Extraordinary Discourse 193
Deviant Curricula You will notice that I have said nothing about the accommodation for the actors. If course it is always terrible, but even here there has been a change. In the old theatres they had smelly kennels in which to change their clothes. But nowadays after the School Board has cut the estimates and changed the plans, they have nothing at all. Have you ever tried to transform yourself into a great character of drama in a schoolroom? The ghost of dead mathematics teachers clutch at your costume and smear your make-up actors of an earlier day dressed in bad conditions too, even in barns, but the barns were unmistakably associated with Life; those schoolroom dressing accommodations speak of education, of repression, of being kept in after four, and their air vents whisper of lingering and chalky death. Humor is put to silence, Passion is rebuked, and Imagination is made to dance in chains. Robertson Davies How To Design A Haunted House