War may be hell but advertising’s no picnic either.
Québécois playwright tackles the violence of communication
Did you ever stop to think how militaristic language infiltrates the world of advertising? Advertising firms develop “campaigns” and companies engage in ongoing “ad wars” with each other. There are marketing departments responsible for developing “strategies.” Sometimes companies even resort to “guerrilla” marketing “tactics” to achieve their advertising aims: winning the hearts minds and often dollars of the public. Is it coincidence? Is it because war like advertising is often about money? Is it because war like advertising often involves deception?
These are questions Quebec playwright poet actor and musician Michel Garneau explores in his play Warriors .
“When preparing Warriors it became horribly obvious that we do not think and have never really thought about the phenomenon of war” Garneau writes in the play’s introduction. He goes on to say that Warriors examines war and the military industry from several angles “as an idea; as an economic reality; as a cultural reality.”
Warriors tells the story of two ad executives — played by Patrick Creery the force behind last summer’s Cold Read Calgary and One Yellow Rabbit ensemble member Andy Curtis — who have 10 days to develop a new advertising campaign to attract recruits to the Canadian Armed Forces. In particular they must come up with a fresh slogan to replace the old one: “There’s no life like it.”
Over the course of the play’s 80 minutes as the characters drink smoke lie on a tanning bed do cocaine and read excerpts from the work of military strategist and thinker Karl von Clausewitz. They discuss what it means to be a soldier the identity of war and how to sell it.
“It’s a war of ideas” says director Trevor Rueger “and words are the weapons.”
Creery who spearheaded this production with his Les guerriers Co-op after first encountering the script in Vancouver 10 years ago is just as interested in the concept of that abstracted conflict. “How do you sell war?” he asks. “How do you recruit? It’s something we keep having to do.”
“It’s not a museum piece” he continues noting that the play defines “them” as the Soviet-era Russians. “The players may have changed but the arguments have stayed the same.”
Those arguments include emphatic theorems sprinkled throughout such as “all wars are holy wars” and “the child warrior has to believe in the mystery of the economy… that the sacrament of the economy must be defended in its holy status quo.”
This year also marks the 20th anniversary of the English-language debut of Warriors which premièred on the Martha Cohen stage as part of Alberta Theatre Projects’ annual playRites Festival. This production is presented in the thrust to better simulate the feeling of being in an enclosed room says Creery.
Besides offering an exploration of selling war Warriors is also a play about the relationship between the two men who spend 10 days together in constant company. Paul is a “money-grubbing executive” while Gilles is “the best idea man in Canada.” Creery likens it to a face-off between the businessman and the artist.
Creery says the “incredible” poetic language is another factor that has kept this play in his mind for the past 10 years. Even the way the words are laid out on the page suggests a poetic delivery of the script Creery explains adding that even though Linda Gaboriau translated it from French none of the linguistic subtleties are lost. (Calgary audiences saw another of Gaboriau’s translations earlier this year with Sage Theatre’s production of Scorched .)
Don’t go to this play intending to just sit back and passively observe. In fact Garneau is quite specific in his desire to engage audience members in evaluating their own views on war and the selling of it as a commodity.
“War has so many impotent accomplices” he writes. “All of us… we are the Warriors.”
