Sunday, March 02, 2008

Tony Nardi- My Hero - Stages His Rants

The ANNOTICO Report

 

Tony Nardi has more than a few beefs, but the way he deals is by incorporating them into a series of  plays he writes, directs, and produces,

Letter One, Letter Two, and Letter Three...and Counting. 

 

His first play/rant  "Letter One" was written in reaction to a script for the TV series Rent-a-Goalie, set in Toronto's Little Italy, sent to him for consideration. Nardi was born in Italy and raised in Montreal. He saw the Italian role he was being offered as stereotypical and offensive.

It wasn't a first. He could have shrugged it off with an, "I'm busy, no thanks, I'll pass," as he had often done before. But this time he couldn't take it anymore. He turned warrior.

"Where do we take responsibility for the crap that we put out there on TV?" he asked, rhetorically, over the phone. "Because we put out crap. I mean, everybody agrees. Notwithstanding the phenomenal talent, we strive for mediocrity." He wrote a lengthy diatribe and mailed it off to the Rent-a-Goalie producers. No reply. He started emailing it to friends. Then he developed it into a play, and began performing it for them.

"Letter Two" His next rant was set off by reviews of a commedia dell'arte play, Carlo Goldoni's "The Amorous Servant", and his  problem with critics: "They pass off ignorance as knowledge of the art form."

If Nardi, 49, last seen at Centaur Theatre as Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls in 1988, were not an established actor with a couple of Genie awards (best actor for La Diroute in 1999 and My Father's Angel in 2001) to his name, his letters/plays might have become career suicide notes. Instead, they have raised his profile and won him admiration.

Toronto Star columnist Joe Fiorito wrote: "Nardi uses dramatic acid to burn the rust off truth, and to blister complacency until it turns into awareness. He takes no prisoners."

 

A man of many rants

 

Tony Nardi Stages His Tirades - Letters - on The State of Canadian Theatre

Montreal Gazette - Montreal,Quebec,Canada
Pat Donnelly

Saturday, March 01, 2008

The thing I love about cantankerous people is that you can get them started on just about anything.

So when I called actor Tony Nardi in Toronto to talk about his three controversial Letter plays, which decry the state of Canadian theatre, television and cinema, I thought I'd test him on the weather.

Sure enough, I got a tirade on the deplorable state of snow removal in Toronto: "It's pathetic. They don't clean sidewalks. When you think of the collateral damage. People break their necks."

Nardi, whom one Toronto journalist recently described as a man who could become our "most famous agitator outside of Don Cherry," cannot resist a chance to express his opinion.

"Wherever I see comic opportunities, I'm in," he admitted.

Enough with the weather. Exactly what is his main beef?

"The first two letters were really specific reactions to specific things," he said. The first was written in reaction to a script for the TV series Rent-a-Goalie, set in Toronto's Little Italy, sent to him for consideration. Nardi, who was born in Italy and raised in Montreal, saw the Italian role he was being offered as stereotypical and offensive.

It wasn't a first. He could have shrugged it off with an, "I'm busy, no thanks, I'll pass," as he had often done before. But this time (fresh in from Quebec after shooting an exciting film about the Oka uprising, Indian Summer: The Oka Crisis), he couldn't take it anymore. He turned warrior.

"Where do we take responsibility for the crap that we put out there on TV?" he asked, rhetorically, over the phone. "Because we put out crap. I mean, everybody agrees. Notwithstanding the phenomenal talent, we strive for mediocrity."

Nardi, who began his professional acting career in Montreal in 1978 in a searing play about Russian dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, wrote a lengthy diatribe and mailed it off to the Rent-a-Goalie producers. No reply. He started emailing it to friends. Then he began performing it for them. Not everyone, he discovered, agreed with him. He incorporated some of their reactions into his script. "It became sort of a documentary, not only of my original letter but also the process of trying to create that letter," he said.

That was Letter One.

His next rant was set off by negative reviews of a commedia dell'arte play, Carlo Goldoni's The Amorous Servant, presented by Pleiades Theatre in Toronto. He now allows that the production, directed by a friend, wasn't very good. But the reviews added insult to injury, he said. His problem with critics: "They pass off ignorance as knowledge of the art form."

So he wrote a "mammoth" essay addressed to two Toronto theatre critics, Kamal Al-Solaylee of the Globe and Mail and Richard Ouzounian of the the Toronto Star. Besides setting out to "educate" these critics on the true nature of commedia dell'arte, Nardi attempted to throw light on the issue of ethnic stereotyping or "how we perceive and present and represent 'other cultures' in this Canadian landscape."

The problem isn't only the Italian, or French communities in Toronto, or the English one in Montreal, he said. "It's everybody. I don't think that English Canada in English Canada gets an authentic representation of itself. Nobody does."

The essay became Letter Two, his take on the Canadian theatre industry. And once again, as with television, the label was mediocre, with gutless and irrelevant thrown in.

According to Nardi, Canadian actors have been reduced to props, not allowed to develop their own voices. Quebec, he acknowledges, is another story, with more authentic voices. "But it's pretty well a very French, pure laine milieu," he said. Which is why most anglo and allophone actors, like Nardi, tend to head for Toronto.

Nardi described his third play "... And Counting!" as largely a post-mortem of the two previous ones, with emphasis on the issue of cultural funding.

In Montreal, for the first time, he'll be performing all three on consecutive evenings, beginning with Letter One on Thursday at UQAM, followed by Letter Two at McGill, on Friday, and the third one on Saturday.

If Nardi, 49, last seen at Centaur Theatre as Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls in 1988, were not an established actor with a couple of Genie awards (best actor for La Diroute in 1999 and My Father's Angel in 2001) to his name, his letters might have become career suicide notes. Instead, they have raised his profile and won him admiration.

Toronto Star columnist Joe Fiorito wrote: "Nardi uses dramatic acid to burn the rust off truth, and to blister complacency until it turns into awareness. He takes no prisoners."

Nardi breaks all the rules of performance, too. He doesn't memorize his lines and he doesn't rehearse. "I read it off the computer," he said. "I stand at a podium with my laptop and read."

There's no admission charge for the Letter plays. And after the show, members of the audience get a chance to tell him off.

Theatre critics, too. Here's the catch: anything you say may end up in the next version of his script.

Tony Nardi's Letter One, will be presented Thursday at 6 p.m at UQAM's Studio-d'essai Claude-Gauvreau, Pavillon Judith-Jasmin, second floor, 405 Ste. Catherine St. E. Letter Two, on Friday at 5 p.m. at McGill's Moyse Hall, in the Arts Building, 853 Sherbrooke St. W. Letter Three, "... And Counting!", on Saturday, March 8, at 7 p.m. at McGill's Redpath Museum Auditorium, 859 Sherbrooke. St. W. Free. Visit www.twoletters.ca.

pdonnell@thegazette.canwest.com

 

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