—as soon as the battery is recharged….

So, we were negotiating the Festival tour of Europe,with bilingual me hopping in and out of the meetings. They were all okay with one exception. I sensed hesitation and waffling on the part of one theatre—hard to translate but fairly easy to hear. I expressed my doubt in the report and sure enough, they reneged - actually they had run out of money, an embarrassing lack they were reluctant to admit.

Couple of sidebars, one jolly, one not so.

FIRST JOLLY

Our first stop was Denmark and we had to get over jet lag—with a Danish massage! Loverly. Bill had never had a massage , ever. I used to have them when my babies were tiny—good for the body and for the morale, and in those days—would you believe?—a massage cost FIVE DOLLARS! Same price as a hair-do. My first masseuse was, in fact, Danish. She taught me not to hold my eyelids up when putting on eyeliner—so as not to pull my face. You must never pull your face. Not that it makes much difference by the time you’re as old as i am.

But in Denmark ,Bills’s first masseuse was not Danish; she was Japanese, a tiny, beautiful woman, and she WALKED ON BILL’S BACK! He loved it. He never got over it. Literally. It was his first and last massage. But who knew?

SECOND NOT SO JOLLY

We had been warned about the water—surely everyone is—and we took it seriously: the farther into the Iron Curtain countries the more careful we were. In Poland we took the Black (expensive) Johnny Walker into the bathroom to brush our teeth, thus avoiding any contact with tap water. The scotch was only 75 cents (U.S.cash) there so we could afford it.

Bill’s Budget Controller was not so careful.. “It was just a few drops,” he protested as we put him on the plane to go home, “to wet my brush.” But he swallowed them. He had a vicious, debilitating attack of gastroenteritis that cut his trip short and kept him in bed at home for a couple of weeks. So we were warned. Later that winter when we sent off our brave little company on a tour that included Poland and concluded with Russia, Bill took the House Manager aside.

“Just bring everyone home,” he said, “Do not leave anyone behind.”

The House Manager remembered that when one of the company was horribly ill and the Russian theatre people offered to take the sick one to hospital in Moscow.

Niet.

He had to drop someone off in Montreal with an ambulance waiting at the airport (and another waiting in Toronto) but he brought everyone safely back to Canada and they all survived.

He remembered what Bill had said when he explained his actions: ’The boss would kill me if I lost someone.” He respected Bill’s words.

That was not the case with some of the staff nor of the local newspaper, The Beacon Herald, nor of many lay people in Stratford.

Where was I?….Oh, yes:

Ben Jonson was a contemporary of Shakespeare’s but I guess he didn’t have as good an agent. Well, the fact is he was too contemporary. He wrote in his time, as did Shakespeare (witness Shrew and Shylock, and other biases), but his language was denser and less accessible. He needed a little tweaking, that is, editing and translating, for today’s audiences. Today is even hard for Shakespeare-lovers, even with all those clichés that make it easier.. I’m talking about 50 years ago now when the S-lovers understood a little more. (Sorry, but have you looked at the faces of today’s audiences? They are worshipping at the feet/pen of an alien god, who doesn’t speak their language, or barely, and they have to tune in. Picnics and wine help.) I offered to help but I was ignored.

I took a (third year Honours) Renaissance course that included Ben Jonson as well as Shakespeare, and my fifth year Shakespeare course included Shakespeare and his contemporaries—again Jonson. We didn’t talk about male chauvinism in the theatre, or anywhere else, in those days. MCP had scarcely come into common usage.

[Male chauvinism is the belief that men are superior to women. The first documented use of the phrase "male chauvinism" is in the 1935 Clifford Odets play Till the Day I Die. Wikipedia

A male chauvinist pig (MCP) was a term used in the late 1960s and early 1970s among some feminists for some men, usually men with some power (such as an employer or professor), who believed that men were superior and expressed that opinion freely in word and action.]

It’s common knowledge now but it still doesn’t help much. MCPs still thrive.

A writer named Jack Ludwig was assigned to do the tweaking. I remember the name only because he was hired instead of me. I have to look him up: “Jack Barry Ludwig (August 30, 1922 – February 12, 2018) was a Canadian-born American-resident novelist, short story writer, and sportswriter. He was most highly regarded for his journalism, which concentrated almost exclusively on sportswriting following the publication of Hockey Night in Moscow in 1972. ]

Why?

Well, this is supposed to be about our halcyon years in Stratford., and it is, they were. But I continued with my play-writing efforts. I wrote a play about Signy, a significant woman from the Norse sagas (no pun intended) , and I had the temerity to show it to Michael Langham (1919-2011), Gascon’s immediate predecessor as artistic director, who had moved on to take over the new Guthrie Theatre (again succeeding Guthrie), in Minneapolis and whom I kew well before he left Stratford. He kept coming back as a guest director. Michael was very courteous and generous and gave me some good tips for my later drafts. Ultimately, I sent it to Mavor Moore (1919-2006), and I don’t have to tell you who he was, do I? Anyway, I knew him well enough to show him Signy.

His response was generous and enthusiastic. I still remember what he wrote: “This is a wonderful play and must be done!” How could I forget? So I sent it to to Gascon at the Festival and to Leon Major at Toronto Arts productions (St. Lawrence Centre) , with notes from Mavor. Leon responded by asking me to write a second adaptation of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People. My first one had been produced at the Manitoba Theatre Centre in 1963., directed by John HIrsch. This one was produced by TAP in 1972, I think, directed by Leon Major.

Jean Gascon responded by not making passes at me any more. He didn’t like smart women, not that smart. I saw his reaction when he put his habitual gesture together with the person he was making it to. At a party (always a party) one night he began to greet me with his customary sexy hug but then then he remembered (“My God, she writes plays!”), cut his gesture abruptly and moved away as quickly as he could.

This is more about me than you care to know. I will go on with Stratford and Bill Wylie.

Tomorrow.