When Guy Sprung, Artistic Director of Infinitheatre asked the editors of Poetry Quebec to attend a reading of Arthur Holden’s play Ars Poetica that they were going to mount in both editors had the same question in mind. Why a play about poetry? This question reflected more on our incredulity that others outside of poetry cared about poetry than on the director’s choice. After the reading of the play which is set in the Montreal English Language community there was a round table discussion with the actors, director, playwright and us. We were asked to give feedback about the “poetic” content of the play. We did. Afterwards we thought that it would be of interest to our readers to read an interview with the playwright and the director. The following is the one with Arthur Holden.
Poetry Quebec: Are you a native Quebecer? If not, where are you originally from? Why did you come to Quebec?
Arthur Holden: I was born in Montreal. On my father’s side, my family has been in the city for well over a century. My mother is the daughter of a Greek immigrant father and a Quebecoise mother.
PQ: Like F.R. Scott, A.M Klein and writers in Montreal, you were trained to be a lawyer. What prompted you to leave this career behind to become a writer? Do you see any similarities between the two careers?
AH: I believe it was Mort Zuckerman (another Montrealer who turned his back on the profession) who said, “Law is the opposite of sex. Even when it’s great, it’s lousy.” But that’s unfair. The callings of law and literature place the highest value on the same virtues: clarity, conviction and grace. So the transition was fairly natural. Or would have been: in fact, I stopped practising law to become an actor – a profession that is even more similar to lawyering than writing. It was only later, and incrementally, that I became a playwright.
PQ: When did you start writing plays and why did this particular art form appeal to you?
AH: I started writing my first stage play, Father Land, in 2007, after years of supplementing my acting income with cartoon translation and TV script work. The attraction of playwriting is, I imagine, similar to that of poetry: it’s an art form in which one is encouraged to shed restraint and embrace one’s idiosyncrasies – in other words, to have a style.
PQ: Do you think that writing in English in Quebec is a political act? Why or why not?
AH: Great question. Let’s leave aside the valid but unhelpfully broad observation that all writing is ultimately political. I think writing in English in Quebec has evolved into a metapolitical activity. Its political ramification lies precisely in the fact that it’s no longer an act laden with political baggage. (Of course, if Michel Tremblay started writing in English, that would be political. But let’s not lose sleep worrying.) By and large, I think Anglo Quebecers have come around to understanding – or, among those who don’t really understand, at least accepting with resignation – that there is a nation called Quebec, and that English-speakers play a vital role in mediating that nation’s perception of the immense continental culture in which it subsists. Which leads nicely to your next question…
PQ: Do you think that being a minority in Quebec (i.e. English-speaking) affects your writing? If so, how?
AH: My mother is a French-speaker who has published several novels in English. My father was a self-proclaimed defender of Anglo rights who eventually sat in the National Assembly as a Péquiste. I know very few people in Quebec whose origins and attachments all tend in one linguistic direction. So no, my minority status, such as it is, doesn’t affect my writing – except to the small extent of providing fodder for a joke or two in Ars Poetica.
PQ: Who were your early influences and what appealed to you about their work?
AH: I remember seeing Arden Ryshpan, now national director of the Canadian Actors’ Equity Association, playing the title role in Puss in Boots at Westmount Park School in 1968. I thought, “I want to do that.” What appealed to me about Arden’s performance and more generally about theatre, from the very beginning, was the sheer fun of it. Like poetry, it’s a job that never feels like work.
PQ: Which, if any, Quebec playwrights do you admire? Why?
AH: Jean-Rock Gaudreault, Évelyne de la Chenelière, René-Daniel Dubois: playwrights who turn the personal into the universal.
PQ: Do you like to travel? How important is travel to your writing? Explain.
AH: I’m not a traveller, much to the chagrin of my adventurous spouse Claire Rothman. The wide world amazes, confounds and sometimes intimidates me; but it doesn’t feed my writing in its wideness; only in its intimate particulars.
PQ: What is the toughest part of writing for you?
AH: Sitting down to do it. I’m an excuse-maker and procrastinator.
PQ: What is your idea of a muse?
AH: “Muse” isn’t quite the right word for me. I find that my creative impulses don’t derive from persons, but from situations. My first play, Father Land, arose from the powerful reaction I had to Qusay Hussein’s predicament: the father of a teenaged boy, unable to save him from an impacable enemy. Similarly, the idea for Ars Poetica came to me from watching various small theatre companies scrabble for survival in the volatile and erotically-charged world of the arts.
PQ: Do you have a writing ritual? Do you have a favourite time and place to write? If so, provide details.
AH: I try to treat writing as a job. I have a small office space in my home, in which I sit down each morning and endeavour to work. But endeavour isn’t achievement. In practice, I find that I’m productive at night. With a laptop. And nothing stronger than a glass of water beside me.
PQ: How many drafts do you usually go through before you are satisfied/finished AH: I guess the key word in that question is “satisfied”. Satisfied is a hard thing to be. To complicate matters, as I’ll discuss later, my own satisfaction isn’t the only consideration. Father Land went through half a dozen drafts before rehearsals began. Ars Poetica has had about the same number of iterations and isn’t yet on its feet. But soon.
PQ: What is your approach to writing plays: inspiration driven, structural, social, thematic, other? What is your working definition of drama/play?
AH: As I mentioned earlier, I start with a situation – a situation which is personal in its scope. It’s about someone wanting – or fearing, or needing – something, and having to surmount obstacles to achieve her desire. Which leads to my working definition: a play is a staged narrative about characters struggling to realize their desires. The struggle needn’t be won or lost conclusively, but by the end of the play, the protagonists should at least have arrived at a clearer sense of why they were struggling, and whether the effort was worth it. I will confess, I’m not a fan of the more overtly political forms of theatre, which I find obtuse and reductive. Not that there isn’t an abundance of compelling drama in the political sphere. But a play can’t subsist on a contest of abstract principles. To me, a play needs human resonance. Richard III, Oedipus, Medea: these are fully realized characters moving in the circles of power; what catches our attention and holds our sympathy is their complicated humanity. We can watch and retell their stories endlessly. The continuing allure for some theatre artists of Berthold Brecht’s plays, so diagrammatic, populated by stick figures mouthing slogans, puzzles me.
PQ: What form do your plays take? Realist, absurd, satiric ?
AH: I may not be the best person to answer that. I’m not sure I have a fully objective sense of what I do. But I would say I work in the realm of heightened realism. The world I create originates in something recognizably our own; but I ratchet up the intensity. Engagingly, I hope.
PQ: How do you go about creating dialogue?
AH: I proceed from character and situation. If I create a poetry editor, say, who is smart and circumspect and facing an irate printer, I’ll try to find a way to embody that poetry editor’s traits – and her predicament – in the things she says and the way she says them.
PQ: How do you create character through dialogue?
AH: I’d say I do it the other way around: I create dialogue from what I know of the character; hoping the audience will then deduce the qualities of the character from the dialogue.
PQ: Poets are usually solo/solitary creators. Playwrights are as well but then their creation becomes communal property. How do you deal with the input of others (e.g. directors, actors, etc.)? How does it affect your original vision?
AH: The big question: how does solitary playwriting become collaborative playmaking? I imagine the answer depends on the playwright, the director and the actors. Ars Poetica will be directed by Guy Sprung, who also directed Father Land. Guy is a loyal and supportive director. He makes it clear from the outset that final say on text is the playwright’s. It’s a principle he respects scrupulously. And precisely because he does respect the principle, he considers it his right – his duty – to question any structural and dramaturgical choices which he thinks may undermine the play. And he raises those questions with a directness that can be disconcerting. But, as he told me very early in our first collaboration, “A playwright has only two things to do: write the play, then defend it. If you can’t do both, it won’t be your play for long.” So when Guy makes suggestions, he doesn’t hold back. Arguments sometimes ensue. I try to stay open-minded. More often than not, I’ll eventually agree with his ideas. When I don’t agree, I have to stand by my views. And he will unfailingly – if not always gladly – respect my authorial choice. As for actors, it’s never happened to me that they raised huge textual objections. Typically, they’ll suggest a modification in lines here and there to make them more natural. I almost always go along with such suggestions. The result of all these discussions is, I imagine, something like what an architect goes through as a building goes into construction. The edifice is recognizably of the architect’s design, but the details of execution are, and must be, the work of the builders. When the thing is finally standing, all can share in the proprietary feeling of creation. I wouldn’t have it otherwise.
PQ: What made you want to write Ars Poetica? (i.e. Why a play about an English language poetry magazine in Montreal?)
AH: As I mentioned earlier, Ars Poetica began to take shape in my imagination as I watched little arts companies, mostly theatres, but also book publishers and film producers, struggle to survive in an environment where the hours are long, the money is short, and everyone is sleeping with everyone else (at least in the imagination). I thought about the extent to which each of these little companies is sustained by the work of one or two people, who tend to be versatile, quick on their feet, and ready to do whatever it takes to keep their little vessel afloat. Thus did Julia and George, the driving forces behind my eponymous periodical, Ars Poetica, come into being. Poetry, even the darkest poetry, is an expression of joy. It’s bereft of utility and utterly indispensable. I wanted that truth to become the sustaining paradox of a story about the struggle to keep a little magazine alive. Money is needed; but money is never the point. My aim was to make a comedy – thoughtful, but not too thoughtful – about the imperfect, self-serving, but nonetheless sincere love that informs artistic creation. Whether I’ve succeeded is something only you and other audience members can decide. Speaking of which, I hope you’ll review Ars Poetica in Poetry Quebec.
PQ: What experience is this play based on?
AH: The play is informed, as I’ve said, by what I’ve seen of a variety of cultural enterprises over the years. But it’s not based on any specific incident or undertaking. It really is true, as the saying goes, that the characters and events in the play are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
PQ: What is the theme of this play?
AH: Money is good. Art is better.
PQ: What are the characters looking for? What do they discover?
AH: Their immediate shared objective is the survival of the poetry magazine. But what they’re all looking for is a little appreciation. What they discover, if I may reformulate a well-known British verse, is that while you can’t always get what you want, you’ll usually get some of what you want, and often more than you need.
PQ: What insights do you hope the audience will gain about the role of art in the individual/collective from seeing this play?
AH: I guess I said it earlier. Poetry is useless and necessary. It demands, and expresses, our love. If Ars Poetica provokes in audiences that giddy thing Yeats describes – to laugh like a string whereon mad fingers play – I’ll be very happy.
Arthur Holden is a Montreal actor and writer. He has appeared in numerous film and television productions and is the voice of Mr. Ratburn in the long-running PBS cartoon series “Arthur”. Onstage, he was in the cast of Infinitheatre’s world premiere production of David Sherman’s hit play “The Daily Miracle” under Guy Sprung’s direction in 2010. In that same year, his own play “Father Land” was also produced by Infinitheatre with the same director. His newest play, “Ars Poetica”, is being produced by Infinitheatre, once again under Guy Sprung’s direction. The production will run at the Bain Saint-Michel, 5300 rue St-Dominique, from January 17 to February 12, 2012. Arthur Holden is married to novelist Claire Holden Rothman. They have two grown sons.
