Lesbo lockout

>> Camera, Woman asks whether a screen kiss ended Dorothy Arzner's career

by AMY BARRATT

Film director Dorothy Arzner shot a screen kiss between two women for a 1943 picture, First Comes Courage. It was the last time Arzner worked in the Hollywood studio system. Whether a direct connection can be drawn between the two facts is the central question in R. M. Vaughan's play, Camera, Woman. A Montreal production opens next week at the MAI in association with Divers/Cité.

Arzner, who began her Hollywood career in 1923 as a film editor and screenwriter, soon became the only woman director in the studio system, working with such stars as Katharine Hepburn, Rosalind Russell, Lucille Ball and Merle Oberon.

The standard explanation of why Arzner had to leave the project (starring Oberon) is that she contracted pneumonia. While this is probably true, it doesn't explain why the director, only 43 years old at the time, never made another film. We may never know for sure.

"We're treating the play as a story with a basis in fact, but as a work of fiction," says David Oiye, who directs the Out Productions/Sin 4 co-production. "Arzner later talked about being 'blackballed.' Certainly, leaving the studio system was a turning point in her life," says Oiye. The artistic director of Toronto's Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Oiye was invited to direct Camera, Woman by David King of Out Productions, a company dedicated to producing queer theatre projects in both English and French.

Although they've been in existence since 1996, Camera, Woman is Out Productions' first English-language venture, as well as the first lesbian-themed play they've produced. Not for lack of desire or effort, says King. "We had been looking around for Canadian lesbian material for a long time." They had hoped to produce Bathory, a historical, lesbian vampire piece, in the '98-'99 season, but funding never came through.

"It means a lot to us to be doing this play," says King. Does he have any qualms about a lesbian play written by a man? "Well you know, he goes by his initials, R. M., so at first we didn't even know. When I found out, I wondered if people would have a problem with that. But so far it hasn't been an issue."

Camera, Woman also marks the first collaboration between Out and Sin 4, the company that did Looking for Romeo at Divers/Cité two years ago. Particularly noteworthy in this production is the presence of respected design team Eo Sharp and David Perreault-Ninacs.

Appropriately enough, for a show about the movie industry, Oiye has a background in film. After graduating from Ryerson, he made a couple of independent films, but soon realized that most of his time and energy was going into fundraising, instead of creating. Having friends, including playwright Daniel MacIvor, in the theatre world, the move to theatre seemed a logical one.

What does Oiye think of Arzner as an artist and a person? "I'm impressed with the diversity of films that she's worked on. And her style is distinctive. She has a similar feel for me to Garbo in that, if one chooses to believe it, there was a point in her career where she said, 'That's it.' Had she stayed in the studio system she'd have ended up fighting the same fight over and over again. Instead, she settled down to a quiet life. She was with the same woman for 50 years."

Camera, Woman, August 1-12 at MAI, $10-18, 982-3386 or 522-6198