bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Mexico: The Cervantes Festival
Authors: Merin Jennifer
Published: June 2023

For three weeks from April 21 to May 15, the International Cervantes Festival brought to the charming and relatively isolated colonial city of Guanajuato, Mexico, a dazzling roster of some of the world’s most accomplished performing artists and ensembles in a program of theatre, dance, opera, music and folkloric performances. West Berlin’s Schaubuhne Theatre, Poland’s Cricot 2 Theatre, Britain’s National Theatre, Spain’s Nuria Espert Company, Rudolph Nureyev with the Boston Ballet, Merce Cunningham and Company, Maurice Bejart’s XXth Century Ballet with Jorge Donn and Marcia Haydee, Leonard Bernstein conducting the Israel Philharmonic, Erich Leinsdorf conducting the Royal Philharmonic of London, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Marilyn Horne, Vladimir Ashkenazy were among those who performed in Teatro Juarez, an ornate turn-of-the-century opera house seating 1200; Teatro Principal, a modern proscenium theatre seating 500, the Templo de la Compania, a beautiful Baroque church seating about 900 and at outdoor locations such as the Alhondiga de Gramaditas, an ancient granary (now an historical museum), converted during the festival to an arena seating about 3,000.
Paper Wheat: The Book: The Whorehouse Papers
Authors: King Larry , Stuart Ross
Published: June 2023

Prairie Wheat has become one of the most popular productions in the history of Canadian theatre. Therefore it was inevitable that someone (appropriately Western Producer Prairie Books of Saskatoon) would publish what in effect is a commemorative volume containing the definitive text, the music and a number of essays.
Dan’s Party, The Club, Travelling North
Authors: Williamson David , Fairhead Wayne
Published: June 2023

As in Canada. the 1970s commenced with a spring-like bursting out of indigenous theatrical activity in Australia. There had been rumblings as the 1960s ended. The former traditionally orientated (especially toiwtisahrd the Br models) performances that had dominated the Australian stage were questioned for the first time in a major way. There was developing a new, aggressive nationalism in the arts that had as its focus the cleansing from the country of past antiquities. A need had finally surfaced for Australian writers, painters, sculptors , and other artists to not only reflect upon their own environment but to create new forms and approaches in order to connect with and define the vividly unique Australian context.
The West Coast’s Hardy Perennial: Green Thumb
Authors: Dolittle Joyce
Published: June 2023

Why Green Thumb? Companies performing for young audiences often choose names which evoke aspects of childhood. Mermaid, Unicorn, Carousel, Kaleidoscope … each conjures up echoes of myth, magic, colour and transformation. But Green Thumb? Dennis Foon, Artistic Director and co-founder of the company has two answers. The prosaic reply is that in 1975, when the founders were drawing up documents to become a non-profit society, they took the name from a plant store across the street. But the name has remained and its associations with nurturing, growth and new life seem apt. Foon’s second answer is more philosophical. “It keeps us honest.” He says that with the name Green Thumb, the company is not tempted to “go adult” as have so many groups which began their work as companies exclusively for young people. Also, the kids love it. They recognize and salute the troupe in a tangible way because of its name. Often, the touring company is met by the entire school population, each of whom lifts a (literally) green thumb.
Canada Steven Rumbelow and TAT
Authors: Smith Patricia Keeney
Published: June 2023

Note: In 1969, Steven Rumbelow started an experimental theatre company called Triple Action Theatre, or TAT as it became known, intentionally located outside of London, England. From its base in Mansfield, TAT began travelling in an attempt to find new kinds of theatre audiences and energies. In 1980, this brought TAT to Canada for the first time where it participated with Jerzy Grotowski in a special weekend of experimental theatre at York University. The play TAT performed – a 60-minute vision of Joyce’s Ulysses – attracted the attention of Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille and the Theatre soon found itself playing to sold-out houses under Passe Muraille’s aegis in downtown Toronto. As a result, during Onstage ‘81 in Toronto, the company returned with a new work called Curriculum Vitae; again, reviews were strong and audiences filled the theatre. Coming to Toronto a third time in the spring of ‘82, ostensibly to do a revival of his earlier two-person Faust at Passe Muraille and staying on to do a controversial collective about Poland (Bridal Polonaise), Rumbelow began to lay the seeds for his most daring experiment yet – a theatrical study of shamans which will take TAT from British Columbia to Peru over the next two years.
Max Reinhardt, Peter Stein
Authors: Styan J.L. , Patterson Michael , Andre Marion
Published: June 2023

600 major productions! Staged in the key cities of the world; Berlin, Vienna, Salzburg, Dresden, Budapest, Prague, London, The Hague, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Rome, Milan, Zurich, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco! And embracing the broadest spectrum of theatre: tragedies and comedies of the ancient Greeks, dramas, comedies of Shakespeare, Moliere, Goethe, Schiller, Ibsen, Strindberg, Hauptman, Goldoni, Pirandello, Turgeniev, Kleist, Wedekind, Galsworthy, Tolstoy, Shaw, Buchner, Hofmanstahl, operas and operettas of Offenbach, and Strauss! And the full range of styles: realism, symbolism, expressionism, baroque spectacles, open-air operatic extravaganza! Such was the artistic reach of Max Reinhardt, the Austrian-born giant of our contemporary theatre, whose vision, achievements, and the most astonishing versatility are a subject of a solid and exciting study by J.L. Styan, Professor of English Literature at Northwestern University, part of a new series called, “Directors In Perspective”.
Theatre and Community: An Introduction
Authors: Wallace Robert
Published: June 2023

Community is a difficult notion to define. Although the term is often used to locate a particular place or region, it is the people who populate a locale who invariably provide it with meaning. Indeed, if there is a characteristic consistent to the various geographical, social and psychological definitions of community, it is the shared experience of individuals who interact because of common interests and / or conditions.
A Circle Without a Centre: The Predicament of Toronto’s Theatre Space
Authors: Stuart Ross
Published: June 2023

There have been three distinct phases in the development of Toronto’s theatres over the past 15 years. The first, in 1969-71, saw the establishment of the seminal alternate theatres and a new beginning for Canadian drama. The second, in the mid to late 1970s, encompassed the real estate boom when the major theatres acquired their own buildings, and multi-tenant spaces like the Bathurst Street Theatre and Adelaide Court opened. Now, in the past year, a third phase has become apparent as four theatres have been extensively renovated, another three await restoration and one new theatre is about to open.
The St. Lawrence Centre: Toronto’s Persistent Problem
Authors: Mallet Gina
Published: June 2023

The theatrical occasion of Toronto this spring was the re-opening of the rebuilt St. Lawrence Centre. In March, after a five million dollar structural and cosmetic renovation, and after being dark for almost two years, the St. Lawrence emerged resplendent. What had been a wood-and-concrete bunker has been turned into a traditional proscenium arch theatre, decorated prettily in shades of beige and terra cotta with sparkling brass railings defining the new, expanded lobbies. 900 seats have been folded into a smaller space than the original 800-seat theatre. But nice as it all is to look at, the theatre has a problem: Its tenant.
Living With Risk: Toronto’s New Alternate Theatre
Authors: Smith Patricia Keeney
Published: June 2023

If Toronto’s established theatre is one of architecture and playwrights, then its leading edge runs on image and idea. Though performances often fall short of the mental ideal, conceptualization being far ahead of execution, they occasionally score a brilliant hit. For the people involved in what may be considered Toronto’s new alternate theatre, however, exploration is their true purpose. They do not work to patent successful formulae, rather to probe and search for new forms and directions. They treat “success” with a caution natural to those who live more fully, more productively, with risk.
Linda Griffiths: The Actress as Playwright
Authors: Leeper Muriel
Published: June 2023

Note: Since Maggie and Pierre, her collaboration with Paul Thompson which toured nationally before a brief, unsuccessful run in New York City, Linda Griffiths has become one of Canada’s busiest actresses. After performing the lead in Lianna, John Sayles’ much-praised low-budget film about a young woman’s growth to self-awareness, Griffiths completed another film, Reno and the Doc, for release on pay-TV, a major role in CBC’s Empire Inc. and a run in Master Builder, John Murrell’s adaptation of Ibsen’s play for Toronto’s Tarragon theatre. Perhaps more significantly, her career as a playwright that began with her work on Maggie and Pierre has also developed in leaps and bounds. Jessica, another collaboration with Thompson, premiered at Saskatoon’s 25th Street theatre last year, as did O.D. On Paradise, a collaboration with Patrick Brymer that was remounted at Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille in March to become that theatre’s hit of the season. Rewritten for the TPM run, O.D. On Paradise is still not finished according to Griffiths. Slated for TPM’s coming season, the play will receive yet another re-write before Griffiths will let it rest. Her diligent concern with the script is typical of her approach to both the roles she plays and those she writes. Maggie and Pierre has once again occupied her time recently as she and Paul Thompson have adapted it for pay-TV over the summer. The following interview with Linda Griffiths – prepared for CTR by Muriel Leeper in Saskatoon over a year ago, before Griffiths’ rise in profile – gives a valuable insight into the life of an artist poised for success.
Australia The Gentrification of the Alternative?
Authors: Goldie Terry
Published: June 2023

There are a number of ways in which Australian and Canadian culture can be compared. Most obviously, they are the largest members of what is often called the “white Commonwealth,” that residue of empire in which European immigrants gained and maintained control. Equally or more important, however, they are the two most noteworthy examples of countries which seem as if they might be American or British but constantly claim they are not. A few years ago, in a conference on Commonwealth literature, the Australian playwright and director, Ron Blair, gave a wide-ranging and witty analysis of Australian cultural problems as reflected in their theatre. One member of the audience, the Canadian novelist Rudy Wiebe, was surprised and excited: “That’s just like here!” he kept saying.
London Politics on the Upswing
Authors: Rump Eric S.
Published: June 2023

“Political drama” is one of those elastic terms that can be compressed or expanded almost at will. It can be narrowed to a play concerning a specific political event or expanded to include almost any action more noteworthy than getting up in the morning. It can be focussed on the domestic sphere in terms of “sexual politics” or enlarged to become a fable about political ideas and forces. None of London’s three recent hits quite fits into any one category, but each displays an interest in the connections between the private and political spheres to differing degrees.
Halifax Reclaiming Popular Theatre
Authors: Adams Rose
Published: June 2023

To write about Eight Men Speak after its production by Popular Projects Society (Nov.-Dec. ‘82) is not to attempt to review this show but, rather, to assess and describe the process of its re-creation; it is to continue the ongoing analysis which must take place before, during and after the performance of a popular theatre project, if the project and the participants are to achieve maximum political effectiveness and collective growth.
Mime: The Step Beyond Words
Authors: Pecknold Adrian , East Ron
Published: June 2023

It is exciting to have the rare opportunity to review a book on mime. There are too few books detailing the growth and development of this young and energetic art form. As a mime and a teacher of mime myself, I have very definite views on the subject and my consideration of this book will be coloured by my vantage point.
Chapeau bas: Réminiscences de la vie théâtrale et musicale du Manitoba français
Authors: Doucette Leonard E.
Published: June 2023

Chapeau bas is part of a continuing series of texts devoted to the cultural history of francophone Manitoba and supported by the Societe Historique de Saint-Boniface. This little volume represents a valuable extension to the other two studies of theatrical activity in that area which have appeared since 1975: the very useful volume commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Cercle Moliere , the oldest active theatrical group in Canada, published in that year by the same Editions du Ble: and the more recent study by Annette Saint-Pierre, Le Rideau se lève au Manitoba, published in 1980 by the rival Editions des Plaines (reviewed in CTR, Spring 1981, pp. 127-9). Unlike this latter work, Chapeau bas offers not a synoptic overview of theatrical activity in the province, but rather an archivist’s choice of materials likely to interest the scholar and the devotee of local amateur theatricals.
Stanislavski: An Introduction to the System
Authors: Benedetti Jean , Rubin Don
Published: June 2023

English-speaking theatre people the world over are familiar with the seminal ideas of the Russian actor, director and teacher Konstantin Stanislavski through three basic texts (An Actor Prepares, Building A Character and Creating A Role), and one autobiographical volume (My Life in Art). What few probably realize, however, is that Stanislavski’s collected works in the Russian language amount to eight volumes and that a 12-volume edition is currently being put together by a Soviet Editorial Committee. What this means in effect is that some 50 per cent of Stanislavski’s essays and articles on performance theory as well as his innumerable speeches and letters on the subject still remain unpublished in English. If one adds to this the fact that Stanislavski himself continued to re-order and re-edit his books and his ideas throughout his life one has just a bit of an idea of the difficulty facing anyone - in any language - trying to make definitive statements about Stanislavski’s working system for actors.
Theatre Energy: “Doing our own theatre”
Authors: Hoffman James
Published: June 2023

The Slocan Valley is a particularly attractive but out of the way patch of fertility situated along the western side of the Kootenay area of British Columbia, some four hundred miles due east of Vancouver and an hour or so from the American border to the south. Headed by the thirty-mile Slocan Lake which, like its nearby, larger sisters, the Arrow and Kootenay Lakes, runs north-south, the Valley meanders with an unhurried pace as it follows the gentle, southerly twistings of the Slocan River and passes slight settlements like Winlaw and Vallican – some no more than a store, a town pump and a post office.
Controversial Subjects in Plays for Schools: Green Thumb’s “One Thousand Cranes”
Authors: Page Malcolm
Published: June 2023

“You can deal with death and sexual abuse in shows for children. But you can’t deal with peace, because ‘peace’ has become a code-word for Communism,” said Dennis Foon, Artistic Director of Vancouver’s Green Thumb. For the fall 1983 show, One Thousand Cranes, boldly tackled fears of nuclear war, and was immediately attacked. My story, however, has a happy ending – though One Thousand Cranes does not.
Frontier Theatre: A History of Nineteenth Century Entertainment in the Canadian Far West and Alaska
Authors: Gilbert Reid
Published: June 2023

Inevitably, any Canadian history must exhibit its author’s acceptance of one of the prevailing theories of social and political development in our country. In Frontier Theatre, Chad Evans announces in title and subtitle and articulates in his foreword, a clear bias toward the North-South thesis which, he admits, “may prove disconcerting to traditional historians of Canada’s westernmost province,” and “surprise those interested in the American West” who do not extend its cultural evolution through B.C. to the Alaska gold rush. Assuming this American influence on colonial memories of European theatricals and 19th century houseparty entertainments spiced mildly with moments “as indigenous as a Kwakiutl ceremonial mask,” Evans details a popular history which describes the cultural reality of B.C.’s place on the Pacific coast, rather than its political reality within a developing, federal state.
Theatrical Touring and Founding in North America
Authors: Salter Denis W.
Published: June 2023

This is a stimulating collection of essays about the highminded and lowminded princ iples and working methods which have characterised some of the salient developments in North American theatre history from the 1880s to the present. Seven of the papers come from the International Federation for Theatre Research conference held in Toronto in 1979. A further six supplementary papers were either delivered at other conferences or written specially for this volume. To the best of my knowledge this is the first scholarly book to engage in even a miscellaneous analytica l history of theatre in both Canada and the United States. Indeed I wish that the comparative approach had been pursued more fully; for apart from Len Conolly’s cogent but alas all too brief editor ial introduction in combination with his useful concluding bibl iographical survey, there is no paper concerned chiefly with how and to what ends the two cultures have interacted theatrically. This invigorating respons ib ility is left to the readers’ powers of discernment. For Canad ian readers in particular the conclusions are not always happy ones; though they are indeed the ones which we have long schooled ourselves to tolerate. Generation after generation, all across the country, in the theatre as in the other arts, we have been forced to raise up the roof beams with a clarion cry so as to be heard above the infernal din created not only by the Americans but also, of course, by the British and the French.
MTC: Past and Present
Authors: Dafoe Christopher
Published: June 2023

“If you hope, as I do, to learn something about yourself and other people from the events taking place on stage, you will recognize the special excitement that comes from exposing yourself to as wide a range of theatrical experience as possible. You run the risk of being happily surprised or bitterly disappointed; you may find your assumptions challenged or your prejudices confirmed; you may be invited to laugh or to cry, to think deeply or rejoice in simple pleasures; you may even be left feeling bored or in- different on those occasions when we fail to do our job properly.”
A View From the Beginning
Authors: Hendry Tom
Published: June 2023

Tom Hendry, one of the founders of MTC and a guiding force during its early years, produced the following memoir in 1965 at the beginning of MTC’s eighth season.
Interview: Healthy Disengagement
Authors: Hirsch John
Published: June 2023

John Hirsch and Tom Hendry helped found the Manitoba Theatre Centre in 1958. In 1966, Hirsch left the company but has been back many times since as a guest director. When MTC opened its new building in November 1970, it was Hirsch who was there to stage its first production — Brecht’s A Man’s A Man. Now head of CBC Television Drama, Hirsch still takes an interest in MTC’s affairs. He was interviewed for CTR by free-lance journalist Harvey Chusid.
An Introduction
Authors: Hay Peter
Published: June 2023

Paracelsus, which appears here for the first time, represents a significant departure both for its author and for Canadian drama. George Ryga, in his previous six plays (including Indian, a one-acter) has made his reputation as a playwright more engage in contemporary issues of Canadian society than anybody else In our theatre. Certainly in English Canada. Even A Portrait of Angelica, as yet unpublished though placed in Mexico, is about a Canadian painfully confronted with the abundant poverty of the Third World.
Vancouver
Authors: Page Malcolm
Published: June 2023

Donald Soule’s commentary on the Freddy Wood Theatre at UBC (Carte Blanche, CTR 2) raises several issues worth further comment, both issues specific to the Freddy Wood and of wider relevance.
Montreal
Authors: Maulucci Anthony Ford
Published: June 2023

There is so much emphasis on verbal communication in our culture that a vast resource of physical language has been wasted. There has been such despicable exploitation of the human body as a product to be controlled by the manipulation of our identities that our body language has been reduced to cliches and trite images. Theatrically, however, there is at least one director in the country who is working against the disappearance of physical language — Montreal Director Alexander Hausvater.
O’Neill: Son and Artist by Louis Sheaffer, O’Neill by Arthur and Barbara Gelb, The Royal Shakespeare Company by David Addenbrooke, The Real Chekhov by David Magarshack
Authors: Snider Edwin
Published: June 2023

Definitive biographies are relatively rare in the world of publishing, but in the last few years several have appeared which are of special interest to theatre practitioners and scholars. One can’t, for example, envision any approaches being made to Ibsen today without a thorough reading of Michael Meyer’s massive study on the subject (originally published in three volumes by Hart-Davis in 1971 and soon to be re-published in an edited paperback version). And approaching Shakespearean scholar- ship or production without an awareness of A.L. Rowse’s revised Shakespeare The Man (1973) seems both short-sighted and foolish.
Letters
Authors: Hoffman Theodore , Tembeck Robert
Published: June 2023

To The Editor: My compl iments to CTR. It genuinely gets at the nation’s theatre as no theatre magazine has ever done. It is a bit over written and the reviews are too parochial (a step beyond provincial). But no matter. The commitment and verve are fine and maybe I even like the fervor for “alternative” theatre though no one defines it any way.
The Regional System
Authors: Rubin Don
Published: June 2023

As recently as 10 years ago, the small group of regional theatres that existed in Canada were considered to be new, daring, almost avant garde by audiences. Today, most of these theatres (and many of those regional operations that have developed subsequently) are considered to be The Establishment. Now, a new group of theatres have appeared (conveniently referred to as the Alternative Theatres) determined to do at least one of the things that the regionals either chose not to do or, for one reason or another, found themselves unable to do: develop original scripts. Perhaps this is as it should be and perhaps the regional theatres are right when they argue that their prime responsibility is to provide audiences with an eclectic selection of the world’s classics. But surely these two ideas do not contradict one another and two or more new plays can exist quite nicely within a production season of five to eight plays. This idea, in fact, has already been proven by some of the more “daring” regional companies (Montreal’s Theatre du Nouveau Monde, for example, includes several new plays on its schedule each year).
The Case for Management Education
Authors: Buck Douglas
Published: June 2023

A good arts manager is "a person who is knowledgeable in the art with which he is concerned, an impresario, labor negotiator, diplomat, educator, publicity and public relations expert, politician, skilled businessman, a social sophisticate, a servant of the community, a tireless leader – becomingly humble before authority – a teacher, a tyrant, and a continuing student of the arts."
Co-Opera Theatre 1975-83: 1 / Goodnight Co-Opera, Sweet Dreams
Authors: Pannell Raymond
Published: June 2023

The other night I awakened from a burdened sleep, having spent the last six months avoiding writing this article. I tried some of my favourite cures for insomnia: counting music officers sitting on arts council fences, listening to "Two New Hours" on the CBC. No luck. Pushed to the wall, I resorted to my collection of Matchless Memories: various singers droning on about their vowel and bowel placements, diaphragms (thoracic), allergies, pasta recipes and other guaranteed glazers. Still no luck. Something had murdered my sleep.
The Board: The Thrill of Victory and the Agony of Defeat
Authors: McCall Gordon
Published: June 2023

The Board. These are the words artistic directors and general managers hear repeated most often during the time they are employed at a theatre.

The words have many connotations. In my experience, and for most people involved in the operation of a theatre, the board is a relatively anonymous group of people who wield power and influence and with whom the administrative personnel must deal on a regular basis to receive official sanction for their actions. The board may also be perceived as a group of well-meaning individuals from the community who contribute to the organization in a practical and philosophical manner. And in rare instances, the board can be viewed as indispensable to the maintenance and operation of the theatre. Unfortunately, the majority of the time, the board is viewed by many staff members as a necessary obstacle to be overcome and, at times, as a hindrance to the operation as a whole.
Theatre for Young Audiences: So Great a Need
Authors: Doolittle Joyce
Published: June 2023

If childhood disappears, will not children’s theatre, like the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland, similarly dissolve - leaving only an enigmatic smile in our memories? If so, the Canadian contingent is not behaving normally, for instead of acting like an endangered species, it shows several signs of robust health.
TYA Festivals: 1/The Problems of Success
Authors: Foon Dennis
Published: June 2023

For many of us who were there, the 1978 Vancouver International Theatre Festival for Young People remains the high point In the last ten years of theatre for young audiences.

As conceived by Colin and Elizabeth Gorrie of Victoria’s Kaleidoscope Theatre and spearheaded by producer Ernie Fladell, the Festival was intended to be a celebration of the best and most exciting national and international theatre for the young. With workshops and seminars designed by Irene N. Watts and the annual general meeting of ASSITEJ Canada (The International Association of Theatre for the Young) also taking place, we saw most of the serious professionals in the field represented at the event.
Drama-in-Education: 2/Creation, Not Therapy
Authors: Wylie Betty Jane
Published: June 2023

The Ontario Arts Council has been running its Artists in the Schools program for 11 years now and the program gets more and more creative and challenging as it and the artists move along. The basic idea is that an artist and a teacher cook up a mutually agreeable idea to work out with a class or a selected group of students within the school in an agreed-upon number of hours, ranging from a minimum of five half-days packed within one week or scattered over five weeks, to a maximum of 14 half-days, again spread according to the calendar of the school and the artist. Together the artist and the teacher or school applies to the OAC, describing the project, its goal and the time and material required to fulfill it. If the project is approved, the Ontario Arts Council will pay two-thirds of the artist’s fee (at last reading $150 per half-day), plus a reasonable amount for expenses if travel within the province is involved, and some allowance for equipment and material. The school, in applying, has already agreed to pay the other one-third of the artist’s fee.
Drama-in-Education: 3/Schools After Fame
Authors: Friedlander Mira
Published: June 2023

Fame. Is it only coincidence that the Toronto Board of Education opened two performing arts high schools so closely on the heels of the hit movie devoted to convincing the world that “if only you can get in, the break’s there waiting for you”? Coincidence or not, the debate on what these schools will mean to our theatrical and social communities has already begun to heat up. Both the Earl Haig Campus of the Claude Watson School for the Arts (North York) and the Etobicoke School of the Arts (ESA) are having no trouble filling their halls with eager aspirants for the dream of a lifetime. It is precisely on this issue that the controversy rests.
Edinburgh: The Festival Prepares for a Change
Authors: Friedlander Mira
Published: June 2023

This was the beginning of what looks like a turnaround era for the Edinburgh Festival. Firmly in the clasp of a new Labour city council for the first time, and under the leadership of populist artistic director Frank Dunlop, the rumbling undercurrents of “elitist“ charges have propelled the 38-year-old festival into a highly visible political arena.
Victoria: Jam Sandwich Takes to the Streets
Authors: Leiren-Young Mark
Published: June 2023

Jam Sandwich is preparing a new show.

After a half-hour discussion of themes and issues an actress begins in sombre tones, “How was I to know I made love with the bomb? In this age of promiscuity we simply don’t take questions Into consideration.“
Toronto: Mixed Company Redefines Political Theatre
Authors: Rubess Baņuta
Published: June 2023

Life on the Line may become one of the legends of Canadian theatre. In the fall of 1984 the show completed its “farewell tour,” somewhat like a golden rock band. Though it underwent various incarnations, it became one of the premiere presentations by Mixed Company: Theatre Artists for Social Responsibility. Like the ensemble, this “new wave musical satire” is unique in Canada - unique in style, content and, especially, its targeted audience.
Report from the High Wire / 2, Twenty-fifth Street Blues
Authors: McCall Gordon
Published: June 2023

In my opinion, “On The High Wire without a Net” is an apt phrase to describe the activities of theatres across the country that develop, promote and produce new Canadian plays as their central mandate. The risks are high, the rewards can be great, but the footing is precarious. Twenty-fifth Street Theatre is one such theatre.
The Fighting Days, Introduction
Authors: McCaw Kim
Published: June 2023

Wendy Lill’s The Fighting Days opened at the Prairie Theatre Exchange on March 16, 1983, and the response was remarkable. Certainly it was something far beyond anything I or, I suspect, anyone else involved with the project could ever have hoped for. We all knew that we had a good new play and we were confident that the production was solid and worth putting on, but none of us reckoned on the overwhelming enthusiasm with which the show was received. We found that we had the kind of show that the Winnipeg theatre scene seemed to have been looking for. Since that time The Fighting Days continued to live and prosper and has managed to be re-born in the form of a Manitoba provincial tour, a remount run in Winnipeg; and a tour to Toronto and Ottawa. The joy of the success of this show is, for me, twofold: first, because it culminated my first year as artistic director of Prairie Theatre Exchange; and, second, because I am very, very fond of the play and want as many people as possible to be able to see and experience it.
Theatre on the Prairies, An Introduction
Authors: Skene Reg
Published: June 2023

Theatre on the Prairies is very much alive, and healthy enough to be concerned about its health.
Why We Don’t Write
Authors: Hollingsworth Margaret
Published: June 2023

The question I am asked most frequently in formal and informal discussions about theatre is “where are the women playwrights?” It’s a question I always dread — it can’t be dealt with glibly; there is no single answer. And to answer it fully would take longer than any question period would allow.
Nightwood Theatre, Toronto: Notes from the Front Line
Authors: Grant Cynthia
Published: June 2023

When we established the company in 1978 we were very anxious that people not consider Nightwood a “women’s theatre .” Personally, I wished to have a career as a director, not as a woman director. Although I was already clearly defined as a feminist, I knew the derogatory, second-class implications of such terms.
The Politics of the Script
Authors: Wilson Ann
Published: June 2023

Theatrical performance is a social event: practitioners produce a show for the audience. More specifically, theatrical performance establishes relations between people (for example : between director and actor, actor and audience). These are relations of authority or power which make all theatre , whether it is acknowledged or not, political.
Confronting Cutbacks: 2 / Federal Advocacy for Theatre
Authors: Buck Douglas
Published: June 2023

Funding levels and loss of arts councils’ autonomy have been issues of concern in recent years. Government grants to the Canada Council were lower than the rate of inflation from 1975 to 1984; in late 1984, $3.5 million was cut from the Council’s budget by the new government. This accelerated the Council’s declining financial position. Between March 1979 and March 1981 the Council had to adopt policies distasteful to itself and to the theatre community: no new theatre companies could be taken on as clients for operating grants, for example. It is interesting to note that between 1976 and 1984, the membership of the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres increased from 33 members to 83.
Learning from The Dining Room
Authors: Green Joseph G.
Published: June 2023

What role does the Independently produced, commercial play serve in Canadian theatre? Is there a place for theatrical ventures which seek first to return a profit to their investors? Must such plays be proven first in New York or in London before coming to Canada? And how do these productions relate to the network of publicly supported regional and civic theatres across Canada?
Rediscovering Cafe Theatre
Authors: Cole Susan G.
Published: June 2023

Every generation has had them: playwrights, actors, and performers with no work, theatres, or financial support – artists with very little but the feeling of being entirely disenfranchised. For some of them, the substance of their theatrical vision has kept them marginalized. Others have lacked the financial and political clout required to mount productions of their own. Most of them have compromised, jobbing themselves out to the so-called legitimate stage, all the while wishing they could exchange their earnings for a way to express themselves using their own voices.
Vaudeville for the Television Generation
Authors: Skene Reg
Published: June 2023

After an absence of 50 years, commercial theatre returned to Winnipeg five years ago when a local investment group headed by Tom Denton and Ben Haskin remodelled the dying Town and Country Cabaret on Kennedy Street and brought in a Stage West franchise. This October the operation is scheduled to move to larger and more luxurious quarters in the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Georgian Room restaurant, a location which will give Stage West a favoured position on the edge of Winnipeg’s new downtown shopping complex. Once again, dinner theatre is an established habit with enough Winnipeggers to support two-month runs and yet, surprisingly, the Denton-Haskin group still has a monopoly on the form here. Why?
Love Is Strange
Authors: Ledoux Paul , Young David
Published: June 2023

The Crown Prosecutor enters with a court brief. He puts it down and calls for the A.S.M. who wheels on a TV. He turns on the TV and an interview with Linda Barrie comes on the screen. At first the sound is inaudible, but after a moment The Crown turns up the sound. The house ligh ts dim. The play begins.
Halifax The First Atlantic Theatre Conference
Authors: Knowles Richard Paul
Published: June 2023

Twenty-one professional theatre companies from the Maritimes and Newfoundland met at Neptune Theatre on 26-28 April 1985 to discuss mutual concerns and possible co-operation at the first ever Atlantic Theatre Conference. The event was organized by the Canada Council at the request of theatre companies in the region, and representatives of federal and provincial funding agencies, as well as the Professional Association of Canadian Theatre (PACT), the Playwrights Union of Canada, and the Dramatists Co-op of Nova Scotia, were in attendance.
Toronto The Community, the Press, and Black Theatre Canada
Authors: Wharton Marcia
Published: June 2023

In 1983 Black Theatre Canada performed A Caribbean Midsummer Night’s Dream, which was perceived as a landmark in Canadian theatre. It was the first time Shakespeare had been performed in Canada with a Caribbean setting and a predominantly black cast. The black community newspapers promoted the production from its inception to the opening night, profiling cast members, and appealing for community support with solid coverage of the event. The mainstream media also was supportive in its highlighting of the production. The Toronto Theatre Alliance honoured the company with the presentation of a Dora Mavor Moore Award in the category of Innovation and Artistic Excellence.
Letters
Authors: Schechner Richard , McDougall Gordon , Finlay Patricia
Published: June 2023

12 December 1984 In Douglas Buck’s “The Case for Management Education,” CTR 40, a picture is printed on page 21 that is identified as part of York University Theatre Department’s Marat/Sade. If so, it is a stunning case of theatrical cloning. That picture is of The Performance Group’s Commune staged in The Performing Garage in 1970. The man in the pool in the foregound is Bruce White, of the other performers coming over the wave, several can be easily identified: (left to right) Patricia Bower, Joan Macintosh, Mik Cribben, and James Griffiths – one and all members of The Performance Group at that time
The Shaw Festival: Making a Splash
Authors: Friedlander Mira
Published: June 2023

Christopher Newton and the Shaw Festival seem to have it made. At the end of the 1985 season, ticket sales had never been as good, nor morale higher. An unexpected box office hit, Claire Booth Luce’s The Women, drove sales figure upwards, and the incredibly opulent Cavalcade was a runaway success despite mixed reviews. One for the Pot, starring Heath Lamberts, did as wonderfully as expected. And the results were astounding. For the first time in 24 seasons, ticket sales passed the $4 million mark. The discounts normally offered at season’s end were reduced and the festival was declared “a landslide business” by its producer Paul Reynolds.
Le Festival international du théâtre de jeune publics: Growing Up
Authors: Rewa Natalie
Published: June 2023

From 16 to 25 August, Parc Lafontaine, in east-end Montreal, was once again the site of the annual festival of theatre for young audiences (TYA). Outdoors, “Le Festival international du théâtre de jeunes publics du Québec” was a real celebration of entertainment for children: the open-air festival featured over 100 performances by 12 companies of tap dancers, jugglers, clowns and acrobats on two stages. Indoors, more formally, 65 full-scale performances of 13 plays by 11 companies entertained audiences in seven temporary theatres in the buildings near the park: participating were six Québécois companies and five guest troupes from Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Edmonton, and Ottawa, all, except Small Change from Edmonton, devoted to the development of TYA. But according to festival organizers the two performance festivals are not as important as the nine-day conference for Québécois practitioners of TYA which uses the indoor festival as a point of departure for a discussion of the current state and future of TYA in Quebec.
The Blyth Festival: The Little Acorn that Grew
Authors: Citron Paula
Published: June 2023

The seeds of the Blyth Festival’s commitment to Canadian drama were planted during its founding season in 1975 when the first artistic director James Roy planned his playbill. For security, he scheduled Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap. His “risk” play was a new script based on the writings of local celebrity Harry J. Boyle entitled Mostly In Clover. “Clover” is Boyle’s literary creation, a fictionalized small town that is the amalgam of St. Augustine, Auburn and Blyth, three neighbouring hamlets nestled in the fertile farmlands of Huron County in Southwestern Ontario. When Mostly In Clover outsold The Mousetrap two to one, the unique direction of the Blyth Festival was set.
Garrison’s Garage
Authors: Johns Ted
Published: June 2023

Garrison’s Garage was first produced by the Blyth Festival in 1984. This published version is of the revised script that was produced by the Blyth Festival in 1985. The production opened on 22 June and ran in repertory through to 16 August with the following cast:
London, England Stage Design 1985
Authors: Berry Ralph
Published: June 2023

“I think that I shall never see,/A billboard lovely as a tree.” Let Nash’s haunting lines stand as emblem for the strategic options of design, realism, or symbolism. They are nicely illustrated In English stage practice this summer. Take Wild Honey at the National, a version of Chekhov’s Platonov. For Chekhov one needs a country house deep in Russia, a measure of naturalism, and trees. John Gunter’s setting supplied them all. I counted over 20 birches, visible from the porch of the country house set; they looked perfectly real to me. This was a clearcut design theme – the birches were repeated in the poster and programme – and congruent with the elaborately detailed schoolroom of scene four, no tricks, square on, an interior that could have been created at any time this century.
Montreal Children’s Creations
Authors: Rewa Natalie
Published: June 2023

Réalité Jeuness’ 85, a festival sponsored by Children’s Creations/Les Créations des enfants, on the occasion of International Youth Year, was the result of an intensive five-week series of workshops involving 200 young people between the ages of five and nineteen from across Canada. Thirteen original shows were mounted in Montreal’s Dome Theatre (five in English, four in French, three dance pieces, and one musical review). These productions were written by the participants of CC in Montreal, but acted, designed, and produced by the participants of the workshops.
London, Ontario Ain’t it Grand?
Authors: Wylie Betty Jane
Published: June 2023

“It’s a no-loss situation,” said Don Shipley In the fall of 1984 in what may have been the most courageous statement ever made in the history of Canadian theatre. He had just been chosen to succeed Robin Phillips as artistic head of London’s Grand Theatre after a highly visible, financially disastrous season in which, in the opinion of critics, Phillips’s o’er-vaulting ambition had almost run the 80-year-old theatre into the ground.
Toronto Playwrights’ Union of Canada
Authors: McCaughna David
Published: June 2023

The calibre of new work by Canadian playwrights is extraordinary, profound, and exciting. We at PUC are working to promote the vast wealth of talent right here in Canada. – Larry Fineberg, founding Chairman, PUC.
The Acadian Theatre
Authors: Chiasson Zénon , Viger Roland
Published: June 2023

Canadian francophones living east of Quebec have been learning to spell the word “Acadie” for 350 years now without ever having come across it In their geography textbooks. And they have been honoring their flag and singing their national anthem, especially on their August 15 national holiday, for the last 100 years. Lacking a country, the Acadians have forged themselves durable symbols Instead. Today they still remember their history and preserve their customs, language, and accents. This highly specific culture has produced a whole range of artists, some of whom, like Edith Butler, Antonine Maillet, Viola Léger, and Jacques Savoie, are internationally known. They have become the Illustrious ambassadors of a much-sought, Utopian homeland of the soul, one of the most striking ambiguities of the Canadian cultural mosaic.
Antonine Maillet / 1: Breaking the Silence of Centuries
Authors: Lacombe Michèle
Published: June 2023

“Globe-trotting scrubwoman has the jitters. She’s entertained Princess Grace but now she must face the English.” - The Gazette, 3 March 1979.

“Corver ou pas corver, c’est là la grosse affaire.” - La Sagouine.

One is reminded of the film My Fair Lady, adored by millions of Americans who have never heard of George Bernard Shaw and who would be appalled to discover the man’s real political beliefs. That La Sagouine has brought notoriety to Antonine Maillet at the expense of a more considered, general acceptance of her other plays is something for which neither she nor the actress Viola Léger should be blamed. It does, however, oblige us to provide a brief account of that play’s rise to fame before moving on to a broader treatment of Maillet’s theatre and Its critical reception. A history of the 600 or so performances of La Sagouine which preceded the English-language production at Montreal’s Saidye Bronfman Centre in 1979 would Itself comprise a book; suffice it to say that its genesis as a play underscores Maillet’s preoccupations as an Acadian and a woman, and contradicts her methods as a novelist who successfully “transposes” for the theatre.
Antonine Maillet / 2: Recycling an Archetype : the Anti-Evangelines
Authors: Usmiani Renate
Published: June 2023

“Je m’appelle Evangéline, moi, et je suis d’une race, ça s’adoune, qui peut encore recommencer sa vie à l’heure où les autres achevont d’achever la leur.”

— Maillet, Evangéline Deusse.

The Maillet opus, both novels and plays, has been hailed as a veritable epic of the Acadian nation, a social and historical panorama in which both past and present come vibrantly alive. In the words of Jacques Ferron, Maillet “rallie les siens et leur redonne une identité qu’ils étaient en train de perdre.”1 This assertion of a national identity is achieved in a large part through language. The author’s scholarly and artistic interest in oral language has led her to the revolutionary decision to transpose the actual speech of her people Into a literary and dramatic idiom which retains the full flavor of its popular origin.
Umiak: The Collective Boat
Authors: Camirand François , Lauvaux Yves , Rioux Monique , Noël Michel O. , Van Burek John
Published: June 2023

Caution: © Le Théâtre de la Marmaille. 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 authors. 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 authors. Interested persons are requested to apply for permission and terms to: Le Théâtre de la Marmaille, 42 Avenue des Pins, Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, H2W 1R1.
Toronto Bilingual Fables
Authors: Leonard Paul
Published: June 2023

If a whole country can be bilingual, then surely a play can be as well. That’s the premise behind Acting Company’s La Storia and La Storia II: A Table of Fables. Although they use English and Italian rather than English and French, they nonetheless raise the kind of questions about language, culture, and communication that have challenged Canadians since Confederation. At the same time, these shows provide a focus for a consideration of the nature of language in the theatre.