Interview
Image courtesy of Soulpepper.
The Boar recently sat down with Jim Warren, director of UW Drama’s Fall ‘09 production of The Government Inspector written by Nikolai Gogol. Warren is a veteran Canadian theatre professional especially renowned for his work in clown and physical theatre.
Sukhpreet Sangha: What brought you to be a guest director for UW Drama, both now and when you directed Tartuffe in Winter ‘08?
Jim Warren: Gerd [Hauck, department chair]. We met in ‘95 at U of T when I was teaching there and he was an associate professor. I had actually just finished directing The Government Inspector at George Brown and bumped into Gerd at Soulpepper. He asked me to come direct at UW. I try to go to a school once a year, if possible. But it can be a bit tricky to schedule.
SS: Why is it important to you to work at schools so regularly?
JW: The process time for a production is often longer. It also forces me to articulate and clarify stuff that you do instinctively, professionally. To question the process, and it works as a great reminder of where my process came from, initially. The need to be teaching, as well, means that I need to be clearer about what I want and why. There is also an emphasis on process in the school environment that professional theatre doesn’t always have.
SS: Is it also a bit about giving back, from the expertise you’ve gained through all of your professional work?
JW: Yeah, I think altruistically it is that too. Saying this is what I’ve learned… In case it’s any use to you. The more diverse palette of ideas that students can have the better off they’ll be. So I think it’s great for institutions to bring in guest professionals.
SS: How do you navigate working with students versus typically working with professionals and the potential difference in standards present there?
JW: How I work is not any different. I operate the same way that I would normally. Dealing with casting, there aren’t many shows that don’t call for an older character; you have to make an adjustment for what you’re trying to get at. I still try to look for the quality of the person: how well they can relate to the feelings of that character, who is best suited to play the role and the age… The emphasis becomes more about what the students’ experience is than on me as a director. I’m more concerned with what they’re getting out of the experience of working on the show than focused on areas of my work professionally.
SS: What is it about The Government Inspector that continually draws you to it, especially considering that you’ve worked on it multiple times now both professionally and with students?
JW: I’m always interested in that balance of exposing real and serious issues through comedy. The point of this play is to expose the idiocy of human behaviour. Things said through comedy can have more lasting effect than a serious play. Things can be said about human behaviour in a less earnest way. There is always a distinct point-of-view or satire or exposing of an issue or something to that effect in the best comedies; they try to shake things up. And this play is classic that. And very, very accessible I think.
SS: What do you think is the current relevance of this play?
JW: The fact that it’s set in 1830’s Russia and that the same corruption is still present today. Our choice to keep it relatively in period makes that clearer. It shows the elements then and their reflection now. It’s also a rather storied play that is constantly reinterpreted. People revisit this play often. The characters are fantastic to play; it will continue to turn up.
We did some adapting of this translation ourselves. Took out some Britishisms. Added some extra “idiot”s. When in doubt, say idiot. We adapted the opening; all of the changes were specific to this company of actors and this production. This play has such a history of extreme adaptations so we didn’t feel too disrespectful. Others have changed a lot more.
SS: Could you comment on the dramatic change in tone at the end of the production?
JW: The hope is to not make them caricatures. It was always intended for there to be a serious tone and consequences to these characters’ actions. The people’s situation is desperate. Government officials experience corrupt enjoyment at the expense of all else. Gogol always intended for there to be a fear running throughout the play; he always said there should be a sense of consequence and seriousness to the comedy. That is always a tricky balance to achieve with this play. I don’t know if we achieved it or if there’s an overbalance to the comedy. So even through the comedy we were trying to thread in that mean-spirited tone.
UW Drama’s production of The Government Inspector continues through November 21st.
As part of a study on Canadian social policy, The Boar’s Assistant Editor In Chief, Angela Gaetano sat down this past winter with NDP International Trade Critic, Peter Julian, Member of Parliament (Burnaby-New Westminster, British Columbia).
When I left my house to attend Ralph Nader’s lecture for WPRIG’s 35th anniversary, I wasn’t expecting to interview him. I didn’t really know much about his politics or his work, aside from the fact that he was involved in social action, and that he apparently gave good speeches. Upon my arrival at my office prior to the University of Waterloo campus, I found out that I would be interviewing the American consumer advocate, independent Presidential candidate, and inspiration for the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) movement, and spent the next 2-3 hours listening to him and other speakers address issues of civic engagement while receiving research notes derived from a mad-Googling conducted by my trusty Boar Manager, Paul Matheson. Over the course of the evening, I began to realise that Nader’s themes of corporate influence in the civil sphere had ties with the content of the longer analysis piece that I was developing for this issue — “Blurring Borders?” on page 18 — with a focus on students as actors in our nation’s social policy development. In our encounter, outlined below, Nader addressed these issues and commented on the state of civic engagement on university campuses.
Gaetano: Are there ways to combine sound corporate fiscal policies and effective social and environmental policies? Can capitalism and social justice coexist in a democratic society?
Nader: Well, only if it costs more to pollute than not to pollute. Then they internalize their costs and put the technology in. But right now [corporations] could use our air, water, soil as their private sewers with minimal costs. So we have to up the ante so we force them to internalize the damage that they’ve done. Costs internalizing. And then, they’ll say “well, it’s cheaper to put in recycle, put in scrubbers, you know, put in modern technology…
G: Would the same sort of theory apply to social welfare as well, say perhaps if corporations were forced to put in health care benefits?
N: I think it should be full government medicare insurance, full choice of doctor, hospital, and private delivery under cost and quality control.
G: In your opinion, are Canada and the United States moving in the same direction in the fields of social and environmental policy, or apart?
N: [Laughing] Well, let’s hope Canada continues not to mimic the U.S.’ downward drift. [...] most people in the United States are losing ground. Eighty per cent actually make less now than the workers in 1973, adjusted for inflation. And, there are more people who are uninsured for health care than ever before. So, we don’t want Canada to parallel this. We want Canada to keep ploughing new ground of humanitarianism for its own people so that we can refer to Canada as an example when we’re pushing to reverse bad directions in our country.
G: Do you think that you’re making progress in the United States to move toward that?
N: Well, not under Bush-Cheney and a compliant Democratic party that is very cowardly and goes along with Bush-Cheney or doesn’t stop Bush-Cheney. Yes, they could’ve stopped him on the war in Iraq, or the tax cuts for the wealthy — they had a filibuster of power in the Senate, but they didn’t do it.
G: If you could boil it down, what, in your opinion, would be the integral components to a civics skills course at Waterloo?
N: It would be three layers. One is learning the history of successful civic victories and how they did it, because that’s why we have what we like about our respective countries. So, learning the history. The second is to learn about the tools of democracy; that is, how do you use the freedom of information act, how do you put on a good news conference, how do you build a coalition — all the bread and butter. How do you disseminate voting records to a large number of voters efficiently about members of parliament. And the third is to build a civic personality and that can only be done by field work – actually looking at a problem in justice in a society, like here in Waterloo, and putting the knowledge that you can acquire in a university setting to bear on it. And, push it through to completion. And, if you graduate, you finish the course, it’s just passed on to the students who follow you. So, it could be a consistent vision for justice, something like that. That way, you really learn how to overcome discouragement, demoralization, burnout. How to give credit to other people. How to keep renewing yourself. How to have your last mistake or defeat be your best teacher. That’s a civic personality.
G: Is the university, particularly here at a very strong CO-OP university, a corporate entity, a civic community, or some sort of combination of the two? And how does that impact our role as students in civic engagement?
N: Well, it should be a cooperative entity, a community. As long as it allows itself to be commercialized, the unique contributions of the academy or the university in our society is subordinated, twisted, distorted. Like, in the universities in the U.S. they have partnerships [...] which shapes the curriculum according to commercial priorities.
G: Are you aware of the connection between RIM and the University of Waterloo?
N: No.
G: There has been some controversy over whether these [connections between UW and corporations such as RIM and Microsoft] have been influencing education, particularly in the choices of what software to use in computer engineering classes or programming classes. Do you have any comments to say about corporate influence on institutions?
N: All corporate university contracts should be put online [...] so the students, faculty, citizens, voters can examine them [...] And that should be a goal of the students. It’s already in electronic form, so put it online. In the States, there’s a movement where the state governments are putting contracts that they make with outside firms online. Indiana has started to do that, and we’re trying to get the federal government to do it. This is a major change. You know, half of what these governments do are outsourcing or contracts for goods or services [...] That is one way to start the ball rolling. So it becomes the subject of scrutiny and inquiry.
G: With the university being run as a business, what kind of an incentive does the university as an institution have to encourage us to be civically engaged?
N: Well, running it as a business has two meanings, one is running it efficiently [...] and there’s nothing wrong with running it efficiently. [...] But, the important thing is to keep, in a supreme position, academic values. For example, academic science is different than corporate science. And, as long as universities cut deals with companies, they’re subordinating academic values to corporate science. Corporate science is secret, academic science is open. Corporate science is not often well peer-reviewed, if at all, because it’s secret, proprietary. Academic science is peer reviewed. Corporate science uses [...] influence in Washington, academic science doesn’t have that kind of political influence. Corporate science has commercial goals for products; academic science may want to do more [...] for civic benefit, not just for making more profit. There’s a collision, and the more universities succumb to commercial partnerships, the more academic science will be distorted, or subordinated, or replaced by corporate science on campus.
G: If I were marketing civic engagement to the University of Waterloo, saying, “you should have a civically engaged student body,” what concrete benefits should I be marketing to them? What should I be saying will benefit them?
N: [...] they’re gonna want to do something about [their city, province, country], and if they don’t know how to do it, they’re gonna grumble and swallow the grievance. That’s not a very good quality of life. But if they know the skills, they can anticipate, foresee, forestall, or if it confronts them as a festering problem, they can go after it. [These problems could include] contaminated water, [...] crooked politicians, [...] wasted tax dollars. All things that people you know can understand.
G: What advice would you give WPIRG, and Canadian students as a whole, for the next 35 years?
N: [To] strengthen WPIRG and make it have more roots with students. Try to get course credit for students working on WPIRG projects, who lend themselves to intellectual rigor and social value. Connect with the province more, [...] is there are a lot of PIRGs, but they don’t connect with each other in the province. And then, make a national PIRG to focus on Ottawa the way the PIRGs in the United States have a US-PIRG in Washington [...] it’s very important that they have a national group, especially when they have such a wonderful person as Duff Conacher who heads Democracy Watch, dwatch.ca, for those who want to know more about how a group focuses on building democracy, building and strengthening democratic institutions.