A Critique of Tony Nardi’s Two Letters
November 13th, 2006
Radheyan Simonpillai
There is a moment in the first act of Tony Nardi’s Two
Letters, where the embittered actor/playwright is harangued
by one of his irrepressible ghosts. It is a moment of “what
is this?”, where the ghost attempts to define Nardi’s
endeavor into a sub-category; of either film, book, or documentary.
The truth of the matter is that categorizing might be one of
those things that Nardi is battling against in his diatribe
against the Canadian entertainment industry, which is too apt
to define its productions by stereotypes.
Whatever it is that Nardi does when he takes aim – towards
actors, directors, writers, middlemen, critics, and audiences
alike – it will remain undefined until after the final
blast, when the smoke clears and the dust settles, and victims
and survivors are all accounted for. At that point, everyone
could look back and label it with their own diminutive little
title – like the Canadian entertainment industry’s
Black Monday, D-Day, Independence Day, or even 9/11.
The latter might seem fitting since Nardi does operate much
like the thespian-scribe version of a terrorist. He bravely
disregards the fact that this bold move could be fatal to his
own career, and runs in strapped like a suicide-bomber, ready
to take him self out, with as many casualties as possible.
At the University of Toronto’s Scarborough Campus, Nardi
delivered the first of a series of performances entitled Two
Letters. It is a dialogue of sorts, where the Genie award-winning
Italian-Canadian actor (and playwright), of Da Vinci’s
Inquest fame, performs the components of two fuming self-authored
epistles, along with the subsequent feedback he received in
workshops.
The first of the letters was a response to a character that
Nardi was asked to audition for, a poorly conceived out-of-leftfield
stereotype of an Italian in the television sitcom Rent-A-Goalie.
Nardi’s rage fuelled a seventeen-page rant against how
often the television and film industry supports writers to author
multi-cultural characters with little to no background on the
subject. The character in question was an elder “Italiano”
whose nasal-sensory can astonishingly pick up the residue of
his own daughters nether region on an after the fact third party.
While this scenario provides the instigating peeve, Nardi elaborates
his missive to reveal how the moment is just one example of
the state of the entire industry. It is a great Canadian world
of business executives that noticed the monetary success of
a little American film, which highlighted the strain of Greek
tradition in a multicultural universe. That film, My Big Fat
Greek Wedding, merely solidified a notion that ethnicity sells,
and occasioned an onslaught of imitators for every background.
For Italian-Canadians, there was Mambo Italiano, and Indo-Canadians
got Bollywood/Hollywood.
What Nardi makes painfully clear is how this formula pressures
writers to look past their own realm of comfort and write about
subjects they clearly do not understand, subsequently relying
on pre-established stereotypes, or simply manufacturing their
own. Nardi recalls when the director of Les Amoureuses (1993)–
a Quebec production he was unfortunately a cast member in –
requested that the actor scratch his “balls” like
an Italian. The obvious question was exactly how do Italians
scratch their genitals. While Nardi does not seem to be able
to provide an answer to that question, he is able to point out
how that moment was an example of unfamiliar writers developing
traits to label onto another culture’s characters.
It’s a culture killing tradition, Nardi states, which
goes back to when the native Indian was catalogued as the first
North American gangster for the western gunslinger to mow down.
Eventually, tomahawks and feathers would give way to spaghetti
and guns so that the Italian would become the new native Indian.
He adds as an aside that this perfunctory inclination is what
placed “aboriginal” on an equal footing with “abnormal”.
The writers of fiction seek out returns based on such concepts,
by penning caricatures of the same order. Nardi points out how
the word caricature was a reference to the prisoners in Nazi-camps,
who were not half finished characters but half finished lives.
The misappropriation of culture-based characters to incapable
writers who produce “cardboard cutouts” is not only
reductive, but also offensive. Nardi argues that if the writer’s
“inject their own blood” into their work they might
achieve a level of honesty that would not be offensive, but
simply the truth. He recalls Spike Lee and Martin Scorsese as
directors whose works are strong because they are honest to
their respective cultures. Lee makes movies about black people
and Scorsese does the same for Italians, and both know how to
effectively criticize their own cultures because it is in their
blood.
In effect to the current mishandling, Canadian actors, as Nardi
describes, must force their Italian (or whatever respective
background) to the foreground and restrict what makes them Canucks.
Yet they willingly submit to this stereotyping. At one point
Nardi even institutes the Italian word for stereotyping in his
show – “Topos”. Not only must he give in to
Italian stereotypes but, ironically, he must also call on the
Italian word for stereotyping to give his program that ethnic
oomph.
Nardi’s far-reaching call for cultural responsibility
asks for the Canadian entertainment industry to be representative
of its respective heritage, and not abstract it. Toronto for
instance is not one big cesspool of diversity. It is pocketed.
Chinatown is Chinese. Gerard Street is Indian. Little Italy
is Italian. The Danforth is Greek. Each of these pockets serves
their respective culture with respect. As any individual Canadian
cannot be at two locations at once, the entertainment should
not attempt to inhabit more than one space.
A film about one cultural background should honestly portray
just that. Then the industry would be made up of a diverse variety
of honestly rendered individual cultures, and that would be
representative of Canada as a whole. By abstracting the multitudes
of culture and building up caricatures, you end up with something
like Paul Haggis’ film Crash, which was a trite and misrepresentative
tapestry, conceived by a middle-aged white man who thinks he
knows how to write dialogue for “niggas” and “hombres”
from the hood.
An interesting aspect of Nardi’s first letter is that
it is directed to a girl named Sarah, who is purported to be
a middleman (or woman) for the company behind Rent-A-Goalie.
The audience knows nothing about Sarah – neither cultural
background nor distinguishing features. She is addressed by
email and retains no presence beyond her ultra-common name.
Sarah, in essence, is free from stereotypes as she is everybody
and nobody at the same time. Her voiceless nature is safe from
industry mishandling.
While there is purportedly a real Sarah, Nardi keeps her identity
elusive, something he does not do for the targets of his second
letter. Reviews by theatre critics Richard Ouzounian, of The
Toronto Star, and Komal Al-Solaylee, of The Globe and Mail,
about a show, entitled The Amorous Servant, sparked a seventy-five
thousand word essay from Nardi, who had seen the production
but was not a part of it. The critics berated an actress for
her performance, which Nardi believed to be one of the only
working aspects of the production, in tune with the form of
Commedia dell’Arte. Nardi blames the poor results of the
production on the director, and the even poorer reception on
the critics, none of whom understand the form. As a result,
Nardi has come to notice the diminished status of actors, as
they are simply working pawns in a world of insubstantial directors
and misguided writers. Yet the actors nevertheless receive the
brunt of unsatisfactory reviews.
This initial annoyance extends to the entire Canadian theatre
industry, which Nardi decries is a sham that we built “to
feel civilized”, with nary an understanding of what theatre
really is. He continues to exclaim that in the Canadian theatre
tradition “… the fake often replaces and becomes
the real. … (It’s) the Starbucks of theatre.”
While Nardi does charge a few specific people with his letters,
it should be noted that the actor is very democratic when he
slings mud. He lambastes every member of the Canadian entertainment
industry equally, including the sedative audiences and the actors
who he is striving to protect.
His self-reflexive act even incorporates the feeble feedback
of the acting community, which he received during workshops.
They are incorporated here as the ghosts that haunt Nardi’s
writing, a device that reminds us of the play Goodness, by fellow
Canadian playwright Michael Redhill. The similarities between
the two works are vital. Redhill’s ghosts scrutinized
the Canadian lead for attempting to mimic a cultural background
with little understanding of what that heritage truly entails.
However, Nardi’s ghosts are more complaisant with how
hollow-heritage is filled by the fat of fabrication. They too
stare down the barrel of Nardi’s gun, as they are representative
of the acting community that allows the cultural injustice to
carry on. At points, Nardi even embellishes the hypocrisy of
such ghosts. While they allow cultural stereotypes to flourish
in Canadian entertainment, the ghosts bicker about their own
misrepresentation in Nardi’s act. One ghost questions
why his character is being combined with others – why
is he being abstracted. Another ghost complains of his physical
representation being that of a simple goatee, and nothing more.
While they clamour for appropriate representation, it cannot
help but be noticed that they are these same ones that make
way for industry distortion. The significance of them being
ghosts resonates to the agency that the acting community has
in the Canadian industry. They haunt it, because they’re
dead to it.
Nardi’s dialogues with his ghosts, where his performance
alternates between both himself and the respective argumentative
apparition, are likely the most fun to be had in his Two Letters,
possibly because of the interactive display. The self-reflexive
devices honed in these moments are humorously taken a step further
when Nardi and a ghost discuss Brechtian theatre – a technique
they have been utilizing for the entirety of the show.
Nardi’s minimal props – only two in fact –
are used with an exquisite effect. He reads from his laptop,
which may be a tad disconcerting since he rarely raises his
eyes to address the audience. However, the author is purportedly
reading an email, or a digitized letter. The other prop is a
cell phone, which seemingly interrupts an honest moment of the
show, until it becomes apparent that it is a part of the show.
These are devices of mediation, technological duplications of
actuality. There is a real person speaking somewhere at the
other end of the phone. There is a real person that authored
the email, but in our society everything is mediated or duplicated
through technology – an inference to the state of the
industry. Nardi hammers this point home when he states that
entertainment writing nowadays “… imitates a facsimile,
of a facsimile, of a facsimile.” The industry, as he describes
it, is a “wall of mirrors” where television imitates
television, films imitate film, but nothing resembles real life
– it is all simply moderated by bad writers.
What certainly feels real in Nardi’s show is the uncomfortable
venue. This is no stage. The performance was held in actual
University auditoriums, which are embellished with either wood
or concrete. It may seem a tease when one of the ghosts exclaims
that the performance should be held at The Bata Shoe Museum,
a more glamorously ideal venue than the dungeon-like classroom
– with the ass-numbing plastic seats – where the
actual event took place. This discomfort is certainly not relieved
by the fact that each of the two acts run over two hours in
length – this for a show that Nardi exclaims “…
plays or reads like a difficult bowel movement.” He warns
that you may “… leave if you’re bored, but
don’t stay and snore”, which is not entirely unfathomable.
Yet if the audience cannot endure the stretch, just imagine
what stamina there must be in that little “Italian Stallion”
Nardi, who stands, and speaks, and yells, and outperforms for
the entire duration, with only a rare and minute silent moment.
Nardi’s energy could easily fill an empty room, and possibly
expand it like a balloon. His sporadic outbursts would make
it difficult for anyone who intends on catching some winks,
and in truth these spasms may at times need to be leashed –
particularly the most obtrusively random. When he’s in
his most volatile element, Nardi resembles an aged Italian-Canadian
miniature of the telephone wielding Russell Crowe, yet with
a more versatile acting style.
If it is difficult to follow Nardi, particularly in the early
passages where it is almost impossible to discern some of his
high-theatre lingo, he eventually picks you up with his animation,
and carries you the rest of the way. Nardi also makes it easy
for outsiders of the theatrical community to follow along by
using pop-cultural references, primarily in film. He recollects
everyone from Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Mel Gibson, Peter
Finch, David Mamet, Francis Ford Coppolla, Sergio Leone, and
Michelangelo Antonioni (with his neo-realist treatment of actors).
Though at times these references are ill fitting, particularly
in the case of a drawn out Dirty Harry quote where Nardi reenacts
the entire “Do you feel lucky punk” scene –
something that is imitated more often than necessary, and is
inconsistent with the originality Nardi squabbles about.
While Nardi delivers an array of mind-boggling ideas, the greatest
challenge is how one keeps up with him. His thoughts are fired
faster than the brain can absorb them. The powers of his ideas
do not simply switch on a light bulb that stays illuminated
with the audience. Instead, they are like bolts of lightning
that disappear at a moment’s whim. If you missed it, you
missed it. There’s no recuperation, but only steadfast
preparation for the next current. If you catch lightning, chances
are you will be awe-struck with that thought for long enough
to miss the next one, which is a sad fact considering the depth
and valor of Nardi’s ideas.
What is caught and missed might be the defining point of anyone’s
interpretation of Nardi’s lecture, or play, or reading,
or whatever it is. The truth of the matter is there will be
those that will wish to define it and those that would rather
dismiss it. As history is written by the victorious, we could
only assume that Nardi’s program will find its textual
definition after the cause has its battle, and we see some effects.
Whether the show is an aged actor’s bitter ramblings or
a justified protest against an industry that lacks sincerity,
the only thing for certain is that Nardi’s Two Letters
Fed-exes a four-letter word destined for everyone in the Canadian
entertainment industry, COD.
radheyan@hotmail.com
