Governor General award-winning Lebanese-Québécois playwright Wajdi Mouawad, whose Dora-award winning play Scorched is on tour now, has written an eloquent and scathing open letter to Stephen Harper in opposition to his government’s crippling of public arts funding. It’s a veritable clinic in oppositional letter writing, and the most galvanizing argument that I’ve read to date. Some exerpts:
Last week, your government reaffirmed its manner of governing unilaterally, this time on a domestic issue, in bringing about reductions in granting programs destined for the cultural sector. A mere matter of budgeting, you say, but one which sends shock waves throughout the cultural milieu –rightly or wrongly, as we shall see- for being seen as an expression of your contempt for that sector. The confusion with which your Ministers tried to justify those reductions and their refusal to make public the reports on the eliminated programs, only served to confirm the symbolic significance of that contempt. You have just declared war on the artists.
Art and politics both hate and envy one another; since time immemorial, they detest each other and they are mutually attracted, and it’s through this dynamic that many a political idea has been born; it is in this dynamic that sometimes, great works of art see the light of day. Your cultural politics, it must be said, provoke only a profound consternation. Neither hate nor detestation, not envy nor attraction, nothing but numbness before the oppressive vacuum that drives your policies.
I believe, my dear colleague, that you yourself have just planted the grain of sand that could derail the entire machine of your electoral campaign. Culture is, in fact, nothing but a grain of sand, but therein lays its power, in its silent front. It operates in the dark. That is its legitimate strength.
It is full of people who are incomprehensible but very adept with words. They have voices. They know how to write, to paint, to dance, to sculpt, to sing, and they won’t let up on you. Democratically speaking, they seek to annihilate your policies. They will not give up. How could they?
Click here to read the full text of the letter, posted by Toronto’s Wrecking Ball theatre blog
Simon Ogden 
Thanks for this, Simon. I tried reading it when it was first written but Google Translation obviously wasn’t the greatest – and neither is my French, sadly. Don’t know how I missed it as Wrecking Ball is on my RSS feed. :(
I’m gonna give this letter 10/10 and a thank you very, very much, Mr. Mouawad.
p.s. Simon, this business made me join facebook.
Ha! That’s hilarious Mike, I just did a picture-perfect Triple Americano spit take. For the record, I’ve been on the thing since that post about it, and outside of the access to that stuff, I still hate it to the bottom of my soul.