Theatre R.F.D.
by Thomas Canfield
In The Drawer Boy, playwright Michael Healey weaves a poignant drama about the terrible price of war, the palliative art of storytelling and the therapeutic power of theatre. Set against the rural canvas of an isolated Ontario farm in 1972, the play also chronicles a landmark experiment in Canadian theatre history and its dynamic impact on performers and audiences.
When Miles, a young actor from Toronto, interrupts the lonely lives of Morgan and Angus, two bachelor farmers in their mid-fifties, he unleashes a chain of events that eventually culminates in life-altering transformations for all three men. Although their story is not based on actual events from the archives of history, Healey drew inspiration for The Drawer Boy from a watershed theatrical experiment that culminated in The Farm Show, a 1972 documentary play. This legendary event in Canadian theatre history, considered to be an artistic milestone, was the brainchild of pioneering director Paul Thompson. Thompson co-founded the Théâtre Passe Muraille (“Theatre Without Walls”) in Toronto with Jim Garrard in 1968. An example of “collective creation,” The Farm Show was an innovative, grassroots project that began as an informal outgrowth of Rochdale College, a counter-cultural community in Toronto.
Often aligned with the people’s theatre movement, collective creation is a form of documentary or ethnographic theatre. Artists enter a community, research a theme and invent works that speak to and about the specific group on which they are based. Through improvisation, both the content and the structure of a play are developed. Collective creation attempts to engage audience members by sparking a dialogue on current events. Often, the results are socially conscious or politically oriented. During his tenure as artistic director of the Passe Muraille from 1971-82, Thompson supervised more than 30 collective creation projects.
To formulate the unique theatrical experience of The Farm Show, actors visited, lived and labored alongside farm families in the community of Clinton, located in the rural heartland of southern Ontario. The stories they garnered evolved into an alternative theatrical production that was dedicated to the farmers they encountered. Much of the script came directly from actual conversation. The final result, first presented to locals in Ray Bird’s cattle-auction barn in Clinton, had no lights, costumes or set, and hay bales provided seating. Actors played roles as farmers, animals, and even agricultural machinery. The delight that audiences had in hearing and observing their own language and culture was unexpected, and the production proved highly successful.
After Ted Johns, a writer with the Théâtre Passe Muraille, transcribed the script, The Farm Show took to the road and toured Canada. It first played in the city of Toronto, then at cattle markets, auction barns and community halls in southwestern Ontario, and subsequently in the provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The revolutionary project also inspired a CBS television documentary produced by prize-winning Canadian novelist and poet Michael Ondaatje. The Clinton Special: A Film About the Farm Show (1974) documents the project’s impact on local audiences, who were spellbound. When interviewed, many recalled the production as a high point in their theatrical experience.
In the summer of 1995, Healey worked as an actor with the Blyth Festival, located just north of Clinton. Founded in 1975, the festival produces theatre that reflects the culture and concerns of the people of southwestern Ontario. There, Healey encountered many of the original farmers and community members whose stories had inspired The Farm Show. Intrigued by the long-standing impact of the original production, the Toronto-based playwright developed the premise for The Drawer Boy, which was his first full-length play. In 1999, Healey’s play premiered at the Théâtre Passe Muraille, the same theatre where, 27 years earlier, The Farm Show had its Toronto debut. Miles Potter, an original cast member and co-creator of The Farm Show (whom Healey used as inspiration for the fictional character of Miles), directed the production. Angus was played by David Fox, another cast member and co-creator of the original production.
As the characters in The Drawer Boy embark upon a journey of awakening and self-realization, each unearths a unique, personal reality that is either forgotten, concealed or undiscovered. The two older men, companions from childhood, have lived and worked together for approximately 30 years since returning from military duty in World War II. Angus, who suffered a brain injury during bombing in the London Blitz, is a mathematical savant with a diminished short-term memory and childlike approach to the world. Plagued with fierce, intermittent headaches, Angus occupies himself with making sandwiches, baking bread and dispensing an imaginary tonic that he spoons from the kitchen faucet. Meanwhile, Morgan buries himself in the daily drudgery of farm work. Every evening, Angus requests that Morgan recite the story of their past with the two English women to whom they were once engaged, an exercise that forms their nightly ritual. The intimate and complex dependency of these two characters has often been compared to the relationship between George and Lennie in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.
Miles offers to help out with the chores in exchange for a hands-on opportunity to conduct research for an improvisational theatre piece about farming. The no-nonsense Morgan, amenable to the idea of free labor, puts Miles to work as a farmhand. However, the city boy knows nothing about typical workaday farming tasks, such as driving a tractor, milking cows, putting up hay or gathering eggs. In more ways than one, this is a coming-of-age experience for him. Morgan puts the gullible young actor through his paces by telling Miles tall tales and making wry sport of his inexperience. As mishaps ensue, Morgan’s patience runs thin and he assigns Miles the most absurd and tedious duties, preferring to keep the actor occupied and out of trouble. While theatrical inspiration is the primary purpose of Miles’s bucolic quest, he ultimately proves to be a quick study and becomes more agriculturally adroit than his hosts imagine.
During the course of his apprenticeship, Miles stumbles upon the personal history of the two men when he overhears Morgan recounting the tale of Angus’s tragic injury and the aftermath. Soon, art imitates life when Miles holds up a mirror to the two and appropriates the story of Morgan, “the farmer boy,” and Angus, the once-artistic “drawer boy,” for a vignette in his theatre project. After Morgan and Angus attend a rehearsal and see their tale enacted onstage, the experience becomes a catalyst that opens a window into Angus’s long-buried, clouded memories. Unpeeling forgotten and concealed truths layer by layer, Angus gradually begins to piece together his fragmented memories in search of the past. In the process, he threatens to expose the cleverly-crafted, fictional history that has acted as a coping mechanism for the two farmers–a convenient crutch that props up their pain of their lives and allows them to skirt the truth. The resurrection of Angus’s wounded memories threatens to shatter the comfortable, predictable security of his and Morgan’s existence and forces them to reexamine their past.
Farming may seem like an usual subject for dramatic contemplation but, like The Farm Show that inspired it, The Drawer Boy bridges the gap between the rural and the urban while crossing the line between truth and invention. In its thematic exploration of the differences between myth and reality, Healey’s play proves to be both a fictional detective story and a slice of theatrical history. Although the clash between rural shrewdness and urban naiveté initially makes this play a pastoral comedy, the story ultimately evolves into a compelling drama of loyal friendship, lost love and abiding devotion.
