The Manifesto of a Non-Idiot

An Introduction

I always start each new year of school planning on being an excellent student. I delude myself with lies of perfect attendance and note-taking and assignments handed in on-time. I buy whatever tools I think will help me. In tenth grade I convinced my parents I'd do well in math if I had a decent calculator. In my final year of high school I convinced myself I'd be a perfect student if only I was more organized- colour coded binders would do the trick. Last year it was a day planner and desk calendar, both of which were left completely unused beyond September's optimistic bounds. The beginning of this year saw my most expensive piece of hope, far outstripping $15 of binders or a $20 calculator. I bought a notebook computer.

I spent $1000 in the hope that technology would override my laziness, that a duel core processor or wireless Internet access would somehow encourage me to read Chaucer or write a review of Brecht. Mobile computing was the solution to years of underachievement, for wasted potential, for countless B minuses.

It was all a lie. I haven't brought it to class once. I even stopped bringing it with me on my once a month trips home. There are only two things I've done with this computer that I could not have done with the one that now sits unused at my parent's house: write and publish blog posts from a toilet, and watch Arrested Development on a commuter bus.

I'm not a bad student though. I'm just a lazy student. The B minuses are forgotten history. Today, I am an A student. In my program, my ideas and understanding are a lot more important than when I hand in my work, or how much of the text I have read.

A Complaint

I ended the last academic year planning to be more involved in the student life on campus. Then I moved in and realized there was no student life that I was even remotely interested in being a part of. I auditioned (Nadia's fault) and got a lead role in a play (with ripped-off songs from musicals) directed by a senior student and then after a month or so of bullshit I gave up the role (which is good, because that play went on to be the worst piece of shit I've ever seen). The only theatre I've been involved in this year is the play that I helped write for class and then only bothered watching once, and the upcoming freezer festival- which I am only involved in because I am the only person to submit finished short scripts, and I was only asked to be a part of the acting troupe for it because both Nadia and Becca threatened the producer that I would recall my writings if I wasn't allowed creative control over their production (entirely true). Other than that all I've done this year is my once a week, one hour radio show. It isn't exactly a major production, or a critical or public success, but I really enjoy doing it, especially because it is so unGlendon.

My show is relaxed and unpretentious and low-key. It is also up-front and honestly offensive at times and performed by people with genuine creativity and talent, even if that isn't always apparent (we don't rehearse or prepare for the show and we have no plan or outline in advance other than the names of the segments, which are more or less the same every week). I wanted to start a comedy club last year but with my class schedule (which includes night classes several days a week) and being forced to work as much as 30 hours a week since September, I just haven't had the time.

I'm frustrated with this place. There is absolutely nothing interesting about this place. Glendon is mostly composed of people rejected by other universities, a lot of them offered spaces here after not making the cut for more competitive programs on the main campus of York. Glendon has too many commuters and too many high school-minded people here just to barely pass their classes and leave with degree after 3 or 4 years. With second and third rate students Glendon lacks a student life, because there are simply no people talented enough or creative enough to do anything.

And those few mediocre students who do do anything bring their mediocre talents and mediocre creativity to the Student Union and the newspaper and the theatre just like they bring their mediocre intelligence to Glendon's classes.

To make it worse, the mediocrities have firmly entrenched themselves into these organizations- partially by ruining them so thoroughly that nobody with half an ounce of dignity would want to be involved: I can write, but I would never write for ProTem, our paper; all but three executive Student Union positions for next year, including President, were filled by acclamation because only one person was running for each; people like Siobhan and myself who used to be actively and regularly involved in theatre don't even audition for roles here because the productions here are less professional than the ones we did in high school and the student run productions in particular are not much more than self-congratulatory circle-jerks, nearly all written, directed, produced and starred-in by the same round-robin of voiceless, uninspiring hacks.

At other schools, and in my high school experience, auditions are held to break through the surface of what a director or producer already knows about an actor to find the skills within, in the hope of finding which person is the most suited for each role in a play. The instructor-led productions at Glendon often do this successfully as in the case of Geoff, who had little previous stage experience or opportunity, recently getting the chance to play the titular role in a class production of Figaro. The student productions on the other hand use Auditions for one thing only- to try to fill any remaining male roles not filled by the theatre clique. Student writer/directors write their plays with the entire cast chosen in advance, and those student directors who choose finished or professionally written scripts offer roles to their friends before auditions are even announced. My high school drama program (which wasn't nearly as successful as it is now, but still produced considerably better plays than Glendon) also had something of a clique, but not only was it not exclusive- new people could and did hang out with us all the time, but it was formed out of all the people who were interested and involved in theatre: the tech kids, actors, musicians and even people who were mostly just an audience. Some members of Glendon's theatre clique only know and refer to Becca and Nadia, who work as paid staff in the theatre as technicians, as "the work/studies".

It is definitely an elite group, most universities do have elite groups of theatre students- usually because they are the very best, but not Glendon. Mediocrity oozes from the walls here, so much so that the idiot students in charge here aren't even concerned about talent. One of the productions at the Fridge Festival later this month will be "Bad Girls Do Broadway" which is more or less a cabaret of copyright infringement with songs and strong female characters ripped from the libretti and books of New York's most over-rated shows, "written," directed, produced and starred-in by the same no-talent fools as the play that was so bad I left it.

First of all, that play was cited by the festival producer as the reason Becca's submission was rejected, "We can't have two musicals." Becca's submission wasn't a musical at all, it was a silent piece inspired by early film about a mime who loves a clown set to vaudevillian piano music. A musical that is not. One of the most creative and interesting things I've recently read, yes. Completely different than anything I've ever seen at Glendon, yes again.

Secondly, nearly all the roles in "Bad Girls Do Broadway" were filled before it was even accepted as a submission (they are clique members, the Festival Producer is a clique member...). One of the roles that was not filled was repeatedly offered and rejected by Brynn, a girl who admits she cannot sing or dance. They wanted her so badly for the role that even after she turned them down, they came back with a new script, altered so that Brynn would not need to sing or dance (in a cabaret?), when she didn't show up for the audition time they gave her, they repeatedly phoned her asking if she wanted to reschedule.

They never cared if Brynn was suited for that specific role, or even if she wanted to do it. They wanted her and that was that. Nadia, who can sing (I've never seen her dance, but she has taken dance before) also chose to skip the audition but they didn't phone her about rescheduling. They didn't want Nadia and even a stellar audition would not have changed that.

I just don't get it. It isn't about having the right looks, a lot of them are horrid; it isn't about race, they are a fairly diverse bunch; it isn't about class, some of them are nobodies from small towns and some of them live in Toronto's finest neighbourhoods; and it certainly isn't about talent.

What binds them? What are they protecting from outsiders?

MEDIOCRITY

They aren't the worst, they are bad but not the worst. That being said, they are also far from the best.

They are reflective of this whole supposedly academic organisation of bland, normal people, where all it takes to get noticed by a professor is an original, academically sound or interesting thought. Where a student's basic grasp of fundamental course material isn't a given. Where expressing a creative and defensible idea in a seminar or tutorial excites the professor or TA and leaves the rest of the students confused. Where being an intellectual, or even occasionally just thinking like one elicits resentment and distaste in the people around you.

A Solution

If I can go to class without having time to do assignments or readings, if I can get A's in classes I rarely attend and for papers I hand in two weeks late, I can make something happen around here that I care about even if I have no time, even if the existing system is rigged against me. That is why Siobhan and I, possibly with Nadia and others are starting a new club. This club, yet to be named, will focus on performance, with a particular emphasis on short comedy requiring little to no technical support. We will meet once a week to plan monthly variety shows, held not in Theatre Glendon, but in the mostly abandoned and derelict student pub (seriously, it is used like 5 times a year).

Who can perform?
Anybody with something creative, original and entertaining.

Will we pretend as though we are professional theatre?
No. There will be no box office and no admission unless we have a special production or guest. For regular events we will pass around a hat and people can make donations of a little as they want or nothing at all.

Will we have high tech lights and sound?
No. Even Theatre Glendon barely has the minimum equipment needed to claim to be a modern theatre. We will have only basic and absolutely necessary equipment. Our purpose is performance, not technology.


We will be a refuse bin of rejected ideas and people. Our minds will burn with thought in that cramped basement room. We will be different, we will embrace change, we will ask questions, we will think aloud. We will breathe life into an organization without a culture and a space without a use.

When others ask "Why?", we will say "We do this because somebody needs to."

Keep on Tranglin,
Anthony