bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
KEYNOTE OF THE COMING AGE
Authors: Schafer D. Paul
Published: June 2023

Canada’s international cultural relations have been growing steadily in importance in recent years. In large part, this has come about as a result of the pressure within our country to have more cultural contact with the rest of the world. In response to this escalating pressure, the Cultural Affairs Division of the Department of External Affairs requested a study be done by D. Paul Schafer. That study, recently published by the government, describes the main features of Canada’s evolving cultural relations as well as identifying the various aims and objectives of the country’s external cultural policy. The following essay is excerpted from that study.
STRATFORD: A CRY FOR REFORM
Authors: Phillips Robin
Published: June 2023

Stratford Festival Artistic Director Robin Phillips, at a press conference last fall to announce plans for Stratford’s 1980 season, presented an argument for ‘internationalism’ in art including a call for a reform of present grant-giving policies that would involve a drastic re-evaluation of any art council’s ethics and system. The wide-ranging nature of Phillips’ remarks and their implications for the 80’s seemed justification enough to make them available here for CTR readers.
HERMAN VOADEN AND THE TEST OF TIME
Authors: Field Alan
Published: June 2023

Herman Voaden’s contributions as an editor, playwright, and director to the Canadian theatre of the 20’s and 30’s—chronicled extensively in CTR 5—continue to attract attention. As far back as June 22, 1929 Voaden was arguing in the Globe, Toronto, that ‘if our stage is to save itself … it must enlarge its vision and scope to embrace playwright, student, thinker, poet, musician, designer, actor and artist. More Canadian artists are especially needed.’ His side of the argument continues to be heard. Here, Alan Field, an actor in some of Voaden’s early work, offers a perceptive personal study of the man, with special emphasis on Voaden’s scripts in their time and their effects on audiences ‘back then.’
MODERN JAPANESE DRAMA: AN ANTHOLOGY
Authors: Goodman David G.
Published: June 2023

Ghosts abound in Japanese literature. This is as true of modern as it has been of classical literature. Indeed, Joji Mori, a most perceptive critic, has published a stimulating full-length study of Japanese literature in the 20th century entitled The Liberation of Japanese Ghosts (1974) which sees modern Japanese literature as a consistent attempt, albeit pursued by diverse means, to liberate the panoply of Japanese spirits.
Theatre in Canada: A Toy or A Tool
Authors: Andre Marion
Published: June 2023

First a statement of concern; theatre as a vehicle for better understanding of the complexities of the 20th century is barely visible in Canada.
The Black Bonspiel of Wullie MacCrimmon
Authors: Mitchell W.O.
Published: June 2023

CAUTION: Permission to perform this play must be obtained in writing from the author and royalties must be paid on every performance. Unauthorized reproduction of this script for any reason whatsoever is forbidden by copyright. The author may be contacted through The Guild of Canadian Playwrights, 86 Bloor Street West, Suite 365, Toronto, Ontario.
Saskatoon’s Paper Gamble
Authors: Thuen Colleen
Published: June 2023

In times of tight money, risk is a difficult thing to ask of a theatre company. Three years ago, though, Saskatoon’s Twenty-Fifth Street House Theatre took a major risk and wound up with one of this country’s largest theatrical successes, Paper Wheat. Recently, the company—now calling itself simply the Twenty-Fifth Street Theatre—took an even bigger risk with its production of Jakob Kepp and though Kepp has a long way to go before coming anywhere near the success of Paper Wheat, its story is equally fascinating.
Muffling the Tears
Authors: Bronstein Marlin
Published: June 2023

Genuine satire is all too rare in the Canadian theatre and when examples of theatrical satire appear in our daily papers it should be brought to the attention of all. The following—perhaps a bit too close to the financial truth for many of us in these budgetary dog days—appeared in the Toronto Globe and Mail.
Two Shakespearean Sequences: Henry VI to Richard II and Pericles to Timon of Athens, The Lear World: A Study of King Lear in its Dramatic Context
Authors: Levenson Jill L. , Brownlow F. W. , Reibetanz John
Published: June 2023

The latest annual bibliography in Shakespeare Quarterly lists 2884 entries. At a party that large, few are likely to stand out, and perhaps the size of the crowd accounts for the self-consciousness which has grown among Shakespearean critics during the seventies. Scholars tend now to explicate not only Shakespeare’s texts but also their own critical methods. While approaches differ, almost all roads lead away from A.C. Bradley’s.
The Passionate Shepherdess: Aphra Behn
Authors: Rubin Don , Duffy Maureen
Published: June 2023

The first professional woman playwright. With apologies to the 10th century nun Hrotswitha who obviously didn’t try to make a living from her dramatic writings, the title clearly belongs to Aphra Behn, as passionate and swashbuckling (assuming that women did buckle swashes then) a lady writer as the English theatre ever had. But who was Aphra Behn? Was she really a spy? Were her intrigues and lovers as exciting as we have been led to believe? What, author Maureen Duffy asks in her recent book on Aphra Behn, is fact and what fiction? The questions are important ones for those with an interest in the Restoration period in general and those like myself, with a fascination for this enormously tough and talented lady in particular.
The Habima—Israel’s National Theatre 1917–1977: A Study of Cultural Nationalism
Authors: Kohansky Mendel , Levy Emanuel
Published: June 2023

Habima, the national theatre of Israel, has had a history unique in the annals of the theatre. Founded in Moscow in 1917, the company performed in the Hebrew language which only a handful of people in Moscow understood, and which, moreover, had for centuries been considered a dead language, used only for prayer, scholarship and elitist literature. There was no body of Hebrew speaking people anywhere in the world; the Jewish settlers in what was then called Palestine were few, and they spoke a variety of European and Oriental languages, though a movement was already afoot to restore Hebrew to its ancient position as the national language of the Jews.
Audience Response
Authors: Beaulne Guy , Filewod Alan
Published: June 2023

I have just recently returned to Quebec City after three years as cultural counsellor at the Délégation générale du Québec in Paris. I had left Le Grand Théâtre de Québec for that mission in 1976. I am now associated with the Ministry of Cultural Affairs. One of the most pleasant discoveries I have made is the healthy state of the Canadian Theatre Review, the quality of its contributors and the variety of topics it contains. It is a fine publication. My warmest congratulations to you. I also have the pleasure to find that a Canadian ITI Centre lives again. Bravo for your role in this.
Des McAnuff: Personal Politics and the Canadian Theatre Today
Authors: Friedlander Mira
Published: June 2023

In 1976. writer-director Des McAnuff had just produced his own version of Faustus for Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille. Audiences stayed away in droves and McAnuff decided that he’d had enough of Canada’s experimental theatre scene and Canada’s less-than-positive theatre community. In New York, McAnuff began working steadily as a director off-Broadway and his work received steadily growing acclaim. This past year, Toronto Arts Productions, the resident company at the St. Lawrence Centre, offered him an opportunity to come back and work, as well as to re-assess the scene. McAnuff’s imaginative handling of Barrie Keeffe’s anarchic comedy, A Mad World, My Masters, attracted general praise. He decided, however, that Canada was still not ready for him and returned to New York. During his stay in Toronto, the following interview was done for CTR by freelance writer, Mira Friedlander.
Peter Colley: The Politics of Being Popular
Authors: Beaupre Therese
Published: June 2023

In the late sixties, the University of Sheffield Drama Group was filled with angry young men intent on advancing the frontiers of the theatre. One student stood out though whose theories on drama were even more controversial than the others. Peter Colley, former private school prefect and All England running star, believed that the theatre should make people happy. When he was found out to be a dyed-in-the-wool entertainer, Colley was duly chastised. Populism wasn’t popular in the Sheffield class of ‘69.
Catalyst: A Theatre of Commitment
Authors: Bosley Vivien
Published: June 2023

Oddly enough the comparison which came unbidden and quite unexpectedly to my mind as I was watching Edmonton’s Catalyst Theatre’s Stand Up for Your Rights was with a performance of Euripides’ Herakles, which I saw in the Greek amphitheatre in Syracuse in Sicily many years ago. Now Stand Up for Your Rights is an exploration of problems facing the mentally retarded, played for an audience of mentally retarded young people. It took me some time therefore to work out what two such disparate theatrical experiences could possibly have in common. The answer was the total absorption of the audiences in what was going on on the stage and their absolutely spontaneous reaction to it. In the case of the Greek tragedy, I found that I was surrounded by dour Sicilian labourers who were sobbing unconstrainedly; in the case of the Catalyst piece, by teenagers who were egging on the actors to take some particular stand, or even on occasion getting up and taking their place. The teenagers, it must be acknowledged, had been asked to guide the actors, but the fact remains that in each case the audience was one which was not accustomed to going to the theatre, and was certainly not conditioned by regular sessions in plush seats to register what they might imagine to be a correct response.
Towards A Canadian Drama: A View from the Thirties
Authors: Voaden Herman
Published: June 2023

The search for a truly Canadian drama is not a new one. Its roots go far back in our history. In our own century, one of the most tireless searchers was Ontario playwright Herman Voaden whose own career was chronicled in CTR 5 and whose two early experimental dramas, Murder Pattern and Wilderness, have recently been published in CTR‘s anthology series, Canada’s Lost Plays (Volume III: The Developing Mosaic). Voaden — as playwright, as teacher, as cultural animator — sought to inspire Canadian artists by his example and his daring. One of Voaden’s earliest and most important statements on the subject appeared in 1930 as an Introduction to a volume he edited called Six Canadian Plays and published by Copp Clark. Because much of what he says still has validity today and because the volume itself is now of historical importance, CTR requested permission to reprint it. It is published here with permission of Herman Voaden.
The Forties and Beyond: The New Play Society
Authors: Tepper Bill
Published: June 2023

Every now and then in the media, there is some odd mention of the Winter Garden Theatre, which sadly rests above a movie house in the heart of Toronto’s downtown. This relic of Canada’s cultural past is today solemnly called the city’s “forgotten theatre”. But there is another “forgotten theatre” in Toronto, one of which even fewer people have likely ever heard. To look at it now, one finds it difficult to believe it was there that professional productions of many of the world’s greatest dramas were once performed. It was in this theatre, that many of Canada’s outstanding stage and radio performers received early experience and recognition. Today, most of the seats in the auditorium still remain, while only a fraction of the original stage is still intact. This is Toronto’s “other forgotten theatre” — the Royal Ontario Museum Theatre. The time was almost thirty-five years ago. The people called themselves the New Play Society and they were led by Dora Mavor Moore.
The NAC and the National Mandate
Authors: Kesten Myles
Published: June 2023

The National Arts Centre’s role in the search for a truly Canadian culture has been debated since the NAC first opened its doors more than 10 years ago. Much of what the NAC was and still is, however, had been determined long before a single performer stepped on its stages. The sometimes extraordinary background to the debate is chronicled in this excerpt from a study prepared for NAC Director Donald MacSween by researcher Myles Kesten. The entire report is entitled The Measure of Discontent and this chapter focusses on the Centre’s mandate to be “national.”
Inspiring Pride: The Indigenous Theatre Celebration
Authors: Carnat Tish
Published: June 2023

“The original peoples of the world have a strong need and desire for a vehicle through which to express their culture — theatre provides that perfect vehicle. Now, we can all share in celebrating our cultures.” — Jim Bullet, Executive Director of Canada’s Association For Native Development in the Performing and Visual Arts.
57 Quebec, Spring 1918
Authors: Provencher Jean , LaChance Gilles
Published: June 2023

Quebec, Spring 1918 was first produced by le Théâtre du Trident, Quebec City, in October 1973; directed by Paul Hébert, designed by Paul Bussières, with lighting by Denis Mailloux.

Original French text published in May, 1974 by Les Editions L’aurore, Montreal.

CAUTION: © 1980, Jean Provencher and Gilles La Chance. Permission to perform this play or scenes from it must be obtained in writing and royalties paid on every performance. Unauthorized reproduction of this script for any reason whatsoever is forbidden by copywright. Performance permission may be obtained by writing to the authors in care of Canadian Theatre Review Publications, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Downsview, Ontario M3J 1P3.
Making Sense of Shaw
Authors: Rubin Don
Published: June 2023

When Toronto lawyer Brian Doherty founded a little summer festival dedicated to the works of George Bernard Shaw in 1962, the town he chose as its home — Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario — was little more than a sleepy village. Niagara had only one even passable hotel, only one modest little restaurant and only a few dozen country stores along its picturesque main street to take care of the needs of its 2,000 or so year-round and summer residents. Each year thereafter, the Festival expanded its season while operating in a makeshift theatre located on the second floor of what was once a Court House and which still served as a sometimes jail and town hall. Things theatrical generally began in early June and generally were concluded by Labour Day.
Blood Relations
Authors: Pollock Sharon
Published: June 2023

The degree of realism desired in design is dependent on the production; there are some specifics, however realized: in the Borden house, the dining-room from which there is an exit to the kitchen, and the parlour, which has a flight of stairs leading to the second floor; in the Borden yard, the walk outside the house, and the area in which the birds are kept.
The BITEF Festival
Authors: Merin Jennifer
Published: June 2023

The Belgrade International Theatre Festival (BITEF) has been recognized as one of the leading international showcases for innovative theatrical production because the Festival has consistently found and presented whatever has been most current and avant-garde in world experimental theatre. During the ‘60s and ‘70s when such well-known avant-gardists as The Performance Group (USA), Nuria Espert (Spain), Luca Ronconi (Italy) and Grotowski (Poland) first appeared in the international spotlight, BITEF tended to be of radical style, with extreme variations in theatrical convention. The Festival, founded in 1967, has customarily given itself an annual subtitle, a phrase placing each year’s invited productions into an overall trend. Subtitles have included descriptive classifications such as “New Directors of Our Times,” “Roots of Theatre,” and “New Theatre Spaces,” among others.
Woman as Artist
Authors: Joudry Patricia
Published: June 2023

Woman as Artist is a chapter taken from playwright Patricia Joudry’s unpublished book, Twin Souls. It is a frankly occult work, a book on reincarnation, whose thesis is that the soul does not change sexes from life to life — as popularly believed among those who believe in spiritual processes at all. The book expresses the belief that sex is soul deep; that each of us is unalterably masculine or feminine at the basic ground of our being, and that the popular idea of sex change arose through non-understanding of the Twin Soul principle. We offer this chapter here as a unique point-of-view on the question.
The Masseys and the Masses
Authors: Hendry Tom
Published: June 2023

To understand how, at a time when even so conservative a body as the Canadian Labour Congress has begun making something more than polite noises about the necessity for national independence for its constituent bodies, the Government of Canada can go on paying out millions of tax dollars yearly to organizations dedicated to the continuation of the most abjectly colonial repertoire policies, one must take a careful look at the roots of present policy. A cursory reading of books like Betty Lee’s Love and Whiskey, a skin-deep portrait of the D.D.F. with a number of valuable chapters on Canadian theatre history, indicates that the “old-boy” network of accommodations around which is constructed the present shambling structure of Federal participation in the arts stretches back to pre-War days, to the thirties when only exalted visitors, such as Governors-General, had the time or the background to take an interest in the arts in our country. Vincent Massey, who was eventually to chair the Royal Commission which recommended the establishment of the Canada Council, was more than slightly Involved in the launching of the Dominion Drama Festival under Lord Bessborough (whose wish it was ironically to have the Festival as a showcase for Canadian plays), and in that organization’s continuing fortunes. The degree to which he became the intellectual prisoner of thinking which saw only the voluntary organization as the vehicle for the decentralized distribution of Federal subsidy is reflected within the Massey Report itself and in the eventual terms of reference suggested for the Council which was its child.
Cultural Politics: A Provincial Approach
Authors: Hay Peter
Published: June 2023

Under the federal system, culture — along with a number of other social programs — is the amalgamated responsibility of three separately elected levels of government. In Canada, the federal government, through its cultural agencies, has played a leadership role in many areas of development; this role has been dominant in the support of professional arts organizations and of individual artists. During the past decade, the phenomenal rise in federal subsidies in the arts has been almost matched by some provincial governments in the country, while the level of municipal support has remained static or actually declined in relation to the senior governments.
Saskatoon
Authors: Hausvater Alexander
Published: June 2023

In a country like Canada where theatrical experimentation amounts to nothing, an event of rare proportion took place in the West that should be mentioned as a significant move towards turning the theatre into a temple with both audience and performer involved in the same series of rituals.
Berlin
Authors: Merin Jennifer
Published: June 2023

From the end of World War II when this city was occupied and divided, to the present, the governments of both West and East Berlin have been carefully preserving its historical role In the proliferation of the arts and conscientiously nourishing Berlin’s tradition of cultural sophistication by devoting considerable funds to the arts. Today, the cities of West and East Berlin maintain active but totally separate cultural lives. West Berlin sees itself as a basis of democracy and free enterprise in the middle of the East German, hard-line Communist desert and must present itself as the shining outpost, as it were, of freedom. East Berlin, on the other hand, is well aware of its Important role as the capital of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR) and must present a bright and successful face for socialism. Both cities are under tremendous pressure to produce.
The Group of Twenty-Nine by Mary C. Sullivan, Environmental Theatre by Richard Schechner, Embrace Tiger, Return to Mountain by Al Chung-liang Huang
Authors: Snider Edwin
Published: June 2023

For several years now, government and non-government bodies alike, have been crying for up-to-date statistics about the arts in Canada. No matter how many studies are conducted, there is always one more needed (and the need is probably well-justified). Now comes a new Canada Council study called The Group of Twenty-Nine which threatens to become the statistical base upon which much future funding of the performing arts in this country will be resting. For that reason alone, the study is of extreme importance to the entire Canadian arts community.
Changing Times
Authors: Rubin Don
Published: June 2023

Once upon a time, politicians believed that the arts were a political liability — an elitist pastime with limited popular appeal. In times when basic political survival was foremost, the arts were kept as far in the background as possible. This was certainly true during the past two years of minority government in Canada. During its majority government days, the Trudeau regime was a strong supporter of the arts. Through both the office of the Secretary of State (the closest thing we have to a Ministry of Culture) and the Canada Council, new programs were introduced, previously developed programs were strengthened and many in government spoke out strongly on behalf of the arts.
The Phillips Years
Authors: Conlogue Ray
Published: June 2023

Robin Phillips’ departure has wracked the Stratford organism with a severe fever. Will Maggie Smith and Brian Bedford go with him? Will the box office collapse next season? The actors are offering, in the words of one, to “sweat blood and work 12-hour days” to see the company through 1981.
From the Colonial Twilight
Authors: Richardson Alan , Rubin Don
Published: June 2023

The events of the past year or so at the Stratford Festival have become something of a cultural headache both for those working there as well as for the public. Indeed, it looked for awhile as if there would be no Festival at all this coming summer since each of the participants in this controversy — the artists, the Board of Directors, Canadian Actors’ Equity Association, the federal and provincial arts councils, the government — seemed correct and justified in their actions. Clearly, it was only the threat of no Festival at all which hastened and ultimately brought about a solution — the appointment of Canadian director John Hirsch to run Stratford for the next three years. Despite this, it is equally clear that few minds have really been changed and it would be surprising to find that any of the combatants have really moved from their previous opinions and actions.
Nathan Cohen a Review
Authors: Salutin Rick
Published: June 2023

Nathan Cohen: A Review was first produced by Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille on January 28, 1981. The play was directed by Paul Thompson with set and lighting by Paul Williams, costumes by Miro Kinch and original music and sound design by Phil Schriebman.
Le théâtre de la maintenance, Le jardin de la maison blanche, Une marquise de Sade et un lézard nommé King-Kong
Authors: Barbeau Jean , Rièse Laura
Published: June 2023

Jean Barbeau is no doubt a professional and original writer belonging to the new generation of dramatists whose plays contain considerable novelty not only in the portraying of characters but also in the rhythm, setting and language of their works. The three plays here mentioned are typical examples. The situations belong to Quebec and this continent. They reflect the problems, difficulties and obstacles that confront us continually. For that purpose, Barbeau chose ordinary people, not heroes or anti-heroes as in his former plays. In Le jardin de la maison blanche we meet the downtrodden, neglected, rejected, living miserably in the city. Normand, a black diabetic, is only allowed to work as a dishwasher because society sees him, says the author, just as a black panther. Benoît, another lonesome creature, is out of work, plays unsuccessfully at pointing his gun at people on the street or himself, hiding a kind protective heart under his misery. Marc and Hélène are a restless young couple, surfacing from a terrible car accident. Jacinthe is an American girl who drinks, uses drugs and obscene racist language. They are all placed in a comatose atmosphere hovering between life and death with all its phantasms. It would be a horrendous world had not the author woven into it some astonishing comic relief.
Le rideau se lève au Manitoba
Authors: Saint-Pierre Annette , Boniface St , Doucette Leonard E.
Published: June 2023

This is truly a pioneering work. Before Annette Saint-Pierre’s book, the only accounts of the evolution of francophone theatre in Manitoba had been a brief (four pages) but useful survey by Father Martial Caron in vol. V of Archives des lettres canadiennes, a few scattered columns by Jean-Joseph Trudel in the periodical Le Bonifacien, and a souvenir-volume commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Cercle Molière in 1975. These had supplied a few compass-headings: the rest was trackless waste.
From the Point of Emptiness
Authors: Flaszen Ludwik
Published: June 2023

I used to be a theoretician who worked with Jerzy Grotowski. But after a number of years in that role, I became a practitioner. It came just about the same time that Grotowski decided to leave theatre work for his para-theatrical work . When I began doing theatre, I learned one very important, concrete thing: that there is no message. Messages are made things and do not exist in and of themselves. Messages are a process within the work. Perhaps that awareness is what we mean by research.
Peter Brook: The Centre
Authors: Croyden Margaret
Published: June 2023

When in 1968. Peter Brook was invited to Paris by French actor. Jean-Louis Barrault to create a workshop with actors, writers, and directors from diverse backgrounds and cultures, the idea for The International Centre of Theatre Research was born. Brook, who had been for a long time exploring new ideas in the English theatre, became strongly impressed with the possibilities that might arise from commingling different cultures, and by a group of artists that might be dedicated to researching the basic aims and fundamental aspects of the theatre. Although the project was short, it had its effects: Brook did not forget the experience. It so whetted his appetite that two years later, he teamed up with producer-friend, Micheline Rozan and together they formulated the principles for a group of their own: The International Centre of Theatre Research.
Creating the Roles
Authors: Barba Eugenio
Published: June 2023

Eugenio Barba, a 44-year old Italian actor-director, started the Odin Teatret in 1964 in Oslo, Norway following an extended period of time working in Poland with Jerzy Grotowski. His actors worked during the day in various jobs; at night they gathered to collectively explore facets of their art. In 1965, the group accepted an invitation to work in a small town in northern Denmark called Holstebro, where a new cultural policy was being developed. The town, with a population of 20,000, risked much in choosing to support this unknown company. The risk, however, proved worthwhile in time.
Looking For An Audience
Authors: Reid Stan
Published: June 2023

Although experimental theatre can be regarded as being sufficiently established to have precisely defined forms, acceptable research methodologies and clear objectives it appears incapable of both finding and sustaining an audience which can ensure its survival. The momentum which carried experimental theatre research to modest success in the 1960s has given way two decades later to a continued scramble for a dwindling share of the public purse, diminishing audiences and dispirited participants.
Closing Down Vancouver
Authors: Langford Roger
Published: June 2023

Vancouver theatre recently suffered several earthquake shocks from which it has not yet recovered, nor learned the lessons implicit in the experience. From the beginning of February and continuing for thirteen weeks, a strike by municipal workers against the city of Vancouver meant that some companies using civic theatres had to cancel their programs. And perhaps worse, their budgets experienced extensive after-shock damage. Worst of all, the future significance of the events appears to have escaped all but the few attendants of real theatre.
Beckett in Buffalo
Authors: Buffalo Harry Pollock
Published: June 2023

From the total dark of the Center for Theatre Research in Buffalo the spotlight fades up gradually on a woman’s face. She is prematurely old, unkempt with grey hair. Huge eyes peer out of a white expressionless face. White hands clutch the arms of the rocker. As the spotlight widens we see that she is dressed in a black lacy high-necked evening gown adorned with sequins. After a long pause during which we are actively drawn into the non-activity the woman utters a hoarse whisper. MORE. As she starts to rock, slowly, effortlessly, her recorded voice speaks: ‘Till in the end/the day came/in the end came/close of a long day/when she said/to herself/whom else/time she stopped’. The disembodied voice continues in repetition and variation urged on at intervals by the one word MORE from the solitary character in Samuel Beckett’s new play Rockaby a fifteen minute dramatic poem. Billie Whitelaw, an accomplished English actress is both the Woman and the Voice in this haunting evocation of a life that has passed into limbo. Alan Schneider directed the piece with great subtlety.
France: Sartre on Theatre: Politics and Imagination
Authors: Dort Bernard
Published: June 2023

The following interview with Jean-Paul Sartre, which appears for the first time in English, took place in Paris in 1979, shortly before Sartre’s death. This interview, one of the few granted by Sartre focussing almost exclusively on theatre, was conducted by Bernard Dort, a renowned French critic and Professor of Theatre at the Sorbonne. It was originally published by the distinguished West German magazine. Theatre Heute, and appears here with the permission of Prof. Dort. It was translated for CTR by Michael Scott and Philippe Rouyer of the University of Bordeaux.
Denmark: Grotowski and Barba A Canadian Perspective
Authors: Fowler Richard
Published: June 2023

I was given a grant by the Canada Council for two purposes: to allow me to participate in Grotowski’s “Theatre of Sources” in Poland in August, 1980; and to make it possible for me to go to the Odin Teatret in Holstebro, Denmark, there to follow and to study their work, and to participate in the International School of Theatre Anthropology, a project led by the Odin’s director, Eugenio Barba, in Bonn, West Germany, in October, 1980.
Hungary: The Price Of Weil-Being
Authors: Tahn Andras
Published: June 2023

Poland may yet succeed in becoming the most liberal and free of all the socialist countries but Hungary is now among the wealthiest. Poles are currently rationing such basic items as meat, sugar and milk. All are available in abundance in Hungary. In abundance too — as a recent six week visit to Hungary showed me — are theatre companies and theatre productions. What are not so much in abundance are new plays, particularly plays looking at the contemporary social situation in this rich and fascinating land.
The Games they Play (At Siesta Time): Juegos a la hora de siesta
Authors: Mahieu Roma
Published: June 2023

The action takes place on a bright day, siesta time, in the corner of some park or square. In the background there is a high gray wall: centre stage, a park bench. A hammock is suspended from a tree which is to the left of the bench; the hammock should be at a height which makes it appear that the actor is swinging over the orchestra pit. Near the edge of the stage to the right of the bench, is a sandbox. The light is dazzlingly brilliant. The characters, although they are children, are played by adults; a mature restraint rather than a puerile interpretation should characterize these roles. In the interplay of characters the actors should caricaturize ‘miniature adults’, prototypes of their future selves. The properties should be commensurate with the actual size of the actors; therefore they will be larger than is ordinarily the case with children. When the stage is set, a shrill, strident chirping and singing of birds is heard, interrupted ever so often by sounds of children playing at war… rrrrrrrr… tata tatatatat… When the curtain rises, the stage is flooded with sunshine. Diego is playing in the sandbox; he is kneeling and his arms are extended outward in an imitation of a plane in combat; he simulates the march of tanks as well; he mimics bombs falling, explosions, and the roar of motors with his voice. Each time a plane is presumably hit, his body lifts off the ground, then falls, creating a shower of sand which falls over his body and reaches the orchestra pit; he is completely absorbed in the game and lost to the world.
Playwrights Showcase: A User’s View
Authors: Wade Bryan
Published: June 2023

Everyone seems to be workshopping plays these days and Onstage 81, Toronto’s first international theatre festival, was no exception. Playwrights Showcase, which was produced by the Guild of Canadian Playwrights for the Festival, presented four plays: Casual Violence by John Mills Cockell; Fire on Ice: The Legend of Howie Morenz by Keith Roulston; Last Exit To Disneyland by Bryan Wade; and Swell by Steve Petch. The idea behind the Playwrights Showcase, beside the beneficial effect of having a play workshopped and shown publically, was that it would let directors, producers and administrators from across the country, who were in Toronto for the Festival have a chance to see four different plays in their various stages of development.
Thunder Bay: Canada’s Other Festival
Authors: Filewod Alan
Published: June 2023

Popular theatre is a term much in vogue around the world today. Used to describe that theatre which is created for audiences usually ignored by the established middle-class theatres, the term embraces not only theatre for the people, but political theatre as well. In Canada, where commercial success is increasingly applied as a criterion of critical success, the decidedly non-commercial popular theatres have been largely ignored, and when they have been noticed (that is, when they can afford to tour to Toronto), they have had difficulty in winning acceptance as a serious and significant movement.
NAC Remembered
Authors: Ibbotson Anthony
Published: June 2023

The excitement, pressure and uncertainty surrounding the birth of performing arts festivals, which have subsequently become critically acclaimed events, are such that keeping an accurate record of those heady days is generally the last concern of the organizers.
An Introduction European Views
Authors: Green Joseph G.
Published: June 2023

For most of the past 300 years, European influences on Canadian theatre have been rather pervasive. During the last century, as Canadian artists have begun to work consciously for a sense of national cultural identity, those influences have been perceived to be either irrelevant or even counter-productive to the development of indigenous art-making. And, for the last decade, many artists here have deliberately shut themselves off from such foreign influences in their attempt to create Canadian theatre in their own image. That such a process of self-imposed isolation, resulting frequently in parochialism and even provincialism, was necessary to the development of our own theatre has now become clear to many observers.
The World Backstage
Authors: Scales Robert R.
Published: June 2023

From 1957 until the present I have held technical director positions in the regional professional theatres and educational theatres. In these 20 – plus years I have searched for technology to apply to theatre technical problems, traditional and nonconventional. My understanding and approach to theatre are centered in regional professional theatre which usually consists of a team of people who fall into one of three roles. These three roles work interrelatedly to produce theatre pieces.
Lighting: Untapped Potential
Authors: Dolgoy Sholem
Published: June 2023

Of all the arts in theatre presentation, lighting design is probably the youngest. Adolph Appia’s philosophical discussions at the turn of the century about plasticity of environment were not to bear fruit until the technological developments of the 20s. As for the concept of Lighting Design itself, Jean Rosenthal is generally acknowledged as the founder. Another of the modern pioneers is Louis Hartmann, possibly the first person to be given recognition for his contributions. Although David Belasco gave his credit as “Electrical Effects by …”, Hartmann’s work in 1911 for Peter Grimm was reviewed as “perhaps the most perfect example of stage lighting ever exhibited.” He and Belasco spent many hours rehearsing the complex design which had each character in a follow-spot. A reading of Hartmann’s book Theatre Lighting, reveals that there really have been very few ‘new’ ideas in this field.
Vancouver’s Arts Club: Getting Bigger
Authors: Millerd Bill , Langford Roger
Published: June 2023

Only in British Columbia. A theatre company operating two successful theatres, beginning work on a third, and actually making money on Canadian plays! The Vancouver Arts Club Theatre is hot stuff these days. And its latest popular and critical success, Talking Dirty by Vancouver’s Sherman Snukal, has become a runaway hit, sold-out nearly every night of the week, packing ‘em in to see some funny, yet serious, indigenous drama about life in one of the city’s affluent quarters.
Berlin Theatretreffen 1981
Authors: Stein Peter , Tracy Gordon
Published: June 2023

The Berlin theatre festival in 1981 made a dramatic comeback after the threat of extinction in 1980. In May and June of this, its 18th year, 12 productions from Austria, Switzerland, the Federal Republic, and West Berlin were performed as part of the main program; other productions of some of the invited theatres were also staged. Discussions with the audience after the performances and a public debate at the end of the festival were arranged. From the point of view of acting and direction the festival was of high quality; the plays themselves offered a wide range of themes and styles.
Period Style for the Theatre
Authors: Russell Douglas A. , Kerwin Shawn
Published: June 2023

Intended as a reference book for actors, Period Style for the Theatre is a very useful work for anyone who has ever had to research a particular historical period to reinterpret it for the stage.
Stage Makeup. Sixth Edition
Authors: Corson Richard , Welsh Norman
Published: June 2023

The training of an actor, whether amateur or professional, involves the development of body, voice and imagination. For some reason, however, little time is spent on physical appearance and makeup, leaving the actor to his or her own devices.
Edward Gordon Craig and The Pretenders
Authors: Marker Frederick J. , Marker Lise-Lone , Eichen Syvalva , Rubin Don
Published: June 2023

In 1926, the great English theatrical visionary Edward Gordon Craig found himself involved in a production of Ibsen’s The Pretenders at the Danish Royal Theatre in Copenhagen. Why he chose to get involved with “a reputable but distinctly out-ofthe- way state theatre, well removed, if only by virtue of the language barrier, from the mainstream of European theatrical activity” is only one of many questions that are approached by two of Canada’s foremost scholars of Scandinavian drama and theatre, Frederick and Lise-Lone Marker of the University of Toronto in their new study, Edward Gordon Craig and The Pretenders.
The Scenographic Imagination
Authors: Payne Darwin Reid , Stuart Ross
Published: June 2023

The Scenographic Imagination. a revision and extension of Darwin Reid Payne’s Design for the Stage: First Steps, is a detailed, thoughtful book packed with theories and suggestions, all supported and explained by pictures and sketches. It is not a “how-to” text for the amateur but a challenging work for the serious student of set design . All the expected topics are covered beginning with the education of the scenographer and going through the process of design from textual interpretation to concept to actuality, with some consideration also given to different stage forms. One of the most valuable sections emphasizes the importance of creative research in the theatre and provides a methodology for carrying it out. The Scenographic Imagination also benefits from the inclusion of appropriate essays by John Bury, Sean Kenny, Mordecai Gorelik, Stanislavski and others, which link the concepts back to the reality of the practising scenographer.
Celebrating the Nation: History and the Canadian Theatre
Authors: Rubin Don
Published: June 2023

The style is of another time. The impulse behind it — as well as the size of the language — is unmistakeably Wagnerian and, as such, more than a touch Romantic for contemporary sensibilities. The images, however, are our own. It was in the 1928-1929 Yearbook of the Arts in Canada, a major attempt at focussing the present for the future, that critic Augustus Bridle wrote:
Cultural Myths and Realities
Authors: Moore Mavor
Published: June 2023

I’d like to look at some of the cultural myths abroad in the modern world.

One of them is the Myth of the Superiority of the Old. This has been around for a long time, but it is still one that keeps a great many civilizations from doing what they might. In a phrase, it’s resting on one’s laurels. Because their societies have done something outstanding in the past, some older countries apparently see no need to do very much today.
Collective Creation: Process, Politics and Poetics
Authors: Filewod Alan
Published: June 2023

Although collective creation has been an important development in Canadian theatre over the past decade, we have not had the volume of critical writing and theoretical investigation of the form that one might find, for instance, in Latin America, where a similar movement has been analyzed systematically by directors and critics such as Boal, Buenaventura and Santiago Garcia.
Rex Deverell: Framing the Mysteries
Authors: Deverell Rex
Published: June 2023

Regina’s Globe Theatre has been making connections with its audiences through the years in ways that have made it the envy of many companies in English-Canada. One of those responsible for those connections is Rex Deverell, the Globe’s resident playwright. The following interview with Deverell was done by CTR scripts’ editor Robert Wallace. It is an edited version of a longer interview which will be published later this year by Coach House Press as part of a series of interviews under the collective title, The Work: Conversations with English-Canadian Playwrights.
Towards the Definitive Anthology
Authors: Wasserman Jerry
Published: June 2023

All of us are aware of how Canadian drama has fought its way to respectability over the past 15 years. Although battles still remain to be won, certain facts are undeniable — the body of plays that have been written, produced, and published; the three professional journals we can now boast; and the growing number of college and university classes devoted to the subject. Yet as recently as the mid-1970s, a major critical essay could still be entitled, “Is There a Canadian Drama?” Quantitatively, yes, was Brian Parker’s answer to his own question. “But what about quality? And is the drama in any way distinctively Canadian?” To these questions his answers were quite a bit more tentative.
The Way of Opposites
Authors: Barba Eugenio
Published: June 2023

The following piece by Eugenio Barba, Eistic director of Denmark’s Odin Theatre, appears here for the first time in English. It was translated for CTR by Vancouver director Richard Fowler who has been working with Barba over the past year.
The Performer: Training Interculturally
Authors: Scheduler Richard
Published: June 2023

The following was given as a lecture during the 1981 Toronto Theatre Festival as part of a series of workshops and seminars dealing with theatre training in North America. It appears here for the first time in English.
Let’s Train the Actor, Let’s Break the Rules
Authors: Latham David
Published: June 2023

Training an actor has little or nothing to do with systems, methods, programs, timetables and institutions. It seems to have everything to do with chaos, discovery, exploration, and revolution. 1 think if we could actually forget the idea that in order to train an actor we must prepare him/her for every kind of experience — be that plays, styles, directors, other actors, agents, etc. — then we could actually get somewhere in training real actors instead of some kind of homogenous puppet. Let’s train the actor.
World Theatre Day
Authors: Cook Michael
Published: June 2023

Every year on March 27th, Canada celebrates World Theatre Day, a promotional event initiated and sponsored by the International Theatre Institute. Throughout the world, special messages are read and published in more than 50 countries. This year’s Canadian World Theatre Day Message was written by Newfoundland playwright Michael Cook at the request of the Canadian ITI Centre (English-language). It was read publicly on World Theatre Day at the St. Lawrence Centre in Toronto by actress Frances Hyland and is published here for the first time with the permission of the ITI.
Canadian Radio Drama and the Radio Drama Project
Authors: Fink Howard
Published: June 2023

What is a radio play? In some ways drama is drama, whether in the theatre, on the television tube, in the cinema or on the radio. The main formal requirements of a dramatic text – plot, dramatic tensions and resolutions, the development of character and so on – are the same in any medium. For the actor a role is a role, a performance a performance, no matter how communicated. There are the same kinds of preparation, rehearsal, moments of truth. That given, one must try to define the differences: a radio play is a type of drama in which the main communicative instrument is sound. More elaborately, sound includes the words of the text; the differentiated voices of the actors and their interpretive performances; the sound effects; and the music – both bridges and supportive background. None of the visual codes of the stage is directly available to writer or producer: not the complete physical acting performance, nor costume, nor sets, nor the physical contiguity of the audience.
Memories and Some Lessons Learned
Authors: Ryga George
Published: June 2023

By its very nature, radio is a moment of life instantly committed to memory. Visceral and bold-stroke to arrest attention at all, radio drama has its own conventions and unities. We were becoming in a relatively short time masters of this art form when two events combined to divert this development – the advent of television, and the numbing paranoia of the Cold War. The rest, too, is now memory. In time one would hope this ground will be thoroughly examined by scholars and researchers to determine just how profoundly radio drama was to foundation the rise of our theatre as a reflection of post-colonial national maturity.
The Maritimes: New Work
Authors: Knowles Richard Paul
Published: June 2023

Two new plays by Maritime writers received their premiere performances at Theatre New Brunswick and Halifax’s Neptune Theatre last year, and one of these – Tom Gallant’s Step / Dance – seems quite deserving of wider attention. Step / Dance, originally commissioned for production elsewhere in 1973, but not then produced, is set in a Cape Breton fishing village and deals with the efforts of Joe Sam, a local fisherman, to fulfil his promise to bury his friend Guitar in a storm at sea. Through flashbacks introduced by a choric theme song which changes with each of the play’s three acts, Gallant explores the lives and loves of his characters, and their complex relationships with one another and with the sea.