Convocation speech accepting Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University College of the Fraser Valley, June 12, 2001. Hello everyone and congratulations to you all. It's a big day. While most of you are Arts Graduates in one form or another, I understand that there are also people here in language programs and Criminology. I am certain that there are forks in the road now for many of you -- exciting and unknown opportunities -- and because life is full of surprises -- unimagined possibilities. I certainly never imagined I would be standing here now. Not in my wildest dreams. Its hard to express how honoured I am by this honorary degree. I have a BFA in acting from the University of Alberta -- a degree that comes from acting and voice and movement classes -- in other words a very non-academic degree -- and so this recognition is important and very moving for me. I am first and foremost an artist who works in real life issues. Because you are all people living real lives, I want to talk with you about making art, in whatever it is you pursue, because I believe that in an ideal world, we are all artists. But first I want to ring an alarm bell: A week ago, on June 5, the word "culture" disappeared from the new BC Government's vocabulary. Culture is now contained inside a ministry that is called "Community, Aboriginals and Women's Services," .. some people are saying they just should have called it "the trouble-makers ministry". Whatever we call it, the Government no longer names culture or art specifically in the title of any ministry. This is something each and every one of us should be very concerned about. Why? Augusto Boal, the Brazilian Founder of the Theatre of the Oppressed, a dear friend and mentor who has influenced my work profoundly, defines oppression in this way: 'Oppression (he says) is a relationship in which there is only monologue. Not dialogue.' We have entered a time locally, nationally and globally where true dialogue is becoming more and more difficult. We are being subjected to monologues in various ways -- the monologues of Government: Provincially, we have just elected a Government with no opposition -- and so the Government will be in monologue for at least the next 4 years. Nationally, we have recently witnessed Quebec City -- where only parties who agreed with each other were invited to the table to discuss trade agreements that affect the future of the population of an entire hemisphere, while dissenting voices from across the hemisphere and around the world stood outside the fence demonstrating and breathing teargas. And then, of course, there are the monologues of Corporations: The role of the Corporation has been changing recently, as corporate entities strive to commodify and take charge of what have been until now mostly publicly owned and run institutions -- I am thinking of health, education, and even the filtration and delivery of the planet's drinking water. If corporations gain control of the planet's water, which makes up 70% of our bodies, what's next? Air? Now, perhaps more than ever, striving for dialogue is essential to the health of the planet and every creature on it, and the arts has a central role to play, because artists can and should be the foundation of dialogue creation. I have a belief that affects all of my work: that cultural work is central to health -- both of individuals and of communities. Just as your body is made up of cells that make up the living organism of your body, a community is made up of people who make up the living organism of the community. The way communities used to express themselves -- and be in dialogue with each other -- was through song, dance, drama, painting, sculpting, etc.it was the way a community expressed its hopes, its fears, its dreams, its victories and its defeats. Its only relatively recently in the evolution of humankind that these activities have been commodified and have become something that we buy, instead of something that we do. And so now we buy movies and television and books and music and theatre and dance and in doing so -- in paying others to tell us stories about others, we lose our ability to tell our own stories about ourselves. We lose our ability to be in dialogue with the communities and the world around us. More and more my work has become to enter a community, having been invited to do so, and to work with people in that community to help them tell the community's story, using a symbolic language -- the theatre. I have come to see this work, in every instance, as creating the space for dialogue. Whether it is working with street youth in Vancouver on criminalization issues, members of the Passamaquoddy Nation in Maine on issues of language reclamation, the local activist community on global trade agreements, various First Nations across Canada on Residential School issues, or, in an upcoming project, collaborating with artists and activists (sometimes people who are both) on privatization of water issues, the core impulse is the same: to create space where true dialogue can take place. This work does not and cannot happen in isolation. I want at this point to recognize someone who is here with me today. Some of you will know her as an internationally accomplished documentary film maker. Nettie Wild and I started Headlines together 20 years ago and I can honestly say that if we hadn't bumped into each other at a meeting over 21 years ago, my life (which, like anyone's, is full of surprises) would have taken a very different path and I would not be standing here today. Nettie Wild. I am always in collaboration with people, ordinary people in communities, who have a desire to create. People just like all of you -- and so, because theatre is a physical language, and creating dialogue often means breaking the rules, I have a surprise: I want to SHOW you what I am talking about. I want, very quickly, to create a theatrical moment with you. (Played Boal's X's and O's with the entire room of aprox. 300 gowned students, faculty, friends and families and then asked for a dozen people to join me -- almost 20 did -- and, through "Complete the Image" created an image of graduating, which was activated by each character speaking a sentence. Then let them all return to their seats.) If we wanted to -- and of course we don't have the time -- we could take this moment and create a play -- created and performed by YOU about YOU. We could then use that play at campuses throughout BC to create a dialogue with others -- a dialogue in this case about graduating. Instead of doing that I have a request to make of you: Here we are at a graduation ceremony. I hope -- I truly hope that you have entered and completed whatever program you are graduating from because you are following a passion. Please, use that passion to make art. Never stop questioning. Break the rules. Make space for dialogue. Use your gifts well. Congratulations to you all and, to the University College of the Fraser Valley, thank you so much for this wonderful honour. David Diamond, D.Litt. (!!)     Back to Headlines contents page