All stories about the Dome (that is, when it really was the Dome) begin and end with Bertrand A. Henry . . .
That year was a cacophony of catastrophes (does anyone sense a pattern here?). We were, as I said, at Centaur, although soon we were working out of the Dome as a set, prop and costume workshop and we had also lost Riverside and were giving classes at both Richelieu and Selby campuses. We had become like Dawson itself – scattered all over the city. The second show up that year was going to be Vaclav Havel’s Memorandum directed by me. You remember Havel: political prisoner, leader of the Velvet Revolution, first democratically elected president of Czechoslovakia, absurdist playwright and political hero of Rock and Roll, by Tom Stoppard. They named the Prague airport after him. Anyway, that was the plan.
What happened instead was that the CEGEP teachers went on strike and it continued right into the rehearsal period for the play. Technically there were supposed to be no classes – and therefore no rehearsals– but Bert had wrangled permission from the Union for us to rehearse as long as we did not do it on any property rented by Dawson College (and thereby cross picket lines). That was a real concern because the Union was at its most radical then and violence at the picket line was on everybody’s mind. The reasoning for the rehearsals was that if the strike was resolved before opening night, then the acting students would not lose their semester in performance. So, we ended up in a dismal and filthy room in old Montreal that someone had arranged for and we were sustained only by our battered esprit and the creative stage managing of Emma Richler (yes, that Richler) who had worked for me at The Piggery the summer before.
The strike did not resolve before opening and a crisis loomed. Three days before opening there was an emergency meeting involving two top union people, a rep from the College, Maurice Podbrey (Artistic Director of Centaur), Bert and myself. The atmosphere was acrimonious and the whole thing had become very public because the show was being advertised and the Press was taking notice of a potential conflict. The College’s position was that they had rented Centaur and they had a contract. The union wanted the show shut down or they would picket it, and the students wanted the show to open or it would all have been a waste of time rehearsing. Bert wanted to have his own way and Maurice wanted everything to go away. At some point, Bert launched into a rhetorically tortured speech that must have gone on for half an hour. I do not have the ability, possessed by the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, to remember every speech he had ever heard, word for word, even years later, so I will just say this. Bert somehow managed to argue for everyone’s position and then to suggest and insist that we were all in agreement that the show should open and it was Maurice’s moral duty to make it so. When he was finished there was a slack-jawed silence in the room. Finally, Maurice said: “Bert, I haven’t a clue what you just said.” Apparently, no one else did either.
At that point a break was in order and during that break Maurice asked me about the students and the rehearsals and the program. When we resumed, he had a suggestion: what if we performed the show as a benefit for the Union strike fund. The College lost nothing because the take at the door (which was small because we only charged a few dollars) always went to the department’s budget anyway and the contract would be honoured, the Union got some money but also positive publicity and the students and the department got the show. It was a genius idea and we rolled with it. Everyone looked like heroes. In the course of the run the strike ended and everybody was even happier.
The last show we did that year was The Three Sisters and the summer began with a number of positive decisions by Dawson. Whether it was the exposure that Dawson got from being at Centaur or the realization that it was costing an enormous amount of money to rent both Centaur AND the Dome or just that wisdom that comes with age; but the College decided that it was time to renovate the Dome for real. They actually set aside a big chunk of money and launched the process under the direction of Pierre Beaulieu (Boileau to Bert).In another piece of luck, I happened to ask an old friend who was the Quebec agent for Strand lighting whether he knew anyone who might be able to construct for us a catwalk for the Dome. For those who don’t know, up until 1983 the lighting at the Dome was suspended from a hanging grid that had a tendency to sway (a lot) and was accessed by a rolling piece of scaffolding. Being on lighting crew was more dangerous than insulting Martin Nuefeld. My friend said that he would ask around and called me up a week later to inform me that there was a catwalk being stored unused, in pieces, in the basement of Place des Arts; ordered, built but never assembled or used. Would I like to look at it? And I would and I did and I discussed it with Pierre and it was bought, adapted and welded to the real ceiling of the of the Dome (not the suspended plaster one that we see from the ground) by three one-eyed welders. (You can’t make this stuff up.) The renovation was under way.
The next season (our last at Centaur) was We Can’t Pay, We Won’t Pay (Howard Ryshpan), Arsenic and Old Lace (Victor Knight)and the final show that we ever did at Centaur was Bert’s (3rd)Major, An Enemy of the People, and it was a beast. The set consisted of enormous walls made of barn wood that had to be hauled around the stage at set change intervals by an absolutely gigantic running crew. In fact, the running crew was larger than the cast (and some were in the cast for the crowd scene) and had to spend every show sitting in the Centaur dressing rooms waiting for their cue to wait in the wings for set change cue. The stage had so many spike marks that the audience believed that it glowed in the dark. Because it did.
It was during the run of this show that work was mostly completed on the Dome renovation. It meant that I had to keep tabs on the wor kand so could not direct a major that year. But I had a lot of fun with a studio of Pleasure and Repentance at Atwater Library. The renovation gave us, in the coming fall, a new and vastly improved Dome. It also meant that I and a number of students (special mention to Cynthia Shaw), had a huge summer job ahead of us: preparing the new theatre for re-occupation. While the catwalk had been finished (it swayed a bit too) there were miles and miles of cable to be run, a new lighting system to be installed and a thousand costumes to be cleaned. Between the fall of 1982 and the spring of 1984, the work did not cease for even one week. It was during that time period that I began to think (when I had the time to think) that there must be an easier way to earn a living. And a saner. But first it was time to settle into the new theatre – and design a new Program.
