This week Andy Jones' current stage show An Evening with Uncle Val plays in St. John's. With Andy Jones on the stage as Uncle Val and remembering thirty years of theatre it's not a bad time to reflect on the contribution to our culture and society that artists like Andy Jones make.
Like many artists and professional funny people through time Andy Jones is one of our society's most serious assets. Memorial University of Newfoundland recognized that by bestowing Andy and three of his comedic colleagues with Honourary Doctorates in 2000. The previous post on this Blog was the Public Orator's speech concerning Andy. Now here's what Andy said.
Memorial Univeristy of Newfoundland Convocation address by Dr. Andrew Jones in 2000
"It's hard to be the last person in a series of CODCO people because usually they say before what you meant to say. We used to have a thing one time in CODCO where we all had to vomit onstage. And I was the last vomiter. And of course I had to do the best one. It was very dangerous because Tommy Sexton used to go before me and sometimes if the crowd really loved him a lot, he couldn't help, he would do my vomit too. And then I had nowhere to go.
I'd like to tell you a little story. Once upon a time not so very long ago, in fact on the 31st of March of this year, I performed in a children's show in Buchans at Lakeside Academy — we dramatized two Newfoundland folktales: Jack and the Three Giants and Little Jack The Little Fisherman.
The eight members of the company all agreed that day in Buchans, that that particular performance had been very, very, very special. It had been a magic 45 minutes. Those moments do happen occasionally in the theatre and do happen occasionally in life, and the 100 or so adults who were in the audience and 200 children seemed to agree by their obvious surrender to the seductive charms of story telling.
I should point out that this show that we were doing was not part of the curriculum, was not a profit making venture and was not designed for tourists. It was a magic moment totally without agenda ... and without Walt Disney. Just a bunch of Newfoundlanders listening to our own stories and enjoying our own particular take on what it is to be human.
It takes a lot of work to produce 45 minutes of magic. Two years of planning, writing, rewriting, rehearsing, designing and building — but more important are the cultural threads that led to this human connection in Buchans on March 31.
I'll just list some of them, and they're probably the same threads that run through your lives: the stories themselves were originally told by Mr. Freeman Bennett from St. Pauls on the west coast of the island, part of the rich oral tradition of Newfoundland; they were collected by Herbert Halpert and John Widdowson, whose life's work was supported by the people of Newfoundland through Memorial University; the actors themselves were from all over the province — Stephenville, Corner Brook, Badgers Quay, Kelligrews, Merasheen Island, Mount Pearl, St. John's and Clark's Beach; two of the actors were graduates of the Grenfell College, one was an alumnus of Figgy Duff, one from CODCO — where we stole stories, phrases, characters, and even lines from our parents who were from Conception Bay, St. Mary's Bay, Notre Dame Bay, Bay of Islands, Carters Hill and Gower Street; another of our actor's beginnings in the theatre go directly back to the Jack tales as told by Mr. Pius Power of South East Bight in Placentia Bay and heard on the school broadcasts as collected by Anita Best, our wonderful singer/storyteller — an alumnus and bright light of Memorial's Folklore Department; another actor started his career because his community was doing a project based on Bernice Morgan's novel Random Passage — which is probably the best story of how we all got here in the first place; another career in our group started because of a high school teacher in Kelligrews who loved the theatre.
I've only just scratched the surface of all these threads — cultural threads that were there at that moment in that magical 45 minutes in Buchans. We do really have something very, very special here and we all know that. But we must tell our fearless leaders that it didn't come about because it made a profit or because it was for tourists. It was generated by human beings — together in our complex, evolved, and still very dynamic Newfoundland culture nurtured by the people of Newfoundland in institutions such as the university and the school system. And the art that comes from that culture should be available to our own people first and later on for the tourists.
And that's just a story and I'll end it the way Mr. Pius Power ends all his stories, by telling you that when we finished the show in Buchans we all sat down to a meal at a tin table, but the tin table bended so my story's ended. If the table had been stronger my story would have been longer, and if the people in the story don't have good luck then may all of ye. "
N.B. Letters from Uncle Val, a Rattling Books audio CD written and performed by Andy Jones is now available from rattlingbooks.com
