and incredible funny in order to earn their living and to help not only the others but themselves as well to forget the problems and the time they live in.

This is the first great and clever move of the director Dehnert and her team: we are let to witness not only what happens in the spotlights on this cabaret's stage but behind the wings too. There it's cold and gloomy, the colors are brownish grey and dim, in the beginning everything is covered with nylons, the metal parapets look rusty. This interior and its inhabitants, when not playing their roles on stage, look like having come out of The Lower Depths. In most of this musical's productions we are, so to speak, in cabarets (in Mendes's it was even literally so: the audience was on small tables and could order drinks). Here we are invited to life itself - that life which, as the song has it, is a cabaret.

This splendid paraphrase, or rather turning upside-down, of the Shakespearean 'world is a stage' is brilliantly illustrated throughout the show: the action takes place in the form of a string of 'numbers' presented on platforms brought in by the very cabaret artists - a trick applied many a time on the world stages, yet looking perfectly fresh here due to it's appropriate use. That's how the story of the American writer, who arrives in Berlin, finds a room and his love, but can't start writing, takes off. And the cabaret artists and their MC are on stage throughout the whole story too - both as participants in and spectators of that other life. One more remarkable move of Dehert, who in this way turns them at times into the most unusual Chorus - in sexy lingerie, even with naked bottoms - or into charming 'invisible spirits' the type of Midsummer Night Puck and his entourage (Puck, of course, being the MC, especially when naughtily shows up right from under the writer's bed while up there love games are in full swing).

The screen actually turns out to be a curtain made out of silver beads and, when in use in the cabaret, images of sets are being projected on it (of the scenes taking place on the platforms). Discreet projections onto the real sets (which at times make the projected images distorted), on the other hand, very skillfully add to the effect of some of the songs and chorus dances in the cabaret and in the home of the writer's landlady. By the way, the plot line of her love with the old Jew here is of the same importance as that of the main couple due to the extraordinary performance of Nora McLellan (the ex Show Festival actress in question!).

The end of the first act is one of those original director's interpretations which one remembers for good. The marriage-announcement party of the landlady is on. A swastika on one of the character's sleeve flashes all of a sudden. The rest pull back and continue the dance in slow motion. He starts singing Fatherland. Several of the guests, first timidly then with full confidence, join him. The song gathers momentum, the lights in the whole theatre go on, from behind our backs more voices start resounding, and, along the isles, more 'singers' start coming in towards the stage. The 'Future belongs to me' refrain literally thunders up and, when it gets so overwhelming, as if it threatens to sweep everything on its road, the MC, terrified, reaches for the circuit breaker and shuts off the electricity. The song breaks off but the darkness it has brought with it stays there. In the silence that follows, one can palpably feel the horror that has grasped the hushed audience, left alone with the evil itself.

Naturally, the second act starts with an electricity switch-on. The set is the same but, lit in a different way, it looks like walls of a concentration camp. The spotlights from the second floor, previously a part of the cabaret, now searchingly grope in the twilight. Previously it was cold only behind the wings, now it is cold everywhere. Anti-Semitic graffiti are being projected on the walls. Noise from broken a glass spills over, as if literally on our own bodies. Previously too there were wholes in the windows but then they were simply signs of the poverty. Now they are on the Jew's store. At the end of the show, the same set, again only via different lighting, turns into a railway station. The writer leaves and at long last starts writing his book: There was a cabaret in a city called Berlin in a country called Germany. There a man was dancing with Sally Bowles... The cabaret artists gather around him. Welcome to cabaret resounds again, now without a hint of joy or solemnity. Gradually they step back. The curtain-screen falls down between them and him. Now the song is already Life is a cabaret. The artists stand as if for a photo. A click! And the photo transfers to the screen. Gradually the colors fade away and become black and white: the people up there are already a memory. With his back to the stage, the writers strides slowly along an isle, fervently writing in his notebook. The lights go off. The film about his Berlin and the cabaret of his love has finished. And the audience is bidden a Welcome to the new Stratford!

Dr. Kalina Stefanova is the author/editor of 11 books, three of which are in English and were launched in New York and London. Her articles have been published in 22 languages. She has been a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at New York University and Visiting Scholar at the University of Cape Town, and has delivered lectures and led seminars in 12 countries. For two mandates she served as Vice President of the International Association of Theatre Critics. Currently she is Associate Professor at the National Academy of Theatre and Film Arts in Sofia, Bulgaria and Director, Symposiums of the IATC. In 2007 she served as a dramaturge of the highly acclaimed production of Pentecost at the Stratford Festival of Canada. Her first fiction book Ann's Dwarves has brought her comparisons with The Little Prince and has been published in Macedonia and South Korea. http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=16764 It has been reproduced here with the author's permission..