I first came to Canada to study acting at the National Theatre School of Canada, the most prestigious school in the country, and at the time almost no Americans had ever heard of it. It was the school’s fiftieth-year anniversary when I arrived and there was much jubilee, including a large panel discussion devoted to the question: “What does it mean to be a Canadian artist?” I listened as the panel struggled to nail down a solid answer to that question with the attitude that if they couldn’t find one, there would be dire consequences for the nation. It was surreal, because I had never seriously thought about what it meant to be an American—our national identity was giant and complex, but we were never taught to worry about it, and we certainly never sat down and tried to find an answer in a panel discussion. I had thought a bit about what it meant to be from Minnesota, and that thought went like this: “It’s cold. I’m pale.” I would come to learn that Canada’s national identity is worrying about its national identity.

This self-conscious, defensive Canadian attitude was necessary and productive for a time. With previous generations I believe it came from a place of great strength and, in the case of the Massey Commission, bold action. However, I think we’ve outgrown some aspects of this posture, and holding onto it has become detrimental. For decades Canada has had regulations about Canadian representation in radio and television. These Canadian Content (also known as CanCon, because we’re adorable) percentage requirements dictate how much airtime is given to, you guessed it, content created by Canadians. (There’s a whole system of how to determine what is Canadian enough that I won’t get it into, but I will tell you it’s called the MAPL system, because, again, we’re super adorable.) It guaranteed that the country was employing Canadian artists and that people were watching Canadian TV shows (because they literally had to). In this age of streaming, however, this makes less and less sense, and there’s something a tad desperate about forcing people to watch Canadian content, when, I believe, our industry is now strong enough to be competitive without the booster seat. This sense of obligation is also the exact stereotype I think we need to be pushing against.

With the privilege of our funding resources and our self-conscious tendencies, we should strive to not just raise the bar for ourselves, but to do it for the world stage, with faith that our national identity will take care of itself.

Although there aren’t CanCon regulations in theatre, there are some self-enforced ones, specifically in new work. Of course our largest theatres, like in the United States, are not generally devoted to new plays but rather to the works Shakespeare, Williams, Shaw, and a host of other older dead dudes. But it’s assumed that the theatres that develop new work will exclusively develop Canadian work, with a pretty strong taboo against putting resources into any non-Canadians. There is the Massey Commission attitude of we are fighting for a national identity, so we better not spend our precious resources on anybody else, which makes sense, and this system has created a huge and rich body of Canadian work that might not have been created otherwise… but, like CanCon, it also separates Canadian work from the rest. We hold ourselves to a slightly lower “Canadian” standard, which of course ends up just holding us back, because we’re often not very hard on ourselves. The community and the critics alike cradle bad work because it feels precious to our national ego and a taboo to criticize it honestly.

I think Canada needs a new narrative for itself that isn’t so much about buttressing a fortress or perfectly defining our national identity, but participating in a larger conversation. I’m not advocating for changes in CanCon regulations, and I’m certainly not advocating for less public funding (because it pays my rent, which in Toronto ain’t cheap), but those efforts shouldn’t come from a place of insecurity. Our public funding should be dedicated to raising the bar of our work and showing off that work to the world, not protecting us from the threat of our big brother to the south. I think the National Theatre School should accept more students from outside Canada. It's one of the best theatre schools in North America, it produces a stunning percentage of working professionals, and it's less than an hour from Vermont—but nobody south of the border knows about it because, unlike the top American or British schools, they so rarely take non-Canadians. Similarly, I think that new work developed here should mostly be Canadian, but if we share some of those resources then it will attract the attention of the international community and raise the bar for our own work. And, in my un-humble opinion, our national identity can handle it. (This isn’t uncommon in other countries. Canadian superstar Hannah Moscovitch developed her latest play at Seattle Rep, and Seattle, as of writing this, is still confidently Seattle.) Being seen by the world goes hand in hand with letting the world in. We shouldn’t feel threatened to tear down the separate standards between Canadian and non-Canadian work, we should welcome it.

There’s much evidence that we’re already moving in this more confident direction and our national narrative is evolving. Toronto’s Canadian Stage brings some of the best productions from around the globe and puts them right next to new Canadian plays and encourages international collaboration, while the city’s Soulpepper brought twelve plays to New York City a couple years ago to critical acclaim. Theatre producer Michael Rubenfeld created CanadaHub at the Edinburgh Fringe, bringing the best in Canadian work to the festival—where it regularly punches above its weight. Compared to when I arrived in Canada in 2010, I have absolutely found myself in fewer concerned conversations about what it really means to be Canadian, and more positive conversations about the work itself, the inclusion of underrepresented voices, how cool it is that Come From Away was nominated for like eight hundred Tony Awards, and what we’re all gonna do on this made up holiday called Family Day. With the privilege of our funding resources and our self-conscious tendencies, we should strive to not just raise the bar for ourselves, but to do it for the world stage, with faith that our national identity will take care of itself.