(long) haul

What Tom Thomson was to the wilds of Northern Ontario, and Miller Brittain was to the hardscrabble city of Saint John, David Blackwood is to coastal Newfoundland.

Blackwood's sublime prints, views of outport life and legends that illuminate Newfoundland's history, ghost stories, domestic life and local heroes, are visionary; Blakean in their epic scope, violent Nordic mysticism and luminous, shadow-stalked application of aquatint to paper.

As someone who grew up in New Brunswick, I'm more than familiar with Blackwood's work. I feel like I've been looking at it all my life, on everything from posters to book covers. And many of the 70 prints on display in the Art Gallery of Ontario's stunning new Blackwood retrospective in Toronto, Black Ice, remind me of my formative years, those happy days spent ducking dogfish hucked at my head while being thrown into the Bay of Fundy.

But I am not a Newfoundlander, and when artworks are as culturally specific as Blackwood's prints are to the island, it's best to call in an actual resident.

Luckily, Allan Hawco, the star and co-creator of CBC Television's hit dramedy Republic of Doyle, agreed to wander around the Blackwood show with me, offering his own insights into, and abundant love for, the work. A handsome natural charmer and born talker, Hawco only took his eyes off the Blackwoods when he had to, which was about every eight minutes, due to the unending attention of otherwise unflappable middle-aged ladies. Some guys get it all.

"Blackwood is a staple," Hawco says upfront, "a staple from a place that is so small but produces so much art - and if you don't know he's from Newfoundland, there's something wrong with you."

Looking at Blackwood's 1971 print Great Lost Party Adrift (which is about a nautical disaster, not a bridal shower), Hawco stops, struck by the depiction of dozens of men trapped on an iceberg, and discusses the role of death in Newfoundland art.

"This is based on a true story, a sealing disaster from 1914. Ninety men died waiting for a ship to rescue them, a whole town's generation of men. But look over here, at this one [ Spirit Departing - Once Told Tale, from 1968, featuring a linen-white spectral figure misting off a dead body]- there's so much loss in Blackwood's art, so much mourning. Mourning, but not morbid."

Another work, Uncle Sam Kelloway, from 1983, features a pair of knitted gloves and a set of tools resting on a table. Hawco smiles. "These are my dad's gloves! He still has a pair like this. I have a pair of these gloves. It's all so … present, still."

With all Blackwood's ghouls, masked mummers, pale infernal faces peering into black nights, fires (from torches, bonfires, burning houses and ships), coffins and cloaks, plus his endless acres of cold, gun-metal-blue ice, one wonders (well, I wonder, because all Atlantic Canadians love nothing more than teasing other Atlantic Canadians, especially those not from one's own province) if Blackwood overplays his magic-realist hand? If, in fact, the whole seaside gothic, campfire-spooky fairy-tale stuff is a bit of a shtick, something to sell to gullible mainlanders? Hawco is ready for the taunt.

"I hear what you're saying, but Blackwood's work isn't that easy, it's smarter than that, deeper.

"Yes, I do come from a storytelling culture, and my grandfather was a schooner skipper when he was 16 years old and supported the whole family, and, yes, I used to go mumming at Christmas, so maybe I'm a bit guilty of overdoing the Newfoundland angle sometimes - but all those things I just said, they're just the truth."

When I tell him I get frustrated by the fact that many Atlantic-Canadian artists, in all genres, completely ignore the region's urban, sophisticated history (and current reality), Hawco agrees.

"Yeah, I did all that average North American kid stuff too - I watched television, I listened to pop music. And I know what you mean about people faking being more rural and peculiar to seem more "real." But on the other hand, I know that when I hang out with my friends at home, everyone has a tale to tell, a fresh one, and they've got about two seconds to get it out before somebody comes up with a better one.

"Even if we are all now city people with laptops, we still can't let go of that part of our culture."

Although Hawco agrees that Blackwood's art is steeped, down to its deepest, midnight blacks, in Newfoundland lore, he rejects the idea of the work being the province's "official art."

"That designation would vary from Newfoundlander to Newfoundlander, and Blackwood would have a lot of competition for that title, if it ever existed. However, Newfoundlanders are very emotional about our stories.

"I don't like to be smug or exclusive, because every place in Canada has its stories - we feel special about where we come from, but I don't expect people to see us as special. And that's the difference, I think, between making a beautiful and very distinct, very specific record of our history, like Blackwood does, and the mere marketing of a culture, which anybody can do."

For a theatre company the play's the thing to do, of course, which means sometimes it takes courage not to.

Actors Allan Hawco and Philip Riccio are the increasingly recognizable names behind The Company Theatre, which they launched together in 2004. On Sept. 14, they'll debut their fourth play in that six-year span - a translation of Franz Xaver Kroetz's Through the Leaves at Toronto's Tarragon Theatre - continuing their reputation for popping up on the theatre landscape every 12 to 18 months with a thoughtful, provocative offering.

The late Tarragon founder Bill Glassco acted as a mentor to Hawco when the latter was a theatre pup, and told a story that has stuck with the actor about closing Tarragon for a year in 1975 when it wasn't running up to snuff.

"I thought, what kind of guts does it take to do that?" Hawco says.

From the get-go, Riccio and Hawco agreed that The Company would pick and choose what it performed, and when, resisting any outside pressure to make mounting a play even an annual obligation.

"We certainly don't ever want to be a company that does shows just for the sake of doing them," Riccio says.

That approach was also designed to allow their young careers to flourish elsewhere, which they have. Thirty-three-year-old Hawco, a native of Bell Island, Nfld., and a National Theatre School graduate, is the creator and star of the CBC's P.I. comedy-drama Republic of Doyle, currently shooting its second season in St. John's. Toronto native Riccio, 32 and a George Brown Theatre School alumnus, recently had roles on another Canadian comedy, Rent-a-Goalie, and in films such as My Family's Secret.

So far, The Company's philosophy seems to be working. They mount a play "when the story is speaking to me so loudly that it needs to be told," says Hawco, and only if it possesses "a visceral, emotional punch," says Riccio. Between them, they hammer out what feels risky enough to be worth trying.

"There's a lot to be said for going to the bar and talking about your ideas, and there's a lot to be said about never stopping that process and fantasizing about things you'd like to do," says Hawco.

For Through the Leaves, Riccio has taken the directorial reins for the first time in his career, leading the two-person cast of Nicholas Campbell and Maria Vacratsis as a factory worker and butcher who struggle to squeeze some human closeness out of their drab middle age.

Behind the scenes, Hawco and Riccio are a dashing pair with very different personalities but a core creative synergy. On stage their work has an edgy honesty to it: The Company's first three shows - Irish playwright Tom Murphy's A Whistle in the Dark, Daniel MacIvor's Marion Bridge and David Eldridge's Festen - are all stark and revealing family portraits.

It may seem unorthodox to have a pair of actors running a theatre company, but it has helped feed a methodology of giving actors considerable freedom to produce what Riccio describes as "improv with text," a style of performance that's "live" in a very literal way. That approach, they say, helps explain how an upstart company attracts high-level actors like Eric Peterson, Joseph Ziegler, Caroline Gillis, Sarah Dodd and Campbell.

"It's certainly not the money," Hawco jokes over the telephone from an editing suite in St. John's.

And because The Company makes it its mission to perform contemporary international plays that haven't often been seen in Toronto or in Canada, Hawco and Riccio have to lean heavily on the reputation they've built and the cachet of the casts they assemble to sell tickets.

"Come watch the best actors we have at their best" is the basic sales pitch, Riccio says.

He also concedes that the long gaps between shows are partly a function of the time it takes to raise the funding for them - typically anywhere from $80,000 to $300,000.

Since Hawco launched into Republic of Doyle, Riccio has devoted more of his time to steering The Company and Hawco is feeling "extremely jealous" that, for the first time, he's not involved in the day-to-day of a Company play. Still, both men balk at the idea of giving up screen work to focus on the stage full-time, or vice versa, and cherish the flexibility their partnership gives them.

Having sold rights to Republic of Doyle to networks in virtually every corner of the world, and earned a Gemini nomination as best actor this past week, Hawco is riding a wave of screen success, but he's keeping one hand firmly on The Company reins.