Later versions of Works were held in April 1975, October 1976 and October 1999.
The Program Notes
WORKS, to me is the most ideal kind of Factory production. It is a project embedded with chaos and confusion and is really too large for our resources. But is ideal in that it is totally eclectic and that around one event so many actors, directors, playwrights and technicians with so many diverse viewpoints can work together. I would like to think that this eclectic ideal applies to the Factory as a whole, and that it can be expanded for larger projects in the future.
As the various smaller theatres of Toronto continue to expand, it is clear that they have left the word 'underground' far behind. Indeed, they are gravitating (as we did with ESKER MIKE) towards larger, more cinemascopic productions. WORKS is a deliberate departure from this trend and we hope it will help proliferate new writers, new forms and new styles of presentation.
Aside from our excitement at being able to exhibit so many artists and so many new plays, WORKS has also been valuable to the Factory internally. The conversations that the project has precipitated over theatre and design aesthetics have been stimulating. I am excited enough by the questions being asked to insist that WORKS become, in whatever form, a recurring event. There is enormous, untapped potential in the short play form, and I am confident that this festival concept will yield interesting ideas and products for the future.
As a result there will be no performance Wednesday and Thursday, December 20, 21.
There will be a special benefit performance of FIELDS by Mike Hollingsworth directed by Paul Bettis on Friday December 22 at 8:30 p.m. (FIELDS, one of the most successful plays to emerge from the festival, will also continue in January. Interestingly enough, none of its cast belongs to Equity.)
In the past, Equity seems to have preferred a situation where both parties played the "let's pretend that you don't know what you know we know" charade. Irregularities in contracts have always been necessary in Canadian theatre in order to develop a working situation where legitimate conditions could apply. However, Equity is now making a large-scale issue of our ambitious festival of 14 short plays that involved a total of 35 actors.
From our viewpoint, this is simply an American-based union that is not responding to the exigencies of the Canadian theatre context, by forcing us to use a contract for actors that is completely irrelevant to this working situation. When we want to do unusual projects like WORKS or to experiment, Equity has no contract that is applicable and refuses to negotiate. We are suggesting a co-operative contract where the actors are also producers and an experimental theatre contract for special situations.
We are also challenging Actors Equity to respond to the basic ills of the Canadian Theatre industry, and to lobby against insufficient funding and inequitable distribution of present funding. We are proposing that all organizations allot 1% of their budgets to create such a lobby and that a general strike against the public be organized for either February 3 or March 3, 1973.
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