bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A Year in London
Authors: Green Joseph G.
Published: June 2023

Perhaps the most striking impression one forms of the cultural situation in London is the confident civility of British establishment institutions — and I include in this government departments and “quangoes” (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organizations) universities and major arts organizations. And running alongside this is the sadly enervated resignation of the disenfranchised — from the poor and unemployed to the once vital alternative arts groups and the underground press to the increasingly factionalized Labour Party itself. Equally striking has been the speed with which establishment values have been co-opting once independent if not outright radical sectors of society.
The Brock Bibliography of Published Canadian Plays in English, 1766-1978.
Authors: Wagner Anton , Davies Ron
Published: June 2023

The new, expanded Brock Bibliography sets out to record the whole body of published English-Canadian drama and French-Canadian drama in English translation from its virtual beginning up until 1978. The need for a single comprehensive list of Canadian plays, including radio plays and screenplays, is as obvious as the immensity of the task of compiling one. While one admires the ambition and diligence of the editor and compilers, unfortunately the new Brock Bibliography is marred by flaws in its design and compilation that diminish its value to potential users.
And What Are You Going to Do For Us?
Authors: Bard Margaret , Stuart Ross
Published: June 2023

And What Are You Going to Do For Us? is another first in Canadian theatre publication: our first book of audition pieces drawn entirely from Canadian plays. The speeches are divided by sex and then into three broad age groups. Accompanying each speech is a short description of the character or situation, a few valuable pointers for the actor, and a concise biography of the playwright.
Upfront
Authors: Ruhin Don
Published: June 2023

In much the same outrageous way that the 1970 Festival of Underground Theatre (FUT) laid the groundwork and style for theatre in Toronto (and via Toronto in much of Canada) for the decade that followed, so too will the recently-concluded $2 million international Toronto Theatre Festival probably affect much of Canada’s theatrical style and consciousness for the coming 10 years. Not that the three week long Toronto Festival was perfect (far from it) but it did do much to shake up both the local and national theatre communities which, of late , have been so very badly in need of new challenge, vision, and commitment.
Poland: The Polish Theatre: Ethics vs. Aesthetics
Authors: Filipowicz Halina
Published: June 2023

After a long Act One of yet another mediocre production in the 1979-80 Polish theatre season, as we were standing in line for coffee and cookies and listening to the latest jokes about the Soviet Olympics, a prominent young Polish critic remarked bitterly, “In Polish theatres, the lobby is now the most important place. It’s the only place where the action is — during the intermissions.” To an outsider, the Polish theatre may seem more lively than ever, putting on spectacular productions, organizing numerous contests and festivals, touring the country, and bringing the art to the reluctant masses. But to an insider, the Polish theatre is a casualty of ruthless censorship, hardline party directives, declining artistic standards, shrinking funds, personal animosities, and audience indifference.
England: The Playwright as Director
Authors: Wesker Arnold
Published: June 2023

It is certainly an inventive production. Signor Visconti has in fact invented a new play, where major, significant and quite crucial pieces of action are introduced into a play by the director, without consultation with the author… . I did not write a play about two lesbians who caress each other continually. I did not write a scene in which a woman exposes herself to a man on stage. There is nothing in the text to indicate that the man and woman powder the naked breasts of the wife on stage. I did not write a musical. The characters sing songs but I did not state that a piano should accompany them, nor that the piano should continue in the most wildly inappropriate places. All the sexual acts I have referred to are not only inexpressibly vulgar in themselves but are totally against the spirit and intention… . Let me remind you that a play is not a public property. It belongs to its author under the international law of copyright.

— Harold Pinter — publicly commenting on Visconti’s production of Old Times in The Teatro di Roma.
Blyth: Still Growing
Authors: Citron Paula
Published: June 2023

Expansion was the keynote for the 1981 Blyth Festival. Building on the previous year’s success, Artistic Director, Janet Amos, scheduled five plays in nine weeks and her optimism was rewarded by increased attendance and new box office records. By mid-season, each performance had averaged significantly higher than in 1980 and advance sales were greater than ever, happy news for a snail, Canadian-only festival that relies on getting 50 percent of its revenue from ticket sales.
A Point of View
Authors: Arnott Brian
Published: June 2023

I designed my first professional production at Vancouver’s Arts Club Theatre in 1966. The show was Muriel Resnick’s Broadway comedy Any Wednesday directed by veteran Vancouver actor, the late Sam Payne. Anyone who has read or seen this play performed will understand when I say that we didn’t spend much time on interpretation. It’s a coy little piece that only requires — indeed only deserves —getting the doors in the right place and having a reasonably intelligent “set director” give it the once-over. Our biggest job in putting this show together physically was simply creating enough space for the actors to play the show in the corner of a not very large open room and still allow for enough space to seat a sufficient number of spectators to pay the bills. The assignment was essentially a functional one and by no means less challenging or important than the job of creating John’s New York apartment out of flattage, paint and furniture. The scenic elements themselves (flats) were either built/painted in the attic above the dressing rooms or begged and borrowed from friends of the theatre (furniture). The show was lit with Pattern 23s and 123s run off an Ariel Davis auto-transformer — the type with the long handles, as I recall. There was no patch, just a lot of cable runs and plenty of two-fers. Fortunately, it was a small set and there were very few lighting demands other than that the actors had to be seen.
Realizing A Concept or The 15% Solution
Authors: Shick Rick
Published: June 2023

Most theatres in Canada, if not the world, have relatively little money to spend. “Relatively” meaning when budgets are large, expectations are high. If you like, Schick’s First Law of Production Management is “Expectations exceed any budget by 15 per cent.” So we must use what money we have in the most effective way we can. This means that goals, objectives and concepts must be clearly stated and set. Real limitations need to be recognized and dealt with. Energy and time must be spent in planning long before decisions have to be made. There should be a real commitment to these plans. Concepts have to be followed through. Realistic deadlines must be set and every effort made to meet these deadlines with accurate, clear, complete information.
Recognizing the Designer
Authors: Doherty Tom
Published: June 2023

It was approximately 15 years ago that a group of set and costume designers, mostly employed by the CBC in Toronto, got together to form an association that would look after their concerns, and so was born the Associated Designers of Canada (ADC). Times changed and conditions changed. The task of organizing designers for television and film was taken over by other bodies and theatre in Canada grew, and developed in skill and sophistication. Today, the ADC remains as an active and dynamic membership of highly talented theatre designers — set, costume, and lighting designers — whose work is recognized as world class.
A Letter To My Son
Authors: Ryga George
Published: June 2023

In the fall of 1978, Kam Lab was in residency in Sault Ste. Marie. We were rehearsing what was to become the Eastern Canada premiere of George Ryga’s Ploughmen of the Glacier. During the run of that production. two members of the company caught the telecast of George’s screenplay for The Newcomers series. an episode about Ukrainian immigrant s. Moved and excited by the program. we discussed the possibility ofthis story as a stage play. how strong and ‘right’ it seemed. Nothing further was said.
The Artist in Resistance
Authors: Ryga George
Published: June 2023

The subject of populist theatre is one that is rapidly gaining in interest not only in Canada but in many parts of the world. This past May in Thunder Bay, Ontario, populist theatre companies from across Canada came together to share productions and information. Workshops were also held involving populist theatre workers from Canada and countries in the Third World. The following talk by playwright George Ryga was given during those workshops and is published here for the first time.
Tennessee Williams in Vancouver
Authors: Page Malcolm
Published: June 2023

The curious story of Tennessee Williams and his recent contacts with the Vancouver Playhouse began in 1980 when the University of British Columbia Creative Writing Department invited Williams for a five-week visit to conduct writing seminars. The funds of the Cecil and Ida Green Lectureships (last used for theatre several years earlier to bring in Richard Schechner and his entire Performance Group) would pay for the visit. But Williams’ agent bargained: only if a major production of his “new” play was staged in the city at the same time. In return, he would favour rehearsals with his presence. Roger Hodgman, Artistic Director of the Vancouver Playhouse, fell for the bait — conveniently forgetting that Williams had not written a good play for many years (as many as 25 years, if Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is seen as his last great play). Williams arrived — with The Red Devil Battery Sign. And the Playhouse advertised its world premiere. The Red Devil Battery Sign had, in fact, had other world premieres, in Boston (June 1975) and London (June 1977) and, I believe, in Vienna.
Artists and Critics: Incompatible Yet Inseparable
Authors: Ritter Erika , Whittaker Herbert , Andre Marion , Kozlinski Wojtek
Published: June 2023

What is the function of newspaper theatre reviews? What does the theatre community think of the critics? These were the two central questions of last October’s Conference on Theatre Criticism at Queen’s University in Kingston. The conference, introduced by Canada Council Chairman Mavor Moore, featured critics Gina Mallet (Toronto Star) and Herbert Whittaker (Globe and Mail), and director Marion Andre, former Canada Council Theatre officer David Gardner, and playwright Erika Ritter representing the theatre artists’ point of view.
Theatre 3: A Critical Obituary
Authors: Brennan Brian
Published: June 2023

When Edmonton’s Theatre 3 collapsed and died from mortgage complications last June, one Edmonton critic lamented the passing of “Alberta’s consistently most daring theatre.” Another, adopting the much-abused term “avant garde”, praised Theatre 3 for having offered a “bold alternative” to the mainstream productions at the palatial Citadel Theatre. The weekly Alberta Report, always looking for an excuse to use a Time-styled quip, noted gleefully that “the theatre that gave Alberta audiences their first glimpse of full frontal female nudity has been caught with its own pants down.”
Shakespeare In England
Authors: Berry Ralph
Published: June 2023

Shakespeare: Man of the Theatre. A banal enough assertion, one might think. As the title of the International Shakespeare Association Congress, held in August at Stratford-upon-Avon, it holds some meaning. The ISA executive — academics, under the Presidency of Sir John Gielgud — has formally admitted the stage to the atrium of Shakespeare studies. It was not always thus. But now, the stage appeared everywhere in the ascendant at the Congress. Workshops, invariably well attended, showed actors and directors discoursing on their work. The terms on which actors should be admitted to classrooms were much discussed. Theatre history is a fast-growing discipline. In the intervals of seminar and lecture, one was entertained with TV versions of Shakespeare. Beyond the Congress lay visits to Coventry for the Mystery Plays, to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, to The Other Place. Theatre itself came to the Congress via the Service at Holy Trinity Church, where the international congregation followed attentively the script of the Elizabethan Prayer Book (1559), and re-created the experience of Shakespeare’s own churchgoing. A triumph, then, for the new orthodoxy, that Shakespeare is not a writer but a dramatist? A signal recognition that the Shakespeare Revolution has indeed occurred?
Graphic Communications for the Performing Arts, Art and The Stage
Authors: Skal David J. , Breitman Ellen , Elchen Syvalva
Published: June 2023

One of the Theatre Communications Group’s aims under its design arts program is to provide publications that are tools rather than “records”. Graphic Communications for the Performing Arts is intended to be just such a “how to” manual for use by arts administrators, marketing specialists, graphic designers, advertising agencies and arts students - in short, anyone whose work involves printed communications for the arts. The book also represents the first formal attempt to collect between two covers the entire spectrum of graphic design as it impacts on the world of non-profit performance art.
Theatre Words
Authors: Stuart Ross
Published: June 2023

Theatre Words. compiled and edited for the Nordic Theatre Union and the Organisation Internationale des Scenographes et Techniciens de Theatre, is a comprehensive vocabulary of technical theatre terms that would be invaluable to anyone working in or even visiting theatres abroad. A pictorial section showing stages, theatres and equipment, makes it easy to find the foreign equivalents for English terminology. The third edition covers nine languages: English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Swedish, Hungarian, Czechoslovakian and Russian. A Japanese appendix is available separately. Theatre Words is available through the Swedish National Theatre Centre (Riksteater) c/o Entré, Rasundavagen ISO, S171 30 Solna, Sweden.
Canada and Quebec: Beginning the Dialogue
Authors: Germain Jean-Claude
Published: June 2023

It used to be that theatre people in both Canada and Quebec were either children of Shakespeare or children of Moliere. As a result, when theatre people here met, they either talked about Shakespeare or they talked about Moliere. What they did not talk about was themselves. That fact made it difficult, if not impossible, to talk to one another. They themselves were unsure who they were. Today, however, a dialogue between Canadian and Quebecois theatre people is a possibility. Today it is possible for them to speak about themselves and their own theatres. That, I think, is a major achievement, perhaps the major achievement of the last decade and-a-half.
Canada’s Playwrights: Finding Their Place
Authors: Pollock Sharon
Published: June 2023

If 10 Canadian playwrights were to speak on Canadian play writing today, there would be 18 points of view. My views are highly subjective and endorsed by no one but myself. My personal position has been described by some people as being slightly left of Trotsky, and by others as slightly right of Genghis Khan. Neither are Canadians, which makes me highly suspect by the nationalist; and my preoccupation with Canadian things, and worse still, regional Canadian things, means that I’m scorned by the internationalists as well.
My Life in Canadian Art
Authors: Hirsch John
Published: June 2023

The story of one’s life changes from time to time. I should think it changes every seven years. In short, you begin to see what went on before in the light of who you are at any given moment in your life. I’ve changed the story of my life many times. I’m engaged in creating my own mythology as all artists have to do, and this is a very important task because, after all, that is what you work from and the way you look at yourself. Your past influences the way you look at the world and what kind of work you do.
From Art to Theory: Canada’s Critical Tools
Authors: Wagner Anton
Published: June 2023

Mavor Moore has cited the filmmaker John Grierson to the effect that “first comes the need, then the art, then the theory”.’ To study the art and theory of Canadian theatre and drama, one must also interject the bibliographic maxim “before books can be studied, they must be known to exist”. What research methodology should we employ to arrive at an accurate understanding of the Canadian art of the theatre? In ourcurrent preliminary stage of scholarship, which in English-Canada is still largely an initial mere identification of Canadian authors and a description of their works, no present bibliography can be considered as completely authoritative.
A Selected Bibliography of Canadian Theatre and Drama Bibliographies and Guides
Authors: Wagner Anton
Published: June 2023

197 pre- andapproximately 2.200 20th century titles are annotated hy 12 compilers. Includes a drama short title index. a Canadian drama bibliograph ies, catalogues andfinding aids resource list and a listing of Canadian puhlisher and playwrights associations.
Straight Ahead and Blind Dancers
Authors: Tidler Charles
Published: June 2023

© 1981 Charles Tidler. These plays are fully protected under the copyright laws of Canada and all other countries of the Copyright Union and are subject to royalty. Changes to the scripts are expressly forbidden without written consent of the author. Rights to produce, film or record, in whole or in part, in any medium or in any language, by any group, amateur or professional, are retained by the author. Interested persons are requested to apply for permission and terms to: Edgar Dobie, New Play Centre, P.O. Box 34091, Station D, Vancouver, B.C. V6J 4ML
Theatre of the Film Noir
Authors: Walker George F.
Published: June 2023

Caution:

© 1981. George F. Walker. This play is fully protected under the copyright law of Canada and all other countries of the Copyright Union and is subject to royally. Changes to the script are expressly forbidden without written consent of the author. Rights to produce, film or record in whole or in part, in any medium or in any language, by any group, amateur or professional, arc retained by the author. Interested persons arc requested to apply for permission and terms to: Great North Artists Management Inc., 345 Adelaide St. West. Sic. 500. Toronto. Ontario M5V IR5 (416) 363-9901.
Newfoundland Theatre: The Proper Thing
Authors: Goldie Terry
Published: June 2023

The title of the piece refers to a Newfoundland expression. When something is deemed to be particularly appropriate, it is said to be “the proper thing.” This phrase seems particularly suited here, in that the best of Newfoundland theatre in the past 10 years, with very few exceptions, has been collective creations. And almost all of those have been very concerned with Newfoundland expressions and with the culture which is particularly of Newfoundland.
Canadian Theatre Today
Authors: Stuart Ross
Published: June 2023

1981 was the Year of the Conferences in Canada. There were three important ones: the first in May as part of the Toronto Theatre Festival; the second, Canadian Theatre Today, organized by Tom Kerr and hosted by the University of Saskatchewan, in October; and the third, a critics’ conference at Queen’s University, later in October. The Toronto event consisted of three national and international colloquia: one on the problems facing Canadian theatre in general and university theatre programs in particular; another on theatre training, and the last on how to improve communication between critics around the world. All these conferences were concerned with the challenges involved in preparing for the theatre of the future. Altogether they generated much talk, some controversy and a few valuable insights.
The Child: A Place in the Life
Authors: Doolittle Joyce
Published: June 2023

What place should theatre have in the lives of Canadian youth today?

Let’s all agree that there must be some place for live theatre: availability, accessibility, and quality. The history of the development of drama programs and theatre networks begin s with availability. For example, the presence of Betty Mitchell at Western Canada High School in 1934, making drama accessible to young people in Calgary. When Betty Mitchell felt the need to improve and upgrade her drama credentials, in order to raise the quality of her teaching and directing, there was nowhere in Canada for her to go. She went to the University of Iowa in 1942 and then travelled extensively in the United States, looking at theatre and theatre spaces — on a Rockefeller scholarship. When she returned to Canada, she brought a broader vision and it nourished generations of young Calgarians — she called them her ‘children’ — many of whom went on to careers in the theatre, more of whom did not … but all of them enriched by their drama experiences with her had been available, accessible and of a high quality.
The American League
Authors: Merin Jennifer
Published: June 2023

The League for Professional Theatre Training Programs, a membership organization concerned with the development of standards of training for the American theatre, was founded in 1971. At present, the league has 12 members, including the American Conservatory Theatre, Boston University, Brandeis University, Carnegie-Mellon University, the Julliard School, New York University, North Carolina School of the ARTICLEs, Southern Methodist University, Temple University, University of California at San Diego, University of Washington, and Yale School of Drama.
Rock ‘N’ Roll: A musical play in two acts
Authors: Gray John
Published: June 2023

Charles Page Fletcher as Screamin John. This photo and all other in this section are from the Vancouver East Cultural Centre’s production of Rock & Roll, in association with the National ARTICLEs Centre.
Canada: Bombing on Broadway
Authors: Nickson Liz
Published: June 2023

It terrifies me as a Producer, and this transcends national boundaries, [that] if I put up a piece which is applauded as fine literature, has excellent performances and gets rave reviews, it will still be a losing proposition.
Vancouver: A Day in the Life
Authors: Wasserman Jerry
Published: June 2023

This is a tale of one day in the life of nine Vancouver theatres. The very fact that there are as many as nine theatres in Vancouver is one pARTICLE of the tale; the day is another. It is March 26, 1982, and the Vancouver Playhouse is dark, having recently concluded its most dismal season in years with a silly 1940s British farce followed by the resignation of ARTICLEistic director Roger Hodgman. Scheduled to open tonight at the Carnegie Centre, but postponed for a week, is the Vancouver Repertory Theatre’s production of James Reaney’s Handcuffs. Still, though, there are seven plays to be seen. A Capilano College student production of Ten Lost Years is on at North Vancouver’s Presentation House. At the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, the Prairie Theatre Exchange is presenting The Ecstasy of Rita Joe. The ARTICLEs Club’s two theatres are both lit tonight, with Allan Stratton’s Rexy! on Granville Island and Sherman Snukal’s Talking Dirty still running on Seymour Street. The Tamahnous production of Last Call!, Ken Macdonald and Morris Panych’s “Post-Nuclear Musical Cabaret,” is selling out down at City Stage. And the city’s newest performance space, The Firehall, is playing host to Judith Thompson’s The Crackwalker, staged by Touchstone Theatre Company. Finally, Westcoast Actors are doing Athol Fugard’s The Island at the Waterfront Theatre.
Radio’s Children
Authors: Miller Mary Jane
Published: June 2023

Most people over thirty-five in this country spent their childhood with radio as the chief supplier of daily drama: from the States, Soaps, Jack Benny, Copshows, Fibber Magee and Molly and, on the CBC, Just Mary, Jake and the Kid, Summer Fallow and The Craigs.1 For adults who had an appetite for more demanding fare, Andrew Allan’s famous Stage series provided imaginative food for thought. Allan, his technicians, composers, actors and band of playwrights learning their craft as they wrote, ‘Got the play on and answered for it afterwards,’ as Len Peterson once said.2 The result was that the Stage series was second only to Hockey Night in Canada in popularity.
Walking a Thin Line
Authors: Corbeil Carole
Published: June 2023

1 Covering the bases It is impossible to examine the current state of radio drama at CBC, a department which was taken over by Susan Rubes in 1980, without looking at the policies which led to her appointment. According to observers, Rubes was ‘appointed to deal with the popular base of radio drama.’ She was, in other words, hired to push existing CBC policies aimed at establishing a strong base of popular drama that had been proposed in an internal report entitled Report on the Study on the Radio Arts, Music and Drama prepared in 1976. ‘She had the reputation,’ says John Douglas, one of the authors of the report, ‘of being implacably resourceful in filling seats, of being ruthless, manipulative, and inventive. And she had a high profile.’
The Last Refuge of the Spoken Word
Authors: Cook Michael
Published: June 2023

I have had a love affair with radio for as long as I can remember. I watch my whiz-kid children mastering video games, mesmerised by the monosyllabic utterances of our TV stars, sharing with the Queen a fascination for the mindlessly materialistic world of Dallas and I consider myself fortunate to have been a child during the Golden Age of radio in England during the forties and fifties.
Structuring ‘Truth’: The Uses of Drama in ‘Information’ Radio
Authors: Pietropaolo Damiano
Published: June 2023

In its short history as a medium of mass communications, radio had the most dramatic impact on its audience during the famous broadcast of the Mercury Theatre adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds in 1938. Structuring the program like an information documentary with on-the-spot interviews and ‘live action’, Orson Welles created a form of radio whose impact depended entirely on a confusion of genres. Although the broadcast was clearly identified as a play, those who tuned in late were caught unawares and, stricken by panic, took to the streets in an expression of collective fear and mass hysteria. They had made a simple error of perception, mistaking an artistically contrived product constructed according to strict rules of dramatic composition to be part of an on-going process which had life and death implications. A set of well rehearsed voices and sound effects broadcast from the studios of CBS was thought to be ‘real’ because of the nature of the medium itself.
Sound Alternatives: 1 The DNA Tape Exchange: Quantum Perturbations and Altered Structures
Authors: Russell Lawrence
Published: June 2023

Radio (or sound) drama has always appealed to me because, like literature, it leaves the image materialization to the imagination. But as a radio genre it fell into a decline with the introduction of television and the powerful bi-sensorial activity that medium allows.
Sound Alternatives: 2 The Luxe Radio Players: Eliciting ‘The Third Man’
Authors: Ready Patrick
Published: June 2023

The Western Front is an artist’s centre in Vancouver that previously was a Knights of Pythias lodge. Since its inception in the early seventies, it has always been supportive of artists working in new formats, making available to them space, time, materials, equipment and personnel. Artists in dance, performance, video, music, theatre and other mediums from all over the world have worked there.
Esse Ljungh and the Stage Series
Authors: Blanchard Sharon
Published: June 2023

In October, 1955, after eleven years at its helm, Andrew Allan relinquished the Stage series to Esse W. Ljungh’s very competent, yet very different, direction. Ljungh had a tough act to follow. He was a well-known producer-director in his own right, with a faithful audience of listeners; however, the Stage series and Andrew Allan had been synonymous. Ljungh’s work would inevitably be compared with his predecessor’s – a difficult position to be in.
Winnipeg: Two Years and Counting
Authors: Runnells Rory
Published: June 2023

Two years into the revival of theatrical life in Winnipeg, the prospects for a truly divergent, active, and original theatre look promising.
Toronto: The International Festival of Children’s Theatre
Authors: Smith Patricia Keeney
Published: June 2023

‘Play is children’s work: they’re going to get dirty.’ Here, inadvertently, is one of the most symbolic statements made by Ludwig Volker, playwright and song lyricist for the German children’s theatre company Grips, at Toronto’s recent international festival of young dramatic art. It is young, because it deals with the realities of children and teenagers. It is exhaustingly hard work for the companies involved, because it is that much more difficult for an adult to get the ‘child’s eye view’ of things in any honest fashion. The Japanese company Kaze No Ko, for instance, sent members of their troupe to kindergarten for a few months where they carried on as peers to five-year-olds, rediscovering those areas in themselves that would allow them to draw faces with purple eyes and orange hair, in that age of pure and aimless invention. For children, all is play and play is how they learn, pouring untried energies into make-believe and role-modeling. So, instinctively, accidentally, in fits and starts and bursts, they come to terms with the world, surprising themselves and us the way sudden flames or floating bubbles do. But, they are going to get dirty. Although Volker was referring to the Prussian tactics still occasionally used in German schools for less than perfect appearance, he might also have been stating a theme of the festival. Not that it championed ‘issue theatre’ for there was whimsical enchantment to be had everywhere. However, as another commentator has put it, children were taken seriously, not merely as half-formed adults.
Michel Tremblay, Damnée Manon, Sacrée Sandra Sainte-Carmen of the Main The Impromptu of Outremont
Authors: Usmiani Renate , Tremblay Michel , Rubin Don
Published: June 2023

Michel Tremblay is, without doubt, Quebec’s most well-known dramatist and probably the best dramatist this land has yet produced. His plays are done not only in French and English in Quebec, but in English translation all across Canada and with increasing frequency in the United States and England. In France, Tremblay’s joual plays (he himself now prefers to call their special language Quebecois rather than joual) are even considered somewhat chic these days. The recent publication of Renate Usmiani’s major scholarly study of Tremblay and the release of three more Tremblay plays by Vancouver’s Talonbooks then is simply further proof that a playwright of acknowledged world genius has truly arisen in our midst.
Fallen Empires: The Lost Theatres of Edmonton
Authors: Orrell John , Keller Valerie
Published: June 2023

John Orrell’s passion for live theatre comes through in his delightful book, Fallen Empires. Orrell has done a magnificent job of collecting and collating a massive amount of Edmonton’s theatre history and presenting it in a highly readable manner.
Contemporary Australian Drama: Perspectives Since 1955
Authors: Holloway Peter , Goldie Terence
Published: June 2023

For a Canadian looking at a book like Contemporary Australian Drama it is difficult not to make comparisons. For example, in 1958 Bruce Grant said, ’The most important pressure on the Australian theatre today is that of ordinary Australians who want to see themselves on the stage.’ Sound familiar? How about a 1960 statement by an Englishman, Hugh Hunt, first director of the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust: ’Today I am concerned with the making of theatre - of a national theatre - and this must include in its repertoire classic as well as contemporary plays.’ As one might expect, he received a prompt reply from an Australian, Leonie Kramer, who particularly took issue when Hunt said of the Australian play: ‘it would be unfair to judge a dramatic literature which has scarcely begun.’
Radio: Canada’s dramatic voice: An Introduction
Authors: Wallace Robert
Published: June 2023

The potential of sound to excite and inflame the listener’s imagination is a fact that all the feature writers in this Issue variously present. That this potential has been exploited, misused and ignored in the history of radio in Canada are other facts which the following articles explain. No matter what the quality or degree of radio’s past and current utilization of sound, however, its effect on our lives and our theatre continues to be immense. The tendency to think of Canadian radio drama in the past tense is understandable but misguided; significant as they were, the so-called ‘golden’ years of CBC radio drama in the forties and fifties pale beside the on-going and immediate influence of radio in our daily lives today. While it is possible to compare disadvantageously the present state of CBC radio drama to its halcyon days, it is equally possible to recognize the advantageous effects that the dramatic techniques developed in series like CBC Stage now exert on all radio programming, both inside and out of the CBC.
That Is Not What I Meant At All
Authors: Green Joseph G.
Published: June 2023

Some years ago, in 1976, I was privileged to address the annual meeting of the Canadian Institute on Public Policy at its Couchiching summer meeting. The title of my speech was The last arts report was so productive we could use another and it argued for two major undertakings, the second of which was “an extensive examination of the place of the arts in Canadian education.” The first was a call for a major review of those very agencies which have given this nation its first steps toward artistic maturity:

Such a comprehensive study - which likely would have to be stagge red because of its enormous complexity - might well concern itself with a number of issues critical to Canada, today and tomorrow. What, for example, is the responsibility of support agencies for leadership in the arts, in addition to service? Who is responsible for the articulation of frequently inarticulate community needs and attitudes? And who, if anyone, is responsible for leading communities to higher levels of artistic and self-awareness? How does a nation like ours create an art which is responsive to the needs and desires of its people, in the face of a media-shrunken global village , in the face of a next-door neighbor who spews his art allover our lawn (but who also offers us a high level of immediate material gratification and a similarly high level of physical defense), and in the face of a nationality based on geographic, ethnic, economic, linguistic diversity? And how do we cultivate such an art, such a spiritual sense of self, without turning negative, sour, defensive - all postures which are anithetical to the production of great art?
The Audience and the Season: Four Artistic Directors in Search of a Community
Authors: Wallace Robert , Zimmerman Cynthia
Published: June 2023

Kramer: I’ve always believed that a theatre audience is created in the image of its management. There used to be a prevalent attitude that when you started a theatre in a town that had no theatre history, you started with the popular “commercial” stuff and gradually introduced the more artistic material. I’ve never believed that. I’ve always believed that the audience you create is the audience you get.
PACT: Networking the National Community
Authors: Milliken Paul
Published: June 2023

A mere six years since its inception, PACT – The Professional Association of Canadian Theatres – is a very important success. Open to all professional, non-profit theatres in Canada, it has more than doubled its membership, which now stands at 83 theatres. The successor to the 33-member League of Canadian Theatres, PACT was born with a double mandate that recognized the need for a national body that could speak from a position of solidarity. Charged to bargain with groups such as Canadian Actor’s Equity and to lobby with government agencies to elevate the position and profile of theatre in Canada, PACT was also issued a hidden challenge: show immediate dexterity, or die.
Seize the Day The Mummers’ Gros Mourn
Authors: Brookes Chris
Published: June 2023

Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from None of That Artsy-Fartsy Stuff, a history of the Newfoundland Mummers Troupe (1972-1982) that Chris Brookes, the group’s Artistic Director for most of that period, is currently writing. This excerpt chronicles the evolution of Gros Mourn, a collective creation about a community crisis that the Mummers encountered in 1973 when they toured to the Gros Morne area of the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland.
Responding to the Region: The Little Company with the Big Name
Authors: Bessai Diane
Published: June 2023

Ottawa is not the first place that comes to mind in talk about contemporary Canada’s regionalist theatre. The profile of the NAC is too conspicuous for that. But in 1975, perhaps because of the dominance of the internationalist focus of the Arts Centre with its civil servant fare, The Great Canadian Theatre Company, the little troupe with the big name, was founded by a group of professors and students from Carleton University.
Trummi Kaput
Authors: Ludwig Volker , Foon Dennis
Published: June 2023

© 1982 Rights to produce this adaptation of TRUMMI KAPUT in whole or in part, in any medium by any group, amateur or professional, are retained by the adaptor and author and interested persons are requested to apply to their agent: ELISABETH MARTON, 96 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10011 (212) 255-1908 Cables: Martonplay New York. For information on GRIPS THEATER, write: Altonaer Str. 22, 1000 Berlin 21. For information on GREEN THUMB THEATRE, write: 572 Beatty Street, Vancouver, BC Canada V6B 2L3 Phone: (604) 682-4664
France Theatre Under the Socialists
Authors: Macnaughton Peter
Published: June 2023

As France’s Minister of Culture under Francois Mitterand, Jack Lang has already gained international notoriety through two scathing public declarations accusing the Americans of financial and intellectual imperialism in the Western world. The first accompanied his boycotting of the 1982 Deauvllle Festival of American Film; the second was made in July of 1982 in Mexico, in the opening speech of the UNESCO conference on culture. Of these accusations, I will say more later. What is, however, unfortunate is that they have tended to obscure the radical changes which Lang has already brought about in France within the arts, and particularly within the theatre.
Vancouver Roger Hodgman and the Playhouse: Where was the Audience?
Authors: Page Malcolm
Published: June 2023

——In CTR 24 I discussed Christopher Newton’s six years as Artistic Director of The Vancouver Playhouse. Only three years later I am writing a farewell to Roger Hodgman, his successor. Hodgman, Australian-born, came in 1977 from working at the E15 Theatre School in Britain to take over the Playhouse Theatre School after the sudden death of Powys Thomas. For the Playhouse mainstage, Hodgman directed excellent productions of David Storey’s The Contractor and Horvath’s Tales from the Vienna Woods, drawing remarkable performances from some over-familiar local actors. These achievements made Hodgman the obvious choice when in 1979 Newton resigned to move to the Shaw Festival.
Winnipeg The Manitoba Theatre Centre: Reaffirming Community
Authors: Dafoe Christopher
Published: June 2023

—The Manitoba Theatre Centre, the oldest of the family of so-called “regional theatres” in Canada, is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its foundation this year in a theatrical atmosphere that has altered significantly since John Hirsch, Tom Hendry and others presided over the theatre’s first season. The theatre still enjoys a special, favoured relationship with its community but with the passage of time, this has changed from Winnipeg to Manitoba.
The Work: Conversations with English Canadian Playwrights
Authors: Wallace Robert , Zimmerman Cynthia , Innes Christopher
Published: June 2023

The need for this book is given ironic reflection in Tom Hendry’s comment that “if Canadians came to a fork in the road and one route said ‘to heaven’ and the other said ‘to nlectures on heave ‘, they would all go to the lectures”. But, as one dramatist remarks, it is the lack of proper critical attention that has relegated so much Canadian work to the limbo of lost plays. Particularly when few plays are given a second production , informed commentary and background material have a vital function, if only as part of a consc iousness-raising process. So it could be said that this volume of interviews marks the coming of age of Canadian drama.
The Collected Plays of Gwen Ringwood
Authors: Delgatty Enid , Hoffman James
Published: June 2023

It is an important (and uncommon) event in the Canadian theatre when a “collected” work of a major Canadian playwright appears . The publication of this volume of Gwen Ringwood’s plays, therefore, stands as an achievement for the playwright , editor Enid Delgatty, and Borealis Press of Ottawa.
The Toronto Movement
Authors: Rubin Don
Published: June 2023

In all exploratory behaviour, whether artistic or scientific, there is the ever-present battle between the neo-philic and neo-phobic urges. The former drives us on to new experiences, makes us crave for novelty. The latter holds us back, makes us take refuge in the familiar. … This state of conflict does not merely account for the more obvious fluctuations in fashions and fads …; it is also the very basis of our whole cultural progression. We explore and we retrench, we investigate and we stabilise. – Desmond Morris The Naked Ape
Survivor: George Luscombe at Toronto Workshop Productions
Authors: Friedlander Mira
Published: June 2023

No more consistently controversial figure exists in Toronto’s theatre community than George Luscombe, the feisty, crusty, and often acerbic Artistic Director of Toronto Workshop Productions. As the granddaddy of Toronto’s small theatres (a title he doesn’t particularly like), Luscombe has borne both the brunt of critical spleen and the accolades of his followers for the past 25’years. Committed to what he terms “group” theatre (a technique based on his work in England with the pioneering director, Joan Littlewood) and to producing works of social significance, Luscombe has managed to alternately please and offend just about everybody, friend and foe alike.
Ten Lost Years
Authors: Broadfoot Barry , Smith Cedric , Winter Jack , Luscombe George
Published: June 2023

© 1974 – Toronto Workshop Productions. This play is fully protected under the copyright laws of Canada and all other countries of the Copyright Union and are subject to royalty. Change to the script is expressly forbidden without written consent of the authors. Rights to produce, film or record, in whole or in part, in any medium or in any language, by any group, amateur or professional, are retained by the authors. Interested persons are requested to apply for permission and terms to: Toronto Workshop Productions, 12 Alexander Street, Toronto, Canada.
Betty Jane Wylie: The Playwright as Participant
Authors: Wylie Betty Jane
Published: June 2023

Collectives are almost a way of life now as a number of theatres in Canada have built their reputations on joint creative projects, the best of which have grass roots appeal that breaks box office records. But what of the playwright involved? There usually is one, a floating name attached to the program with a jaunty acknowledgement: “consultant,” or “playwright in residence,” or “in association with.” Horror stories drift into the office of the Guild of Canadian Playwrights about some playwright or other who gets sued or ripped off for using material other than his or her own, garnered in the heat of collective creation. Did Bertolt Brecht have to cope with such effrontery when he was picking people’s brains?
Ingmar Bergman, Four Decades in the Theatre, Ingmar Bergman and the Rituals of Art
Authors: Lise-Lone  , Marker Frederick J. , Livingston Paisley , Walsh Paul
Published: June 2023

“Filmmaking is very neurotic,” Ingmar Bergman says in one of the two interviews that frame Lisa-Lone and Frederick J. Marker’s Ingmar Bergman, Four Decades in the Theatre; “You’re obsessed – your work is very neurotic, but the creative work of the theatre, made together with the actors, is a very healthy way of creating.” Coming from a man who knows both forms intimately, this statement is not only intriguing but illuminating. In simple terms, Bergman suggests a possible approach for clarifying the perennial theoretical problem of distinguishing between the two media by focussing on the working process; at the same time, he draws attention to the concern for process which distinguishes his own work.
Playmakers: Adventures in Canadian Drama, Scripted Drama: A Practical Guide to Teaching Techniques, Fun with Stagecraft
Authors: Binnersly T. , Miller J. , England Alan , McCallum Andrew , Doolittle Joyce
Published: June 2023

With the publication of Playmakers, the Great Canadian Theatre Company joins other professional troupes in making their plays based on Canadian history and legend available to a wider public. This volume contains one original play and two adapted from short stories. The Secret of the Golden Fiddle by Robin Mathews is about a violin, a villain and a long lost map to a gold mine. It is a melodrama with a message, summarized by the hero, Pierre:

I don’t want a golden fiddle ever again. The world isn’t made up of golden fiddles . Beautiful music can be made wherever people have good thoughts. I think we should stake the claim for the gold mine in the name of the whole village so we can all be reasonably rich and reasonably happy. Does anybody disagree?
Vancouver in 1983: Summer Success and Winter Worries
Authors: Page Malcolm
Published: June 2023

1 / In the Summer of 1983 Vancouver left behind the idea of theatre as a winter activity. The tradition of September to April as the “season,” though maintained by the Playhouse, has finally gone. The citizens – and tourists – no longer spend their summers entirely on boats and beaches: they go to theatre too.
Touchstone: The Way It Was, 1975–80
Authors: Fenwick Ian
Published: June 2023

Touchstone was formed in September, 1975, by ten products of the University of British Columbia Theatre Department. We had worked together on various projects and found we shared common interests and feelings about the theatre . Our graduation dates created an urgency (panic?) within us to provide theatre work for ourselves.
Why are the Critics so Bad?
Authors: Lazarus John
Published: June 2023

“What I am about to say may hurt and anger …”

“Only the cruellest kind of miscasting, compounded by the saddest sort of self-indulgence on the part of the actress, could have deluded anyone into thinking that _______ would be convincing as the wife, Agnes, whose beauty ‘bewitches’ her husband… . Miss _______ is … armed with an expression that, depending on her mood, is not entirely unlike that of a wistful or irritated Schnauzer.”
Come Out, Come Out, Whatever You Are
Authors: Ouzounian Richard
Published: June 2023

Caution: 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. Change to the script is expressly forbidden without written consent of the author. Rights to produce, film or record, in whole or in part, in any medium in any language, by any group amateur or professional, are retained by the author. Interested persons are requested to apply for permission and terms to: Richard Ouzounian, CentreStage Company, 44 Wellington Street East, #44, Toronto, Ontario M5E 1C8.