bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
What’s New about Newhouse? / 2: All News Newhouse
Authors: Rewa Natalie
Published: June 2023

The lauching of a CBC all-news television channel in July confirms the contemporary need for a substitute for first-hand knowledge. On-the-spot reporting reassures us that we can get on with our lives because someone will draw our attention to anything that goes amiss. “News” also creates the illusion that the battle, the court judgement, or the manifesto is simultaneous with the audience’s viewing. Moreover, with such dissemination of information and image, commentary is implicit.
The Real World?, Bonjour, là, bonjour
Authors: Tremblay Michel , Burek John van , Glassco Bill , Rae Lisbie
Published: June 2023

In addition to their many other commitments, John van Burek and Bill Glassco published two Tremblay translations last year: The Real World! which premièred in English at Tarragon in May, 1988, and a revised version of Bonjour, là, bonjour which played at CentreStage in November, 1986. Tremblay revised the latter play in 1986 to integrate the characters more closely with the cycle of works set on Plateau MontRoyal; he changed the names of Albertine and Gabriel to Gilberte and Armand. Despite Talonbooks’ claim that the translation is “substantially” revised, other changes are fortunately minimal.
Battle Fatigue
Authors: Munday Jenny
Published: June 2023

Battle Fatigue was first produced by Mulgrave Road Coop Theatre (Guysborough, Nova Scotia). This production toured throughout Nova Scotia and New Brunswick from October 27, 1989 to November 18, 1989. The production was directed by Mary Vingoe with set and lighting design by Gene Gibbons. The costumes were designed by Cynthia Flannagan. The technical director for the production was James Thibodeau; the stage manager, Kay Robertson; the musical director, Ursula Ryan. The production had the following cast:
Crossing the Canada / US Border: People, Things, and Definitions
Authors: Peel William
Published: June 2023

A border is a line of demarcation – something ends at a border and something begins. It is also, like a cell membrane, a selective, bi-directional filter, which allows certain items to pass freely, some with difficulty, and some not at all. It separates nutrients from poisons and what is needed from what is not, and its operation vitally affects the health of the nation as a whole.
Sharon Pollock at Theatre New Brunswick: The Return of the Native
Authors: Mullaly Edward
Published: June 2023

Theatre New Brunswick’s first artistic director, Walter Learning, had it easy: a new theatre, Beaverbrook Foundation funding, a sympathetic government, and no competition. In his decade at TNB, Learning built up a touring circuit which brought to the corners of the province the sort of theatre he felt responded to the needs and wants of the area. He didn’t even have to worry about competition from television, this “region” being protected from cultural overload by Upper Canadian overlords who decreed that, since we had the CBC, American channels were off limits to us. Learning stayed for ten years. Malcolm Black, TNB’s next artistic director, offered uncompromising productions of challenging scripts that demanded an unsettling level of audience involvement. Black stayed for six years. Next came Janet Amos. According to her critics, she felt that NB stood for New Blyth and was discombobulated when she found that the Canadian scripts over which she enthused were dismissed as superficial and patronizing. She cut short her second term as artistic director and left after four years.
Polygraph: somatic truth and an art of presence
Authors: Sidnell Michael J.
Published: June 2023

Robert Lepage’s Vinci began, he says, with the impression made on him by Leonardo’s Saint Anne, the Virgin and Child, which appears in the work in the form of a projected image.1 He had discovered in this drawing something of the paradoxical genius of an engineer profoundly moved by the human body. In Plaques Tectoniques / Tectonic Plates one of the uses of a pair of grand pianos is to illustrate the geological theory of continental drift, which becomes the immense context of individual self-transformation (very evident through the various versions of the work as well as in them) and of complex personal relations. In Echo a bed frame is the main piece of stage furniture, constantly manipulated by the actors and becoming the very antithesis of itself – a burial plot – in the course of its metamorphoses. Such emphases on things are in keeping with the professed program of Théâtre Repère: to begin with the available resources and to work through successive cycles of development based on them. In this way Repère opens itself to intuition, avoiding the domination of its work by argument or theme.2
Polygraphe
Authors: Brassard Marie , Lepage Robert , Raby Gyllian
Published: June 2023

Caution: © Robert Lepage and Marie Brassard. © Gyllian Raby. This play is fully protected under the copyright laws of Canada and all other countries of the Copyright Union and all performances are subject to royalty. Rights to produce film or record, in whole or in part, in any medium and in any language, by any group, amateur or professional, are retained by Robert Lepage, Marie Brassard, and Gillian Raby. Interested individuals are requested to apply for permission and terms to Robert Lepage and Marie Brassard c/o 259, rue Rachel est, no. 1, Montreal, Quebec, H2J 2J9.
Endangered Species; Words in Play
Authors: Hollingsworth Margaret , Stratton Alan , Boire Gary
Published: June 2023

There is a grim prescience in Margaret Hollingsworth’s pithy and uncompromising introduction to Endangered Species, a collection of four experimental plays published in 1988 – long before the horrible massacre at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal. Entitled “Margins,” this brief polemic initially explores the political dimensions of literary marginalization: how the centre of any culture (especially in Canada) needs to peripheralize, to render “ex-centric” elements deemed counter to, or subversive of its own dominant ideology. Hollingsworth asks some fairly thorny questions, like why “drama of any kind has been marginalized by the Canadian literary establishment” and, more specifically, why “women have only a small voice in the theatre in Canada” (p. 7). Most important and triumphant, however, is that Hollingsworth resists the temptation of easy or academic answers and in her four plays interrogates the intricate, far-reaching causes and consequences of such exclusionist activities. Consequences wherein women (playwrights and non-playwrights alike) are thus doubly marginalized: where women hover on the edge of the centre.
Deverell of the Globe: Selected Plays by Rex Deverell
Authors: Perkins Don , McDonald Larry
Published: June 2023

Rex Deverell is not only an intriguing phenomenon, but one of our most undervalued playwrights. A Baptist minister of the Social Gospel persuasion from the East who went West, he has been exclusively associated with one theatre almost from the beginning of his professional career. Serendipity led him to Regina’s Globe theatre in 1971, where he has remained as playwright-in-residence for the past 15 years. In Ken and Sue Kramer he found artistic directors who encouraged his desire to write plays that explored history, society and personal morality from a socialist perspective. He is also, he insists, a regional writer whose sense of place is fundamentally political. He recently wrote of this self-identification with region that his “religious and aesthetic consciousness became linked into the militancy and vigour of the Saskatchewan left/right political dialogue.”
Winnipeg Close-ups / 3, Seizing the Centre
Authors: McCaw Kim
Published: June 2023

Kim McCaw was born in 1952 in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, where he lived until his family moved to Saskatoon when he was twelve years old. It was while at high school in Saskatoon that Kim discovered his interest in the theatre, an interest he continued to pursue when the family later moved to Regina. After high school Kim enrolled in the bfa program at the University of Victoria and two years later he was accepted at the National Theatre School, from which he graduated in 1974. The following couple of years he spent as an actor living in Toronto, returning to Regina when Ken Kramer offered him a job in the Globe Theatre’s school tour. It was in Regina that Kim began directing and soon he was hired both as an actor and a director at the Globe. After the untimely death of Sue Kramer, Kim and his wife, the actor Linda Huffmann, were appointed associate directors of the Globe Theatre. In 1983 Kim arrived in Winnipeg to take on the responsibilities of artistic director of the Prairie Theatre Exchange. Here he began creating serious opportunities for local writers. Plays by David Arnason, Sandra Birdsell, Patrick Friesen, Wendy Lill, Bruce McManus and others were staged, telling stories growing out of life in Manitoba. The result of this programming was enthusiastic attention from both the press and audiences. The pte subscription list grew in leaps and bounds and the intimate 200-seat theatre in the old Exchange building at 160 Princess Street began to feel tight.
The Theatrical Stories of Morris Panych
Authors: Gilbert Reid
Published: June 2023

The 1990 Jessie Awards belonged to Morris Panych and his partner, Ken MacDonald. Panych’s 7 Stories won six Jessies, including Outstanding Original Play for Panych, Outstanding Production of a Play for the Arts Club Theatre, Outstanding Set Design for Ken MacDonald, and Jessies for three actors. These awards bring to nine the number of Jessie Richardson Awards won by Panych and MacDonald.
Roles and Responsibilities: The Artist and the Board of Directors
Authors: Breon Robin
Published: June 2023

The board. What is it? How is it supposed to function? And why is it so much maligned in the news of late? Ask the questions to a variety of people and receive a variety of answers. The question is open to many interpretations and clearly continues to be an item of great concern to many arts and cultural heritage organizations.
1/ “Deathless, Timeless, Living On in Others”
Authors: Baumander Lewis
Published: June 2023

Death brings heirs out of the woodwork when there is money involved, but a tragedy brings out claims of special relationships, e.g., “I knew him deeper,” “better,” “my loss is greater,” etc.

I did not know Rene Highway. He did not know me. I lay no claim to his memory. I have only my own.
Saskatchewan Women Playwrights
Authors: Endicott Marina
Published: June 2023

Each of these two “particularities,” being a woman playwright and being a Saskatchewan playwright, has separate consequences. Playwright itself carries a certain weight of particularity, because the playwright is the initiator of the work in the theatre but often has the least control of the final product. Saskatchewan women playwrights here identify and respond to some of their difficulties. Theirs are difficulties which face all playwrights in Saskatchewan, not just women: isolation, few theatres and fewer which produce new work, lack of informed critical attention for the work when it does get produced. The difficulties for women playwrights are probably not unique to those in Saskatchewan: a conscious or unconscious gender bias operating in artistic directors (and readers), and the perceived gender bias of audiences; the relative scarcity of women directors for collaboration; strong women’s roles being seen as negative; and the dearth of plays written by women to serve as models or jumping-off places.
Playhouse: Six Fantasy Plays For Children
Authors: Doolittle Joyce , Behnan Lorraine
Published: June 2023

Traditionally fantasy stories have helped children to confront fears, understand social morals and responsibilities, and nurture the imagination. In the preface of Playhouse Ms Doolittle writes, “Fantasy is one way of dealing with reality that has its roots deep in the human psyche. To a child, fantasy is sometimes more real than the real thing.”
Forms and Functions of Scenography: Theatre productions for young audiences in Quebec
Authors: Beauchamp Hélène
Published: June 2023

Senography, the art of designing for the stage,1 has progressively acquired significance in Quebec since the 1950s, that is, since the founding of the major theatre companies in Montreal and the opening of Radio-Canada’s television studios. The growing attention paid to artistic achievements in set and costume design, the recognition of lighting design per se have had repercussions on all of the theatre productions, regardless of their genre or of their preferred audiences. Differences between the productions, then, have stemmed from the artistic choices and the ideological orientations of the companies themselves, from the specific constraints met by the scenographers (mainly touring), from financial considerations, and from the talent of the artists themselves. The history of the development of scenography in Quebec is presently being researched.2
The Scenography of Hillar Liitoja Privacy and Senses
Authors: Leonard Paul
Published: June 2023

March, 1991. Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Toronto, DNA Theatre is midway through a performance of Sick. The entire room is silent and in darkness. Sitting alone, almost under a scaffold, I become acutely conscious that an actor has perched herself on a chair behind me and is now breathing in a peculiar manner. I hear her labour, her respiration louder, more rhythmical than normal breath. I wonder idly whether or not what I am hearing is part of the show. Is this a character’s breath I hear, or simply that of the actor? I can’t quite describe the sound she makes as she draws in air, releases it; it is hyper-naturalistic, stylized. Perversely, I begin to imagine that the director has caused the entire room to fall silent only so that I can listen to someone breathing. No other members of the audience are seated near enough to hear.
Chronology
Authors: Hollingsworth Michael , Taylor Deanne
Published: June 2023

In February of 1976 the Hummers began to work with playwright / director Michael Hollingsworth and composer Andrew Paterson on a performance for “Fifty Ways To Heat Your Video”, an Ontario Video Producers’ Conference organized by Marien Lewis and Deanne Taylor. The collaboration led to the founding of VideoCabaret that summer, in the ground floor of A Space Gallery. Almost as soon as the sketching began, video artist Chris Clifford arrived with the know-how to realize the what-ifs …
Sculptured Spaces
Authors: Watts Allan , Plaxton Jim
Published: June 2023

A conversation with Jim Plaxton on 28 October 1991 at the Epicure Cafe during a break from his work on the lighting of Deanne Taylor’s show, 2nd Nature, in rehearsal at Theatre Passe Muraille.
Death, Taxes and Writing
Authors: Brask Per K.
Published: June 2023

Karen: (At a desk, writing in longhand) It all began when . . . It all began . . . It all . . . It . . . (Pause.) No. (Beat.) Not “all” . . . It didn’t “all” begin. (She tears the page and crumbles it. Writes on a new page.) It began . . . in . . . (Beat. Looks ahead, blankly. Writes.) in . . . earnest . . . after . . . (Pause) the first . . . story . . . was . . . (Beat) No. (She makes a correction.) The first stories . . . were told. (Pause. She reads it over.) Yes. (Beat) “It?” . . . (Reads aloud.) “It began in earnest after the first stories were told.” (Beat.) “After?” . . . (Pause. Then she tears up that page as well. Begins to write on a new page.) Occurring . . . occurred . . . (Beat. Reads. Shakes her head. Laughs.) when . . . stories . . . provided . . . reference. (Pause. She reads aloud.) “Occurring occurred when stories provided reference.” (She continues to write.) Prior . . . to this . . . nothing . . . (Beat) could . . . occur . . . and be . . . told . . . about. (She smiles, feeling smug. Continues to write. On a roll now.) Telling . . . turns . . . events . . . into . . . stories . . . which . . . simply . . . means . . . that . . . we . . . only know . . . events . . . that is, facts . . . by . . . the vehicle . . . of . . . (She sniggers.) story . . . Period. Events . . . i.e. facts . . . are therefore . . . inseparable . . . from our . . . stories . . . (With emphasis.) quod . . . erat . . . demonstrandum . . . Exclamation. (Reads the statement over to herself, humming, as if conducting the sounds of the words.) Quod erat faciendum. (She sits back, takes a deep breath, then lights a cigarette – the prize. Blows out smoke with pleasure. She picks up the page again. Reads aloud.) “Occurring . . . reference . . . nothing . . . Telling . . . facts . . . vehicle . . . Q.E.D.” (She takes a deep drag on her cigarette. Frowns. Butts out the cigarette.) “Prior?!” . . . Nonsense. (Pause. She tears the paper, crumbles it. She writes on a new page.) Stories . . . were . . . are will be . . . told . . . Period The difference between . . . fictional and . . . non-fictional . . . (Beat) accounts . . . (Beat) speaks . . . to the . . . shifts . . . in . . .
The Musical Coast / 3: Raging Grannies
Authors: Burns John
Published: June 2023

In the last four years, the Raging Grannies have grown from a local curiosity into an international movement whose political messages and forms of protest appear regularly in the press. They have rejuvenated theatrical traditions like the commedia dell’arte, and street theatre in general, in order to communicate their warnings. As older women, they have reversed cultural expectations by empowering themselves within a society which belittles their experience and point of view.
Oklahoma in Inuvik
Authors: Fort Tim
Published: June 2023

In the spring of 1988, I was invited to spend a week staging a play with a senior drama class at a high school in Inuvik, NWT. The class, a majority of whom were Inuit teenagers, worked up a story involving snowmobiles, bar fights, and rip-offs of the Bay company – ending with a moral pronouncement about the difficulties of leaving the bush for the town. Rehearsing in scruffy jeans and AC / DC T-shirts, the group acted no differently than any other collection of high school students trying to cruise through the long last period of the day, but they improvised their assortment of local vignettes, set around familiar points in town and along the Mackenzie Delta, easily and quickly. By the end of the week, we had pieced together a script (which we had the nerve to call True North) and had even managed to evolve some rude staging supported by some well-meaning cardboard scenography. Before I was packed off back to the south, I was invited to bring my “professional perspective” to a second theatrical event-a rehearsal for the spring production of Inuvik’s newly formed community theatre company. The inaugural season had featured Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore, and that night I was invited to watch a run-through of their second production, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s paean to America’s manifest destiny, Oklahoma!. I agreed to attend with some reluctance, trying to imagine what critical criteria I could bring to the event.
Toronto A Chakra with Annie Sprinkle
Authors: Keeney Patricia
Published: June 2023

There’s a line of people outside the theatre waiting for any tickets not booked in advance. Most are young. Some are not. Most are connected to the theatre community. Some are not. Their expectation is particularly high. They think they may miss something.
7 Stories, Twenty Years at Play: A New Play Centre Anthology
Authors: Panych Morris , Wasserman Jerry , Page Malcolm
Published: June 2023

Morris Panych first made his mark in Vancouver more than ten years ago as an actor specializing in crazies: he was the obvious choice to play Mozart in Amadeus. More recently he has added directing, notably School for Wives set in Mussolini’s Italy and a Wild West Comedy of Errors, both for the Arts. As a writer, he began with three musicals, the best of which was the “post-nuclear cabaret”, Last Call.
The Yukon Writers’ Festival: Building a Northern Literary Voice
Authors: Flather Patti
Published: June 2023

It’s hard to believe that there are enough writers in a northern city of 21,000 to read their original work for six hours in a smoky, intimate cafe. But that’s just what happened at the Talisman Cafe in Whitehorse on three evenings, as part of the second annual Yukon Writers’ Festival. For almost a week, writers and members of the public could take in free noon-hour readings with guest and local writers, workshops, dramaturgy, a 24-hour play-writing competition and more.
Actor Training and Cultural Identity in Austral / asia
Authors: O’Connor Barry
Published: June 2023

As we approach the millennium, think tanks are mobilizing across the nation seeking out a common target: the Australian cultural identity. One of these think tanks, a national theatre training conference, which was held in July 1992 at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in Sydney, addressed the question of “Theatre Training in Australia” under the rubric, “Towards the 21st Century, Present Practice and Future Directions”. Over a period of three days and five scheduled sessions, two of which were public forums, many of the big issues were tackled, for example: “One Nation ... One Culture?”; “Towards the 21st Century: Australia in the ‘90s”; and “Australian Theatre in the ‘90s: Future Directions”. Two “Working Parties”, Theatre Training in Australia 1 and Theatre Training in Australia 2, allowed delegates to split into groups and follow their interests in either acting or stage management, design and technology. Acting won the lion’s share of time and attention, directing at first received none, as was pointed out by Kingston Anderson, one of the country’s newly appointed artistic directors, who was attending the conference.
Making, Out: Plays by Gay Men
Authors: Wallace Robert , Gross Robert F.
Published: June 2023

In his thoughtful introduction to Making, Out, Robert Wallace presents the publication of this volume as a political action: “this books makes available, in a clear and unambigous manner, work by an invisible minority that is usually ignored in mainstream curricula” (12). He correctly observes that literary works by minorities are rarely studied in classrooms until those works become available in book form. Publication, therefore, becomes a first step in creating a literary canon. Rejecting the definitionally fuzzy notion of a “gay play”, which seeks to link sexual orientation to a literary genre, Wallace anchors his volume in the statement that these are plays by “out” gay men, who by being both “out” and active in theatre, “help construct gay subjectivities in Canada” (13). As such, Making, Out is a public statement of the gay presence in contemporary Canadian theatre, and a conscious contribution to a growing canon of plays by Canadian gay men.
Breaking All Four Walls: Open-Air Theatre at the Caravan Farm
Authors: Anderson Peter
Published: June 2023

Theatre began outdoors, around fires, celebrating important passages, acknowledging the cycles of nature and the changes of seasons, and affirming our sense of community and the essential mystery of life. By recognizing theatre’s roots in ritual – in community celebration – we re-establish connection with things larger than ourselves and are revitalized. It is to these roots that the Caravan Farm Theatre, located on an 80-acre farm five miles northwest of Armstrong in the heart of B.C.’s Okanagan farming district, seeks to return. Since 1983, the Caravan Farm Theatre, formerly the horse-drawn Caravan Stage Company (now a separate legal entity based in Ontario), has brought professional performing arts to rural B.C. through theatre workshops, tours, and open-air theatre performed on its farm. Under the artistic direction of Nick Hutchinson1 the Caravan has remained committed to a collaborative approach to theatre that is enhanced and supported by its rural and communal lifestyle.
Towards Canadian Postmodernism
Authors: Peters Helen
Published: June 2023

Canadians today recognize ourselves as descendants of French and English colonists, immigrants, and North American Aboriginal peoples. We are becoming more aware of complex issues in the history of our country and increasingly sensitive to the interrelationship between the Aboriginal population and European settlers from the earliest stages of colonization through the process of achieving nationhood. In Canada as in other countries of colony-based origins, colonization furthered the interests of the colonizer, not the native, and subsequent historical development has paid little attention to redressing political, social, or economic imbalances. We are all still becoming aware of our legacy and future as Canadians. Theatre critics and analysts in Canada, like colleagues in other former colonial countries, are studying the recent development in theatre and theatre studies and the influence of funding and other policies of recent governments to promote Canadian theatre and culture in the latter part of this century.1 Effects of government policies have been both positive and negative; a positive effect which interests me here is the increasing capability that enables Aboriginal peoples to express themselves theatrically. A major result of this capability has been the appearance of theatre written and performed by Aboriginal people and another result has been the disappearance of European representation of Aboriginal people in “white” productions, even in established works such as Shakespeare’s The Tempest which is being restaged so that the play’s basic imperialist assumptions can be called into question.2 This change is effected by replacing the generic savage with Aboriginal people who have “a local habitation and a name” and by relocating the play from a vague unidentified protrusion of land in a Prospero-controlled sea to an identifiable period and a recognizable island.
Directing in Educational Theatre
Authors: Sperdakos Paula
Published: June 2023

When I began to think about “directing across boundaries”, and making decisions from “particular political or social vantage points or within particular performance theory”,1 I became distinctly grumpy. I was immersed in the final (hellish) week of rehearsals for a large-cast musical revue / extravaganza at the Scarborough campus of the University of Toronto, where I teach acting and theatre history and direct a variety of shows. Our only “theatre facility” at the College was built as a television studio in the mid-1960s when videotaping lectures and feeding them out to several classrooms at once was thought to make sound pedagogical sense. The folly of this notion was soon discovered, and, in the early 1970s, the studio became the sole teaching-and-performance space for the new Division of Drama, without, however, any particular conversion to the somewhat different requirements of a theatre having been made. For twenty years, consequently, dozens of productions have been presented in, and the drama program has been run out of, a cramped, ugly, woefully inadequate space. And yet interesting and valuable theatre has sometimes been made in what is still referred to as the TV Studio. Fortunately, plans to renovate are (finally) going through, but when I began to think about directorial decisions, I was rehearsing my show in the only space on campus large enough to hold it, the cavernous concrete nightmare known as the Meeting Place; the thought of writing about any director who has the luxury (as I saw it in my sullen state) to be truly creative, to make artistic decisions that are not based on any limitations whatsoever of facilities, funds, or talent, made my eyes cross with antipathy. Directing across boundaries indeed, I thought, what about those of us who direct, if one can even call it that, almost exclusively within boundaries, limits, confines?
Directors in Vancouver: The New Community
Authors: Johnston Denis
Published: June 2023

As far as stage directors are concerned, the community in Vancouver is comprised of a few mainstream theatres, a couple of layers of alternative companies, and some individual artists. Among the alternative theatres are several artistic directors whose body of work has drawn a good deal of attention here. Since these directors run their own companies, and sometimes their own spaces too, they probably have more latitude in play selection than either free-lance directors or mainstream companies. The kinds of plays they choose, in turn, largely determine their role in the theatre community. Despite their broad impact on theatre locally, however, these directors are not well known outside Vancouver. This article is intended to introduce you to five of them.
Mary Medusa
Authors: Dempsey Shawna , Millan Lorri
Published: June 2023

Caution: copyright 1993 by Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan. This work is fully protected under the copyright laws of Canada and all other countries of the Copyright Union and all performances are subject to royalty. Change to the script is expressly forbidden without the written consent of Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan. Rights to produce, film, or record, in whole or in any part, in any medium, in any language, by any group, amateur or professional, are retained by Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan. Interested persons are requested to apply for permission and terms to Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan, 485 Wardlaw Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3L 0L9.
Authentic Movement: The embodied experience of the text
Authors: Koltai Judith
Published: June 2023

A few years ago I was watching a live theatre performance with a friend. He is, I think, an average theatre-goer: intelligent, educated, enjoys theatre, but with no professional interest or expertise. He was not impressed. He commented, however, that he found one actor exceptional. “When he was on stage, everything changed, even the other actors.” I questioned him about what it was about this actor that made a difference, and he finally said: “He was so in his body. I could see everything he said.” I asked him to repeat his comment. No, it was not a slip of the tongue or a sudden onset of synaesthesia. Hardly – he meant exactly what he said.
The Dunsmuirs: A Promise Kept, Writing with Our Feet, Fragments from the Big Piece, Dreams of a Drunken Quaker, Naked West and Yowl: Two Plays & A Rant
Authors: Langley Rod , Carley David , Kaufman Brian , Green Michael
Published: June 2023

A package of play texts arrives, always an intriguing prospect. First impressions. The publishers: one from Talon, old friends; one from Blizzard, who must now rank as middle-size; and two publishers I haven’t heard of. The authors: I have a nodding acquaintance with Rod Langley (that is, we attended the same party); I have read Carley’s Midnight Madness; I have scarcely heard of the other two. Performance: none are mainstage. Green’s texts come from One Yellow Rabbit in Calgary; those from Carley and Kaufman are associated with Dark Horse, one of Vancouver’s shadowier alternatives; The Dunsmuirs comes from Nanaimo Festival on Vancouver Island. Finally, perhaps most crucially: Langley’s is in a familiar linear, episodic convention; Carley presents odd people in an odd world; Green and Kaufman write in a manner I don’t immediately understand, at least on the page.
Women on the Canadian Stage: The Legacy of Hrotsvit
Authors: Much Rita
Published: June 2023

Women on the Canadian Stage, the first volume of criticism dedicated solely to the work of women dramatists in this country, fills an important gap in dramatic criticism. It is also written entirely by women. As the press release for this collection notes, “women are over-represented in the theatre’s administrative and support systems, [but] positions of power, like that of the artistic director, remain a male domain.” Similarly, plays by women have traditionally been ignored both within the academy and in production.
Heroines: Three Plays
Authors: Doolittle Joyce
Published: June 2023

Although the plays included in Heroines: Three Plays are important Canadian plays, and worthy of publication, the decision to collect them together is a curious one; to collect them under the title Heroines is even more so. The interplay between the title, the pictures of the actors / characters, and the names of the authors (two of whom are men) which compose the front cover visually represent the volume’s uncertain focus. Do the names listed refer to the pictures? Does the title refer to the names? – but two are male names. Or does the title refer to the pictures? – but two of the three could be men in drag (one, in fact, is).
Letters
Authors: Johnston Denis , Festival Shaw
Published: June 2023

In his review in CTR 77, Harry Lane excoriates my book Up the Mainstream on a number of grounds. The final one is that, in the appended performance calendar, I omitted listing The True North Blueprint. He accuses me of leaving it out for ideological reasons.
Goodnight William Shakespeare: (Good Morning Ann-Marie MacDonald)
Authors: Dvorak Marta
Published: June 2023

During the last decade or two, the world of theatre has undergone great fluctuation due to many essential factors. One of the most remarkable ones has to do with the contribution and, to a certain extent, the control of women. It is an era in which actresses are also playwrights, thus controlling the written medium and exerting a measure of control over the stage interpretation. Some, like Linda Griffiths, take over the direction as well, as with Jessica, and even transform play into film – writing, producing, casting, acting. The only factor that to her regret escaped Griffiths’ control in the process of turning The Darling Family into a movie is the editing.
Silver Dagger; The Seagull; Fronteras Americanas
Authors: French David , French David , Verdecchia Guillermo , Dijk Maarten van
Published: June 2023

There are three David Frenches. One is the writer of lyrical naturalistic plays mostly recounting the lives of the Mercer family. The Mercer plays embody the ideal of Raymond Williams, who championed the naturalistic convention in the face of modernist formal experimentation. He thought it was the only way of ensuring that the stories of ordinary people could be told. Wherever you stand on the issue, this naturalism has deeply influenced the mapping of Canadian lives on stage. In this guise French has been one of Canada’s most important and influential playwrights.
The Plainsman; Roundup; Talking Back; Saskatoon Piel
Authors: Mitchell Ken , Sapergia Barbara , Kerr Don , Ursell Geoffrey , Day Moira
Published: June 2023

It is appropriate that Coteau Books should name their new series of Saskatchewan play texts after Florence James, the noted Drama Extension worker of the 1950s. As the biographical note by Rita Deverell suggests, arts policy in Saskatchewan has always been as much about preserving and fostering community at the grassroots level as producing a good artistic product. And the fact that three of the four plays were first produced by Twenty-Fifth Street Theatre, creators of Paper Wheat, indicates the continuing role of the Saskatoon-based theatre in generating and producing original Saskatchewan work among the grassroots. Whatever wider appeal they may have, Roundup, The Plainsman, and Talking Back are plainly directed at Saskatchewan audiences first, and tend to be more celebratory or elegiac than critical and introspective in tone.
The Electronic Highway and the Canadian Theatre Community
Authors: Hewitt Ken
Published: June 2023

As we approach the mid-point of the 1990s, and look forward to the beginning of a new century, there may be no single term that is so badly overused and so little understood as “electronic highway”.
Theatre by Default: Sharon Pollock’s Garry Theatre
Authors: Much Rita
Published: June 2023

When her play Fair Liberty’s Call was in rehearsal at the Stratford Festival in July of 1993 Sharon Pollock casually announced over a drink in a local bar that she had started her own theatre in Calgary, the Garry. The small venue, only 236 seats, is run like a cooperative, she explained, receiving no public or corporate subsidies and, she added with a nervous laugh, it might just bankrupt her. My first reaction was one of astonishment. Why, I wondered, would a senior Canadian artist, a multiple award-winning, internationally respected playwright choose to embark on such a breathtaking but stressful theatrical venture during dire economic times that saw some theatres in the country close and most in retrenchment? There was no question that the enterprise was gutsy, but was it also foolish?
The Disowned Collective Théâtre Parminou and the Canada Council
Authors: Graham Catherine
Published: June 2023

Can a troupe that has performed 4,200 times for 960,000 spectators over a twenty-year period contribute to the development of Canadian theatre? The troupe in question, Quebec’s Théâtre Parminou, thinks it can. The Canada Council disagrees. The result of the disagreement: an $85,000 cut to the operational funding of a troupe the Canada Council believes lacks artistic merit.

The cut hurts. The Theatre Parminou is a touring troupe and one of its trucks needs to be replaced if it is to continue to play in the regional halls and school auditoriums that are its main venues. The nine permanent sta ff members, all members of the cooperative that runs the Parminou, already have salaries slightly below the Canadian average but after years of perfecting their skills they find themselves forced to accept lower salaries and longer hours to keep the troupe afloat. The forty contractual salaries that have allowed the Parminou to act as a training ground for young Quebec actors are now more than the troupe can afford. But worst of all, the Canada Council’s decision to completely cut their operational support has left members of the collective feeling like they’ve been disowned. In co-artistic director Maureen Martineau’s words: “All of a sudden they’re telling you that you’re no longer a member of the Canadian theatre family. You can keep doing what you do, but as far as they’re concerned, you really have nothing to contribute.”
Haitian Theatre in Montreal: Building a Base
Authors: Fouché Jacqueline E.
Published: June 2023

For decades, theatre in Haiti was historical and intimist, based on the Western theatrical model. Haitian theatre only began coming into its own in the 1940s, and more so in the 1950s.

Playwrights like Morisseau Leroy, Franck Fouche and Enock Trouillot began to look at Haiti’s cultural heritage and created a new form of theatre using new theatrical language; a window opened onto a “theatre of the people”, written in Creole, onto total theatre that incorporated song and dance, onto a theatre of demystification.
Sistahs 1994
Authors: lewis sharon , bailey maxine
Published: June 2023

Sistahs was first produced in Toronto by Sugar ‘n’ Spice Productions at the Poor Alex in October 1994.

Maxine Bailey / playwright/producer/costume designer

Sharon Lewis / playwright/director

Bryan James / set designer

Christine Bucknell /lightingand sound designer

Diana Soodkeo I stage manager

Sonia Dhillon / assistant stage manager

Fleurette S. Fernando / movement consultant

Cast

Assata / Carol Anderson

Sandra / Melanie Nicholls-King

Dehlia / Lisa Richardson

Rea / Kim Roberts

Cerise / Shakura S’Aida
Félicitations, PUC
Authors: Goodwin Jill Tomasson
Published: June 2023

Only a few months shy of its twenty-fifth anniversary as the oldest publishing house of Canadian drama, Playwrights Canada (formerly Playwrights Union of Canada) deserves our congratulations. As Susan Bennett documents in our review article, PUC was formed as a small group on the Gaspé Peninsula in 1971. The date and the place seem now, in retrospect, a fitting start for publishing Canadian drama: 1971, part of the heady days of collective creation and playwrights unions; the Gaspé Peninsula, one of the geographic edges of the country, just as Canadian drama publishing was then on the farthest “edges” of Canadian literary publishing. All that has changed, and PUC has mirrored the development of our theatre. Now firmly ensconced in Toronto, one of the world’s most active theatre centres, Playwrights Canada publishes yearly a full range of texts, from single scripts to full anthologies, and is developing, with Blizzard Publishing in Winnipeg, a CD-ROM containing information on more than 1,000 scripts in its copyscript repertoire.
Flowers & No More Medea; If We Are Women; Taking the Stage: Selections from Plays by Canadian Women; Wanna Play? Three Plays for High School.; Wrong for Each Other
Authors: Porter Deborah , Glass Joanna McClelland , Zimmerman Cynthia , Foster Norm , Bennett Susan
Published: June 2023

The review of these five recent publications by Playwrights Canada Press presents a double opportunity: an assessment of this press’s contribution to Canadian theatre and drama, and a chance to offer some general comments about the state of the art, as it were, in the middle of the 1990s,

Playwrights Union of Canada had its origin in a small group formed on the Gaspe Peninsula in 1971, soon after receiving Canada Council support to establish a resource centre for Canadian playwriting. As the activities of this playwrights’ co-op developed and expanded, it was officially incorporated in 1979 as Playwrights Canada. In 1984 this group merged with the Guild of Canadian Playwrights (itself formed in 1977) to establish the Playwrights Union of Canada (PUC). Publishing has been and continues to be an important aspect of PUC’s work. At first, publications were those now-familiar typewritten and stapled scripts - and these were indeed my introduction to the existence of a Canadian drama. I was a new immigrant to Canada in the early 1980s and a graduate student in a Department of English. In response to my question “what Canadian drama is there?” asked of the department’s Canadianists and one or two others there, I heard the univocal response: “Oh, there isn’t any.” But soon after this emphatic declaration, I began discovering PUC’s typescripts on the University library shelves and read them all and eventually sent for a catalogue. Some ten years later, I find myself the President of the Association for Canadian Theatre Research so I guess I found my own and different answer to that initial inquiry. I wonder for how many other people PUC’s publications have been a route for uncovering and enjoying the breadth and diversity of talent that is contemporary Canadian drama. And now PUC’s publishing enterprise has expanded to include the full text production of some six or more plays each year, along with occasional special volumes (such as the Taking the Stage anthology reviewed here).
The Mentored Path
Authors: Burkett Ronnie
Published: June 2023

When I was a kid growing up in Medicine Hat, there weren’t any professional puppeteers around that I could pester for “how-to” information, and certainly no one in my family had a clue what I was talking about. Thus began a childhood campaign of tracking down those puppeteers whose work fascinated me from the pages of puppet books in the local library. Sometimes I would be lucky enough to find the address of one of those idols, other times I would have to use my own resourcefulness in contacting them. Before I had miraculously discovered American puppeteer Bil Baird’s address in a magazine article, I had written him the first of many fan letters with this straightforward (I thought) information on the envelope: Mr Bill Baird, New York City, U.S.A. I was nine years old.
Shakespeare at The Globe in Tokyo: A Crossroad of World Theatre
Authors: Poulton Cody , Hiroshi Takahagi
Published: June 2023

The Globe Tokyo opened in April 1988, and has now been in operation for seven years. I have been with the theatre since its opening, as assistant producer from 1988 until last year, and as its program manager since then. The theatre is five minutes’ walk from Shin-Okubo station, on the loop line in northwestern Tokyo, and is located on the southern border of a neighbourhood where older, low-level structures are being replaced by high-rise apartment buildings. It is three storeys high, plus a basement, and is unusual for Tokyo theatres in that spectators can walk directly from the street into the theatre without the use of a staircase. Architect Isozaki Arata made every effort to design a reconstruction of the original Globe Theatre, basing his plans on contemporary records (De Witt’s drawings of the Swan, and the Fortune contract) of the theatre where Shakespeare staged his plays on the south bank of the Thames. Modern concessions, however, were made in stage machinery, lighting, and sound, as well as in the addition of a roof so as to ensure year-round performances. A square open stage extends into a circular auditorium, and is surrounded by a three-tiered gallery of seats. An actor at downstage centre would be standing in the very middle of the circle. The thrust stage can be adjusted to accommodate anywhere between five hundred and seven hundred seats.
Prague: Uses and Abuses of Cultural Diplomacy
Authors: Irwin Kathleen , Kristmanson Mark
Published: June 2023

Every fourth Summer since 1967 the Prague Quadrennial of Theatre Design and Architecture has gathered together the best work of theatre designers from around the globe. The benchmark for this year’s theme, “In Search of Theatrical Space”, was a massive parallel exhibit of designs by the Czech innovator, Josef Svoboda, whose durable work concedes little to his younger contemporaries on show at the PQ ’95. If Svoboda’s trademark use of projections and light produced a new psychological space within the parameters of traditional theatre architecture, however, the notable feature of scenography of the 90s is its shift into non-traditional performance spaces.
Writing for a Playwright’s Theatre: Urjo Kareda on dramaturgy at Tarragon
Authors: Cottreau Deborah
Published: June 2023

In the 1970s, Tarragon Theatre emerged with a mandate to develop new Canadian plays, and to give the best possible production to the scripts chosen to première there. Since his appointment as artistic director in 1982, Urjo Kareda has devoutly upheld Tarragon’s goals by reading every script submitted to the theatre, personally developing those with potential. Deborah Cottreau spoke to Urjo Kareda last winter and asked him to reflect on his dual role as dramaturge/artistic director.
The Country in Her Throat, Beyond The Ruins
Authors: Fortin Simon , Glassco Bill , Micone Marco , MacDougall Jill , Basourakos John
Published: June 2023

In the wake of a powerfully divisive political exercise such as the Quebec referendum, tribal partisan rhetoric of power-hungry political demagogues is creating a dominant perception of three Canadian solitudes. As a Montrealer of Greek cultural heritage, with a keen interest in the potency of Canadian and Quebec theatre to function as a catalyst for philosophical and ethical reflection, and as an educator concerned with exposing stringent ethnocentric intolerance within a supposedly multicultural society, I feel it significant to articulate the political context within which I have chosen to write this review. A prevailing sense of cultural malaise permeates the angst-ridden soul of this nation’s ethnic and racial minorities, discerned in a cautious silence infiltrating the streets of post-referendum Montreal, and superbly captured in the two plays written by Marco Micone and Simon Fortin. It is only timely to review these two play texts that explore those seminal issues of cultural and political assimilation facing ethnic and racial minorities within Canada and Quebec. The voices of the culturally disenfranchised, the victims of partisan ideologies and of cultural assimilation, speak through these plays and can serve to remind us of the human casualties often overlooked when ideological passions obfuscate the revealing powers of human empathy, sensitivity, and logic.