bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Risk Factors
Authors: Thiessen Vern
Published: June 2023

Any talk of new play dramaturgy is moot unless it includes a discussion, not only of what playwrights create and how they create, but also of the economic and social conditions in which they choose to operate.
Cheering for a Change: Actor-Cheerleaders Revive an Ancient Choral Tradition
Authors: Singh Rebecca , Gauvin Émilie
Published: June 2023

Every day across Canada, legions of underemployed actors gather at local pubs to pound out their frustrations about not having a gig and elaborate on what they would do to change their situation if only they had the opportunity to do so. Sadly, many of those passionate ideas and dreams never make it past the bottom of the pint. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that actors, infinitely creative and imaginative people, are classically conditioned to do ONLY what they are told, when they are told and in the costume they are told to wear. It is a culture of limitation. We often sigh and proclaim, “Such is the nature of the beast.” But does it really have to be this way? What if we all found new ways to realize our dreams for the theatre? Sometimes you just gotta stand up and try to change the world you live in. This is a story of a group of Montreal actors who are doing just that. We are here to say, “It can be done!” Using the POWER OF CHEER, we are creating our own form of personal artistic expression. In the process, we have uncovered a connection between cheerleading and theatre deeper than anyone had ever imagined . . .
Editorial
Authors: Quirt Brian , Kugler DD
Published: June 2023

Dramaturgy happens in every theatrical process. Our goal in this issue is to broaden the understanding of who is doing it and what it entails. In addressing the idea of dramaturgy through creative research and new-play development, we decided to slip past institutional models that have been well articulated elsewhere. This issue is not about new-play development in producing theatres or in play-development houses – although it could have been. Our shared interests took us beyond that narrow institutional framework, in pursuit of a larger dramaturgy.
Technologies of the Monstrous: Notes on the Daniels’s Monster Trilogy
Authors: Wallace Robert
Published: June 2023

In his foreword to the second edition of House. Humans, the first in a trilogy of plays1 that he created with Daniel Brooks, Daniel MacIvor likens the text to “night-time story-telling around the fire” (9). His comparison is useful for a number of reasons. First, it suggests the dramaturgical strategy that unites the plays of this trilogy, one that requires a single actor to narrate stories, recollections, fantasies, and dreams by performing multiple roles in complex patterns and plots. Second, it indicates the instrument crucial to the production of these narratives, namely sound – which, in this instance, includes not only the actor’s voice but, as well, the scoring of acoustic effects and original music. Third, the comparison implies how the plays’ elaborate soundscapes couple with innovative lighting design to heighten the audience’s imaginative response – an effect similarly stimulated by storytelling in firelight. Consistently, the plays in this trilogy force the audience to focus on the performer’s voice, in a space where lights variously illuminate actor, stage and house in unconventional ways. The performer, by manipulating his voice to represent the changes in age, sex, class and ethnicity that the plays’ numerous characters depict, both foregrounds vocal properties and complements the theatricality of the lighting, a technique that becomes especially obvious when Daniel Brooks distorts the voice by using audio technology. In here lies henry, the second play in the trilogy, MacIvor (who, thus far, is the only actor to perform the shows professionally) “wore a lavalier microphone through which the sound operator effected [sic] Daniel’s voice. In the script these effects are noted as VOICE, and the effected [sic] lines are underlined” (6). While the script for Monster, the final play in the trilogy, omits mention of this technique, in performance it uses a microphone with deliberate emphasis and greater effect. The actor delivers his opening speech in darkness, for example, with considerable amplification. At the end of this speech, as lighting slowly illuminates the performer at centre stage, he recites, And from the darkness … And from the darkness … And from the darkness come … I. (9)
Monstrous Clowns: American Grotesques on the Canadian Stage
Authors: Wasserman Jerry
Published: June 2023

I can no longer convince myself that we have even a snowball’s chance in hell of escaping ultimate ravishment at the hands of the Yankee succubus. Farley Mowat (I)
Sarah Kane’s Crave in Montreal
Authors: Leroux Louis Patrick
Published: June 2023

Monstrolls? Sarah Kane? Her earlier works were certainly shocking; they could be described as Artaudian, resolutely post-New Jacobean if one must (assuming th at one sees her as an inheritor of Bond and Barker), but monstrous? “Theatre of the Abject,” “Theatre of Extremes,” maybe. Compe ting ep ithe ts jostle to convey Kane’s challenging work; yet Crave defies these qualifiers. Her plays provoked with their violence, images and apparent lack of moral fibre, and critics had a field day reacting to her so-called “euro-cynicism.”
Editorial
Authors: Gilbert Reid
Published: June 2023

Monsters are in the world but not of the world. They are paradoxical personifications of otherness within sameness. That is, they are threatening figures of anomaly within the well-established and accepted order of things. They represent the outside that has gotten inside, the beyond-the-pale that, much to our horror, has gotten into the pale.
Indirections: Evolution, Not Revolution, at the Shaw Festival
Authors: Bannerman Guy
Published: June 2023

On May 14, 2002, a curious scene was enacted on the stage of the Shaw Festival Theatre in Niagara-on-the-Lake. In a New York City precinct police station, the setting for Neil Munro’s acclaimed production of Sidney Kingsley’s Detective Story, a mysterious trench-coated figure in the obligatory slouch-brimmed fedora entered into the half-light. As the figure roamed among the desks, a second figure, similarly clad, entered behind the first: A gun blazed; the first fell victim to the second, the victim’s fedora rolling away across the floor. Calmly, the newcomer stood over the body, then deliberately picked up the fallen hat. Looking it over, the murderer came to a decision. The fallen hat replaced the fedora on the head of the stranger, the rejected hat was tossed onto the floor beside the body. The murderer posed proudly in the dim room. As the assembled members of the Shaw acting company laughed and cheered, the lights came up and the figures took their bows: Christopher Newton, outgoing Artistic Director, swiftly recovering from the murderous shot, and Jackie Maxwell, Artistic Director Designate, stepping dramatically into the Shaw spotlight.
Rasika’s Bharata Natyam and Story-Dancing
Authors: Aklujkar Rasika Vidyut
Published: June 2023

In the 1970s, in Canada, the belief was that people with handicaps belonged in institutions. They were viewed as worthless people. Parents had to fight for the inclusion of their sons and daughters. In the 1980s, that belief began to change, as people began to include children with disabilities in their neighbourhood schools. Institutions began to close down. Right now, people with handicaps are subjected to a world of discrimination because there are still some people who believe that we are worthless. I believe that all of us are equals and that we are all unique.
Lyle Victor Albert’s After Shave: Scraping the Surface through Theatre Anthropology
Authors: Houston Andrew
Published: June 2023

Lyle Victor Albert is an accomplished playwright and performer who lives with cerebral palsy. It is te stimony to Vic’s wit and wisdom that he describes himself as “jumpy” and that he has created his own style of solo performance from observant prose and his own way of dancing with his disability. In Scrapinq the Suiface, this “dance” takes the form of a good close shave, literally as well as figuratively, and in this private-turned-public act, Vic asks us to consider the life-altering benefits of scraping the surface of our own first impressions of him, of cerebral palsy and of the long-term effects this “shave” may have upon how we define identity in theatre.
Sex, Cars and Shopping: Meditations on Social Disabilities
Authors: Templeton Andrew
Published: June 2023

Can a community suffer from disability? Is it possible to define the behaviour of a society as dysfunctional? As I write this, George W. Bush has been re-elected president of the United States. If the polls are to be trusted, this outcome should baffle the majority of Canadians (and, I’d venture to guess, an even bigger majority of CTR readers). In the wake of the election result, much of the analysis in the media has focused on how the Bush campaign was able to exploit key “hot button” issues, including a sense of fear in the United States about the rest of the world. It would seem that for many Americans concepts such conciliation and consensus building (not to mention an ability to speak French) are seen as signs of weakness, perhaps even effeminacy. It is clear that many Americans define themselves through a military framework – their heroes are soldiers – a very alien concept to a demilitarized nation such as Canada. Can a culture that can be so easily moved to fear, isolationism and wilful ignorance be considered mentally balanced?
Mercy Killing or Murder: The Tracy Latimer Story
Authors: Decottignies Michele
Published: June 2023

The primary intention of this project was to bring together professional artists and members of Calgary’s local disability community. Our ultimate goal was to research, develop, workshop, rehearse and perform a multimedia exploration of the death of Tracy Latimer, a girl with cerebral palsy who was killed by her father in 1993 under the aegis of “mercy killing.” This goal was made possible by a generous grant from the Canada Council’s Artist and Community Collaboration Fund and was achieved through adapted development and rehearsal processes. The endeavour was a true collaboration, with a cast of thirteen people (six with disabilities and seven without), a production team of forty theatre artists and over ten community agencies and/or businesses engaged in the creation and presentation of the story. The end result of this artist—community collaboration was an acclaimed, interdisciplinary performance creation called Mercy Killing or Murder: The Tracy Latimer Story.
Mercy Killing or Murder: The Tracy Latimer Story
Authors:   Stage Left Productions
Published: June 2023

Caution: Copyright Michele Decottignies. This script is protected under the copyright laws of Canada and all other countries of the Copyright Union. Changes to the script are forbidden without the written consent of the author. Rights to produce, film or record in any medium, in any language, by any group, are retained by the author. The moral right of the author has been asserted. For performance rights, contact Stage Left Productions ( http:///info@stage-left.org .
Stage-Bound: Feature Film Adaptations of Canadian and Québécois Drama
Authors: Johnson Stephen
Published: June 2023

In this informative study, André Loiselle traces a history of the relationship between Canadian stage drama and Canadian cinema, through an examination of cinematic adaptations from 1942 on. (This was the date of the limited release of Hilda Hooke Smith’s Here Will I Nest in London, Ontario [play written 1938; film dir. Melburn E.Turner].) After a thorough review of the past and present debate over the differences between the two media and their complex relationship, he offers a variety of case studies of works that will be known to students of Canadian theatre – no doubt better than to students of Canadian cinema, since the stage versions were for the most part far better received (critically and/or commercially) than their cinematic progeny. Among the play titles included in this study are
Implementing Agreements
Authors: Habel Ivan
Published: June 2023

In discussing working conditions in the professional theatre in Canada, it is important to understand the diversity of practices that exist in the theatre community. Theatre is produced using a range of models, including the conventional model of a play mounted by a company; but theatre can be created by collectives or by an individual. The theatre, also, no longer reflects just the Anglo-American tradition of drama but has expanded to reflect the storytelling, physical and visual traditions of theatrical practice derived largely from outside the European tradition. This expansion in the methods and practice of professional theatre presents an incredible challenge in trying to create uniform working conditions to suit all artists and theatres alike.
Boards of Directors and Artistic Directors: Who’s in Charge?
Authors: Wilson Ann
Published: June 2023

On Saturday, January 15, 2005, Ian Prinsloo, the artistic director of Theatre Calgary, was invited to meet the chair of the theatre’s board, Maggie Schofield, in a coffee shop in the Epcor Centre for the Performing Arts, where Theatre Calgary is resident. There he was given the news that every artistic director must fear: His contract, which expires on October 1, 2005, would not be “renewed,” the euphemism in the theatre community for what is now Donald Trump’s famous edict — “you’re fired.’’ There had been, as Prinsloo relates in a letter to Alberta Playwrights ‘Network s Quarterly Bulletin, indications earlier in the week that something was awry. The board had scheduled a retreat for Friday January 14, 2005, insisting that members of the staff, save for the general manager of Theatre Calgary, Tom McCabe, not attend because the board wished an opportunity to discuss matters in private. Prinsloo reportedly told Schofield that he “didn’t like the idea of the Board meeting to discuss the theatre” without his being present, adding in his conversation with Schofield that he wasn’t “staff” and so should be present (Prinsloo, Letter). Prinsloo continues,
The Long and Winding Road: Touring Canada with Two Planks and a Passion Theatre
Authors: Schwartz Ken
Published: June 2023

“Where the Hell am I?” I awake in state of panic. The sheets cling to me in a clammy tangle, the heater next to my bed roars and my partner doesn’t respond to my call for assistance. Where the hell is she? I try to find a light switch, a lamp, but I don’t know what direction to reach in. My hands run up and down walls without any discernible features. No switch. A bedside table? I find it with my left knee, knocking over a bottle onto the carpet below, the cold water running in a torrent around my bare feet. No lamp. Some distance away, a tinny clock-radio erupts midway into “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” oblivious to my predicament. I follow the sound across the bed to another table, this one with a lamp — but where’s the switch? On the bottom, on the top, where the hell is the damn switch? Finally, success. A blinding light reveals a room that resembles a crime scene photo, minus my silhouette in chalk. The smell of obsolete Chinese takeout and dirty laundry permeates the room with an evil potpourri, and I move to the curtains and throw them open to reveal … a brick wall. Where am I? I dial “0” to get some information and hang up before a voice answers. What am I going to do? Ask, “Where am I, please? I’ve lost track?” That would guarantee an uncomfortable visit from guest services.
Calgary’s Wild Ride: How the High Performance Rodeo Inspired and Transformed a Theatre Community
Authors: Morrow Martin
Published: June 2023

Looking back, 1987 was a momentous year for theatre in Calgary. Two years before, the city had opened its impressive, multi-venue Centre for Performing Arts; in a year to come, it would host the XV Olympic Winter Games and Arts Festival. Now, in a general mood of optimism and anticipation, three major theatre-based festivals were launched: playRites, a showcase for new Canadian plays produced by Alberta Theatre Projects, the Calgary International Children’s Festival and the High Performance Rodeo. However, had you referred to the last one as “major” in 1987, people would have just laughed. And I would have been among them.
A View from the Border
Authors: Quan Elyne
Published: June 2023

In September 2003, I began a two-year MFA program in Dramatic Writing at New York University. Over the course of my time in New York, I made some discoveries about culture and, in particular, the ways in which people express the world around them through drama. I also found myself answering certain questions on both sides of the border, such as “Is there a difference between Canadian culture and American culture?” and “How does Canadian theatre rate with American theatre?” I am pleased to report that the short answers to these questions are, “Yes” and “Very well, thank you.” However, short answers rarely give the full picture …
In the MT Space
Authors: Verdecchia Guillermo
Published: June 2023

I want to start by saying that I’m very pleased to be here today. It hasn’t always been the case that being in or near Kitchener-Waterloo was a pleasure for me. I lived here for many years, attended elementary and high school here and, at the time, was less than pleased about it.
Flying Solo
Authors: Knowles Ric
Published: June 2023

The 2005 edition of the World Stage Festival at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre provides the occasion for reflection on questions of nation in the festival world, as befits the themes of the current issue of CTR. It also provides occasion for reflection on the theme of an earlier issue, that of solo performance.
Site-Responsive
Authors: Couillard Paul
Published: June 2023

Site-specific work is hardly new. No doubt the urge to perform predates the development of theatre and gallery spaces as privileged locations for presenting manufactured images. And certainly there is a rich and extensive history of works that have taken place outside of these “traditional” architectures of presentation,1 for various economic, political and aesthetic reasons.2 Recently, however, there has been a proliferation of works that posit themselves as “site-specific.” Non-traditional venues are all the rage, as artists look to reach new audiences, to reinvest aspects of daily life into the distilled languages of performing or, conversely, to transform mundane locations by enlivening them through performative gestures.
Negotiating Serendipitous Specifics or Curating Site-Specific Performances That Didn’t Begin That Way
Authors: Firth-Eagland Alissa
Published: June 2023

In June 2005, I curated Sound Madness 2, an evening of sound works and performances by artists-in-residence from the Sound + Vision Creative Residency at the Banff Centre. This group of artists from Japan, Mexico, the United States and Canada were at the centre to explore, experiment and play within the fields of music, sound, popular culture and contemporary visual culture.1
An Environmental Engagement with Theatre and Life: An Interview with Richard Rose
Authors: Houston Andrew
Published: June 2023

Swiftly upon graduating from York University, Richard Rose founded Necessary Angel Theatre Company in 1978. Under his energetic and ambitious direction, the company developed and produced many original works, including notable adaptations of novels, environmentally staged in locations around Toronto. In 1983, Rose directed Censored in St. Paul’s church, based on Mikhail Bulgakov’s A Cabal of Hypocrites; in 1989, he staged Michael Ondaatje’s Coming through Slaughter at the Silver Dollar bar. In 2002, Rose left Necessary Angel to become artistic director at the Tarragon Theatre, an institution with an established history of new-play development, thanks to his predecessor, Urjo Kareda. Rose was the best candidate to replace Kareda because his vision as a director came from his dramaturgical insight into the development of new work using unique forms of text, music, character and space. Arguably, Rose’s best work at the Tarragon or at the Stratford Festival, where he regularly directs, comes from his sensuous and intelligent engagement with environments. In the following interview, he discusses the dramaturgical dimension of environment in his directing; in particular, he addresses Necessary Angel’s two most successful environmental productions, Tamara and Newhouse, and the effect these works have had on his approach to theatre.
Monolith Makeover: The Art of Subversive Urban Enhancement
Authors: Stonyk Zoë
Published: June 2023

Recently, I was in a tall building in downtown Toronto with a panoramic south-facing window. I stopped for a minute to gaze at the endless stream of automobiles flowing along the Gardiner Expressway. As I spied on the concrete arteries bringing travellers to and through the city’s heart, my own heart bubbled over with memories of our summer fling. Suddenly, I felt like the heroine of a Hollywood movie contemplating a past lover from a distance with tenderness and passion. I was haunted by romantic recollections of the fleeting artistic relationship I had enjoyed with this highway. In the universe of site-specific installation and performance, the physical evidence of work may fade or vanish after minutes or months, but the memories, as they say, linger on.
Anecdotes Off the Map: Sites Archived, Revisited and Replayed in Toronto and Montreal
Authors: Nanni Laura
Published: June 2023

Today. I’ve just listen ed to ]aclyn reminisce about an old man on a bicycle. She remembers passing him near this spot, 483 Bloor St., every day on her way to work. Jaclyn shared this anecdote with me although we’ve never met, and probably never will. I heard her voice over my cell phone. Jaclyn’s story is one of many captured by [murmur], an archival audio project that collects and curates stories about specific locations in cities across Canada by the people who live there.! These personal accounts range from a woman named Marion Green recalling the sandwich shop her family frequented in 1937 to a man identified as “M” recounting in detail the dispute he witnessed outside his home at two in the morning.1
BOX a show in a diner
Authors: Fanconi Kendra , Laurenson Andrew , Ternes Paul , Kahre Andreas , O’Connell Stephen , Hall Craig
Published: June 2023

Caution: Copyright Radix Theatre collective. This script is protected under the copyright laws of Canada and all other countries of the Copyright Union. Changes to the script are forbidden without the written consent of the author. Rights to produce, film or record in any medium, in any language, by any group, are retained by the author. The moral right of the author has been asserted. For performance rights, please contact Radix Theatre collective.
Yukon PIPE Takes Theatre Outside the Box
Authors: Chalykoff Leighann
Published: June 2023

In a territory of 30,000 people, differences are easy to spot, and Whitehorse’s speak a tale of two cities. It has a thriving art and music scene, funded by government dollars and fuelled by well-paid workers who live mostly in the city’s subdivisions. In some parts of the downtown core and in some communities, there is a culture of substance abuse, born from First Nations groups having their culture ripped away. Although the streets are safe, it is not uncommon to see used syringes scattered in downtown parks or a brawl erupt outside a local bar late at night. Yukon PIPE (Performance in Peculiar Environments) has bridged the gap between those two cities by bringing performance from the theatres to the downtown streets.
Inside Outside: New Off-Site Work at Summerworks 2005
Authors: Gallagher-Ross Jacob
Published: June 2023

The proscenium arch was a ghostly presence behind two new plays debuted in outdoor stagings this past August at Toronto’s Summerworks festival. Both Child Hood, written by festival veteran Bobby Del Rio and directed by Hume Baugh, and Downtown, a collective creation by the Question Company under the stewardship of Julia Gray, reproduced the sight-lines and spectatorial positions of a conventional auditorium in their otherwise well-selected performance venues, thereby severely curtailing each site’s theatrical possibilities. As a consequence, neither production was able to offer a compelling argument for the integrality of its performance environment to the overall fabric of the piece.
Heterotopian Creation: Beyond the Utopia of Theatres and Galleries
Authors: Houston Andrew , Naurui Laura
Published: June 2023

First there are Utopias. Utopias are sites with no real place. They are sites that have a general relation of direct or inverted analogy with the real space of society They present society itself in a perfected form, or else society turned upside down, but in any case these Utopias are fundamentally unreal spaces.
Theatre Channel: Exploring the Dramaturgy of Juxtaposed Media
Authors: Rivers Paul
Published: June 2023

Theatre Channel came about as a result of a series of explorations of the phenomenon of live theatre productions incorporating video. Having made, witnessed and read about increasing use of this juxtaposition in experimental and mainstream theatre settings, I have found questions continually arise about what video is really adding to the theatrical experience. Beyond the use of a playful trompe l’oeil gimmickry (exemplified by Blue Man Group’s stage magic, which uses video to trick the audience as an illusionist might do), I have witnessed instances where, at best, the use of video technology created a sense of visual poetry that extended or transcended the spoken text. In Robert LePage’s The Far Side of the Moon, for instance, video was frequently used to impart a sense of strangeness to the familiar. In one notable scene, the video reversed the audience’s perspective on the act of doing laundry, evoking a hatch or porthole on a space vehicle.
As performed at Ye Olde Carlton Arms Hotel, October-November 2005
Authors:   BLUEMOUTH INC.
Published: June 2023

Caution: Copyright Bluemouth Inc. This script is protected under the copyright laws of Canada and all other countries of the Copyright Union. Changes to the script are forbidden without the written consent of the author. Rights to produce, film or record in any medium, in any language, by any group, are retained by the author. The moral right of the author has been asserted. For performance rights, please contact Bluemouth Inc.
My Body in Plastic: A Tourist Goes to Body Worlds
Authors: Johnson Stephen
Published: June 2023

When I told my family doctor that I was going to visit Body Worlds — an exhibition of anatomical models comprised of “real” bodies — at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto, she told me that she had mixed feelings about this kind of display. She was curious to see it, of course, and thought that it might be instructive for the general public; but, in her experience as a medical student, any room containing bodies was a place to be treated with respect and a quiet reverence — voices at a whisper, a high seriousness at all times. She expected to find the jostling, noisy crowds, working their way past what had once been living human beings, profoundly unsettling.
Theatre in Atlantic Canada: “Myth-Making and Myth-Challenqinq”
Authors: Burnett Linda
Published: June 2023

In an interview that was published in 1991, Wendy Lill had this to say about the state of theatre in Atlantic Canada:

In the East, I find, as with everything else, a sense of reticence. It’s not insecurity, because there’s certainly a great deal of pride here: people who are here want to be here. It’s more a feeling that’s been drummed into Easterners for decades that historically “East is Least” and that their stories aren’t as interesting as those from the West. At least not to anyone who isn’t an Easterner. (Rudakoff 37)
Victoria Playhouse: Re(de)fining Space and Focus in Rural Prince Edward Island
Authors: Belliveau George , Lea Graham
Published: June 2023

Prince Edward Island’s Victoria Playhouse celebrates its twenty-fifth season in the summer of 2006. Since 1981, the Playhouse, as it is locally known, has been producing theatre in the Victoria Community Hall, which inside looks like the inverted interior of a ship, quite appropriate for a theatre a two-minute walk from fishing wharves. This cosy hall, built by Win Bradley between 1914 and 1916, has had a long history of activity. During the two world wars, the Playhouse was used for “recruiting meetings, lectures, plays, concerts, suppers, [and] quilting bees” to help the war effort (Boswell 27). At other times, the Playhouse was used for “showers, farewells, joint political meetings, movies, Christmas [concerts], school closings, fashion parades, [and] music festivals,” and it has seen performances by artists such as Anne Murray and Don Messer and His Islanders (27–8). However, it is as home of the Victoria Playhouse that the hall has had the most significant impact on the community over the past twenty-five years.
Contemporary Acadian Theatre in New Brunswick
Authors: Nichols Glen
Published: June 2023

From Antonine Maillet’s canonical La Sagouine (Les Feux Chalins, 1971) to Emma Haché’s postmodern Murmures, produced by Théâtre populaire d’Acadie (TPA) in the winter of 2006, contemporary Acadian theatre has matured and developed a sense of itself in an interrelationship with the community that is both complex and dynamic. While playwrights like Haché or Herménégilde Chiasson continue to explore aspects of Acadian history, their plays like Murmures or Pour une fois (l’Escaouette 1999–2004) interrogate the assumptions of that history and of the Acadian nationalism that has been so closely allied with a mythologized past. In the relatively short span of time since Louis J. Robichaud became the first Acadian premier of New Brunswick in 1960 and subsequently instituted a number of measures in education, language equality and economic structures that rebalanced the relationship between English and French communities in the province, cultural and identitary assertiveness of the Acadian renaissance (or “miracle” – both metaphors are heard) has seen Acadie and Acadians develop from being significantly disadvantaged to asserting economic, political and cultural power. From the earliest years, theatre has played a role in the construction of this identity, and an examination of the situation of contemporary theatre in Acadie1 in New Brunswick will make it clear that both theatre and society have moved beyond traditional nationalist narratives.
The Challenges of Park Performance: Pericles in Halifax’s Point Pleasant
Authors: Green Reina
Published: June 2023

As Peter Brook notes, any space can be a theatre. He writes, “I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space while someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged” (9). While theatre can happen anywhere, the space in which theatre occurs is one of the most crucial defining aspects of theatre production. As Ric Knowles argues, a theatre space may appear empty before a performance, but it is never empty of meaning (63). The physical characteristics of that space and the macro- and micro-cultures within which it is situated inform the understanding of that space for both audience and theatre company. Despite the growing awareness of the importance of theatre space, there has been little scholarly examination of the influence of space on theatre production and audience perception (Knowles 67), and there has been virtual silence on the influence of open-air staging. However, more people will see a performance of one of Shakespeare’s plays in an open-air theatre than in any other venue (Heatley 65).1 One of the most popular outdoor theatres in Canada is Halifax’s Shakespeare by the Sea (SBTS), which uses the Cambridge Battery in Halifax’s Point Pleasant Park as its main playing space, and the influence of that space on the company and on its 2005 production of Pericles is what I wish to consider here.
Robert Chafe: The Last Two Years in Review
Authors: Lynde Denyse
Published: June 2023

The year 2004 saw the publication of Robert Chafe’s Two Plays: Butler’s Marsh and Tempting Providence and its nomination for a Governor-General’s Literary Award. It also saw Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland’s production of Burial Practices of the Early European Settlers through to Today, Theatre Newfoundland and Labrador’s (TNL) production of Isle of Demons and Stephenville Festival’s commission of Vive la Rose. Finally, it saw the beginning of the international tour of Tempting Providence. Although busy, this was a typical year for playwright/actor Chafe, who, while closely associated with Artistic Fraud, also works regularly with TNL and the Stephenville Festival.
All Roads Lead from Mulgrave (Road Theatre)
Authors: Rhindress Charlie
Published: June 2023

Last fall I directed the world premiere of Jenny Munday’s Relatively Harmless at Live Bait Theatre in Sackville, New Brunswick, where I’m the artistic director. Watching one of the final rehearsals, I thought to myself, “Wow, that’s Gay Hauser and John Dartt on stage in my theatre.“

I felt privileged to be working with two artists who had helped establish indigenous Maritime theatre; two artists who were instrumental in the early days of the Mulgrave Road Theatre Co-op; two artists who I made coffee for in one of my first profession al theatre gigs.
The Drama Club at St.Thomas University, Fredericton, NB
Authors: Silk IIkay
Published: June 2023

St.Thomas is a small liberal arts undergraduate university with approximately 2,800 full-time students and 340 part-time students. Despite the fact that there is no theatre program per se at St.Thomas University, theatre has always been an integral part of student life. Looking back on St. Thomas’s history, it has always valued the “drama club” as a valid and serious extra-curricular activity. It has seen the valuable contribution theatre can make to a community outside of the academy, while at the same time affecting the academy itself. Because the university is small, the tradition of the drama club continued at STU at a time when some other universities went ahead and developed theatre programs to meet the demands of the growth of professional theatre in Canada during the 1970s.
Magnetic North in St. John’s
Authors: Lynde Denyse
Published: June 2023

Magnetic North Theatre Festival played in St. John’s, Newfoundland from 28 June through 8 July 2006. We in St. John’s were delighted to welcome Canada’s National Festival of Contemporary Canadian Theatre in English. It is hard to believe that this outstanding theatrical event has only been in existence for four years, but what a tremendous special happening we experienced on the East Coast. With world premieres, exciting remounts, special Atlantic contributions, Magnetic Encounters, the Newfoundland and Labrador Scene, On the Verge and non-stop theatre-going and partying, it was a busy and extremely stimulating time.
Remembering Herbert (c. 2006)
Authors: Breon Robin
Published: June 2023

These eloquent words begin Herbert Whittaker’s account of Montreal theatre from 1920 through 1949, as detailed in his book, Setting the Stage. This text, along with two earlier books, Whittaker’s Theatre 1944—1975 and Whittaker’s Theatricals should be required reading for every drama student in the country.

I firs t met Herbert - (I won’t use the diminutive “Herbie” here although it was almost universally applied by most of his friends. Whenever I would receive a message on my voice mail from him it was always: “This is Herbert give me a call when you get a chance .“And I think , if the truth were known, he preferred it ) - in the early 1970s when we formed an organization of theatre critics and writers called the Toronto Drama Bench. The arts patron, Floyd Chalmers, had given a sum of money for an endowment to encourage excellence in dramatic writing, and there needed to be some body to adjudicate the award. Herbert was then the drama critic for the Globe and Mail and I was writing for a small, left-Wing “underground” newspaper of the period called Guerilla. In chatting after the meeting, Herbert noted that he was the senior (meaning oldest) member of the organization and that I was the youngest and that therefore we should try to get along. We did that in a friendship that lasted over thirty years. During that time, (lost my status as youngest member of the organization, but some how he remained our elderst atesman.
Moving the Furniture
Authors: Kahre Andreas
Published: June 2023

Peter Hinton is one of English Canada’s most respected playwrights, directors and dramaturges. In his twenty-year career, he has been an integral part of the Canadian theatre landscape, working as an Associate Artist of the Stratford Festival of Canada, Associate Director and Dramaturge at Theatre Passe Muraille, Associate Director and Head of the New Play Development Program at the Canadian Stage Company in Toronto, Artistic Director and Dramaturge of the Playwrights Theatre Centre in Vancouver and Dramaturge in Residence at Playwrights’ Workshop Montreal. He is passionate about Canadian theatre and is proud to have developed new works by John Mighton, Guillermo Verdecchia, Marie Clements, Larry Tremblay, Blake Brooker, Normand Chaurette, Maristella Roca, Allen Cole and Greg MacArthur to name a few.
Tiny Heartbreaks and the Electric Creative Body
Authors: Drew Noah
Published: June 2023

There were a few years there where I kept getting my heart broken. In the theatre. Doing sound design gigs.

The basic scenario would go som ething like this. I’m hir ed by a theatre company to do a sound design. It ’s an attractiv e company; maybe it’s a sexy young thing, an avant-garde typ e. Or maybe it’s a little older, distinguished , with a sens e of class and a heftier wall et . In either case, a company I’m flatt er ed to spend a little t ime with.
Kenaxis and Diamond: Tools for Theatre Artists
Authors: Smulovitz Stefan
Published: June 2023

The power to make your own tools completely changes the creative process. You can envision a unique solution to a problem and, if it isn’t available, create it yourself. In my sound work outside of theatre, I developed a software instrument called Kenaxis that lets me quickly grab hold of sounds, manipulate them, mangle them, change to a different set of sounds, grab live samples and, if the setup allows, do it all in surround sound. This software is perfect for experimental theatre, places where improvisation and an emphasis on gestures is important, and for working in alternative spaces with surround sound. It allows the environment to be more playful and removes the need to set sound parameters rigidly ahead of time. Compositionally, the software is set up to provide an environment where any number of things can happen: a space where various processes can be applied to the sound — deliberate or random — allowing the software to create a different sound design for each performance. However, while Kenaxis was the perfect tool for experimenting with sound, it is not optimized for a cue-to-cue approach to sound design.
One River (running . . .): Hybrid Space – Open Composition for an Immersive Environment
Authors: Dulic Aleksandra , Newby Kenneth , Gotfrit Martin
Published: June 2023

The theoretical and practical concepts presented here pivot around the composition and design of an interactive audiovisual installation, presented at the Surrey Arts Centre in 2005: One River (running . . .). This immersive media environment is a new form of participatory documentary that reflects the contemporary Surrey community it is presented in. This open composition takes advantage of a set of braided computational media and narrative processes as a dramatic model and integrates computation as a medium for composition, expanded immersive environment, performance and improvisation. The concept of braided processes provides a model for braided conversations and provides an open frame-work for describing an integrated relationship among various independent elements that comprise the complex media braid within the One River (running . . .) environment and is discussed in detail in this paper.
Intelligent Instruments for Situated Media Performance
Authors: Newby Kenneth , Dulic Aleksandra
Published: June 2023

The development of computer-based tools for use in theatrical production is in large measure linked to changes in the conceptual and technological frame-work of media performance. Composers and sound designers work increasingly in situations where the boundaries between theatre, media installation and sited performance are blurred or arbitrary. As a result, media tools are finding their way into theatre, and sound designers are developing strategies to integrate media into performance and to create systems that are responsive to site.
Audience is a verb: A conversation with Darren Copeland
Authors: Rogalsky Matt
Published: June 2023

Darren Copeland: I think in a lot of cases I’m taking my studio background and trying to apply it to public situations. Playing on the 401 is perhaps an extension of other installations that I’ve done, which have been in public spaces, where I may have been creating something in relation to the visual world, having sound that complements it or comments on it in some fashion. Last November at the Inter active ’05 festival in Toronto I made a piece that was called Intersections. It was on a pedestrian bridge, about 100 feet long, that goes over the train tracks. The bridge connects the two buildings of the Metro Convention Centre. In one of the buildings of the centre, the Toronto Art Fair was going on , and Intersections was a kind of welcoming piece in a sense. I did recordings of the br idge and people going by and stuff-just the sound of people walking through it, and also the sound of the trains underneath as they passed by. I was interested in playing those sounds back into the space and then manipulating them, to kind of alter reality and create a kind of ambiguity between what is real and what is imaginary. And so, sometimes , the sound is quite manipulated and has maybe only a very slight sense of it being a train or someone talking or some one walking, but other times the sound is realistic .There’s that sort of “look over the shoulder” thing that sometimes people have when they think they hear something that’s not actually there. It also kind of altered people’s awareness of space. The bridge was no longer just a way to get from one place to another; it was a place to visit. I think it worked in that way. I’d like to do mor e pieces like that. For the Open Ears festivals in Kitchen er I have been doing pieces in the City Hall rotunda. Those are eight-channel soundscape pieces.
Editorial
Authors: Kahre Andreas
Published: June 2023

When Ric Knowles, at the instigation of former UBC theatre student Helina Patience, proposed publishing an issue of CTR on sound design, it seemed that the task should be straightforward. Sound design, one would think, is similar enough to other design disciplines in the theatre that it ought to be a matter of describing the history and current state of the practice and of finding some examples of how it is currently being deployed. One might then speculate intelligently on matters like the future impact of technology or intercultural approaches to theatre and perhaps attempt to glimpse a near future, in which image projection, light and sound might merge to form an integrated scenographic syntax – which, as Robert Gardiner slyly proposed at a recent Performance Creation Canada conference, would make designers altogether superfluous.1
First Time Eyes: Unearthing Spoken Word
Authors: Wilson Sheri-D
Published: June 2023

Certain things just stick with you; they become part of what you observe or how you observe. This “seeing” informs the process of discovery, which leads to the chaos of unearthing and ultimately to the Eros of creation. Poets are merely scribes who describe their own history, with their own language, sound and vision. Perspective is everything; instinct and intuition, essential.
What a Twoonie Can Deliver
Authors: O’Hara Alexis
Published: June 2023

In the late nineties, I moved to Montreal, where I quickly started performing and, for a while, organizing events. Every few months, I’d get a call from someone from the (real or aspiring) media, wanting to interview me about the “spoken word explosion.” Disingenuously, I’d relent and offer some sound-bites about “the scene.” Truth be told, apart from a smattering of live performance series and an endless stream of well-intentioned benefit cabarets, there really was no scene; if there was an explosion, it wasn’t exactly the big bang. No one — not then, not now — got rich off of spoken word in Montreal. The press eventually lost interest. Some reading series went the way of the eight-track. Many spoken-word artists turned to journalism, theatre, performance art and music or, in some cases, to a professional life that could provide food and shelter.
Lineages, Geographies: A Review of the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word, Toronto, 11-14 October 2006
Authors: Hermant Heather , Rotary MissTer
Published: June 2023

Veteran spoken-word performer and director of the Calgary International Spoken Word Festival, Sheri-D Wilson kicked off the opening ceremonies of the 2006 Canadian Festival of Spoken Word in Toronto, a fitting gesture, given that Calgary is the newest team addition to the national event. In the midst of entertaining poetry featuring drag queens in pasties, Wilson lamented having recently heard a younger poet “pissing on the Beats.” She implored an audience of poets, “We must as a group know our history.” Veteran dub poet activist Lillian Allen echoed the importance of history when she performed as the Female Honouree on closing night: “if you don’t know where you’re coming from, you can’t see where you’re going to.” The Festival proved that this “we” derives from an eclectic mix of poetic lineages, histories and networks within and beyond poetry. For example, references to Apollinaire, the nineteenth-century-born French-speaking Polish—Swiss—Italian who coined the term “surrealist,” shared the stage with hip-hop legend Tupac Shakur, who coined the much misunderstood acronym “THUG LIFE” (The Hate You Give Little Infants F — -s Everybody).
Blood Lines: A Review of d’bi.young’s blood.claat
Authors: Estima Christine
Published: June 2023

I was working the box office at Theatre Passe Muraille in downtown Toronto when d’bi.young’s blood.claat first premiered as part of the Stage 3 repertory theatre series in Fall of 2005. Apart from the frenzied pace at which tickets were selling out, this remains one of the oddest box office experiences I’ve ever had. Patrons would shyly approach the wicket, pause with a glint of embarrassment in their eyes, and quickly ask for “the d’bi.young play.” Always “the d’bi.young play”; never “blood.claat.” The few times I would actually hear the play’s title come out of a patron’s mouth, it was immediately followed by a round of self-conscious giggles, like those of giddy schoolchildren quictly swearing under their breath.
Invisible Realms: Canadian Speculative Drama
Authors: Duchesne Scott
Published: June 2023

Science has never been a popular subject for Canadian playwrights. Prior to the 1960s, few if any Canadian plays of note dealt directly with topics in science, and, with a handful of exceptions – albeit some of them very prominent exceptions (in particular, John Mighton) – few contemporary Canadian playwrights have dealt directly with issues rooted in technology. There have been even fewer examples of Canadian playwrights consistently producing work in the genre in which science and technology have always flourished as subjects: science fiction or, more specifically in this article, speculative fiction (SF). For the most part, the dominant formats in Canadian drama over the past century have been varieties of realism and naturalism. Kitchen sinks, family dysfunction, a host of social ills and the harshness of the land or the city have consistently trumped works of sheer imagination in terms of critical and, apparently, audience appeal.