bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Kleist Variations: Three Plays
Authors: Rubin Don
Published: June 2023

The first question, perhaps, should be: why Heinrich von Kleist? Why, one might ask, would the brill iant mind of Eric Bentley, perhaps this century’s most important theatre critic, want to translate/adapt the work of this reasonably obscure German playwright who committed suicide in 1811 at the age of thirty-four? An adaptation of a single play by von Kleist one might accept as a literary exercise . Two could be construed as an aberration. But three adaptations is either downright perverse or suggests something much more profound as motivation . Bentley himself says that it was simply that he liked the plays and that there was nothing else like them in English. But that seems to ignore the heart of the matter . And it is to the heart, to the plays themselves - The Broken Jug (here called Concord), Penthesilea (here called The Fallof the Amazons) and Cathyof Heilbronn (here called Wansee) - that one must go to find more acceptable answers.
British Columbia Theatre Today, An Introduction
Authors: Page Malcolm
Published: June 2023

The Rockies must be very high. British Columbia theatre is its own world. The theatre doesn’t even look south: once – it was an event – West Coast Actors invited a performer from Seattle. The theatre is insulated, too cosily perhaps, from other people’s realities – and from other people’s triumphs. Here we have Bill Millerd still taking the Arts Club onwards and upwards, Norman Browning as our favourite actor, Tamahnous for experiment. We still flock to They’re Playing Our Song, while regularly accepting a handful of Canadian plays. B.C. has a confidence amounting to arrogance: we’re not too eager for visitors or travelling, for we just know we’re good. Attendances were small when Stratford toured in 1977 and the National Arts Centre in 1979. Nevertheless, 70s Vancouver has made a large contribution elsewhere in the 80s, notably to the Shaw Festival and to Manitoba Theatre Centre. Perhaps the rest of Canada should be looking to Vancouver to find actors, directors and writers for the 90s.
MTC: A Personal View
Authors: Gilbert Edward
Published: June 2023

Edward Gilbert, artistic director of the Manitoba Theatre Centre for six of its seasons, assembled the following “random observations” for CTR in the hope, as he put it, “that some knowledge of the way I think will throw some light on the operation of MTC.”
Building the Building
Authors: Waisman Allan H.
Published: June 2023

Allan H. Waisman, the architect who designed MTC’s current home, recalls the long struggle to transform a concept into a physical reality.
Paracelsus
Authors: Ryga George
Published: June 2023

A cast of 24 players, from which are drawn the secondary characters in the play. Human bodies must be used to texture the play with a sense of humanity relentlessly moving out of one epoch into another. This may be specifically medieval, or it may not. Caution: Paracelsus is fully protected by copyright. All inquiries concerning production of the play including scenes from it should be directed to the author’s agent, Renee Paris, c/o Talonbooks, 201/1019 East Cordova, Vancouver, B.C.
At-Large
Authors: Rubin Don
Published: June 2023

Director John Hirsch once pointed out that in theatre there are really only two things that change artistic policy: “If the public stays away or if the artists themselves working in the theatre have a kind of categorical imperative within themselves to search, to go further, to discover, to explore, to grow.” Hirsch was, of course, referring to the Stratford Festival and the aesthetic base upon which it was built, and he was speaking of a time (roughly, the late 60’s and early 70’s) when the possibility of change at Stratford seemed rather negligible. But change is obviously in the theatrical air right now, not only at Stratford but at the other three major Festivals as well — Shaw, Charlottetown and Lennoxville. The question here is whether or not this sense of change has behind it a qualitative as well as a quantitative logic. For all our theatres do need to think at this point in their development as much about why they’re doing what they’re doing as they do about how. That Is, of course, the first crucial step in the development of a genuine aesthetic and if our theatres have one basic need today, It is quite obviously the need to develop an aesthetic upon which they can effectively come to grips with the future.
Calgary
Authors: Euringer Fred
Published: June 2023

I am well aware of the reasons underlying what I take to be George Ryga’s support for a “Canadian Content” quota (CTR 1) and I think, if I read his reasons accurately, that I am in some sympathy with these reasons, if not with his suggested solution. We all know that figures can be fudged to make things seem as they are not. I personally don’t think that quotas are the answer — they seem to me to invite fudging; but if I am wrong and quotas are the answer, I become very interested in the question: “How do you tell a Canadian Content when you see one?” Is Michael Cook, for example, naturalized? If he isn’t yet but becomes so, will his subsequent plays be Canadian Content and his earlier ones not? Or will all of his works be beatified retroactively? (And please don’t respond by giving me the date of his naturalization because it’s not really germane; I mention it as an example of the futility of quantification).
Winnipeg
Authors: Henry Ann
Published: June 2023

No responsible newspaper editor would assign a raw reporter to the legislature or the sports beat. Yet it has been common practice in Canada for city editors to look around the news room, spot the likeliest reporter and assign him or her to go and see a play and “write it up.” This haphazard and irresponsible method of developing theatre critics has resulted in a generally poor level of the art of criticism and has been devastating to the growth of theatre.
New York
Authors: Merin Jennifer
Published: June 2023

Recent estimates place the number of Off Off-Broadway theatres in New York City at approximately 200. These theatres range in reputation from the infamous to the obscure, in quality from the brilliant to the dull, in temperament from the sublime to the ridiculous, in theatrical territory from the classics to the avant-garde and in physical locale from the lofts to the basements.
Co-Opera Theatre 1975-83: 2/A View from the Board
Authors: Rubin, QC David A.
Published: June 2023

As a member of the board of directors of the Co-Opera Theatre from its inception to its demise I had an opportunity to be aware of its objectives and to observe its accomplishments and failures.
Jennie’s Story
Authors: Lambert Betty
Published: June 2023

For the legal background for this play, see "The Sexual Sterilization Act" (Alberta, 1928), especially Section 5, which concerns "multiplication of the evil by the transmission of the disability to progeny." In 1937, just before the time of the play, an amendment was passed, making it possible to sterilize a person without his or her consent, provided consent was given by the appropriate relative or, if the appropriate relative did not exist or was not a resident in Alberta, by the Minister of Health. This law was repealed in 1971.
Planning Through Financial Management
Authors: Lane Marcia
Published: June 2023

Note: Two years ago, the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres (PACT) and the Society of Management Accountants of Ontario established a committee under the leadership of Ron Blackburn, finance director of the National Arts Centre in Ottawa and himself a member of the society, to study long-range planning through financial management as it applies to Canadian non-profit theatre. Three sites were selected for a pilot planning study: the Shaw Festival, Toronto Free Theatre, and Comus Music Theatre (large, medium, and petite). Each theatre was assigned a society member accountant to work with the theatre’s finance officer. The resulting planning document, Financial Management of Canadian Theatres, was released in June 1984. Marcia Lane, general manager of Theatre Calgary, prepared the following response for CTR.
Theatre for Children in Quebec: Complicity, Achievement and Adventure
Authors: Beauchamp Hélène
Published: June 2023

To write about theatre for children1 can be problematic for, in the process of doing it, one risks falling into quite a few traps. Because it is relatively recent, at least in the exuberant fashion of the past 10 years, children’s theatre tempts the writer to clarify over and over its short but exciting history. One can easily be brought into writing its apology, into praising its essential existence, because it has to be proposed and defended with such persistence by those who believe in it. Since this theatre, in its written form, does not entirely correspond to usual genres, one also can be inclined to analyze its plays according to entirely new categories or, conversely, to bring all of them under the general designation of “theatre for children.“ Another pitfall awaits the writer who only considers its young spectators: because children have gained important social recognition in the past years, their reactions to a play are often scrutinized in isolation, as if they existed in a vacuum. But finally, the greatest trap lies in writing about “theatre for children” without considering the particular ways and styles of its individual authors, directors, actors and scenographers.
TYA Festivals: 2/Keeping One Step Ahead
Authors: Fairhead Wayne
Published: June 2023

Recognition of the legitimate place of theatre for young people has been a long time coming in Canada. But now that it has at last gained some sense of respect, it is far more progressive than its big brothers in the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. Both superpowers have a long tradition of children’s theatre. Unfortunately, that tradition has shackled them to stereotypes, tradition and the need for spectacle. In Canada there has been a healthy development of dramatic literature and presentation for children and young people that explores social issues and group dynamics. The growth of drama in the education system, over the past 15 years in particular, has played a major role in this evolution. Canadian teachers have adopted the British drama-ineducation approach, rather than the American show-and-tell system, and have developed a uniquely Canadian educational drama. We have paid close attention to Canadian sources, both historical and literary, for our drama. And consequently our young audiences have become eager and ready to participate in the theatre experience in a very special fashion.
TVA on the Road: Canada’s Intrepid Ambassadors
Authors: Lewis Sara Lee
Published: June 2023

During a trip to France last summer my eye caught a colourful poster promoting the 38th International Festival of the City of Lyon. Like all good theatre-administrators-onvacation I studied the program, the graphics and the copy. And of course I checked to see if any Canadians were to participate . Sure enough, Quebec’s Le Carrousel was vividly listed between pianist Claudio Arrau and the Peking Opera.
Drama-in-Education: 1/Brian Way and the Alternate Catalogue
Authors: Deverell Rita Shelton
Published: June 2023

The 60-year-old man crawls on all fours. He looks up at the chair beside him. His hands play with some Imagined objects: “This is a rocket… and it’s landing right here … rum um um turn. Everybody better get out of the way.”

Right in the middle of Johnny’s story, observes Brian Way, his mother comes along and says “Stop that noise”; she picks Johnny up before his story is over and takes him somewhere. Concludes Way: Johnny’s early practice at concentration has been spoiled.
Goodnight Disgrace
Authors: Mercer Michael
Published: June 2023

Caution: ©1984 Michael Mercer. 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 Michael Mercer. 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 Michael Mercer. Interested persons are requested to apply for permission and terms to Michael Mercer, 1205-1330 Harwood Street, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6L 1S8.
Stockholm: Ingmar Bergman Returns to the Stage
Authors: Trilling Ossia
Published: June 2023

These closing lines of King Lear can be read as Ingmar Bergman’s comment on the state of the world today and on the play itself, which he staged for the first time at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm last spring.
Halifax: Rick Salutin Leads a Workshop
Authors: Brunner Astrid
Published: June 2023

Note: On 31 April and 1 May, 1983, Rick Salutin led a workshop at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax. In the following article, participant Astrid Brunner reports her observations on the relationship between life and the theatre according to Salutin.

Theatre mixes illusion and reality in many and surprising ways. The variety makes talking about theatre a challenge - philosophically seductive and logically impossible. This is enough of a contradiction to challenge playwright Rick Salutin.
Second Stage: The Alternate Theatre In Canada
Authors: Bessai Diane
Published: June 2023

In Second Stage: The Alternate Theatre Movement in Canada, Professor Renata Usmiani follows the commonly held view that the decade of the 1970s spans the essential phase of the indigenous experimental theatre seeded in the 1960s in reaction to the predominantly mainstream emphasis of the established theatres. To document and discuss this important phase of recent theatre history she has selected to focus on several seminal regions of the country where certain important companies reached their zenith during the decade, primarily through varieties of collective creation. Rather than survey the whole movement, she focuses on Toronto, Vancouver and Newfoundland for English-language developments, and Montreal for French. Her “representative companies” are Theatre Passe Muraille, Tamahnous, Savage God, The Mummers’ Troupe and Le Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui, with more general introductory surveys of the Toronto and Quebec theatrical milieus of the period. By way of overview of the Canadian scene generally, Usmiani provides what she calls the “international context,“ a survey of the European and American theatre of the modernist and postmodernist periods. The result is certainly a useful, although essentially selective and schematic study of the movement, giving painstaking academic authority to a relatively new field.
Theatre and the Young, An Introduction
Authors: Wallace Robert
Published: June 2023

It has been eight years since CTR devoted an issue to theatre for young audiences (TYA). Since that time, the rapid growth of Canadian theatres exclusively devoted to the development and production of theatre for young people has been matched by an increase in the quality and scope of their productions such that Canadian TYA has achieved international acclaim. Sara Lee Lewis, past president of ASSITEJ Canada (Association internationale du théâtre pour l’enfance et la jeunesse) speaks with legitimate authority when she asserts in this Issue that our TYA companies now have become major cultural ambassadors. Yet at home, the work of these theatres often remains unknown even to those in other branches of the profession. And despite the fact that TYA companies serve the largest audience in the country, they still must fight to survive.
Calgary, Cowboys, Culture and an Edifice Complex
Authors: Doolittle Joyce
Published: June 2023

Calgary is a conundrum. Cowtown. Does the city truly kow-tow to Cattle, Oil and Wheat and find its identity In a rodeo? Few cities are perceived as a persona tied to an annual bash. New Orleans springs to mind, but Mardi Gras has its roots in ritual. The Calgary Stampede is a wild west show in a west more erratic than untamed. Its star, the cowboy, retains considerable romance and power as a symbol of rugged individualism but seems increasingly out of sync with contemporary sensibilities, notably feminism.
Spiritual Explorations of a Rooted Playwright, In Place
Authors: Burrs Mick
Published: June 2023

Note: The questions and answers in this profile of Rex Deverell are drawn from three interview sessions, separated in time by seven years. I first interviewed the playwright in March 1977, then in January 1984, and finally In November 1984. I have taken the liberty of splicing the material together as though it were from a single interview, to give an in-depth portrait of the man and his ideas – a kind of docudrama about this creator of docudrama.
Working from the Child’s Perspective
Authors: Johnson Chris
Published: June 2023

Three years ago, Actors’ Showcase in Winnipeg was in serious trouble. In a major shakeup, the theatre’s board dismissed the former artistic director and hired Leslee Silverman. Since then, the theatre has gone from amateur to professional status, has expanded its tours of provincial schools, has introduced season’s tickets for parents and children to come to the theatre together, and has moved in new artistic directions, away from entertainment for entertainment’s sake toward a theatrical mixture that includes social activism and new approaches to traditional material. Leslee Silverman was recently interviewed for CTR on the subject of her strong beliefs on what she thinks children’s theatre should be, and on her plans for Actors’ Showcase.
Nanaimo: Leon Pownall at Shakespeare Plus
Authors: Twigg Alan
Published: June 2023

When Leon Pownall hears the phrase “Stratford West” applied to his fledgling Shakespeare Plus Festival in Nanaimo, B.C., he chuckles with devilish delight. Pownall didn’t coin the phrase. But given his inaugural season’s remarkable success in the face of a depressed provincial economy – 81 percent average attendance for three plays In repertory over six weeks – he’s not about to discourage the enthusiastic journalists who have picked up that description.
Toronto: Richard Rose in Rehearsal
Authors: Knowles Richard Paul
Published: June 2023

Note: The following is an account of Richard Paul Knowles’s experience working as an assistant director with Richard Rose on his 1984 production of The Seagull. It also includes interviews with Rose, John Krizanc, Dorian Clark, Maggie Huculak, Roger McKeen, Richard McMillan, and Anthony Parr recorded between July and November 1984. Quotations, unless otherwise acknowledged, are from these interviews.
Colombia: The Manizales International Theatre Festival
Authors: Merin Jennifer
Published: June 2023

Manizales is a charming small city, situated high in the Colombian Andes. It is a university town, but is usually overshadowed as a cultural centre by the larger Colombian cities of Bogota, Cali and Medallin. Nevertheless, last September, the Sixth International Theatre Festival of Manizales dominated Colombian cultural news to make this city the cultural focal point of Colombia, if not of all Latin America.
After Baba’s Funeral / Sweet and Sour Pickles, Jacob Kepp, Lokklnen, Righteousness, Gramscl X 3
Authors: Filewod Alan , Galay Ted , Tahn Andras , Sapergia Barbara , Deverell Rex , Watson Wilfred
Published: June 2023

By weight of numbers, this recent batch of plays from Western Canada supports the critical commonplace that the strength of Canadian drama derives from regional sensibility. But at the same time they challenge conventional assumptions about the nature of regional culture. It is not simply because the two most interesting of these plays bear no overt relation to their place of origin that I find myself questioning the nature of “Prairie drama.” The remaining three plays reviewed here deal with the historic nature of the Prairie experience, but their shared qualities suggest that what we identify as regionalism is often the existence of a localized genre common to any evolving culture. We tend to perceive regional drama in terms of its most obvious thematic attributes: when we speak of “Prairie drama” we speak of plays about farms and immigration. The label of regionalism can in fact obscure the actual workings of regional drama by relegating it to a literary ghetto that cannot describe those plays that do not fit the obvious patterns.
Major Plays of the Canadian Theatre 1934–1984, Modern Canadian Drama, Vol. 1
Authors: Johnson Chris , Perkyns Richard , Plant Richard
Published: June 2023

Until now, there has never been a comprehensive anthology of Canadian drama. The existing anthologies have all accepted limitations; regional, political, or historical (deliberately, as in the case of the Canada’s Lost Plays series, or accidentally, as in the case of Canadian Plays from Hart House Theatre). Two anthologies, Dell’s Ten Canadian Short Plays and Commcept’s Transitions I: Short Plays, cover a good range of material, with breadth in both period and style, but their selections are restricted to one-act plays, which limits their usefulness. With the appearance of the Perkyns and Plant anthologies, all that has changed, and we have two collections of unprecedented comprehensiveness and usefulness.
Notes towards the diagnosis of a curable malaise: Fear of Feminism
Authors: Lushington Kate
Published: June 2023

As part of a recent survey of Miss Teen Canada contestants, The Toronto Star asked each young hopeful: Do you consider yourself a feminist? Their answers were even more startling and revealing of the current state of Canadian society than their overwhelming choice of Princess Diana as the most influential woman in the world and The Bible as the most important book. Almost all answered no. For example:
A Survey Report: Women, Feminism and Prairie Theatre
Authors: Bessai Diane
Published: June 2023

Feminism in its straight political sense has a relatively low profile in contemporary prairie theatre, but clearly the feminist undercurrent is gaining strength, in ways as yet largely unacknowledged or perhaps merely unrecognised. Though their responses to feminism are as varied as its definitions, most women with whom I discussed the question do acknowledge benefit from the women’s movement in the development of their theatre careers and many are guided by Its principles to some degree.
Ms. Unseen
Authors: Fernie Lynne
Published: June 2023

The title of this issue — “Feminism and the Canadian Theatre” — is depressingly accurate. It reflects the fact that the substantial amount of theatre based on feminist analyses produced over the past decade has not been incorporated in any significant way into any level of the institution of Canadian theatre.
En de multiples scènes
Authors: Camerlain Lorraine
Published: June 2023

Au Québec, en 1974, deux spectacles ouvrent la voie à une nouvelle expression dramatique (et théâtrale) des femmes. Le Grand Cirque Ordinaire produit un premier spectacle “de filles,“ ironique et dont l’orientation est avouée: Un prince, mon jour viendra. La même année, le Théâtre des Cuisines (ainsi nommé en réaction au nom d’une autre troupe de théâtre militant: le Théâtre d’Ia Shoppe1) produit un spectacle engagé, non équivoque: Nous aurons les enfants que nous voulons. Le feu est mis aux poudres: le théâtre féminin s’engage irréversiblement dans une expression essentiellement féminine; le théâtre féministe est bien enclenché.
Jovette Marchessault: A Luminous Wake in Space
Authors: Gaboriau Linda
Published: June 2023

Mother, dreams, literature, illumination, and cosmic perspective. Gratitude and posterity. In a single sentence, attributed to Ernest Hemingway in the final scene of her third full-length play, Jovette Marchessault reveals several of the essential themes that inhabit her plays and propel her theatre into an orbit of its own.
Nova Scotia and New Brunswick: Messages in the Wilderness
Authors: Cowan Cindy
Published: June 2023

Mary Daly, a radical feminist writer as well as an associate professor of theology at Boston College, understands very well the difficulties of women working in fields traditionally dominated by men. Her own experiences have revealed how long it takes feminist ideas to find their way into popular theatre, literature and playwriting. Daly’s quote above perfectly reflects the nature of women working in theatre in Nova Scotia.
Newfoundland: 1/Outport Reminders
Authors: Buchanan Roberta
Published: June 2023

No theatre company in Newfoundland defines itself as feminist. There Is nothing like the British group Monstrous Regiment which issued a manifesto stating: “We see ourselves as part of the growing and lively movement to improve the status of women.” There are, however, Newfoundland plays which would fit in with Monstrous Regiment’s next statement: “Our work explores the experience of women past and present, and we want to place that experience in the centre of the stage.”1 Three plays, in fact, immediately come to mind: Rhonda Payne’s Stars in the Sky Morning; Grace Butt’s Mom; and Michael Cook’s Therese’s Creed. All are indigenous plays centering on the lives of women in Newfoundland.
Newfoundland: 2/Downtown Views
Authors: Clarke Annette
Published: June 2023

Energy that consciously challenges feminist ideas is not a priority in the downtown St John’s theatre scene. St John’s theatre does not formally support the feminist philosophy that there are two cultures in our world with two sets of meanings and experiences —one belonging to women; one to men. We do not have feminist collectives in the threatre; all-female casts are rare; women in the theatre are not collaborating to analyze feminist culture or to create political and revolutionary feminist scenarios.
This is for you, Anna: A spectacle of revenge
Authors: Project Anna
Published: June 2023

This is for you, Anna is a performance piece for four actors. The four actors change roles continuously. The most frequent role played is that of Marianne Bachmeier, indicated as Marianne 1, Marianne 2, etc. The white set consists of various levels containing: a refrigerator; a laundry line; a white suitcase; a white hamper; an accordion; four red chairs. The women are well dressed in black, red and white.
Fragments: Afterthoughts
Authors: Project Anna
Published: June 2023

Many people ask us what the images of the nails and the milk mean. The only true answer is that they do not mean one thing; they are not to be read on one factual level. Like Images in poetry, they will have a different story, a different resonance, for each reader, each viewer. Almost every night when we talk to the audience, we hear a fresh response to those images. The final milk image is, for me, on the simplest level, an image of absence. The woman at the fridge pours and pours. Anna never takes the milk because she isn’t there. In her absence, the milk overflows and spills as we say “I did it for you Anna.” This image simply emphasizes the silence. There is that much space round a few words.
Fredericton Janet Amos
Authors: Scriver Julie
Published: June 2023

Work has never been lacking for women : domestic chores have been relegated to their attentions since time immemorial. It is only recently in terms of our history, that women have been admitted into the professional, man’s world of work , to exercise their talents and skills and vie for a place of their own. In light of this it is necessary that we give a shout of joy and congratulation when one of “ us” achieves a height hitherto unknown to womankind . One such instance is that of Janet Amos who early in 1984 was named the successor to Malcolm Black as artistic director of Theatre New Brunswick in Fredericton. Amos’s new post has been described as “ arguably the most important permanent theatre post now held by a woman .’”1“ Indeed, she is the first woman ” to be entrusted with the artistic leadership of a major regional Canad ian theatre.“2
Readings in Review
Authors: Parker Brian
Published: June 2023

Professor E. Ross Stuart’s The History of Prairie Theatre provides a general guide to an area hitherto fragmented among periodicals, reference works, literature surveys, and a growing number of theses. The few monographs we’ve had on prairie theatre have been the colorful but narrow accounts by the participants, and even theses understandably restrict their points of view.
Feminism and Canadian Theatre, An Introduction
Authors: Wallace Robert
Published: June 2023

The genesis of this issue was my discovery last year that Rina Fraticelli’s invaluable report The Status of Women in the Canadian Theatre, which she prepared for the Status of Women Canada in 1982, had never been published. When I proposed to her that CTR publish parts of this report, she suggested that, at this late date, it would be more constructive to address the current status of women in Canadian theatre and to explore the ways in which feminism connects with or influences their work. Because she was busy planning “The Next Stage” — a conference on women in the theatre that was part of the Theatre Festival of the Americas held in Montreal this May — she was unavailable to edit the issue but able to advise me on its final form. Both of us realized the necessity of involving women in the planning and production stages of the issue and therefore set about contacting those we thought might want to help.
Confronting Cutbacks: 1 / The Economic Impact of the Arts
Authors: Scholar Michael
Published: June 2023

The following condensations of two policy papers prepared for national theatre organizations address the harsh reductions in government subsidies to the arts announced this year. In the first, from a speech to a national meeting of ACTRA on 16 January 1985, Michael Scholar of the University of Regina confronts ministerial rhetoric with convincing statistics of his own that effectively demonstrate the national economic vitality of the arts. In the second, a resource document prepared this spring for PACT, Douglas Buck of York University balances the economic and artistic integrity of the theatre against government funding as an investment in Canadian culture. Seizing the symbol of conservative fiscal pragmatism – the balance sheet – both writers offer thoughtful strategies to counteract the constant and recently redoubled threat to the arts.
Theatresports / 2: Breakthrough or Breakdown?
Authors: Hawkins John A.
Published: June 2023

This article poses a series of questions about Theatresports, and reports on discussions of these questions with people who are familiar with the form. It does not give information about how to play Theatresports. Nor is it scientific or broadly based; opinions were sought from a small number of knowledgeable people. The specific intention is to provoke further discussion on Theatresports, especially in view of the concern expressed in many quarters over its rapid proliferation in schools, community theatres, and the smaller professional theatres across Canada. The questions considered here fall into four basic categories: education, actor development, audience development, and Theatresports and theatre.
The Canadian Mandate / 1: Going for Broke
Authors: Kaplan Jon
Published: June 2023

Toronto’s Factory Theatre is no longer, at least by title, a lab. Besides a new name, the company has acquired a new image, a new audience, and, along the way, a new home. Living dangerously, the Factory is pushing vigorously ahead with its new plans despite economic uncertainty.
Love is Strange
Authors: Ledoux Paul , Young David
Published: June 2023

Caution: ©1984 Paul Ledoux and David Young. This play is fully protected under the copyright laws of Canada and all other countries of the Copyright Union and is subject to royalty. Changes to the script are 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 Pop Productions, 53 Lanqlev Ave., Toronto, Ontario, M4K 1B4.
A note on the play
Authors: Ledoux Paul , Richmond Brian , Young David
Published: June 2023

It can be argued that most modern love songs derive from a romantic tradition which goes back to the poetry of 12th-century France. Love Is Strange is a play which examines the way this tradition has been transformed by the electronic age. From Michael Jackson’s glitter glove to Princess Di’s hair, our contemporary understanding of love Is shaped in the image of shared public fantasies. But how far into the communal fantasy is a citizen allowed to go before society deems him dangerous or insane?
Calgary Richard Fowler and the Barba Connection
Authors: Citron Paula
Published: June 2023

When Calgary played host to the International Theatre Symposium in June this year, 10 Western Canadian performing groups had the opportunity to work directly with renowned European director and theorist Eugenio Barba. The conference marked the emergence of a “Barba family” in Canada – a network of performing artists creating original experimental work who wish to share their training and performances with each other.
New York Playwrights Beware
Authors: Baldridge Mary Humphrey
Published: June 2023

What does it mean to be a Canadian playwright – or to have a Canadian play produced – in New York? Does it mean anything? Does anyone notice that the playwright is Canadian, or care?
Los Angeles Tamara Takes Off
Authors: Kaplan Jon
Published: June 2023

Even in Hollywood, they rarely see anything like Tamara. Canadian John Krizanc’s award-winning play, now in its second year in Los Angeles, still Is packing the American Legion Post #43 with audiences agog with delight. Transported back to 1927 fascist Italy for three hours, they drink champagne, eat trendy chocolate-mousse desserts catered by the fashionable restaurant Ma Maison, and follow 10 actors through the three stones of one of the most lavish theatre sets in the city.
Showing West: Three Prairie Docu-dramas, Eight Plays For Young People
Authors: Bessai Diane , Kerr Don , Doolittle Joyce , Skene Reg
Published: June 2023

Showing West–the fifth entry in NeWest’s Prairie Play Series – makes available three playscripts which exemplify and account for an important trend in theatre on the prairies in the past 10 years.
Contemporary Canadian Theatre: New World Visions
Authors: Wagner Anton , Filewod Alan
Published: June 2023

There is a case to be made that theatre criticism in Canada has not developed as vigorously as the theatre it documents. Because we lack an intellectual press or, for that matter, a reflective weekly press, there are few avenues for serious critical inquiry in this country. Canadian criticism remains divided into the occasionally overlapping camps of journalistic reviewing and academic analysis. What little theoretical discussion of Canadian theatre there is must be sought in the pages of scholarly journals, and, while media reviewers tend now to come out of the universities rather than the cub reporters’ bullpen, the demands of the daily press prohibit serious critical thought. The practice of criticism is not much more advanced than it was at the turn of the century.
Alternatives: An Introduction
Authors: Wallace Robert
Published: June 2023

Although theatrical forms such as cabaret, dinner theatre, Theatresports, and cafe performance differ greatly among each other, they have one characteristic in common: all reject the formal relationship of audience to performer that typifies traditional theatre. This is signified by the greater intimacy evident in the organization of the performance spaces used by most of these forms. The audience, besides being closer to the performers, often is seated in small groups, sometimes eating, drinking, and smoking. The relaxed relationship with each other fosters a more informal attitude to the performance, one that is conducive to their participation in it. Quite simply, these forms of theatre encourage an exchange between audience and performers that traditional plays don’t allow.
To Serve the Art
Authors: Czarnecki Mark
Published: June 2023

1 / What is the “quintessential” theatre festival? To find the answer we must first eliminate operations that call themselves “festivals” but which clearly are not. In Canada, the three largest “festivals” – Stratford, Shaw, and Charlottetown – are not festivals but summer theatres operating on a repertory basis. Their self-imposed programming mandates, high ticket prices, and locations define them as tourist industries. Nor is the Blyth Festival a true festival; although its mandate Is populist and its roots are communal, it mounts a summer season using resources from a national talent pool and rarely presents touring productions.
The Stratford Festival / 2: The State of the Art vs. The Art of the State
Authors: Hayes Elliott
Published: June 2023

In 1959, the year the Stratford Globe and Mail playwriting competition started receiving submissions from across the country, the Stratford Festival was already being labelled a disaster area by Antony Ferry of the Toronto Star. Arguing that all hopes for a true Canadian theatre had been buried there, he predicted that the theatre would die when It had done Shakespeare’s major works. While this may have enlivened some cocktail conversations, it was fundamentally incorrect for two important reasons: the first being the newly formed Canada Council, which pulled Stratford out of a deficit season in 1959 with a grant of $50,000; the second was the barely perceptible but soon-to-be-realized shift in the theatre’s mandate. For it was in 1959 that the winners of the Globe and Mail contest were announced, and new Canadian work was promised its first audience at Stratford.
The Edmonton Fringe Festival: Home on the Fringe
Authors: Day Moira
Published: June 2023

In 1980 the city of Edmonton organized Summerfest to help alleviate the cultural aridity of the summer months. While Summerfest’s two musical festivals, Jazz City and International Folk, caught fire immediately, its theatre festival was slower to ignite. A plan to run a summer-long repertory season of primarily Shakespearean plays out of a large tent in a city park worked well in 1981. The programme fell through in 1982 when the city offered Northern Lights Theatre, the sponsoring company, only half its previous budget. Enter Brian Paisley, founder and artistic director of Chinook Theatre, a touring group that had moved from Fort Saint John to Edmonton in 1980 and now was doing two shows a year in the historic Princess Theatre. Paisley, attracted to the “Old World” atmosphere of Edmonton’s Old Strathcona district, found himself imagining a multitude of small theatres in the area’s older buildings. When the $50,000 originally slated for Northern Lights came free, Paisley jumped at the chance to turn his fantasy into a reality.
Bread and Dreams: The Means to an End
Authors: Bouzek Don
Published: June 2023

“This festival… brings together groups who are just beginning, who are just learning, and who want to renovate the theatre.” – Jeanne Sauvé, Governor-General of Canada, at the opening ceremonies of the Bread and Dreams Festival, Winnipeg, 18 June 1985.
Director’s Notes
Authors: Kaszas Katherine
Published: June 2023

Late in 1983, Janet Amos, at that time artistic director of the Blyth Festival, commissioned Ted Johns to write a play for the 1984 season and asked me to direct it. Garrison’s Garage, the result, opened on 22 June 1984 at the Blyth Memorial Hall and played to capacity houses throughout its 1984 run. Due to Its enormous popularity, I remounted the show at the end of the 1985 season, and followed this with an extensive tour.
Amsterdam Home Thoughts from (A Festival) Abroad
Authors: Ackerman Marianne
Published: June 2023

Neither bad weather nor festival fatigue could fully account for the gloomy mood as three members of Ottawa’s Groupe de la Place Royale sat sipping espresso at the Bellevue Cafe, official rendezvous of the Holland Festival. On a chilly day last June, they were asked to speak on a radio art programme broadcast daily from the Bellevue, but arrived to find the airtime given over to a contest. Listeners had been invited to submit critiques and the happy winner was reading her review on the dance troupe’s opening night. So, no time left for interviews.
Salt-Water Moon, Criminals in Love, White Biting Dog
Authors: French David , Walker George F. , Thompson Judith , Walsh Paul
Published: June 2023

November 1984 is a month that Toronto theatre enthusiasts recall with fondness. As the Tarragon Theatre’s production of David French’s Salt-Water Moon was transferring for an extended run to the Bayview Playhouse, the Factory Theatre was opening its new doors on Bathurst Street with George F. Walker’s Criminals in Love. French’s play was held over for five weeks at the Bayview, played later in the year to enthusiastic audiences in Los Angeles, and has been slated for production at several theatres across Canada this season. Walker’s play ran for five months – a prodigious 136 performances – and won him the 1984 Chalmer’s Canadian Play Award. The overwhelming demand for texts of these two plays induced the Playwrights Union of Canada to jump ahead in its printing schedule, and both are now available in the sturdy, smaller-format volumes recently Introduced by PUC.
Letters
Authors: Creighton Valerie , Johnstone Keith , Baldridge Mary Humphrey
Published: June 2023

19 August 1985 I just sent in the readership survey questionnaire. I wanted you to know I was completely inspired by the Summer Issue (CTR 43) “Feminism & Canadian Theatre.” In fact I was in the hospital while I read the issue, in a room with four women, and after seven days of conversation and the influence of the issue, I drafted some character studies, plot notes, ideas, emotions and plan to try to incorporate it into a scr ipt someday.
Festivals: An Introduction
Authors: Wallace Robert
Published: June 2023

The cover of this issue of CTR features a photograph of two women playing katajjaq, a vocal game common among the Inuit of northern Quebec. In the game, two or three women standing face to face repeat short, apparently meaningless words to each other using a simple rhythmic structure and a wide variety of tonal treatments. The women organize their sounds like a canon: after one begins to chant, the second joins in, letting the beat of her voice coincide with the off-beat of the other’s, creating a complex series of sounds that often appears to issue from only one source – which is the aesthetic purpose of the game. The women continue to play until one runs out of breath, loses the rhythm, or yields to nervous tension and lets the other “win.” In the process, they illustrate how careful concentration, good co-ordination, and, above all, close personal relations can transform a simple pleasure into art.
Tales of Two Cities
Authors: Wallace Robert
Published: June 2023

Wallace: When you began the Centaur 17 years ago, Quebec was entering a period of political unrest and upheaval. Was it difficult to start an English-speaking theatre here then?

Podbrey: I loved Montreal the moment I arrived here and started the theatre company within months of my getting the idea. It happened very quickly and happily and actually preceded the big period of unrest. The Montreal public still hadn’t confronted itself the way it was going to in the following years . But even through the unrest we never had any real difficulty in establishing and continuing our work here. We’ve always had very high levels of attendance and have tried to keep an open-door policy towards the changes that are taking place, to encourage a progressive response rather than retrenching or hiding behind any barr iers. We’ve enjoyed a very good relationship across the language lines in the city and with the French theatre community. There has never been any acrimony that I can remember.
Anglophone Theatre in Montreal: A Crisis of Vision
Authors: Ackerman Marianne
Published: June 2023

Habitual newspaper readers could hardly have been surprised by the gloomy tone of a recent La Presse story about English-language theatre in Montreal. Since the mid-1970s, various publications and politicians have routinely announced and denounced the death of anglophone Quebec. Despite the newly-elected Liberal government’s conciliatory tone, anglo Quebeckers are still humming a dirge. In the last decade, francophone nationalism, high unemployment, and the multi-faceted acceleration of a westward shift in power have dealt anglo cultural institutions a hard blow. Individual artists have suffered as well. Centaur Theatre has felt the change: most productions at Montreal’s only government-subsidized English-language theatre are completely cast in Toronto. The once-thriving amateur theatre scene has registered a noticeable decline in both the talent and numbers of volunteers. And while a handful of small ventures have struggled to get established, neither the commercial dinner theatres nor semi-professional dramatic ventures have yet defined a profile or built resources upon which a stable future could be predicted with any certainty.
New Play Development in QuebecL: A Matter of Voice
Authors: Poteet Susan
Published: June 2023

What is the state of English-language new play development In Quebec?

Is this simply another of those questions that haunt Quebeckers without yielding answers? Big ones like, “Is Montreal’s English theatre dying, or is it merely stagnant?” Or, even bigger, “Has the English exodus stopped?” “Will there be an audience in 20 years?” In other words, are we English Quebeckers asking “What’s going to happen to us?” And will the answer determine whether we get on Highway 401 heading west?
Where is David Fennario now?
Authors: Desson Jim , Filson Bruce K.
Published: June 2023

I first met David Fennario in September of 1966. I was a middle-class kid from suburbia who was hanging around the Café Prag in Montreal, hoping to meet beatnik poets. I fondly remember the hours I spent with Dave and his friends. We read our own poetry and drank cheap wine In our down-and-out tourist rooms. And we listened to Dave tell stories. He was sincere, gentle, and committed to social justice.
Francophone Theatre in Ontario: On n’est plus loin deToronto
Authors: Wright Heather
Published: June 2023

Like so many of the audience, Helen Stone is attending the production of Michel Tremblay’s Hosanna at Toronto’s Théâtre du P’tit Bonheur for professional reasons: she works in French Services in the provincial government and needs to maintain her French. Hosanna’s process of self-exposure and self-discovery, culminating in his powerful nude scene with his lover, Cuirette, leaves her squirming. But she has no choice: if she wants to go to French theatre, this is the only game in town. Miles from Toronto, a typical spectator at a production by Théâtre du Nouvel-Ontario yields a very different profile. TNO’s Sudbury audience consists largely of members of the community that this theatre has carefully nurtured over the years-retirees, students, unemployed francophones, and their friends and families-all living in the moulin-à-fleur district. Currently these two theatres define the opposite extremes of the Franco-Ontarian theatre community. Contrasting and comparing them, an overview of the issues and opportunities within this community begins to emerge.
Discovering the Inuit People
Authors: Rioux Monique
Published: June 2023

In January 1982, a group from Montreal’s le Théâtre de la Marmaille consisting of François Camirand, Emmanuel Charpentier, France Mercille, Daniel Meilleur, and myself, left for our first expedition into the far North, land of the Nouvel-Québécois. André Moreau from the Kativik Board of Education accompanied us. This vast northern space, which as children we always called the land of the Eskimos and which children today still believe to be the land of Santa Claus, is inhabited by a race that prefers to be called “Inuit” (meaning “man” in the broadest sense of the term). The Inuit inhabit that part of Quebec which is above the tree-line, from Kuujjurapik (Poste-au-Baleine) to Kuujjuak (Fort Chimo). Indeed, there are no trees, only the vast stretch of white where the native people live spread out in 14 villages in a region that we know as Le Nouveau Québec. It was Michel O. Noël, ethnologist and coordinator of Indian and Inuit Affairs at the Ministère des Affaires Culturelles, who first had the idea of touring a children’s play into Nouveau Québec and he submitted his project to us.