Director David Anderson Places Gold in Dufferin Grove Park

"I believe theatre can speak to the whole population, and that the role of theatre is to give the community an image of itself. I think of our task as being a kind of 'thinking in public,' and thinking in public works most effectively when the whole public, the hoi polloi, is really there. That's why we do our theatre in parks and on the street. We save the best seats for the groundlings." - David Anderson, artistic director, Clay and Paper Theatre, and Gold: The Play

David Anderson has been successfully taking his talent to the streets for more than 30 years.

The founding artistic director of Clay and Paper Theatre has performed and directed across Canada, and in the United States, Europe and former Soviet Union. His work has been informed by his desire to touch as wide a cross-section of the population as possible.

In so doing, he has spent most of his time performing and producing theatre in such non-traditional public spaces as parks, plazas and even on the streets. He has developed a style of narrative theatre using large-scale imagery and exaggerated gesture to convey issues both simple and complex. And he brings together seasoned professionals, young theatre aficionados, and entire neighbourhoods.

Gold: The Play marks his ninth production with Clay and Paper Theatre, which he founded in 1994. Torontonians have seen his giant puppet mummers' play, The Return of the Green Man, yearly at the Kensington Carnival's Festival of Lights and at First Night celebrations. Summer audiences will remember epic tales from different cultures, dealing with human issues from the great universal questions and profound trivialities. Original Canadian productions by Clay and Paper Theatre include The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Epic of Mael duin, Lilith Unfair; The Lost City of Wagadu (which Anderson co-wrote with Michael Boughn), and two earlier plays by Gold's playwright Larry Lewis - The Ballad of Garrison Creek and The Resurrection of Fornax.

One of Anderson's most original endeavours has been to conceive and direct the first annual Night of Dread Community Masked Parade, on October 28, 2000, and to carve one of the two masks that led the parade. With the generous support of the Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Family Foundation, the Night of Dread began as an invitation to the local community to build images of our private and collective fears and, on the Night of Dread, to march these frightful images through the streets of the community and to return to the park to name and mock them. The project was an attempt to allow as many expressions as possible of the neighbourhood's ethnic diversity, and has now become an annual Toronto event. This year's 2002 parade will feature a spectacular mask that Anderson created at the Art Gallery of Ontario's spring break program during the Ultra Baroque exhibit. His mask, which he called 'Death on a Baroque-N Car,' used an old car and 800 pounds of clay as the mold for the huge sculpture. More than 2000 people helped him papier-maché the mask over the course of three weeks.

David Anderson has been working as a performer most of his adult life. But being an urban subversive is a long way from his rural roots. Originally from a struggling working class family on the prairies, he began his university studies in engineering, but graduated with a degree in psychology. While doing graduate work in philosophy at the University of British Columbia, he was enthralled by a commedia dell'arte performance, and joined the Vancouver Street Theatre as it was embarking on a tour of universities across Canada to perform Leonard Angel's play, The Bribe. The play brought him to Toronto for his debut, in 1969, as part of The Year of the Barricades Conference at Glendon College. For the next five years, he worked in Vancouver's Stanley Park with Bread Bakers' Puppet Theatre, together with an American draft dodger and his wife.

By 1976, he had moved to Toronto and was performing on its streets as the Whole Loaf Theatre. He was supporting his young family with his one-man performances of music and 'cranky movies.' He'd take his bicycle, trailer and cranky box, and set up wherever he might attract a crowd. A cranky movie is a story drawn in pictures on a roll of paper and cranked past an open screen, while the actor/narrator tells the story and acts the parts, providing sound effects, commentary and emotional tone. It's a cheeky spoof of movies and television, and Anderson could draw upwards of 300 people with his captivating and comic illustrations, interactive questions and comment.

At the same time, Anderson, as co-director of Whole Loaf Theatre Company - which he founded with writer Sara Barker - performed and directed a large number of shows in Toronto parks. The Whole Loaf Theatre became the first company to be allowed to perform for remuneration in a Toronto park. In its 18 years of existence, Whole Loaf performed in High Park, in the Queen's Park circle, and in Kew Gardens in the Beaches. Many Torontonians will remember The Great Return, a poetic piece about a returning astronaut and a mocking madman, which featured giant puppets and a crew of 16 performers and musicians.

A versatile musician, Anderson also performed for many years on the street and as a licensed subway musician. "I was probably the oldest subway musician," he recalls. Wearing tux, tails and a tall, cardboard top hat, he played the accordion and danced planchette puppets. (These were an ancient kind of puppets from medieval times or earlier, in which two puppets were joined by a string through their chests and tied at one end to a stake and at the other to the performer's right knee.) He would tap his heel to make the puppets dance on the floor. Eventually, the exertion of keeping up the dance while wielding a 30-lb. accordion daily from 11 a.m. to midnight 'created severe chiropractic difficulty'.

Anderson continues to perform as a musician and to compose for theatrical productions. He still plays accordion, along with keyboards, flutes, and trumpet and is 'a rhythm guy.' He has performed and collaborated with many Toronto companies as a director, composer, musical director or actor. In the summer of 2000 he was a musician for the very successful Shadowland Theatre production of The Right of Passage on Ward's Island, and that fall played music in the Swizzlestick Theatre's stilt-dancing production of Harvest in Dufferin Grove Park. He also wrote and performed the music for The Brick Circus by the Puppetmongers and, with Nuno Cristo, composed and performed the music for Puppetmongers' Tea at the Palace.