bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Making The Rounds
Authors: Close J. Herbert
Published: June 2023

Changes in the wind… . The possible reestablishment of a Canadian ITI (International Theatre Institute) Centre was the subject of a recent by-invitation-only meeting at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. PACT (the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres) called the meeting… . Christopher Newton making no secret of the fact that when he takes over as artistic director of the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake in January of 1980, the Festival will considerably expand its philosophy of producing only plays by Shaw and his contemporaries. Welcome news there. Actor/director Leslie Yeo will handle the artistic reins at Shaw next summer… . Plays by Lillian Hellman and Racine on this season’s bill at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto. Also planned are new plays by David French, Michel Tremblay and Rick Salutin. The Salutin play, for the record, is being called The Nathan Cohen Revue and it will star Cohen’s old friend and occasional rival, Mavor Moore. Meanwhile, Tarragon artistic director Bill Glassco is waiting to see the final script. He’s had difficulty getting in touch with Salutin in recent months to discuss the project. Salutin, it seems, decided to take his holidays this year in Mozambique.
Dialogue Fantastico
Authors: Andre Marion
Published: June 2023

The editor asked Toronto Artistic Director Marion Andre to write something about theatre, contemporary theatre. He suggested that it should be about 2,000 words, general in outlook, humorous, informative, reflective and controversial. Andre agreed to the challenge and then could not be found for quite some time. Right on deadline, though, Andre arrived with his piece, left it on the editor’s desk and disappeared into the night. It was, happily, exactly what the editor had ordered. It was unique, fascinating, relevant. It was … it was …
Toronto’s Baby Building Boom
Authors: Souchotte Sandra
Published: June 2023

Cutbacks, cutbacks, everywhere cutbacks but despite the dire news theatre buildings are springing up all over Toronto. How and why is this apparently contradictory situation happening? Writer Sandra Souchotte looks at Toronto s recent baby building boom and provides some of the answers.
Prairie Portraits
Authors: Glauser Lorne
Published: June 2023

The province of Saskatchewan has been known for many things but except perhaps to an avowed provincial chauvinist it has never been known as a major centre of theatre. In recent years, however, the province’s theatres and playwrights have been making themselves felt all across the country. The province’s most well-established theatre — the Globe in Regina — goes back to 1966 when the enlightened Saskatchewan Arts Board gave Sue and Ken Kramer a $3,000 grant to begin operations. Saskatoon’s two major theatres — the Persephone established in 1974 and 25th Street House, established in 1975 — have built on the Kramers’ pioneering work and, of late, have served as a positive kind of prod to the Globe to go even further in its development. The key, of course, to all of this development has been the people involved and in Saskatchewan those people have been professionals who are deeply committed to the idea of theatre that makes connections with its audiences. The result has been a theatre that is and has been very much a part of the social and political fabric of its region. Few provinces — Quebec being the major exception — can boast of theatres so closely connected with the day-to-day realities of their constituency. Perhaps as a consequence of this regional commitment, each of these theatres has taken extraordinary pride in creating and presenting new work to its patrons. The Globe has long been committed to the concept and today remains one of the few major theatres in the country which has on its payroll a playwright-in-residence. That playwright is, of course, Rex Deverell. The whole country is aware of the Ken Mitchell-Humphrey and the Dumptrucks musical, Cruel Tears, a production that began at the Persephone in 1976. Andy Tahn’s 25th Street House last year linked into Saskatchewan audiences as no one had before it with its deservedly-acclaimed production of Paper Wheat, a play that broke records wherever it played in the province and which recently completed a sold-out run at Montreal’s Centaur Theatre. These theatres too are leading the way in establishing effective touring networks which help significantly to make their respective work financially — as well as artistically — viable. Who and what make these companies go? In the following reports from Saskatchewan, writers Jason Schoonover and Lorne Glauser answer just those questions and suggest rather clearly that there is more growing in Saskatchewan today than prairie wheat.
A Tribute: Sue Kramer
Authors: Deverell Rex
Published: June 2023

Around Regina’s Globe Theatre there is a notion that there is nothing wrong with the world that politics can’t cure. After a performance it has not been uncommon to see tall, gangling Sue Kramer, take the stage and plead for the audience to lend its support to a particular cause, sometimes affecting the theatre, sometimes concerning a broader social issue. Now, however, a loss has occurred to the theatre that no amount of letter writing to the Secretary of State can restore. Sue Kramer, actress, co-artistic director of the Globe and an extraordinary woman, is dead at the age of 39.
The Shipbuilder: A Play
Authors: Mitchell Ken
Published: June 2023

The play you are about to read, The Shipbuilder, remains in a state of development for me. It has received the benefits of one production, a most eloquent production, at the University of Regina. But this play remains a rather complex and multi-layered blueprint for execution which, to be completed, will require at least one and possibly two more productions. Among other things, I’d like to see a lot of percussion used in the play and I believe it should be “scored” to achieve full effect. I also think the script should become more “poetic” and less realistic than perhaps it is now. I think too that perhaps some of the lesser characters need greater definition. But I won’t really know until some company decides to begin additional work with me on this script. Hopefully, my decision to permit publication of the script at this point will spark that interest. For the record, I would also like to acknowledge the assistance of two people — L. J. “Moon” Mullin and Erald Jones of Moose Jaw — who were instrumental in restoring the Sukanen ship and in the creation of this play.
Nothing to Lose, Ploughmen of the Glacier
Authors: Fennario David , Ryga George , Neil Boyd
Published: June 2023

The least likeable character in David Fennario’s Nothing to Lose is the writer named Jerry Nines . He talks in affected monosyllables seemingly meant to pass for working class argot. In the midst of eloquent expressions of despondency and futility, he broods (as a writer is supposed to do I guess) or worse, gives outjejeune moralisms and irresponsible political slogans when his opinion is solicited.
Gapi
Authors: Maillet Antonine , Rièse Laure
Published: June 2023

Gapi, the close-mouthed husband in la Sangouine is now alone, an old man who during 28 pages soliloquizes. Not for a moment do we get bored. He talks about himself as the lighthouse keeper , reminisces , eats his frugal meal and contemplates the sea. He has constant company, first of all the silent inhabitants of the sand-hills and the vociferous sea-gulis. His speech is typical of the people of Acadia, goodnatured, rough and frank . The birds are agreeable company, friendly or quarrelsome, gay or sad . He watches them in search of their food under or above water. He likes to call them, especially the lame one who seems close to the old man. His days seem to be well-filled for there is the lighthouse that needs a certain care, but times have changed and it has become an easier task , not as many steps to climb and switches will give the light directing those still at sea. Boats are fewer since there is no longer the prohibition or clandestine cargos . However, sometimes a certain lonesome feeling descends upon him.
The Dismissal
Authors: Reaney James , Beaupre Therese
Published: June 2023

Unlike traditional playscripts, James Reaney’s The Dismissal can be seen not as a blueprint for future performance, but as an historical record of a single past performance. Commissioned and performed in November 1977 for the University of Toronto’s l50th anniversary, the play deals with the blights and plight s of that same campus 80 years earlier in time.
Asides
Authors: Rubin Don
Published: June 2023

In case you hadn’t noticed, Canadian theatre people are turning up all over the world in increasing numbers these days and in the coming year Canadian theatre companies will be linking internationally as never before. That was Théâtre du Nouveau Monde Artistic Director Jean-Louis Roux in the States for several weeks in November speaking at American colleges and universities from Wisconsin to California. This coming March 29 to April 8, the city of Birmingham, Alabama is throwing a high-budget Salute to Canada which is expected to include speakers and performing arts participants from all across the country. A voluntary, non-commercial endeavour, the Birmingham Festival of Arts has been in existence for 28 years and each spring it looks at the cultural, artistic, educational and industrial life of different countries. Discussions between the Festival and Canada’s Department of External Affairs Cultural Affairs Division have been going on for more than a year although specific plans have not yet been announced. This Spring as well, Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille goes on an extended tour of England.
The Actors Lab: The Ritual Roots of Human Action
Authors: Grimes Ronald L.
Published: June 2023

The Actor’s Lab, a professional research and performance ensemble from Hamilton, Ontario, was founded in 1971 on the campus of McMaster University by Richard Nieoczym, then a student of religious studies and philosophy. Influenced by Jerzy Grotowski’s root work on the actor and those elements which psychologically stand in the way of the actor, the Lab today conducts activities ranging from occasional public performances (including periodic para-theatrical events) to special performance workshops and conferences. Continual group and personal research in the form of ‘studies’ is maintained as an ongoing activity by the Lab’s six members, all of whom are in their 20’s and 30’s and come from Catholic or Protestant, Anglophone backgrounds. As suggested by its original name, Le Théâtre de I’Homme, the Lab has always tried to achieve a theatre of essential man and essential actions. Its themes, gestures, settings and rhythms are consequently quite typically elemental and non-narrative with strong emphasis on shadow, silence and a flowing form of movement that appears most often as dance-like. Performances by the Lab are neither thematically nor typically Canadian, though some of its playwrights and all of its members are from Ontario. Through the years, the Lab has performed at Festivals in Europe (BITEF and Wroclaw to name just two) and in the United States (the New Theatre Festival in Baltimore). In the following essay, written for CTR by Prof. Ronald Grimes of the Religion and Culture Department at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, the Lab’s work is looked at in its relation to the ritualistic roots of all personal and social action.
ELJOGLARS: Truth and Consequences
Authors: Bell Wade , Ragué-Arías María-José
Published: June 2023

The question of theatre’s social role has particular relevance in Spain these days where members of that country’s most innovative populist company, Els Joglars, remain in jail for doing something which “people of culture do not do.” Members of the company, it seems, had been consistently critical of the government in general and of the military specifically. The court which tried the company members decided that the group’s work was not socially responsible. The following report on the Els Joglars situation was written especially for CTR by Wade Bell, a Canadian free-lance writer currently living in Barcelona and María-José Ragué-Arías, a well-known Spanish theatre critic.
In the Concentration Camps of Chile
Authors: Feliciano Margarita
Published: June 2023

In the mid-60’s, Chilean actor-director Oscar Castro helped to found El Aleph, a theatre group which, after producing a number of traditional pieces, quickly moved into collective creation. Under the Allende regime, the company did well and, in fact, appeared at a number of major international theatre festivals. Clearly left-leaning, however, and increasingly political in its approaches, the company found itself in a difficult position when the Allende regime was toppled. Should it continue its social activism under a clearly right wing government or should it disband for a time? The group decided to continue its work and in 1974 mounted a major political allegory called In The Beginning There Was Life. The production was a huge success and played to packed houses before it was closed by the military. Shortly thereafter, Castro was arrested. Later on, so too were his mother, his wife and his brother-in-law. In time, Castro was placed in Tres Alamos, one of Chile’s well-known and well-documented concentration camps. Between 1974 and 1976, Castro served time not only in Tres Alamos but in three other camps as well—Chacabuco, Melinka and Puchuncavi. In the beginning, he wanted to give up everything but he soon realized that his theatre work could help both him and the other inmates to survive. Every week, performances were improvised and soon these so-called Cultural Fridays became a way of life. As Castro was moved from camp to camp, the idea of Cultural Fridays spread. In the following interview, Castro, who now makes his home in Paris, speaks for the first time of theatre in the Chilean concentration camps—what it was and what it meant. The interview was first published in Spanish in the distinguished Latin American theatre journal, Conjunto and it appears here in English for the first time with their permission. The interview was translated especially for CTR by Toronto writer Margarita Feliciano. It was conducted in Paris by Chilean exile Ariel Dorfman.
The Great Canadian Play
Authors: Hornby Richard
Published: June 2023

For years, Canadian theatre people have been searching for The Great Canadian Play. Recently, that play arrived in the CTR mail. Written by Richard Hornby, a member of the University of Calgary faculty, it is offered here for what it is … although what it is we’re not exactly sure.
Russian Plays for Young Audiences
Authors: Morton Miriam , Doolittle Joyce
Published: June 2023

With 400 to 500 different plays produced each year by 50-odd permanent repertory companies performing for young audiences in the Soviet Union, it must have been difficult for Miriam Morton to choose five to translate into English for this important addition to the small number of significant published plays for young people — in any language. Her choices are excellent and her introduction to the collection is a model of clarity in explaining the remarkable phenomenon of the Soviet TIUZ (Theatre for Young Audiences). One might question the disproportionate ratio of plays for teenagers (three of the five), but the popularity of the pieces included, the stature of the authors, and the seriousness of the themes demand respect.
Three Plays
Authors: Walker George F. , Beaupre Therese
Published: June 2023

More than just a collection of early plays, Bagdad Saloon, Beyond Mozambique and Ramona and the White Slaves actually comprise a trilogy united, not by a continuing plot and characters, but by a common theme or repeated vision. In all three works, an essentially absurd world vision is depicted: a meaningless universe, a chaos, where order, purpose and logic no longer apply—merely anarchy, amorality and futility. Beyond this shared thematic core, and the fact that all three works have exotic settings, each play is established as a separate entity, each a full-length play, and each originally produced on its own.
Penguin in the Grey-Clad City
Authors: Filewod Alan
Published: June 2023

When Don Bouzek talks about alternate theatre, he refers not to the search for new performance concepts or dramatic styles, but to the need to service a community, a non-ideological mandate to reflect the tastes and problems of a particular place. Often, when one hears these phrases from an artistic director, there is reason for judicious suspicion, for the rhetoric of ‘community’ has a reputation of concealing a lack of critical thought.
Inuit Theatre: Dramatizing the Myths
Authors: Souchotte Sandra
Published: June 2023

In March of this year, the touring Tuukaq Theatre of Greenland staged two performances of an Eskimo play called Inuit at Toronto Workshop Productions. After Toronto, the company moved on to Ottawa and Montreal then north to Fort Chimo, Baffin Island and Keewatin to perform for Canadian Eskimos. It was expected that the Greenlandic Inuit language of the play as well as its mythology would be easily shared by the Inuit people of other lands.
George Ryga: Beginnings of a Biography
Authors: Hay Peter
Published: June 2023

One thing that we don’t have very much of in Canada is basic biographical information on most of our playwrights. In recent years, this situation has begun to change but one quickly sees just how far we still have to go when it is realized that virtually no extended biographical material at all has been published about one of Canada’s most important playwrights, George Ryga. Recently, Vancouver critic Peter Hay began work on a Ryga biography and he spent many hours with him discussing Ryga’s life and work. The following is excerpted primarily from the section dealing with Ryga’s early career. Full publication of the still-to-be-completed volume is not expected for at least another two years.
Discovering the Nuances
Authors: Brassard Andre
Published: June 2023

Director André Brassard has staged all of Michel Tremblay’s major works to date in both French and English. In the following interview with Renate Usmiani, Brassard talks about the problems of doing Tremblay well. The interview was done for CTR in June of this year in Montreal.
Michel Tremblay: The Pedestals (Les Socles)
Authors: Usmiani. Renate
Published: June 2023

This short, unpublished play provides some interesting insights into the “other” Tremblay, strikingly different from his generally accepted image. Written in classical French, and using an abstract, rather than realistic, style, Les Socles presents us with a powerful stage image in the absurdist vein of Beckett. Three levels of meaning are immediately obvious: the play can be seen as a parable of family life; a political parable; or an allegory of the human condition. The Father and Mother figures of this play are the same as those of the full-length Les Paons, which also incorporates their main speech (“En dehors de nous . . .”) — R.U.
The New Montreal Theatre: Battling way Back Then
Authors: Bains Yashdip Singh
Published: June 2023

Edward Allen, William Moore and John Bentley were the first ‘pioneer’ actor-managers to bring professional companies to Montreal and Quebec City in 1786. They were followed in the early 19th century by Ormsby, W.H. Prigmore, Noble Luke Usher, and Mills—to list but a few of the more prominent names—all of whom tried to develop further the tradition of performing popular London plays in assembly rooms or makeshift theatres with little scenery and a few talented performers. Unfortunately, most met with little public (and thus financial) success during this period. But with the arrival of peace after Napoleon’s defeat, two managers arrived on the Montreal scene who sought to revive theatrical performances without being deterred by the unhappy experiences of the past—John Duplessis Turnbull, an actor-manager-playwright and tavern keeper in Montreal since 1808, and Thomas Doige, a law stationer. Both men sought to exorcise the spectre of failure by recruiting a company of outstanding performers. Thanks in part to the extended coverage their theatre received in both the Montreal Herald and the Canadian Courant as well as to the recent discovery of contracts and employment records, this theatre’s history can now be more fully-documented. This material may not, of course, reveal full particulars of the administrative and economic organization of the New Montreal Theatre but they have allowed its author —Dr. Yashdip Singh Bains—to piece together an outline of the partnership between the two men and the kind of work produced by this then unique Montreal theatre.*
Bringing Light Back to The Earth: Edward Bond’s The Woman
Authors: Coult Tony
Published: June 2023

The play to me is a celebration of human intelligence, of reason as opposed to all that murky, decadent reactionary darkness that passes as art. So the play is a rhapsody. It’s a rhapsody in praise of human beings.
Stratford ’79 The Burden of Routine
Authors: Berry Ralph
Published: June 2023

Robin Phillips’ illness last year, and his part-sabbatical, meant that 1979 had to be a holding operation for the Stratford Festival. So it would be unreasonable to expect too much of the Company this summer. Even so, I confess to some disappointment and unease at the Company’s performance. Their limitations have emerged more clearly in a difficult year, and it’s been a generally undistinguished season for the classic repertory. Ustinov’s Lear will of course be a different affair, but it runs only for the last month and cannot substantially modify the impressions of a five-month season.
Theatre Synergy: A Collective Festival
Authors: Zientara Jerry
Published: June 2023

The second annual Theatre Synergy Festival, a gathering of groups involved in collective creation, was held this past May in South Slocan, British Columbia. Sponsored by Selkirk College and organized by Theatre Energy, the festival gives approximately half a dozen companies each year an opportunity to share their works and observations. Those participating this year included Tamahnous, Theatre Energy, Touchstone, Canadian Theatre of the Deaf, Terminal City Dance Company and Brass Tacks. The first three are primarily theatre ensembles; the latter three work in related forms. All the companies are based in British Columbia. The following report was written especially for CTR by Jerry Zientara, a visitor to the Festival from San Francisco.
The Sceptical Vision of Moliere: A Study in Paradox
Authors: McBride Robert , Sabiston Elizabeth
Published: June 2023

The Sceptical Vision of Moliere: A Study in Paradox affords a jud icious and illuminating survey of traditional and recent trends in Moliere criticism, and uses them as a springboard to setting Moliere’s ‘problem’ plays in the context of the prevalent morale of the playwright’s time. Too often the philosophic components consist of the extensive use of apt quotations from such as Gassendi, Montaigne, and La Mothe Ie Vayer without any very rigorous application to the plays in question. McBride is at his best when he steps away from the history of ideas and focuses on what, for want of a better term, could be described as New Critical analysis of the ‘internal coherent structure’ of the plays: their suggestive juxtaposition of absolutists and raisonneurs in the Molieresque moral dialectic; the linguistic games subtending the doubleness of the comic vision; and Moliere’s dual role as actor on the scene and playwright behind.
An Approach to Our Beginnings: Transplant, Native Plant or Mutation?
Authors: Moore Mavor
Published: June 2023

Again and again—with fortunate regularity—we find the theatre community reflecting the social and political concerns of our country. The controversy centering on the form of an evolving identity for country and theatre, with some hopes pinned on the ethic of nationalism, some on internationalism, continues into the 1980’s unabated. Mavor Moore, first chairman of the Canadian Theatre Centre and Guild of Canadian Playwrights, now chairman of the Canada Council, as well as an actor and playwright of distinction, has been intimately involved with this dilemma throughout his career. In the following address, delivered to the International Federation for Theatre Research at the University of Toronto last August, he tackles these points outlining a vision of our contradictory past and the various directions implied for tomorrow in that founding.
WINNIPEG REPORT: THE MANITOBA PLAYWRIGHT SEARCH
Authors: Runnels Rory
Published: June 2023

New script development in Winnipeg was given a healthy boost last August. In this report, Rory Runnels describes the scope and process of the search for new work, and the workshops that resulted.
THE MAROWITZ SHAKESPEARE
Authors: Sabiston Elizabeth
Published: June 2023

Charles Marowitz contrasts Artaud’s ‘exhortations to destroy masterpieces’ with recent attempts to assemble a ‘Frankenstein monster’. Clearly, his own penchant is for destruction in the manner of Artaud. He resists being placed in ‘something like an orderly system … I speak for no one but myself, and … do not presume that my work is the front-runner of any kind of Zeitgeist.’
HEROD (REFLECTIONS ON POLITICAL VIOLENCE)
Authors: Richardson Alan
Published: June 2023

Conor Cruise O’Brien has been active in national and international politics for over 20 years as well as pursuing careers in teaching and writing. He was the United Nations representative in the Congo when Katanga tried to secede. In the early 1970s, back in his native Ireland, he was embroiled in the continuing controversy concerning events in Northern Ireland, both as a member of the Irish parliament and as a government minister. Defeated in the 1974 elections Dr. O’Brien became editor-in-chief of The Observer in London.
STANISLAVSKI IN REHEARSAL: THE FINAL YEARS
Authors: Rubin Don
Published: June 2023

For decades past and well into our own century, actors and directors, in their search for a vocabulary that described what they did, spoke about ‘tone.’ One sought to find the ‘proper tone’ for a role. One tried to raise it or lower it, influence it or modulate it. The problem, of course, was that ‘tone’ was no more precise a word in this context than any other that had been invented to that time and until Konstantin Stanislavski came along, the imprecision of the theatrical vocabulary remained an ongoing problem.
UPFRONT
Authors: Rubin Don
Published: June 2023

The Massey Commission Report of 1951 significantly changed the shape of theatre in Canada. It was in the wake of that Report that the Canada Council was founded, that a regional theatre network was developed coast to coast and that government agencies came to understand that the arts could play a role in our national development. Of late, though, Canadian artists and many of those concerned about the state of our arts have been urging the establishment of a new Commission whose job it would be to articulate national policies in the arts over the next quarter century in the same way that the Massey Commission did more than a quarter century ago. The recent appointment by Secretary of State David McDonald of a nine-member advisory committee on cultural policy seems a most positive step in this direction. Some of the preliminary stocktaking was obviously done by the Liberal government which had appointed two men—Yvon Desrochers and David Silcox—to do a national study a year or so back. Unfortunately, that Study was never released. Hopefully, the next one will be.
Shaping the Word: Guy Sprung and Bill Glassco
Authors: Prung Guy
Published: June 2023

Over the last decade or so of Canadian theatre, many playwrights and many directors have emerged. In a few cases, they have emerged together. In CTR 23, the unique relationship between Quebec playwright Michel Tremblay and director André Brassard was looked at, a relationship that both admit has worked to their mutual benefit. English Canada has its pairings too and in the following articles we look at two major directors—Bill Glassco and Guy Sprung—and the way they work with their writers. In Glassco’s case, the focus is on his relationship with David French whose plays have been developed at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre. In the case of Sprung, his work has taken him all over the country—to Montreal where he has worked regularly with David Fennario, to Calgary where he has worked with W.O. Mitchell and to Saskatchewan where he helped shape the successful collective creation, Paper Wheat. The following interviews with Sprung and Glassco were done for CTR by Eileen Thalenberg and David McCaughna.
Video Cabaret: Form As Protest
Authors: Beaupre Therese
Published: June 2023

In CTR 25, rock playwright Michael Hollingsworth spoke about the need to find appropriate forms in theatre, forms which can relate to future generations, forms which can come to grips with the increasing role of electronics in our lives, forms which can celebrate as well as examine changing sexual roles. In Canada, Video Cabaret may be the company going furthest toward trying to find that form, a form that will certainly confront the traditional role of theatre in society. The search over many years by Hollingsworth, the Hummer Sisters and Video Cabaret is the subject of the following essay by freelance writer Therese Beaupre.
The IFIT Meetings
Authors: Filewod Alan
Published: June 2023

Just about two years ago, a number of European alternative companies decided to create a world association of, what they chose to call, independent theatres. That organization—IFIT (International Federation of Independent Theatres)—recently organized its own official theatre festival in Stockholm. What was that Festival like? Should Canadian alternate companies try to participate in it in the years ahead? Alan Filewod, who has written previously for CTR on theatre in Edmonton and in Ottawa, sends back this special report from Sweden.
Upfront
Authors: Rubin Don
Published: June 2023

Canada’s foremost English-language play publishing house, Talonbooks, is not—repeat—is not out of business contrary to recent rumours. “It all started in the fall,” explained Karl Siegler, Talon’s business manager, “when word got out that we had a $40,000 deficit. We had gotten into that situation because of inadequate subsidy over a long period of time. The people working here were personally subsidizing the whole operation. We decided that the only way out was to suspend publication of our 1980 list until such time as the financial problems were solved. But we never talked about going out of business. We have a back list of 130 titles and we’re in the process right now of reprinting 10 of our best sellers.”
Athol Fugard: Lessons From A Playwright
Authors: O’Brien James
Published: June 2023

In previous issues of CTR, we have documented the work of Polish director Yurek Bogajewicz’s Oedipus at the Vancouver Playhouse (CTR 19) and the Robin Phillips-Peter Ustinov Lear at Stratford (CTR 25). The following documentation focusses on South African playwright-director Athol Fugard and the world premiere of his own new play, A Lesson From Aloes,which he directed at Montreal’s Centaur Theatre this past winter. The piece was put together especially for CTR by James O’Brien who worked as Fugard’s assistant on the production. O’Brien kept a running journal of the work and excerpted pieces from the journal for this unique report.
Trevor Griffiths: Politics and Populist Culture
Authors: Summers Alison
Published: June 2023

Trevor Griffiths’ plays have been produced widely in Canada in recent years. The Comedians, his most well-known play, has been done by theatres right across the country. A year ago, Griffiths came to Canada to see a production of his drama Occupations at Toronto’s Theatre Plus. And this summer, visitors to the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake will be able to see his adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. What are Griffiths’ plays like? In Athol Fugard’s work, the politics often stem from the humanity of his characters and situations. In Griffiths’ work, the humanity and the situations often stem from the politics. In many ways, Griffiths may be the most consciously political writer working today in the English-speaking theatre and if his message sometimes appears to go beyond audiences, Griffiths himself has never lost sight of the goal. Will his theatre ever lead to a populist culture? Probably not. But Griffiths continues to use populist media — especially television — to spread the seeds of his very personal brand of socialism. The following interview was done for CTR by freelance writer Alison Summers.
I’ll be Back Before Midnight
Authors: Colley Peter
Published: June 2023

“I’ll Be Back Before Midnight” was first commissioned by James Roy, the Artistic Director of the Blyth Summer Festival. The original production was directed by Keith Batten in Blyth on July 7th 1979. During the winter of 1979/80 the author consulted with several directors including Urjo Kareda, Keith Turnbull, Tony Lloyd, Tom Markus and Brian Rintoul and collected notes to be used during the re-writing process. The major impetus for the first re-write came from Bill Glassco, and this was completed in the spring of 1980. The final and most detailed draft was developed with Lewis Baumander, who directed the Tarragon production, during the months prior to the Tarragon opening, July 10th 1980. During this period the characters and their motives were expanded and deepened and numerous new endings were conceived. The ending that appears in this script is the one that was used in the Tarragon production. The original production had the following cast:
Neptune: Class versus Crass
Authors: Brissenden Connie
Published: June 2023

A tuxedoed John Neville, wearing white tie and an insouciant grin, welcomes patrons to Halifax’s Neptune Theatre. It’s only a photo, a head shot at that, but this particular packaging of Artistic Director Neville is everywhere — on the kiosk outside on Argyle Street, in the programs for past productions and for this last mainstage show of the season, the Leonard Gershe comedy Butterflies are Free, it’s even been transformed into a drawing and used as background art in an Eaton’s ad for “Albert Nipon collectables.”
Equity Showcase Workshops: Revitalizing the Actor
Authors: Jeanes Rosemary
Published: June 2023

Yoshi Oida made an immediate impact when he entered the hall to begin his workshops at the International Theatre Training Congress in Toronto this summer. He asked the participants to empty the room and wash the floor. For 10 days every morning began in this manner, with actors attempting to clear their minds and avoid becoming mechanical. The daily floor scrub became a reflection of Yoshi’s sensibility for clear spaces, both inside and out, and set the tone for this particular phase of the five weeks of workshops.
Montreal: Diluted Politics
Authors: Garebian Keith
Published: June 2023

The 1979-’80 season was a shapeless one for English theatre in Montreal — a year of Chalmers Award nominees and incredible duds, a year in which Centaur generally went from box-office triumph to box-office triumph, a year in which the Saidye Bronfman Centre lost the centre of an uneven season and a year in which the Montreal Theatre Lab became virtually extinct.
Two Stratfords
Authors: Berry Ralph
Published: June 2023

At the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, England a gentle slope of audience looks up at a steeply-raked proscenium stage. At Canada’s Stratford Festival, a sharply descending audience looks down on a more-or-less flat stage. One wonders from time-to-time how much of the differences between the two Stratfords come down to the dynamics of auditorium. The English Stratford is at bottom a traditional enough box, within which the actors hurl themselves at the audience with an intensity and élan that constantly revilatize the old form. Our Canadian Stratford, on the other hand, has a vividly exciting auditorium, and yet — with the audience slope its most pronounced feature — the happenings on stage, for all their colour and movement often remain oddly flat. The Canadian Fesival Stage, with all its virtues, is clearly a vehicle for display, but there are other aspects of theatre it can lose. One felt this at Stratford’s Third Stage this season, where Pam Brighton’s version of Henry VI had some of the excitement and danger the Festival stage lacked. The English analogue to the Third Stage is The Other Place, where indeed there is great intimacy, and the claustrophobic sexual drama of the Jacobean/Caroline court works superbly there. Intimacy, and a rough kind of sweaty danger: that is what the workshop theatres have to offer, and what one has to give up on the senior stages.
Mexico’s Cervantes Festival
Authors: Merin Jennifer
Published: June 2023

For three weeks each April and May, Mexico’s Cervantes International Festival presents a program of music, opera, dance, theatre, folklore, film and the plastic arts to the world inviting noted international ensembles and individual artists to perform in theatres and plazas throughout the colonial city of Guanajuato, population 55,000. The festival is the highlight of Mexico’s cultural season. It is also one of the more important international cultural events regularly scheduled in the Americas. Unique because of its scope, variety and quality, it has a program that has gained in stature each year. The following report was prepared for CTR by correspondent Jennifer Merin.
Brazil: Linking to a Deeper Culture
Authors: Weiss William
Published: June 2023

Canadian theatre critic William Weiss, a professor at the University of Ottawa, recently spent an extended period of time in South America. The country that fascinated him most was Brazil where it appeared that the European theatre tradition had all but wiped out the folk tradition. Not so, however, and of late new interest has begun to be shown in indigenous forms and subject matter. Those fortunate enough to have seen the Brazilian play Macunaima last year during the Theatre of the Americas Festival in Washington D. C. and New York had a unique opportunity to see clearly how those earlier traditions have begun to blend with European dramatic narrative. In the following, Weiss looks at some of the country’s most interesting recent theatrical events in this context and speculates on what they mean in terms of the overall development of a national culture.
Lennoxville’s Uncertain Future
Authors: Young Don , Young Nelly Auster
Published: June 2023

As Festival Lennoxville approaches its 10th anniversary season, its future is far from certain. Despite the appointment of a new artistic director, its Board, faced with rising costs, dwindling government subsidies and stagnant box office returns, might yet pull the plug.
A Mirror of our Dreams: Children and The Theatre in Canada
Authors: Moss Peter
Published: June 2023

A Mirror of Our Dreams is one of the most invigorating books about young people and their theatre that I have read in a long time. It manages to evoke the pioneer spirit of the original explorers and theatre workers, gives a great deal of information to explain the phenomenal growth this area of theatre has had, and still retains the air of mystery and excitement that makes working with young people’s theatre so attractive.
Upfront
Authors: Rubin Don
Published: June 2023

What began just over a year ago as an attempt by Robin Phillips to ease some of the artistic and administrative pressure in his job as head of the Stratford Festival has turned in recent months into one of the most bizarre stories in Canadian theatre history. And though the story remains incomplete as of press time, it is nevertheless quite clear that the shock waves from this series of events will be felt for years to come in the Canadian theatre.
Designing At The Centre
Authors: Laufer Murray
Published: June 2023

After graduating from the Ontario College of Art, designer Murray Laufer spent a year in Europe and then returned to his native Toronto where he began doing design work for both television and theatre. In 1970, he was appointed resident designer of the St. Lawrence Centre and soon realized that the 800-seat theatre there was a real problem. Laufer has solved some of those problems in his designs for Brecht at the Centre [Puntila and His Hired Hand, Galileo and Good Woman of Setzuan] as well as in Narrow Road To The Deep North, Trelawney of the Wells, Colour the Flesh the Colour of Dust and Misanthrope. But problems still remain as he points out in the following article.
At-Large
Authors: Rubin Don
Published: June 2023

There are at least four areas of original theatrical and dramatic activity in Canada at the present moment worth looking at. Three of them are reasonably well-known — British Columbia (George Ryga, Beverly Simons, Herschel Hardin, Eric Nicol, Sharon Pollock); Ontario (James Reaney, David Freeman, David French, John Palmer, Carol Bolt, John Herbert); and Quebec (Michel Tremblay, Robert Gurik, Jean-Claude Germain and Marc Gelinas). But one area which has been virtually ignored and which is now proving to be of real interest is Newfoundland where writers such as Michael Cook, Al Pittman and Tom Cahill along with sympathetic directors such as Chris Brookes and Dudley Cox are developing a theatre which is at once rooted in the realpolitik of the Newfoundland social structure and yet which is also theatrically-rich enough to make its statements to audiences outside. That, in fact, is one of the problems at the present moment. Funds to make their statements are rather scarce in Newfoundland and there is a distinct danger that Newfoundland artists will be making their statements to audiences in Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto instead of to the people to whom they’re addressed. But the awareness of that problem is obviously there and when the newly-organized Newfoundland Arts Council officially comes into being in the coming months some of this danger may be eased.
In the Beginning…
Authors: Cook Michael
Published: June 2023

“In the faith of Jesus Christ we dedicate this theatre to the glory of God and for the deepening and enrichment of the lives of His people, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, Amen.”
Britain’s Unkind Cuts
Authors: Green Joseph G.
Published: June 2023

On December 17, 1980, soon after learning from the Government that their allocation for 1981/82 had been increased by close to 12 per cent, the Arts Council of Great Britain met and decided that 41 arts organizations on their client roster would receive no grants at all in the coming financial year, thereby saving £1,200,000. At the same time, they decided to increase funding to 43 other clients.
Tourist Bucks Do Stop Here
Authors: Merin Jennifer
Published: June 2023

The potentially lucrative financial partnership between arts institutions and the travel industry came under close scrutiny at a three-day “Arts and Tourism: A Profitable Partnership” conference held in Toronto this past October, under the joint sponsorship of the Ontario Ministry of Industry and Tourism, the Ontario Ministry of Culture and Recreation and the New York-based American Council on the Arts.
John Coulter: Death of a Griot
Authors: Wagner Anton
Published: June 2023

In the conclusion to his black epic Roots, Alex Haley describes his magical encounter with the griot Kebba Kanji Fofana in the small village of Juffure, Gambia. Through the centuries-old histories of African villages, clans, families and heroes passed on from griot to griot, Haley was able to, more or less, verify the oral history related over seven generations within his own family, the story of the kidnapping into slavery in the late 1760s of Haley’s ancestor, “the African” Κunta Kinte. Historical fact engendered a work of art which revealed to millions the past and present fate of a whole people and nation.
Le père Emile Legault et le théâtre au Québec
Authors: Caron Anne , Moore Mavor
Published: June 2023

Father Emile Legault has been a seminal figure in the modern Quebec theatre, and also an important influence in Canadian theatre as a whole. This book — less a biography than a study of his theatrical activity — pays long overdue attention to his contribution to the development of Québec’s vital stage. But its failure to set that development in the context of the developing Canadian theatre as a whole robs Legault of some of his real stature. He emerges as a parish saint rather than a leader of a remarkable group of artistic pioneers across the country who in the late 30s and 40s transformed our theatre.
Le Roitelet
Authors: Dorge Claude , Filteau Louise , Boniface St.
Published: June 2023

With the encouraging support of Le Cercle Molière, in the last few years there has been a genuine awakening of Franco-Manitoban drama. You may have heard of Roger Auger; now meet Claude Dorge. Born and raised in Saint-Norbert, Manitoba, Dorge has been involved in both French and English theatre and television since 1964. Le roitelet, his first attempt as a dramatic writer, was soon followed by several other successful plays and adaptations for the stage as well as for television. The first performance of Le roitelet was given at the Centre culturel franco-manitobain, Saint-Boniface, by Le Cercle Molière, on April 30, 1976.
La tête de Monsieur Ferron ou les Chians: Y a rien là!
Authors: Troupe La , Wagner Anton
Published: June 2023

Une épopée drôlatique tirée du “Ciel de Québec” de Jacques Ferron by Victor-Lévy Beaulieu. Montreal: VLB Editeur. 115 pp. $5.95. (In French.)
Canada: Savage God and Tamahnous
Authors: Usmiani Renate
Published: June 2023

Theatre exploration in Canada has taken many forms ranging from agit prop and art theatre movements in the 20s and 30s to formal experiment in the 60s and 70s, a time when the term alternative theatre became fashionable. The following essay is a chapter from Professor Usmiani’s soon-to-be published book on alternative theatre in Canada and focusses on two of Western Canada’s more significant exploratory theatre companies — Vancouver’s Tamahnous and Edmonton’s Savage God.
Exiled Emotions
Authors: Chaikin Joseph
Published: June 2023

American director Joseph Chaikin is best known for his work with the Open Theatre, a collective which first came to international note in the 60s. Chaikin’s work has always been exploratory in one way or another but exploration — laboratory work as he calls it — requires significant levels of funding. And funding exploratory work in recent years has diminished significantly world-wide. The following interview with Chaikin was done by Vancouver freelance writer Jim Handman this past fall during Chaikin’s visit to British Columbia for performances of the Chaikin-Sam Shepard evening, Tongues/Savage Love.
Betraying the Self
Authors: Kantor Tadeusz
Published: June 2023

Polish director Tadeusz Kantor stunned the world some years ago with his production of a new kind of theatre piece entitled The Dead Class. His most recent work, Wielopole, Wielopole has once again taken the theatre festival world by storm. Produced by Kantor’s Cracow-based Cricot 2 company and created in association with the Teatro Regionale Toscano in Florence, the play is a visually dazzling spectacle recreating elements of Kantor’s own past. It is a performance about the enormous pressure which the dead exert on the imagination, consciousness and sub-consciousness of contemporary man. It is also the stylistic consequence of Kantor’s long-term explorations into what he calls Theatre of Death.
Roundtable: The Purpose of it All
Authors: Rubin Don
Published: June 2023

Edited remarks made during the theatre research weekend (October 1980) at York University by critics Don Rubin and Margaret Croyden, directors Stephen Rumbelow and Richard Nieoczym, dramaturge Ludwik Flaszen and professors Ron Grimes and Richard Mennen.
Cold Comfort
Authors: Garrard Jim
Published: June 2023

CAUTION: © Jim Garrard. Permission to perform this play or scenes from it must be obtained in writing and royalties paid on every performance. Unauthorized reproduction of this script for any reason whatsoever is forbidden by copyright. Performance permission may be obtained by writing to Jim Garrard — Jonathan Barker, 14 Riverdale Avenue, Toronto M4K 1C3.