A different draft could have been used for the Quebec Superior Court decision lifting the director’s suspension

I find it easier to criticize plays than court decisions.

However, I have mixed feelings about a ruling by Mark Phillips of the Quebec Superior Court in March that overturned a theatre director’s one-year suspension by the Canadian Actors’ Equity Association.

In 2021, a disciplinary committee convened by Equity, a professional association of directors and actors, concluded that Montreal-based director Guy Sprung had engaged in discriminatory conduct and behaved in a manner contrary to professional standards during rehearsals for the planned world premiere of a play entitled. Keep fighting!

Rehearsals for the unusual historical drama about Charles Dickens’ Mountie son and his encounters with Cree chief Big Bear fell apart about a week before its scheduled 2020 premiere after several Indigenous actors walked off the stage amid disputes that included concerns about the portrayal of Indigenous characters.

Four actors from the show, including two who left the show, later jointly filed a lawsuit against Sprung with Equity.

I want to make it clear that I have no reason to disagree with the judge’s dismissal of this complaint and Equity’s suspension of Sprung, which he described as “unjustified.”

However, by making comments in his written judgment which demonstrated his ignorance of the workings of rehearsal rooms and by concluding, beyond the legality of the suspension, that in reality ‘certain members of the cast displayed behaviour which was unprofessional’, he unfortunately undermined the credibility of some aspects of his judgment in the wider theatre world.

This is not an ideal conclusion for Sprung, nor for efforts to create a more respectful working environment in Canadian theatre, where actors of all backgrounds must have the freedom to express their opinions in the rehearsal rooms, especially when they are often also hired to represent aspects of their own culture or identity on stage.

With regard to the discussions and disputes that have arisen in keep fighting! Phillips writes that Sprung “faced a highly charged environment in which, quite astonishingly, at least some of the actors, although they were performing from a fixed script and had rehearsed for only a few weeks before the public performance, seemed to believe they were in some kind of improvisational or workshop environment where they could freely criticize the script, suggest changes, and in one case even rewrite their own lines at will.”

Here, as in several other places in Phillips’ decision, it is clear that he mistakenly believes that the script for a new play is “set” at the start of rehearsals. In reality, playwrights typically use rehearsals, especially for a world premiere, to revise the script, with the final changes often made in the preview process when the final stakeholders – the live audience – are involved.

Not understanding the difference between inappropriate behavior in the actor’s rehearsal room – such as rewriting one’s lines without permission – and appropriate behavior – such as suggesting changes – clouds Phillips’s decision.

It is up to each director to set the tone in the rehearsal room as to how and when feedback should be given. As a director of Keep fighting!Sprung clearly invited the actors to respond, even asking the Indigenous cast to write a program note expressing their perspective on the play. He had already incorporated “sarcastic, ironic and iconic comments” from Indigenous playwright Drew Hayden Taylor into the script.

Phillips even argues that Sprung went too far: “If the plaintiff (Spung) can be accused of anything, it is that he to open to criticism and suggestions from the cast, which may create inappropriate expectations and blur the actors’ respective roles.”

What I think Sprung could be accused of instead is that he wore too many hats: he was the director, the playwright and, at the time, the artistic director of Infinithéâtre, the theater company that wanted to produce the play. This put him in the impossible position of having to respond directly to criticism of his work, without a director or artistic director to champion his vision or mediate disagreements. It also left the theater company internally with no way to address their concerns.

There are other areas of his decision where Phillips seems to stray from the topic to comment on broader culture wars that seem to have influenced his conclusions. For example, he compares the questioning of the insult “Wilder” in Keep fighting! on the censorship of Mark Twain’s 1884 novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

In the same passage, the judge also refers to recent controversial controversies in Quebec involving the use of the titles of a 1968 essay and a 1969 comedy sketch containing racial slurs. “Protecting people from insults through hurtful name-calling is one thing,” he writes. “Blatant cultural ignorance is quite another.”

But in assuming that it would be censorship if a new play set in the past, especially a non-naturalistic one, avoided racist insults in the dialogue, Phillips does not seem to understand that artistic choices can be debated and plays can be subject to interpretation. On the first page of his decision, he writes that the script was “obviously written with great sensitivity to the subject matter.” And he concludes, “It cannot be denied that the play was about challenging discrimination against First Nations in order to promote the laudable goal of reconciliation.”

It is difficult to reconcile the judge’s certainty with what happened when the play was, as they say, put on.

A more welcome decision would have stressed that it is not unprofessional for any artist to disagree, even passionately, with how complex issues should be approached in rehearsal. Collaboration is key to theatre, particularly when it is cross-cultural, and it would be a shame if Phillips’ comments turned off others in the hall.