On the plane coming back from vacation this weekend, I happened to watch the movie Shakespeare in Love - as much a pleasure on what I'd guess was the fourth viewing as it was on the first.
The film is many things, but mostly it is a love letter to the theatre. As the play within a play (Romeo and Juliet) unfolds in the film's last act, we watch the groundlings gasp and weep at each tragic turn, and are reminded of the spell a great play and fine actors can cast upon an audience, even today.
Or perhaps especially today: The spectacle and special effects of which the movies are uniquely capable only sharpen the appeal of watching fleshand-blood human beings confronting each other, as it were, in the raw.
For all the attempts to mimic the movies via big-budget stage spectaculars, it is often the simple two-hander that packs the biggest wallop. And it was in this frame of mind that I watched Sunday's first Quebec election debate.
Politics is theatre, of course, and always has been. Parliament is its stage. When the Palace of Westminster was damaged in the Second World War, Winston Churchill, who understood this perhaps better than anyone, gave instructions that it should be rebuilt as before, with fewer seats than there were members, the better to create a sense of drama at times of great moment, with MPs filling the aisles. At its best, it still has the power to produce the odd riveting exchange, with the country's future - not to say a few careers - at stake.
But election campaigns have become something more akin to film, or perhaps video games - bursts of sensory stimuli in which the main characters appear only as grainy still photos, often with slogans stamped over their faces. Which may explain the enduring appeal and growing importance of the leaders' debates.
Televised they may be, but in essence they are theatre, and with the decline of Parliament, perhaps the only time most people will see their political leaders, close up and unfiltered, performing under pressure - the crisis that reveals character, as playwrights have known since Aeschylus.
The point of these is not to find out who "won" any more than it is when we go to see a play. We don't go to Macbeth to find out if he defeats Macduff: We are there to watch a tragic hero's inevitable fall, to reflect on how human virtues are subverted by human frailties, and so on.
If election debates really were just about who won or lost, they wouldn't be worth wasting a minute on.
We're choosing a government, not a debating champion. It is, rather, the opportunity they afford to learn about the people who would lead us, and how they would govern: not only their programs, but their judgment, indeed their psyches.
It's as much about the things they do not mean to say as the things they do, the little slips in unguarded moments, when they are forced off their scripts.
Which makes it a pity that we do so little with them. No one would claim that our debates are Shakespeare, but some of the perennially disappointing quality is a product of the format, usually negotiated at the last minute, with whoever is leading in the polls at the time in a position more or less to dictate terms. So we get as few debates as possible, with the risk of any outbreak of spontaneity held to a minimum.
The volatile politics of present-day Quebec, however, with three parties having a realistic shot at power, has produced a more intriguing lineup: after Sunday's relatively conventional all-party opener, a series of one-on-one matchups on three consecutive nights. Voters will have a chance to give much closer scrutiny to the party leaders, who for their part will have a chance to present their case in much greater depth.
But why stop there? Four debates is certainly better than the one (in either language) to which the federal campaigns are typically limited. But why not half a dozen - one a week?
One-on-one is a start, but why not experiment with other formats? For example, rather than forcing the leaders to spit out 45-second statements, why not give them 10 minutes to develop their argument?
More radically, why not, as has been suggested elsewhere, try a debate with no format - just let the leaders talk among themselves, and follow the conversation where it leads? Don't call it a debate. Call it a night at the Improv.
