Director-playwright Guy Sprung faced a suspension from the Canadian Actors’ Equity Association a few years ago after several actors became so uncomfortable with his approach to a new play that they filed a complaint against him. Now a Superior Court of Quebec judge has ruled that the suspension was “unjustifiable,” arguing that it was the actors who “lacked professionalism.”
The March, 2024, decision, not publicized until now, outlines Sprung’s attempt to mount a new play in March, 2020, at Montreal’s Infinithéâtre that used Charles Dickens’s son’s career with the North-West Mounted Police in the late 1800s to present “an ironic deconstruction of colonial attitudes toward Indigenous peoples,” Justice Mark Phillips wrote.
Though the play, Fight On!, was shuttered as pandemic lockdowns were rolled out that month, the decision says, it was almost simultaneously derailed by the exit of several actors. Some members of the cast had taken issue with Sprung’s script and narrative approach, in some cases asking for revisions or making changes to their own lines. Four actors later filed a complaint with Equity, alleging they had been discriminated against and that the workplace had become unsafe, which prompted the union to hire a third-party investigator to assist a disciplinary panel.
Sprung was subsequently suspended from accessing union benefits. He appealed, but when that was dismissed, he went to court to dispute the process. In his decision, Justice Phillips described Sprung as the wronged party and blamed the actors.
“At least some of the actors,” the judge wrote, “appeared to think that they were in some sort of improvisational or workshop setting where they were at liberty to criticize the script, propose changes and, in one case, even rewrite their own lines as they saw fit.” If an actor felt uncomfortable with Sprung’s approach, he continued, “then he or she should simply have declined to participate in the production.”
The union politely disagreed with the ruling.
“While we don’t necessarily agree with the judge’s assessment of the third-party investigator’s report, we respect his decision to dismiss the original Discipline Panel decision based on that report,” said Scott Bellis, Equity’s council president, in an e-mail. “We are still confident in our ability to address unprofessional conduct in the workplace when it occurs.”
Sprung said in an interview that he hopes the judgment establishes how boundaries should be respected by professionals in Canadian theatre: “It makes it clear that when an actor signs a contract, they sign a contract to do that script. They can’t then expect to rewrite that script according to their own needs or desires.”
The decision states that one of the complainants had a copy of the script for almost three months before signing their contract on the first day of rehearsals – but had not read the script until that day.
Sprung, 77, has had a long career both in Canada and abroad. He co-founded London’s Half Moon Theatre in the 1970s and has served as artistic director of several institutions, including the former Toronto Free Theatre.
He had workshopped Fight On! for several years, seeking input from members of the M’Chigeeng First Nation on Manitoulin Island, the court filing says, as well as Drew Hayden Taylor, a playwright originally from Curve Lake First Nation in Ontario.
Taylor had even recorded some commentary to be played during the play’s performances. He said by phone this week that while theatre is a “collaborative adventure,” his understanding of Sprung’s situation amounted to more than that.
“Any playwright that’s not willing to listen to the actors is a problematic playwright, for sure, but there’s a difference between a dialogue and a demand,” Taylor said. “I’m very much aware of the collaborative nature of theatre, but some stuff that was being asked for by the performers was, I found, quite astonishing.”
During the workshop phase, Sprung and his collaborators decided to acknowledge each time one of the 19th-century characters used the word “savage” or “Indian” with a “swear jar,” a metallic “ping” that would indicate a donation to the Native Women’s Shelter in Montreal.
Casting for Fight On! was complete by the end of 2019, with a plan to mount it at Infinithéâtre, where Sprung was also artistic director.
The decision does not fully name the actors involved but says the cast had divergent responses to Sprung’s script. Three Indigenous cast members wrote a note for the play’s program that said “hopefully through this theatrical reimagining, settler audiences can find a way into a much bigger and complex conversation.”
Elsewhere, the decision says, one complainant said a character she would play “was not enough of a feminist to her liking, being too much of a 19th-century Dickensian woman.” One complainant’s agent sent a “list of actionables” to Sprung, describing a “lack of acknowledgment of the special services exceptional to these actors’ lived experiences.”
Actors began leaving the production, and in January, 2021, four cast members filed a joint complaint through Equity against Sprung. Equity’s disciplinary panel found Sprung “guilty of discrimination and improper conduct,” the November, 2021, decision reads, and imposed the one-year suspension, barring him from accessing Equity services such as insurance or retirement benefits.
Equity said this would not have affected his ability to work on other productions, adding that the suspension was actually put on hold because of the legal process and that Sprung had not served any part of it.
But Sprung said he took the union to court to disprove any allegations that he might be racist. “I hated the idea of taking my own association – I’ve been a member for 50 years – to court, but I had no choice. I had to do it,” he said.