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Abstract
This article considers the negotiations surrounding historical authenticity in a unique Canadian production of Shakespeare’s King Lear. It argues that choices had to be made between accuracy on the one hand and authenticity on the other. Three particular contexts of these negotiations about authenticity are identified: that of Shakespeare’s original play, the production’s chosen setting of early modern ‘Canada’, and contemporary Canadian society and politics. Traced through the National Art Centre English Theatre Company’s script work, set and costume design, and dramaturgy, the article invites a re-consideration of the relationship between a commitment to historical accuracy and a desire to achieve historical authenticity.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Gillian Gallow, Peter Hinton, Suzanne Keeptwo, Janet Siltanen, the anonymous reviewers recruited by Rethinking History, and my colleagues and graduate students at Carleton University for their helpful comments and suggestions. I have benefitted greatly from conversations about theatre and history with Kathryn Prince, Yana Meerzon, and Irena Makaryk. Thanks to English Theatre at the National Arts Centre, and especially Judi Pearl for her help with prompt books and other materials. Finally, a very special thanks to everyone at the NAC involved in the production of King Lear, the members of the Four Nations Exchange, my associates on the creative team, and especially the acting company: your passion and dedication to your art continues to be an inspiration.
Notes
1. Email to the National Arts Centre’s English Theatre Company performing King Lear, 21 February 2012 (author’s possession).
2. In this article I use ‘Aboriginal’ to indicate Canada’s indigenous or first peoples, including First Nations (‘American Indians’ in the United States), Inuit, and Métis peoples (of First Nations or Inuit and settler descent).
3. Even getting an Aboriginal adaptation on the NAC stage took nearly four decades. Yvette Nolan and Kennedy Cathy McKinnon’s The Death of a Chief, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar re-imagined as a play about matriarchal power in Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) society, was a touring production from Toronto’s Native Earth Performing Arts. It reached the NAC in 2008. In October 2015 it was announced that a new Indigenous Theatre will join the English and French Theatres; its first season will be in 2019, fifty years after the opening of the NAC.
4. A powerful documentary about the production, Chasing Lear, dir. Lorne Cardinal and Monique Hurteau, had its first release on the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network’s Reel Insights on 24 February Citation2016.
5. From 2008 until 2012 I was Company Historian with the English Theatre and King Lear was to be my last production. This article, then, is a view from both inside and outside, but also from the unique position of being a witness to the making of this historical performance.
6. The one drawing that survives of contemporary costuming suggests the likelihood of period-appropriate dress (Schlueter Citation1999).
7. Algonquin speaking First Nations inhabit much of what are now the provinces of Ontario and Québec. The largest federally recognised First Nation in what is now known as the National Capital Region of Ottawa-Gatineau are the Anishinaabe-Algonquin of Kitigàn-zìbì Reserve.
8. Lindley (Citation2008) and Van Kampen, Mcgowan, and Lyons (Citation2008) offer astute observations on authenticity in historically informed performance of music at the restored Globe.
9. The debate over the most appropriate language to capture this legacy and history continues. To take one recent example, in September 2014, the Aboriginal music group A Tribe Called Red called off their planned performance at the opening of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights because of the museum’s refusal to use the word genocide in describing Canada’s policies towards Aboriginal peoples (CBC Citation2014).
11. Attentive audience members might have noticed that the Union Flag used in the loincloth was that of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, before the addition of St Patrick’s saltire to the Union Flag after the 1800 Act of Union, but its resonance with the modern flag was obvious.
12. See images from the December 2012 (Canadian Press Citation2012) and January 2013 (National Post Citation2013) protests.
13. Suzanne Keeptwo, personal communication. Figure also shows that the elderly Gloucester’s torture was originally going to take place while he was bound to a European colonial chair. Three weeks into rehearsal this was rejected in favour of him being bound by the wrists and kneeling so that audiences would not be distracted by wondering why a chair had suddenly appeared on stage. Production Note #9. Email attachment from production team to King Lear Company, 24 April 2012, in author’s possession.
14. ‘The First People’s Hall celebrates the history, diversity, creativity, resourcefulness and endurance of Canada’s First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples. In doing so, it presents a vivid record of cultural richness and a story of survival, renewal and vitality’. www.historymuseum.ca/event/first-peoples-hall/.
15. For a succinct discussion of the differences and their consequences for the play see Foakes (Citation1997, 110–146). See also Smith (Citation2006) for a discussion about the memories the play’s first performances invoked of its predecessor, the anonymous The True Chronicle History of King Leir and His Three Daughters.
16. In our early deliberations our understanding of both sisters was influenced by the strong matrilineal cultures of some eastern woodland nations, notably the Haudenosaunee.
17. See Gurr (Citation2004, esp. chapters 3 and 4). For some intriguing observations about different audiences in the reconstructed Globe from an artistic director, see Carroll (Citation2008, 40–42).
18. This is not to say, of course, that historical understanding cannot be achieved through, say, counter-factuals or imaginings or fictions.