Emergency Act: George Ryga’s Captives of the Faceless Drummer Reconsidered

Captives of the Faceless Drummer , George Ryga’s 1970 play that effectively ended his career, is never discussed without its attendant controversy. Inspired by the October Crisis, Ryga accused the Vancouver Playhouse Board of Directors of censorship, McCarthyism and harassment after they removed it from their season—charges that they repeatedly denied. This article suggests that, after decades of critical silence on the controversy and the virtual disappearance of the play from the Canadian theatre imaginary, both play and controversy are ripe for reconsideration and produce six new potent insights into the creative and political life of contemporary Canadian artists. First, Ryga’s disdain for emergency legislation had deep roots in his personal history that underline the constant suspension of Canadian civil rights during the twentieth century. Second, the leadup to the eruption of the controversy at the Vancouver Playhouse reveals a strongly progressive cadre of theatre makers straining for artistic control against a conservative Board of Directors and Vancouver civic government. Third, declassifications and historical scholarship on the October Crisis in the ensuing decades show that the “paranoia” Ryga was accused of at the time was well-founded and that his critique of government actions was largely apt. Fourth, elements of the Captives controversy that engulfed the theatre community directly mirrored the larger societal struggles of the October Crisis. Fifth, the archives show changes to drafts of the playscript that suggest a continuance of Ryga’s collaborative and socially inflected writing process, with the battle around the play’s cancellation finding its way into the writing. And finally, several legacies of the controversy impacted the national theatre community and Ryga’s relationship to it, but little trace of the October Crisis or repression under the War Measures Act can be found in the actual content of English Canadian drama.