Daniel MacIvor, Recipient of the Siminovitch Prize for Playwrighting, 2008

The following acceptance speech was made by Daniel MacIvor at the 2008 Siminovitch Prize in Theatre honouring playwrights on October 27, 2008.

First of all I would like to say to Dr. Siminovitch, the founders, members of the jury, and BMO Financial Group, the sponsor of this prize: thank you for this incredible honour. I thank you, my mother thanks you, my sister Dolly who is here tonight thanks you, and Phil Nunes my loans officer at the BMO Bank of Montreal College and Manning branch thanks you.

Tonight I would like to talk to you about math. But since John Mighton did that three years ago my second choice is to talk about family.

I was born in Sydney, Cape Breton to Lily MacLean and Buster MacIvor. He was a welder by trade and she was a waitress for 35 years at the Isle Royale Hotel overlooking the unfortunate-to-smell but beautiful-to-look-at Sydney Harbour. My parents had a tumultuous relationship but a profound love for one another. It was the kind of love affair you might imagine happening between a welder named Buster and a waitress named Lily – throw in every other cliché you can imagine and that was pretty much my childhood. Recently I was preparing a talk about how I came to have a life in the theatre and I asked my sister Ann if there was anything about my early years that might explain this calling. She thought about this and said that my tempter tantrums could “attract quite an audience” but other than that nothing. My family was basically mystified by my attraction to the creative and the theatrical. In grade school I was putting on plays in the back porch. Later in junior high I started making Super 8 movies but people found them slow and ponderous so I decided to become a poet. And as mystified as my parents were about my interest in such seemingly other worldly concerns they never discouraged me, even to the point of, on my sixteenth birthday giving me an electric typewriter. I often wonder how odd it must have been for the welder and the waitress to go shopping for a Smith-Corona. But that’s the kind of thing family does.

The rest of my teenage years were basically spent waiting for the alien to show up and take me back to my home planet. Which I’m sure describes many of our adolescences. It wasn’t until I went to Dalhousie University in Halifax that I found the courage – away from the potential mockery of the high school hockey players – to consider getting involved with a drama club. King’s College Drama Society was auditioning for Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town”. I had become quite friendly with my across-the-hall neighbour Debbie Townsend – who was incidentally studying Psychiatric Nursing and I realize now she was practicing on me – and with her encouragement I went to the audition and I was cast as the lead. Those of you who know my work will recognize that my entire methodology is based on that of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town”, so clearly it had an effect. Time became compressed through that rehearsal period and I found myself among this odd group of people with whom I had this familiar connection that I couldn’t quite identify. It wasn’t until opening night when I walked out on stage for the first time in front of an audience that I could name that feeling. It was family. And it wasn’t just about the people on the stage with me, it was the people in the audience as well. I was surrounded by a group of people who understood what theatre could be, what it could do, how it could fill the spirit, how it could give us pause to identify ourselves in the world and to understand what that meant and what we could do with that knowledge. I had become part of another family. The next year I entered the theatre program at Dalhousie and began writing plays in earnest. My first play was called “Blue Bells” and we booked one of the classroom studios to rehearse and perform it. In the class a year ahead of me there was this odd kind of wild kind of weird kind of girl who was actually from my hometown and whom I suspected might have been originally from the same planet as me. I asked her to be to be the stage manager and she agreed – probably because she thought there’d be a party. Her name was Caroline Gillis. Caroline quickly became like a sister to me. A few years later I was living in Toronto and I was desperately trying to convince Caroline to leave her job as a telephone operator in Halifax and come and join me in my quest for fame in Toronto. I asked her if she’d come to Toronto if I’d write her a play. She considered this and then said, “How about a one-woman show?” I agreed. The one-woman show was called “See Bob Run”. And she actually moved to Toronto before I’d even finished writing it. But that’s the kind of thing you do for family.

My entire theatre career has been charmed in terms of the kind of people I’ve been able to work with, the kind of families I’ve been able to become a part of.
In the late 80’s I became a member of the Buddies In Bad Times family who supported my early work and paid my rent. For those of you who don’t know Sky Gilbert he’s the best aunt you could ever have – and the most glamourous too. Through Buddies I had the privilege of meeting my brothers Ken McDougall and Ed Roy. Through Buddies I met Jerry Doiron who brought me in to Theatre Passe Muraille where he produced my first one-man show. There I met Linda Griffiths who I was such a fan of I managed to wrangle space the theatre magazine Theatrum because one of the editors was my roommate just so I could take Linda out for lunch at Bar Italia. I was so nervous I forgot to write down any of her answers and I had to make up the interview from memory. Then I became a part of the Tarragon family with Urjo and Mallory and Andy. Through the Playwright’s Unit at Tarragon I had the opportunity to learn from Joan McLeod and Don Hannah, to stand outside Judith Thompson’s office and listen to her make those strange sounds she makes when she writes. Through Tarragon I found another family with the Banff Playwrights Colony and John Murrell and Bob White. And then a very special family was formed when I started da da kamera where I produced my work for twenty years. Richard Feren and Andy Moro and Kimberly Purtell and I were on the road sometimes eight months of the year. We were a solid family. And Sherrie Johnson who was my partner in the company for most of that time was much more than just a working partner. In the early years she did everything but my laundry, although I do remember her ironing a costume or two. Inside the company I was known as Dada Kamera and she was MaMa Kamera. But she was more than a MaMa, she was a kindred spirit, a true believer, another alien like me. And it was in this da da kamera family that I learned that you can’t make theatre as a writer by yourself. I learned that a script was an element of a production equal to performance and direction and design and marketing and audience. I also learned that the best way to write a play was to book a venue. And we booked a lot of venues and I wrote a lot of plays. And our da da kamera family joined with other families. In Montreal with Theatre Quat’Sous and Usine C, in Calgary with the One Yellow Rabbit family, in Nova Scotia with Mulgrave Road Theatre – whose artistic director Emmy Alcorn is my former sister-in-law, so the family thing is really crossing into new realms now – in the United States with the Wexner Centre and PS 122, here in Toronto with Canadian Stage, and most recently Buddies In Bad Times, bringing the circle together. And the amazing thing is that after all these years we all still care, we all stay in touch. But that’s the kind of things families do.

In taking about family I have to mention a very special member, and that’s my brother Daniel Brooks. When I first met Daniel he and Don McKellar and Tracy Wright were doing a show with their Augusta Company called “Indulgence”, which was a meta-theatrical meditation on, among other things, “Canadian” theatre, and in which we see a “Canadian” play performed in all its kitchen sink pathos. And the play inside the play of “Indulgence” was – and Daniel will deny this, as he does to this day, as he will later tonight - based on a play I had written and in which Caroline Gillis was one of the stars. Let me just offer as evidence that the play I had written was called “Somewhere I Have Never Traveled” and the name of the play in “Indulgence” was “Sometime Come Often”. I’ll leave it to you. Caroline and I were at “Indulgence” together and Daniel and Don and Tracy heard that we were in the audience. After the show we all ended up at the same café. There was a tense Sergio Leone moment: high noon, gunfighters, tumbleweeds. I don’t remember exactly how that night ended up but within a couple of months Caroline and Tracy were roommates and about a week later I decided Brooks was perfect boyfriend material so I tried to pick him up. So I was wrong about him being gay, what did I know I thought he was British. So having been rejected romantically there was nothing I could do but work with him. And together we created a series of plays that would change the course of my life. His impact on me has been enormous. Without Daniel’s faith in me, and his unwavering support, and his rigorous doubt, and his ceaseless questioning of purpose, and his absolute insight and his real love, I don’t think I’d be standing here today. And I don’t mean standing here receiving a prize, I mean standing here at all. And not only has Daniel been generous enough to welcome me into his work and his life and his thoughts and his heart he has made me a part of Emma and Kate’s life. Two beautiful intelligent girls I am proud to call my goddaughters. Now that’s family.

Of course in talking about family we can get very expansive. As Canadians we’re part of a big Canadian family. And if we look at it that way I guess that would make Stephen Harper the Dad. And it makes me sad to think that if you were a slender rather “theatrical” 16 year old boy who came home from school one day and said you wanted a Smith-Corona electric typewriter for your birthday so you could become a playwright he’d be the kind of Dad who would respond: “What are you, gay?” But the good news is that if Stephen Harper is the Dad that would make Michaelle Jean the Mom. And she’s a hell of a Mom to have. She’d be the kind of Mom who would not only make the costumes but also sell the tickets and every night she’d be in the front row, clapping the loudest, never stopping being proud of you, filling out your National Theatre School application for you and driving you to Montreal for the audition. Ah well, so as a country our family is a little dysfunctional. That’s what families are.

When Leonard McHardy phoned me recently to tell me I had won this prize he said “You’re part of the Siminovitch family now.” And what is the Siminovitch family? It’s the past recipients, the juries, the founders the sponsor, all the people who are affected by this prize. And at the centre of this family is an idea about mentorship and encouragement. And the beginning of this family is a story about a scientist who is offered the honour of having a prize presented in his name and chooses to offer that award to the memory of his wife, an artist. That is a story about love, and those are the stories that form the best kind of families.

In the end, the family I’m talking about here tonight is the family of people who believe that art is important. And inside that family we’re a smaller family who know that theatre has the power to transform lives, the lives of the practitioners – because certainly mine has been transformed – and the lives of those audiences who come into the dark rooms with their minds and their hearts open, who are filled with questions and find a moment of peace in the presence of something innately familiar.

The best part of this prize really and truly is that I am awarded the privilege of giving twenty five thousand dollars of it to a younger theatre artist whose work I respect and who really needs it. I have chosen two people who work together in a way that is very familiar to me. Who work in a process that is smart and strange, filled with fervent faith, profound doubt and a deep personal connection. A process that creates work that is highly theatrical, truly human and both challenging and entertaining. And if they have any question as to why I chose them I would simply say, that’s what family does. Allow me to introduce Medina Hahn and Daniel Arnold.