The Black Theatre Workshop (BTW): An Artistic Cultural Experience in Canadian Diversity.

Introduction. The Black Theatre Workshop (Le Theatre BTW Inc.) evolves out of the Drama Committee of the Trinidad and Tobago Association of Montreal (October 1965-1985). It is the oldest surviving professional English speaking Black theatre company in Canada. In Montreal, it shares the stage with Centaur Theatre and the Saidye Bronfman Centre as the oldest companies that continue to present theatre in English to Montreal audiences. Black Theatre Workshop (BTW) boldly declares itself to be a Black company. It is dedicated to encouraging a truly harmonious Canadian society through drama and the performing arts. It has a long history as an advocate of Black culture, and dedication to the advancement of the theatre arts, the works of Black artists or works that include Blacks in a meaningful way in Canadian society. It participates in Quebec's cultural future by contributing to the cultural life of Montreal and the pursuit of excellence in the arts as one of the hallmarks of its contributions.

The Company's public releases, brochures, press kits, annual reports, theatre programmes state that it seeks always to make Black people proud and to instill pride into the youth of the Black community. Its current President, Ms J. Webb, considers taking theatre to Black and other youth in schools and community halls, a moral imperative for the company. The company's mission encapsulates these beliefs, values, and purposes in its commitments and mission: "to encourage and promote the development of a Black Canadian theatre, rooted in a literature that reflects the creative will of Black Canadian writers and artists, and the creative collaborations between Black and other artists. BTW aims to promote and produce Black theatre that educates, entertains and delights its audiences. The company strives to create a greater cross-cultural understanding by its presence and the intrinsic value of its work."

A study done in 1999 for the BTW (The Susan Grundy Report, 1999) (1) strongly suggests that the older Blacks in the community have a strong emotional attachment to the company. But the same study and an anthropological market analysis by Joy and Bayne (2) state that, while the goodwill to the company continues to be very strong, there seemed to be a separation from the youth and a sense that there is an imbalance in the "gift exchange" between the company and the Black community. However, there is a considerable amount of information documenting the love affair between BTW and its communities. Mr. Garvin Jeffers, a retired Principal of Westmount High School in Montreal writing for a local community magazine (Focus 1982 Issue), captures the essence of collective proprietorship, passion and goodwill in the by line "Black Theatre Workshop is the Soul of Black people." A study of national and local news paper reviews of the company's work provided evidence of critical approval of the Company's work and on occasions urged the funding agencies to give greater support of the company. Gazette 1978: "The Ginger Bread Lady is a highly polished piece of theatre (Cecilia Blanchfield)". The Chronicle Herald, Halifax: "Quality on a Shoestring", Le Devoir, June 1979; Raisin in the Sun: "Ce Raisin in the Sun" ... c'est le reeve parfaitement incame par le Black Theatre Workshop." June 1981, Sunday Express, "River Niger Powerful." Gazette, June 8, 1985: "'Home', a show you won't want to miss" (Pat Donnelley). Gazette Jan 1985: "Do Yourself a Favor- see 'Colored Girls' ". (Marianne Ackerman) Sunday Express. "Black Theatre Workshop has unbeatable hit on its hands"(Myron Galloway). Despite these accolades, funding has been demonstrably very slow in coming, considerably slower than has been the case with mainstream companies that were founded at about the same time as BTW. Meanwhile, costs escalated with its professional designation while the purchasing power of scarce dollars shrank in the face of price inflation in the eighties. Moreover, exceptionally high interest rates drove up the costs of the Company's overdrafts. The perception of imbalance in the distribution of the cultural dollars created and continues to create great tensions between the BTW and the cultural funding agencies. The leaders in the Black community, successive artistic directors, and governors of the company have at one time or another feuded with the various cultural agencies (especially Canada Council) about, what seems to them, to be unfair treatment of the company and its staff This is what the Artistic/Associate Artistic Director had to say to the funding agencies in the 19992000 grant application: "I cannot afford to earn this sort of salary for very long. If the company is to have the kind of artistic continuity it deserves, the staff salaries will have to increase."

Nine years earlier (1991, another Artistic Director had expressed the same agonizing plea to the president: "I am forty; I too want a family, a car, and the things that normal people want". Then three years later when nothing happened he quit. Two years after he quit, the company was described, by one funding agency, as lacking artistic direction. Surprise!!! The funding situation from Canada Council got even worse.

A detailed review of the files and financial documents of the company shows that the administration and supporters of the organization valued and strived to achieve and maintain fiscal responsibility and artistic excellence. The minutes and various reports going back to 1974 show a pre-occupation with detailed planning and the desire to express pride through excellence in the theatre and other performing arts. Loyalty to the Company and commitment to the discipline of training was exacted from members of the group throughout the seventies and eighties. On March 29 1976, David Edgecombe, member at large and student in the theatre arts at Concordia, presented the Board with a discussion document entitled, "A list of Things Which Must be Carried Out if Group is to function efficiently and effectively." A Memorandum dated August 1 1976 makes reference to a series of planning meetings and discussions with the members throughout the 1974-5 and 1975-6 seasons that "set goals to reach professional excellence in its performances and above all, to present and project Black culture." In that same Memorandum, notice was given that a disciplinary committee was being set up to investigate the reasons that two members of the company "absented themselves without notice on Saturday 30 July [1976] , while the company was involved in a critical production situation." Since its inception in 1972, there is no evidence that puts at question BTW's commitment to the principle of excellence as the hallmark of its performance. But there is much evidence that it believes that the indicators of excellence used by the cultural funding agencies and White critics were external, even alien, to the community's own sense or perceptions of excellence and relevance (Various Board and Artistic Reports, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s). Moreover, they felt that the amount of funding to BTW did not, and still does not adequately take into consideration the cost implications of the benchmarks of excellence that are specified as criteria for funding. C. Bayne, a Past President, frequently referred to this as the "false god of excellence". The history of BTW therefore deserves more than a chronological listing of its successes, and failures. We need a backdrop that will contextualize the events, the passion and frustrations that motivated the organization. We will also address within the theoretical framework of life cycle analysis some of the observations made by Joy, Baldrey, and Bayne above. It is first important to sketch the demographic context in which the story unfolds, and the socio-political situations that gave rise to the creation of the BTW.

Demographics. Clearly anyone can produce plays by or about or involving Blacks. It does not require a Black run company to make that a reality. But it does require the existence of Black peoples whose actions and lives attract the attention of the writers, actors, producers, and other stakeholders. Moreover, the situation we are addressing here is much more complex than the technical production of a play or readings of work. We are talking of the performing arts as self-definition, the re-creation of self, the search for purpose, and location in an emerging society. There has been Blacks in Quebec as far back as 1660. Thus there is a story to be told. Until recently the numbers have been small. The 1960 census showed that there were fewer than 10,000 Blacks living in Census Metropolitan Area of Montreal. The census recorded 6,000. But this was generally believed to be an understatement due to the misclassification resulting from the census variable used to identify Blacks. In 1960, almost all Blacks living in Quebec were concentrated in Montreal and surrounding areas. That continues to be the case. The population consisted mainly of Blacks that had migrated from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, some Blacks that had emigrated from the Caribbean during World War II to join the war effort, and a growing number of Caribbean students who graduated from Canadian universities and acquired resident status. These Blacks were almost entirely English speaking. The change in the linguistic composition of the population began in the mid-seventies, reflecting the change in Quebec's language policies and its impact on immigration to Quebec.

The changes in numbers and linguistic composition of the Black population have had a major social and cultural impact on the demographics of that population and its influence on the society. In the immediate post-World War II period (1946-50), Europe, USA and Australia accounted for 95.3 percent of immigration to Canada. By the 1968-73 periods they accounted for 53.4 percent. By contrast, immigrants from Central and South America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and other third world countries that accounted for a mere 4.7 percent in 1946-50 saw a rise in their contributions to 46.6 percent by the 1968-73 period. According to census reports, in 1971 only 5.2 percent of the immigrant population on the island of Montreal was from Africa and 4.8 percent from the Americas and the Caribbean.

By 1986 these percentages increased to 6.8 and 15.2 percent respectively (3). The greatest increase was recorded by the Asiatic population, which represented 17.2 percent of the immigrant population in 1986. These dramatic shifts in sources of immigration to Canada reflect worldwide changes in social and political philosophies: the spread of democratic principles after World War II, declining birth rates in Canada, in particular Quebec; and the dramatic increase in economic and political refugees from the third world. But the most important implications for the purposes of this paper are the effect of this new immigration on the cultural diversification of the mainstream as well as non-mainstream established cultural communities. This diversification introduced new habits, customs, values, tastes, mores and cultures. It changed the patterns of consumption choices; introduced new demand for different goods and services: non-traditional music, foods, sport, and entertainment. It has raised serious questions in arts community of Montreal about the future audiences. A conference at HEC, 1998, focused on the likely structure of future cultural organizations best suited to meet the needs of an audience rapidly changing to reflect the dynamics of aging traditional populations; and their replacement by eclectic and culturally diverse immigrant populations (4). Professer Annick Germain's paper, "Montreal: Laboratoire de cosmopolitisme entre deux mondes", notes that " plusieurs quartiers identifies h une ou deux communautes culturelles specifiques sont devenus beaucoup plus multiethniques ... Cette realite nouvelle par son ampleur et son extension change l'image que l'on se faisait des enclaves ethniques marquees par une ou deux communautes culturelles particulieres (5)".

In the Black community, the small indigenous Black population was overwhelmed by the new Caribbean immigrant populations, both in terms of their numbers and their social and political activism. Studies based on Statistics Canada Census reports show that the Black population in Montreal increased from 6 000 in 1960 to 49,115 in 1981 to 73, 975 in 1986. It is estimated that the Black population in Montreal 1990 exceeded 110,000 (6).

Most of the growth in the population of Quebec is directly and indirectly a result of immigration. The Caribbean, including Haiti, is major contributors. Statistics collected by the Government of Quebec (Immigration Quebec) on immigrants admitted to Quebec by language and country of birth strongly support the view that more than 60,000 Blacks came to Quebec between 1969 and 1983. While this data source does not allow a test of accuracy, this count is a reasonable indicator of the relative importance of the contribution of the various sub-populations to total Black immigration to Quebec. According to the data collected, it would seem that 85 percent of all Blacks that came to Quebec in that period were from the Caribbean and South America (Guyana, Brazil). Slightly more than 60 percent came from Haiti. Prior to 1970, more than 80 percent of all Black immigrants to Quebec came from the English speaking Caribbean. In fact Haiti accounted for less than 15 percent. This began to change after 1975. In the period 1975-79, approximately 63 percent of all Black immigrants to Quebec were from Haiti. This increased to 77 percent in the period 1981-83. The increasing importance of francophone Blacks in Quebec was further re-enforced by the fact that one in every three English speaking Black immigrants tends to leave Quebec after arriving here while Haitians tend to stay (7). The new patterns and rate of immigration were not only changing the demographics of Canada's metropolitan areas, but were also dramatically changing the dynamics of the relationships within the Black community and between that community and mainstream society. The rise in intensity of Quebec nationalism and the legislating of French as the official language, plus the increase in the number of Black French speaking immigrants to Quebec gave a new dimension to the linguistic debate in the Black community and the delivery of services to that community.

It would soon become clear that if Black institutions were going to serve all Black people that language would have to be a serious consideration. The Drama Committee of the Trinidad and Tobago Association and its creation, the Black Workshop, would discover that, notwithstanding the assumptions of a common heritage, they could not ignore the eclecticism of its peoples and the differences in the needs of the two language groups in its midst, or for that matter the geographic origins of these populations. Thus when the Drama Committee decided to produce Professor Lorris Elliott's play "How Now Black Man" and approached Jeff Henry (a professional choreographer and dance master at National Theatre School) to be the director, they soon found out that this would only happen if the group became more inclusive of all Blacks: African, Canadian, American, Haitian, the various West Indian Islands, in fact the Diaspora. More specifically, an agreement was reached that the group would turn its attentions to exploring all forms of Black theatrical expression. It would open up the boundaries of the Black Workshop. For this reason, the Trinidad and Tobago Association agreed to be the producer, and the show was billed "Black Workshop presents How Now Blackman, by Professor Lorris Elliott". Twenty seven years later, at the AfriCanadian Playwrights Festival, Toronto, April 19 2000, Lorena Gale (Author of "Angelique", Canadian Playwrights Union, April 2000) tells the workshop participants, "BTW taught me that it is possible to have a theatre where it did not matter whether you were from Jamaica, Trinidad, Africa, England, the USA, Nova Scotia, Ontario, or wherever. You were welcomed because you were Black. It didn't matter whether they liked you or not. You had a right to be there; and they respected that."

With the increase in the number of Blacks to Montreal and Quebec, came demands for equity and recognition. In what one writer popularized as the "Sir George Williams Computer Party", it was the Caribbean students that under the banner of "Black Power" raised the barriers of occupation at the Sir George Williams campus in Concordia University challenging the system to deal with them equitably. The new Caribbean communities, faced with "benevolent neglect" and virtual exclusion from mainstream society in Quebec, responded by creating over a hundred new associations and institutions between 1960 and 1975: religious, cultural, sport, educational, social, political, entertainment. They created a new theatre (Black Theatre Workshop) initially with a distinct Caribbean cultural focus different from the old Negro Theatre Guild, festivals (Vue d'Afrique, Rythme du Monde), carnivals (Carifete, later named Carifiesta, the precursors of Caribanna). They marched to demand freedom and a rightful place in Canada and Quebec society. They danced in the streets to celebrate and express themselves. They wrote pamphlets(The New World Bulletin), tracts, published papers(Moa, Uhuru, Contrast, The Black Voice, The Afro-Canadian, Community Contact) magazines(Focus, The Black I, Kola) as they bravely attempted to create a New World in a land where, according to Bayne (8),

"Mama! I ... discover new trues me never know ah yard. That Black is the negative to White. That if yuh poor yuh na exist ....Here unemployment is the monopoly of Blacks ... [and] Freedom is a figment of impossible democracy ... Yes Mama this is a land of contradicting diversities, where Truth dances to the inconstant Borealis." It is against this changing landscape and the continuous search for truth and self definition that the Black Theatre Workshop began its journey, one that was to grow to include a wide representation of Diaspora Blacks, mostly immigrants in Canada in search of an illusive single voice. In its early logo, "Black Theatre Workshop", "Black" became a unifying cultural symbol that has withstood several attempts to mute it. The most successful to date has been the acronym, BTW.