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Name of Reviewer: Dr. Barry Freeman         

Reviewer’s Credentials: Assistant Professor, University of Toronto Scarborough

Name of Reviewed Applicant: Dr. Robin C. Whittaker

Title of Production Reviewed: The Trickster of Seville

Date(s) Viewed: 19 November 2016

Location: Black Box Theatre, St. Thomas University, Fredericton NB

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Declared Conflict: Prof. Robin C. Whittaker and I are friends and colleagues in the community of Canadian Theatre scholarship who have worked together in the past.

 

Reviewers are asked to submit a written assessment that addresses the following questions:

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Is the intended outcome of the production clearly stated in the applicant’s proposal? Are the Production Participants and relevant conditions adequately described? Does the peer review proposal state how this production is valuable to its context on campus, locally, regionally, nationally, internationally, academically, and/or artistically? Does the pedagogical/artistic/research activity involved add to existing knowledge at the local, regional, national, or international levels?

 

I was grateful to be invited to review The Trickster of Seville at Theatre St. Thomas (TST), under Prof. Whittaker’s direction. I knew nothing of the production or Prof. Whittaker’s intentions with it on arrival in Fredericton, but was pleased to see the show and learn more about the St Thomas University (STU).

 

The production proposal provides some basic information about the production and the spirit of TST’s activities at STU. A critical, first thing to know about TST, the students who participate in it, and STU, is that while the participants in the productions are generally those taking English and Acting courses (the latter also within the English program), the productions are effectively extra-curricular. This makes rather remarkable the level of student investment in the productions (49 coming out for auditions, for example), as well as the scope and production value of the shows themselves. This perhaps recommends the virtues of a Liberal Arts program at a small institution, at which students generally participate in activities beyond and across programs.

 

The choice to do Trickster is exciting; the ‘Don Juan’ story has seen innumerable adaptations down through the centuries, making it fascinating to see staged the Tirso version that most scholars concur is the story’s first appearance. As for his choice to stage Trickster, Prof. Whittaker seems to offer a few brief justifications: i) that its concern with politics and sexual power are of contemporary relevance, ii) it offers insight into “political history [and] geography”, and iii) that it provides students an opportunity to experiment with the “action-oriented comedy of the Spanish Golden Age.” These are all reasonable and intriguing, and I wanted to know more about the first two to better understand how the director might be thinking about these themes, and how they may have been taken up by the students in rehearsals. Some examples of issues arising in building character or making other production choices would be helpful. Aside from an interest in these themes, and a desire to create a rich experiential education experience for the students, it is suggested that there are otherwise in this case no specific research or artistic questions driving the production.

 

Importantly, I would point out here that of more significant value than the proposal was the opportunity to spend a few hours with Prof. Whittaker at St. Thomas the day prior to the performance. I was welcomed into a first-year theatre course as an observer, got a tour of the theatre facilities, met students and staff, and, over lunch, learned more about the unique situation of Theatre St. Thomas in relation to its academic programs. Given that what happens on stage is necessarily conditioned by the circumstances and resources of the program and institutions surrounding it, I would suggest that this is a kind of minimum threshold of contextual knowledge required to properly assess a production by way of a performance.

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In your view, does the production satisfy the values stated in 1? In other words, does this production meet, exceed, or fall short of these stated outcomes?

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If the ostensible primary goal of the production was to create “an experiential learning environment in which students explore a variety of goals and intentions with one another,” there is every indication Trickster was a success. In my experience at STU before the show, watching the show itself, and in speaking briefly with two students from the cast after the closing night performance, there was every indication that the students were well prepared, professional, and pleased with the experience they were having in their various capacities on the production.

                It is a credit to the production team, and certainly to Prof. Whittaker as Director, that Trickster received a clear, inventive and entertaining performance. This is a centuries-old play with language and social conventions that are foreign to a modern audience. Making this drama legible and evocative for the actors—and by extension the audience—must have been the result of careful research, many hours of explanation and discussion in rehearsal, and refining staging ideas. I would comment as well on the original music design, an impressive collaborative accomplishment that greatly enhanced the atmosphere and emotional shifts in the play. Credit here goes to STU alum Zachary Greer, both for his composition and his ability to perform the score live in communication with the actors onstage—separate skill sets confidently displayed by this promising young artist. Having undertaken this kind of original musical composition myself in support of a University production, I know well that this is an onerous organizational and creative challenge; here the payoff was clearly worth it.

                Of course, much of the experiential learning in such a process takes place in rehearsals and in design meetings, so someone seeing only a performance has to infer how successfully this was carried out – and it might be a recommendation for the future that those assessing productions somehow gain access to the creative process in some form. That said, again, here the clarity of the show, the commitment of the actors to their performances, and the all-round professionalism of the ensemble suggest high-quality engagement from all participants.

 

If this is a research-oriented production, does the work add to what is already in the published literature? If so, what does it add? Please cite relevant references to support your comments on originality. Is the research question adequately described and addressed? Are the methods/processes adequately described? Does the proposed research raise questions about the work?

 

No research outcomes are stated in the proposal, so it is difficult to comment. I would note, however, that TST is following-up this production with No White Picket Fence, a verbatim-documentary theatre piece compiled and directed again by Prof. Whittaker, which explores the experience of women who have experience in foster care. While these plays deal with vastly different contexts, they may also have in common explorations of the socially coded roles for men and women, experiences of mis-treatment, or perhaps, reaching a bit further, a concern with moral fairness or social justice. I wonder whether there might have been, among or between these productions, some potential effort for dialogue around the plays within STU classes or with community groups invested in these themes, which in turn might materialize into some kind of research output on these themes, or even to do with the pedagogical value of engaging with these themes (for a venue such as Theatre Topics, Research in Drama Education or Applied Theatre Research). Such would depend of course on the research agenda and available time of Prof. Whittaker, and perhaps more institutional support for TST’s activities generally. Certainly there is a limit to the additional engagement you can get out of students in extra-curricular activity, and decisions have to be made about where time is most valuable invested.

 

 What is the importance of this work to the students involved? And what is the importance of the work to the following (comment on any that may be applicable): educators, practitioners, researchers, policymakers)?

 

Regarding the value to the students involved, I would highlight a post-show conversation Prof. Whittaker organized with two student performers from the production, Dustyn Forbes and Kira Chisholm. I met Dustyn and Kira briefly in private and welcomed them to offer any feedback, positive or negative, about their experience working with TST on Trickster. Their comments were exclusively and enthusiastically positive. They noted how much they enjoyed the process, and specifically complimented Prof. Whittaker’s patient discussions with them in rehearsal as various ideas were tried out and improved upon. Interested in what they think of the extra-curricular nature of the work at TST, I asked them whether they would prefer it if the work took place within a formal theatre program, which would likely mean that the work they were doing on this production was more formally organized, graded, and so on. They indicated that they were very happy with the current setup, which gave some separation between their duties as a student and an activity they could engage in free of academic judgment. Both confidently suggested that they intended to pursue theatre studies after their work at STU.

 

 Aesthetics (if applicable):

• What aspects of the viewing/assessment experience caught your attention? (consider experiences both inside and outside of the performance space)

• What about the play mattered? What was important?

• How did the performers, playwright, designers, director engage you as an audience member? How did they fail to engage you?

 

I was impressed at the costume and set design, among which there was some visual unity that mashed together a period Spanish style with a contemporary colour palette (black and red) and synthetic fabrics to make for an inventive and whimsical look that felt appropriate to the comedy.

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One area for improvement was in minimizing the tendency of actors to over ‘indicate’ the emotional content of their text—a common problem among inexperienced actors, and an unfortunately ready ‘crutch’ on which students can lean when they have text which they aren’t fully able to inhabit for whatever reason. Of course there are many exercises in the Stanislavsian/Method/Practical Aesthetics tradition of acting to work against this tendency. Prof. Whittaker is no doubt aware of this problem, and I know that overcoming it can be very difficult when working with some actors, especially when working outside the academic expectations of coursework.

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Additional Comments:

I would underscore that Trickster strikes me as especially impressive given that, in a manner of speaking, it was created on entirely borrowed time: that of the students, that of Prof. Whittaker who has a great deal of other responsibilities, and of other staff and alumni. What TST accomplishes in these circumstances is easily comparable in scope and quality to the work taking place in other undergraduate theatre programs in Canada in which shows are folded fully into the curriculum. Perhaps this is, and will remain, a happy administrative situation for TST. One can imagine, however, how much more rich and resourced the experience would be under the auspices of a program, and how it might therefore be more easily conceived in parallel with faculty research agendas supporting STU’s overall mission.

 

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