[URBAN NOTE] "Now and Then: George Luscombe and Toronto Workshop Productions"

[rfmcdonald]

Torontoist's Erin Sylvester reports on a person who was a major player in mid-20th century Toronto theatre.

Summer is a great season for theatre in the city. There are outdoor arts festivals and shows inside, if you prefer to escape the heat and bugs. While Toronto has a vibrant theatre scene today, its history is impressive as well.

One of the major figures in Toronto’s theatre history is George Luscombe, who created Toronto Workshop Productions in 1959, when it was originally called Workshop Theatre. The group has been heralded as one of the great early alternative performance troupes, and one of Canada’s first professional alternative theatre companies. According to former-troupe member and drama instructor at the University of Toronto, Steven Bush, “WP was in operation some 10 years before important companies like Factory, Passe Muraille, Tarragon, and Toronto Free appeared,” he wrote in a 2015 journal article. “Theatre-makers in other parts of Canada would acknowledge George’s influence.” Bush says he was also likely the first director in Toronto to “practice ‘colour-blind casting,'” the practice of casting actors for roles without considering their ethnicity.

Luscombe first got involved in the arts when he assembled a song-and-dance troupe with the Canadian Commonwealth Federation Youth Club to perform for striking workers on the picket line. In the 1950s, Luscombe moved to London, England, and worked with the Theatre Workshop under Joan Littlewood, where the company put on classic and modern plays and lived in a commune. Inspired by his time across the pond, Luscombe returned to Toronto and founded his own workshop.

According to Bush, “George was committed to original creation, to new looks at old plays, to strong political content and to building a full time paid ensemble of actors who would train as well as perform together.” Like Littlewood, he developed his work through rehearsals with the troupe.