In his signature play, Hey Rube!,George Luscombe crafted
the story of a ragtag group of circus folk stuck on the edge of nowheresville,
beseiged by rubes bent on driving them out of town. Hey Rube! was
a show that George returned to several times in his career, always
retooling it for a new audience, who periodically needed to be reminded
of where we really live. It was his own ongoing epitaph.
George's death this past February came as a hard blow to many,
but to his former colleagues at Guelph it was a particularly sad occasion.
After his (forced) retirement following the purge at Toronto Workshop Productions,
we invited George to teach acting for us.
I spent many hours sitting in George's office, listening to his
stories -- tales of the fit-up company in Wales where he served his apprenticeship
(and discovered that he had been hired as a potential husband for the manager's
daughter), memories of the great move into Stratford East with Joan Littlewood;
stories of the epic struggle to bring the fire of political theatre to
Toronto the Good in the '50s. George was a great raconteur who led an epic
theatrical life.
My most vivid memory is not of his stories however, but of his
passion. One day I was passing through the acting studio where George had
just taught a second- year class. He was standing transfixed by some inner
joy, and it is not an exaggeration to say he glowed. I said some commonplace
thing in greeting, and he responded with excitement, "Finally, finally,
I've figured it out, I finally understand the magic If!" I was humbled:
here was a man who had been working on Stanislavsky for more than four
decades as an actor, director and teacher, and he was jumping with happiness.
I suspect that George discovered something new in every class he taught.
He was a brilliant teacher.
He was also as tough as they come. When we invited him to direct
a show for us, he declined, because he felt the students were not nearly
ready to appear on a stage. His great dream was to open his own acting
school. He deserved it, but because he was an iconoclast, a contrarion
and an outspoken leftist, there was no way the cultural establishment in
this country would support his vision.
George was deeply proud of his working class roots, and he believed
strongly that working class art must claim as its own the entire heritage
of theatre history. Like Brecht, he belived that theatre was work, not
magic -- but he also knew that the bloody hard work of theatre is the making
of magic. To the rest of my days I will remember the stunning force of
his imagery: the hobos jumping trains in Ten Lost Years; the dehumanized
mill in The Wobbly; the battlefields of Spain in The Mac Paps.
All done on a bare stage, with actors who moved with clarity, purpose and
passion.
George Luscombe more than any other figure was the leader who
gave English Canada a theatrical voice and vocabulary. He collected some
honours: the Order of Canada, honourary doctorates from York and Guelph.
But after he was ruthlessly ditched by the theatre he founded (a scandal
described in detail in Neil Carson's excellent critical biography, Harlequin
in Hogtown), he never again directed. What a damning statement that
is on our cultural "ecology" (to borrow the Canada Council's current
buzzphrase). And yet George didn't complain. Like the man of the theatre
he was, he lived in the present passion. He always seemed to know the rubes
wouldn't catch up.
Alan Filewod