News

Founder of the Stephenville Theatre Festival, Maxim Mazumdar, at age 13.

Gordon Pinsent applying make up for the 1984 production "Cyrans de Bergerac"

"Theatre in the schools" troupe on tour (left and above)

Scene from the 1983 production "Guys and Dolls"

The Theatre Festival- Why Stephenville?

An Early history

By Cheryl Stagg, Special to the Georgian

There can be little doubt that the Stephenville Theatre Festival, now entering it's 24th season, was a gift which landed on the doorstep of this town, giving it a new and interesting image.

Since it had no long history of interest in the arts, Stephenville was really a most unlikely home for a theatre project in 1979. In its small population you could find few theatre-goers and fewer still who wished to make a career for themselves in theatre. So the question arose- Why Stephenville?

Successful theatre operations, such as the Stratford and Shaw festivals for example, are generally found where there is a very large population base. In addition to providing an audience base, large population centres provide easier access to funding and sponsorships. It's little wonder that it took an enormous amount of persuasion and many years to convince funding agencies that this rural Canadian theatre project was just a blip on a screen; that it was for real, and that it was worthy of support.

Strangely enough, corporate support was somewhat easier to secure in the early years. There may have been an element of corporate fascination with a sort of "the little engine that could" idea. But more likely it was the compelling personality and charm of the Festival's founding Artistic Director Maxim Mazumdar, and an underlying intrigue with what made him select Stephenville as the site for his experiment.

Mazumdar had quite a presence. He had a theatrical flare that commanded attention, and made arts critics either love him or hate him. He was determined and irrepressible, and more than that, he had an amazing talent which had carried him on tours to many parts of the world by the time he had reached his early twenties.

Mazumdar experienced early success in theatre having won a play writing competition at age thirteen. By age fourteen he had directed his first production, and at age fifteen he was cast in his first semi-professional role. Following his graduation from Loyola College in Montreal, a college chum founded the Phoenix theatre in downtown Montreal and began producing their own scripts along with some of the usual money making audience pleasers. There he honed the skills which, just a short time later, he would put to work for him in Stephenville.

Mazumdar was attuned to the fact that in order to capture the attention of the media, which seemed to be a prerequisite for success in Canadian theatre, you had to push the envelope, be daring, go after the impossible. Enter: Stephenville

By comparison, establishing a theatre operation in Toronto, Vancouver, Stratford or any other major city or town would have been easy, but the downside would be the high level of competition for media and audience attention.

Having starred at Stratford in his own play in the mid-70's, a one man show about Oscar Wilde, Mazumdar took careful note of the operation of a tourism based theatre festival, and when he discovered Stephenville's potential during his adjudication of the 1979 Spring festival of Newfoundland's community theatre productions, the possibilities were not lost on him. With the assistance of an enthusiastic local committee, the wheels began turning and the project soon become known as the Stephenville Theatre Festival was born.

Another factor which played a huge part in Mazumdar's choice of Stephenville was the "people" factor. He found that the people he met were unpretentious and generous of spirit. He felt at home and was made to feel welcome in the community as well as in nearby Corner Brook. Having spent most of the previous two years on tour throughout Canada, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand, living out of suitcases and hotel rooms, he longed to have a "home base". The final deciding factor was the tremendous advantage provided by the facilities, both at the College and at the Stephenville Arts and Culture Centre, which were under-utilized during the summers. Stephenville was the right place at the right time for Mazumdar.

There were tremendous challenges to be met over the ensuing years, not the least of which were those related to resource problems, both financial and artistic. Mazumdar's instincts told him that the key to quick success would be the participation of stars from the theatre world. he felt that a star actor or director would draw more than just audiences; it would encourage the participation of other actors, and directors, corporate sponsors, and trigger the hard to get media attention. Otherwise, the theatre project at Stephenville would be just another one of the proliferation of summer theatres in Canada.

Mazumdar used his influence with friends he had made throughout the theatre world in order to draw attention to his project. Those he convinced to participate included Sir Anton Dolin and Wendy Toye; directors from London, England; Larry Fuller, the Broadway choreographer of Evita, and John Gilin, a british dancer; Eric Bentley, a world famous playwright and Brecht translator; Edward Atienza, a Stratford regular; and the ever popular and much loved Gordon Pinsent, to name just a few. CBC's The National, the Financial Post, the Globe and Mail, the New York times, the Boston Sunday Globe, Savvy magazine, Air Canada enRoute magazine, and many others were captivated by what was happening in theatre in Stephenville, and they all focused attention on the daring project at one time or another during the first ten years of its operation. They marveled at what was being accomplished in such a remote area of Canada, and their coverage was all motivated by the same curious thoughts: how and why could this be happening in Stephenville?

Mazumdar knew that he could not have bought this kind of media attention if he had developed a similar project in a large city where it would risk being considered commonplace. The location was a major factor in winning early national recognition and ensuring the rapid growth of the festival.

Offering a challenge

Another point that Mazumdar realized early on was that in order to get stars to agree to come to a small festival in a remote area of a small province, he had to offer them something challenging and difference from an artistic perspective. That often mean choosing programming which was controversial or experimental. This was a choice which did not always endear him to local audiences, or to the Board of Directors for that matter, but to Mazumdar it was necessary.

It meant short term pain for long term gain.

He introduced scripts like "The recantation of Galileo", by Eric Bentley, which was highly critical of the church's treatment of the great scientist; "Oscar remembered", which dealt with the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde in a less enlightened time; "Torch song trilogy" which dealt with female impersonators and raising a child in home with same sex parents.

These scripts also caught the attention of National media and theatre critics, who expressed admiration for Stephenville's courage in addressing topics at a time when larger theatres lacked the courage to do so. Local audiences were, at best, indifferent to these scripts and at worst, walked out of performances, but seasoned theatre goers from other locales came to visit year after year and the word of mouth about Stephenville spread like wildfire. the festival had become a consequential part of the Canadian theatre scene in a very short time.

In time, the festival was able to stand more on its own record of consistently high quality, and was able to relax its programming considerable. For the next while, the mainstay was the large main stage musical. Most importantly, although the festival still attracts a large tourist audience, it has built a base of local support which will ensure the stability of the box office.

The Festival today

In the past 23 years the Stephenville Theatre Festival has been widely recognized for having made a substantial contribution to the development of theatre in this province. It has encouraged and helped develop local and provincial talent such as Cindy O'Neill, Amy House, Gerard McIsaac, Shawn Doyle, Jeff Pitcher, and Berni Stapleton, to name just a very few. It has introduced new plays by Newfoundland and Canadian playwrights, it has provided opportunities for local and provincial musicians, for local tradesmen and for students.

Several hundred people have worked with the festival on its 189 productions (and more than 1200 performances) over the past 23 years. For ten years, until costs became prohibitive, the festival also operated a touring "Theatre in the schools" program which took theatre into classrooms throughout Newfoundland and Labrador, and for many years it was the force behind the Provincial drama academy, a training ground for provincial artists.

Artistic directors carrying on from Mazumdar following his death in 1988 have included Edmund McLean, Cliff LeJune and Jerry Doyle. The festival now runs for four weeks, offering approximately sixty performances of seven or eight productions in three performance spaces each year. Its programming includes classics, main stage dramas, musicals and comedies, local historical scripts, cabaret performances and children's shows.

The Artistic director for the 2002 season is Jerry Doyle. The festival opens on July 12 and runs until August 11, 2002.