I’m more comfortable criticizing plays than court decisions.
But I have to give a mixed review to a March judgment penned by Superior Court of Quebec Justice Mark Phillips that overturned a theatre director’s one-year suspension from Canadian Actors’ Equity Association.
In 2021, a disciplinary panel convened by Equity, a professional association of both stage directors and actors, concluded that Montreal-based director Guy Sprung had engaged in discriminatory behaviour and conducted himself in a manner contrary to professional standards during rehearsals for the planned world premiere of a play called Fight On!
The rehearsals for the offbeat historical drama about Charles Dickens’s Mountie son and his encounters with Cree Chief Big Bear fell apart about a week before its scheduled opening in 2020 after several Indigenous actors walked out amid disputes that included concerns about the representation of Indigenous characters.
Four of the show’s actors, including two who had walked out, later filed a joint complaint with Equity against Sprung.
I want to be clear that I have no reason to disagree with the judge’s quashing of that complaint and Equity’s suspension of Sprung, which he described as “unjustifiable.”
But by making remarks in his written decision that demonstrate an ignorance of how rehearsal rooms operate, and in going beyond ruling on the validity of the suspension to conclude that, in fact, “certain members of the cast exhibited conduct which lacked professionalism,” Phillips, unfortunately, undermined the credibility of aspects of his judgment in the wider theatre world.
That is not an ideal conclusion for Sprung, nor is it for efforts to create more respectful workplace environments in Canadian theatre, where actors of all backgrounds need to feel free to speak up in rehearsal halls, particularly when they are often hired in part to represent aspects of their own culture or identity on stage.
Regarding the discussions and disputes that arose in Fight On!’s rehearsals, Phillips writes that Sprung “was faced with a highly-charged environment in which, quite astonishingly, at least some of the actors, although engaged to perform a set script, with only a few weeks of rehearsals prior to public performance, 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.”
It’s clear here, as it is in several other places in Phillips’ decision, that he erroneously believes a script for a new play is “set” at the start of rehearsals. In reality, playwrights typically use rehearsals, especially for a world premiere, to revise the script, with the final changes often made in the preview process when the final collaborators – the live audience – get involved.
By not understanding the difference between inappropriate rehearsal room behaviour for actors – such as rewriting one’s own lines without permission – and appropriate behaviour – such as proposing changes – Phillips muddies his decision.
It is up to each director to set the tone in the rehearsal room for how and when feedback will occur. As the director of Fight On!, Sprung clearly invited response from the actors, even asking the Indigenous cast members to write a note for inclusion in the program expressing their perspective on the play. He had already incorporated “sardonic, ironic and iconic commentary” from Indigenous playwright Drew Hayden Taylor into the script.
Phillips actually argues that Sprung went too far: “If applicant [Sprung] is to be faulted with anything, it is for having been too open to the cast’s critiques and suggestions, thereby perhaps creating inappropriate expectations and a blurring of people’s respective roles.”
Where, instead, it seems to me Sprung could be faulted is in wearing too many hats: He was the director, the playwright and, at the time, also the artistic director of Infinithéâtre, the company planning to produce it. This left him in the impossible position of having to react directly to criticism of his writing without a director or artistic director to stick up for his vision or mediate disagreement. It also left the company with nowhere to go internally with concerns.
There are other areas of his decision where Phillips seems to go off topic to offer commentary on wider cultural wars, which seem to have influenced his conclusions. He, for instance, compares questioning the slur “savage” in Fight On! to censoring Mark Twain’s 1884 novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
In that same passage the judge also makes references to recent hot-button controversies in Quebec regarding the use of the titles of a 1968 essay and a 1969 comedy sketch with racial slurs in them. “Protecting people from being reviled with hurtful invectives is one thing,” he writes. “Crass cultural illiteracy is quite another.”
But by suggesting that it would be somehow akin to censorship for a new play set in the past, particularly a non-naturalistic one, to avoid racial slurs in its dialogue, Phillips doesn’t seem to understand that artistic choices can be debated and that plays can be open to interpretation. He writes in the first page of his decision that the script was “obviously written with tremendous sensitivity toward the subject matter.” And he concludes by writing: “It cannot be disputed that the point of the play was to fight discrimination against First Nations, with a view to furthering the laudable objective of reconciliation.”
It’s hard to square the judge’s certainty with what went down when the play was, as they say, put on its feet.
A more welcome decision would have emphasized that it is not unprofessional for any artist to disagree, even passionately, about how to tackle complex subject matter in rehearsals. Collaboration is key to theatre, especially when it is cross-cultural, and it would be a shame if Phillips’s comments chill others in the room.