“And this
our life exempt from public haunt
Finds
tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in
stones and good in every thing.”
Growing up in the 1980s in Newfoundland, I was witness to a
cultural revolution that changed our perception of place and recalibrated the
value we put on our community. For the twenty years previous, as relatively new
members of the Canadian confederation, we were in the tail end of a push to
burn our boats, lose the accents, and move into the future. Rural culture was
considered more and more backwards, Newfie jokes were in full swing, and the
crackling beginnings of an oil-driven future that might hold some wealth seemed
possible if not probable. My mother was hit with a ruler for speaking with her
southern shore brogue in school, and urban rock and roll took over at dances in
town and around the bay. People left the outports in droves.
Sensing that loss, in the late 1970s and 1980s the St. John’s-based musicians Figgy Duff
began making journeys out to the tiny coves and inlets to record the people who
knew the old songs, and the theatre troupe Sheila’s Brush began to record the
traditional folktales and dances. George Storey began his massive work The
Dictionary of Newfoundland English.
These were all part and parcel of the recognition and legitimizing of the
culture which now has become, in a wonderful strange way, an economic tourism
lifeline to the province at a time when the once crackling oil prices are
failing.
One of the signatures of Newfoundland culture is that it is
not performative but participatory. As you reach into your bag and become part
of a starry night, an ocean, a sheep, a whale, a fish or a fire, you’re being a
part of a kitchen-party culture, a dance-together culture – wherein the art is
not to be examined or observed but to be experienced by all of us, together in
a circle.
As You Like It is a love story, an
argument to recognize the good of rural living, and a couples dance.
This production is based on a traditional dance called “Running the
Goat,” a legacy left by the now resettled community of Harbour Deep.
I’d like to thank my friends and colleagues at the National
Arts Centre English Theatre; Kelly Russell, Tonya Kearley and their Bell Island
Dancers; Margaret Chang for teaching me what the word culture
means; Audrey Sturino, Marcus Jamin, The Old MUN Extension, Susan Knight, Shane
O’Dea, and Chris Brookes; Andy Jones, Phil Dinn and the members of
Sheila’s Brush dead and living who danced the dance; Figgy Duff; Codco; and all
of the wonderful skeets and scullys and baymen and townies who inspired
the production.