Tandem Corriere Canadese
March 8, 2007
Sarah B. Hood
Still a Stage Rebel
Tony Nardi takes a stand against mediocrity
Back in 1995 I wrote a story about theatre artist Tony Nardi
for an Italian-run magazine called The Eyetalian. Beside his
picture on the cover, the editors published the words "Stage
Rebel: Why Tony Nardi refuses to be typecast". The piece
sketched some of Nardi's history, including his Genie award
for the 1991 film La Sarrasine and his play A Modo Suo, which
he produced in Toronto in 1990.
The production of A Modo Suo says something about Nardi's determination;
he not only staged it in Italian, but in Calabrese dialect.
To produce a play is hard enough; to produce one in a language
that the majority of the population can't understand takes real
courage. However, to Nardi, it made artistic sense. "If
I write in English," he said of his characters at the time,
"I'm basically displaying them in a shop window."
A decade later, Nardi is still forging his own rigorous course
through Canada's occasionally bleak cultural landscape. In particular,
he has spent much of the past year on a unique production -
not a stage play, exactly, but his own solo reading of two letters
he was moved to write about the Canadian performing arts scene.
One was a response to reviews of a 2005 production of Carlo
Goldoni's The Amorous Servant, sent to theatre critics Kamaal
Al-Solaylee of the Globe and Mail and Richard Ouzounian of the
Toronto Star. The second, on the subject of racist stereotyping,
went to the creators of the television comedy Rent-a-Goalie.
"These were letters that as far as I can see needed to
be sent out to people who have something to say about culture,"
says Nardi. "I cannot believe that I would be alone in
writing that kind of letter, alone in thinking that kind of
thing."
In the first, Nardi uses one production to discuss the state
of the whole theatre community. "In most periods over time,
actors and theatre people have been at the forefront, at the
edge; they provoke," he says. "Today, we can sadly
and safely say that we're trying to catch up with society. We
have 'museumized' the process of theatre."
The second points up the dangerous laziness of writers who
consistently populate TV fare with cardboard stereotypes instead
of real characters - a phenomenon encountered by actors from
every community. "The second letter is in a way more necessary,
because it deals with a medium that is far more popular. Both
are important. The only common denominator is the actor's role:
in a play, on television and in society," says Nardi.
"Every individual does have a part of the answer; it's
basically how hard people are working to contribute to their
part of the answer," he says. "The bottom line is
I think we can afford to debate issues in this country."
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reply to the editor click [here]
