bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Lipid -Lowering Effect of Polysaccharide (Pectin) of Viscum album L. Plant in Rats
Authors: Pozdnyakov Dmitry , Adzhiakhmetova Similla , Chervonnaya Nadezhda , Oganesyan Stanislav
Published: June 2023

Disturbances of lipid metabolism is a predisposing factor of cardiovascular diseases, which are accompanied by high mortality rates of the population - ischemic heart disease and ischemic stroke. Plant polysaccharides can be promising remedies for correction of lipid imbalance.

In this regard, the aim of the study was to assess the hypolipidemic activity of polysaccharides isolated from the leaves of mistletoe.

The test-object was the leaves of the white mistletoe (Viscum album L.) growing on the apple (Malus domestica Borkh.), and the pear (Pyrus communis L.). Polysaccharides (water-soluble polysaccharides and pectin substances) were quantitatively determined by the gravimetric method followed by reprecipitation from ethanol. The qualitative composition was evaluated by thin layer chromatography. Functional groups in polysaccharides were determined by titrimetric method. The hypolipidemic activity of the obtained polysaccharides was determined under oral administration at a dose of 100 mg / kg in Wistar rats by the change of the concentration of total cholesterol, triglycerides, LDL and HDL cholesterol. The change of the content of cholesteryl ester transfer protein and Niemann-Pick C1-Like1 protein was also determined.

As a result, it was found that among the polysaccharides in the leaves of mistletoe, pectin substances are predominate, which belong to the group of low-esterified pectins. A significant content of free carboxyl groups in pectins from the leaves of mistletoe was also found. The study of hypolipidemic activity showed that, among the polysaccharides of mistletoe leaves, pectin substances exert a more pronounced effect on lipid metabolism, the use of which reduced the content of triglycerides, total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol with an increase in LDL cholesterol in rats, probably due to a decrease in the activity of cholesteryl ester transfer protein and Niemann-Pick C1-Like1 protein. At the same time, at the level of the trend, mistletoe pectins showed a higher level of activity than analogous compounds obtained from the leaves of host-plants. It should be noted that the severity of the pharmacological effect of mistletoe pectins did not depend on the host-plants.

Thus, based on the obtained results, it can be assumed that pectins obtained from the mistletoe leaves can be a potentially effective and safety hypolipidemic agent.
The Ameliorating Effect of Oral Paquinimod Administration against Imiquimod Induced Psoriasis-like Inflammation in Mice
Authors: Khaleel Raghad Abdulsalam , Zalzala Munaf Hashim
Published: June 2023

Psoriasis is a chronic, inflammatory condition that primarily affects the skin, hair, and joints and is associated with significant humanistic and economic consequences. Psoriasis was induced in mice in this work using an imiquimod 5% cream, an immune response modifier that can cause psoriasis-like skin inflammation when given orally. Paquinimod is prepared as a suspension and has been orally given to mice before imiquimod application. The current study found that paquinimod suspension reduced psoriasis area and severity index, spleen index, skin thickness ,TNF-α,IL-23,IL17 level and gene expression of TNF-α,Nf-KB,IL-1B,IL-17in the (Paquinimod suspension+imiquimod) group substantially more than the (vehicle suspension+imiquimod) groups.
My Own Private Oshawa
Authors: Wilson Jonathan , Sahely Ed
Published: June 2023

Caution: Copyright Jonathan Wilson. This script is protected under the copyright laws of Canada and all other countries of the Copyright Union. Changes to the script are forbidden without the written consent of the author. Rights to produce, film or record in any medium, in any language, by any group, are retained by the author. The moral right of the author has been asserted. For copyright information contact: The Pistol Group, #315-25 St. Nicholas St., Toronto, ON M4Y 1W5 or Playwrights Union of Canada, 54 Wolseley St., 2nd Floor, Toronto, ON M5T 1A5. Tel.: (416) 703-0201. Fax: (416) 7030059. E-mail: cdplays@interlog.com
The Royal Engineers, 1858-1863: Theatrical Entertainment for and by the Enlisted Men
Authors: O’Neill Patrick B.
Published: June 2023

From the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, part of the British officer’s cultural attainment was his assistance in the provision of theatrical entertainment; however, it was not necessarily part of the attainment of enlisted men, many of whom, during the first part of the nineteenth century, could neither read nor write. For the enlisted men, private theatricals on a large scale began during the 1840s as a conscious attempt to “provide recreation and harmless amusement for the troops . . . so as to wean them away from the low beerhouses where they are encouraged to desert and commit other military offenses” (Bermuda). By 1842 Sir J.E. Alexander advised officers trying to decrease the desertion rate in British North America specifically to encourage theatricals in the barracks:

Music has a most humanizing tendency; it would be well to encourage that in a corps: and if theatricals can be conducted with the strict propriety of dialogue they will have a beneficial effect, and amuse the men in the long winter evenings. (475)
The Growth of Professional Theatre in Vancouver, 1963-1999
Authors: Page Malcolm
Published: June 2023

The Canada Council congratulated itself on a decade of growth in its 1961/62 annual report. In ten years, Mark Czarnecki summarized, “huge strides . . . had been taken, among them the founding of Stratford Festival in 1953 and the establishment of Winnipeg’s Manitoba Theatre Centre in 1958” (35). Similarly, Tom Henighan, in Ideas of North, asserts, “after the Massey-Levesque Report, the creation of the Canada Council, and the founding of the Stratford Festival, all in the 1950’s, Canadian professional theatre began to come of age” (42). Vancouver saw neither strides nor a coming of age. The fifties in the city saw the death of Everyman, the birth and death of Totem, the forming of Floliday (theatre for young audiences) and, a little later, the death of Theatre under the Stars.
Staging “North” in BC: Two Cariboo Gold Rush Plays
Authors: Grace Sherrill
Published: June 2023

“The Road Runs North” by Gwen Pharis Ringwood and The Song of the Serpent by Betty Lambert are both about the Cariboo Gold Rush. Both plays have considerable intrinsic interest to students of Canadian theatre and history, and both are part of a much larger phenomenon that I call the discursive formation of North; they contribute to a long history of Canadian representation of the North that can be traced back to the 1860s and which shows every sign of continuing. Before describing both plays, however, I want to consider briefly what Glenn Gould called “the idea of North” and to stress two key points that help contextualize these plays.
Mistranslation, Bad Faith and Even Worse: En français comme en anglais
Authors: Wren Jacob
Published: June 2023

I do not speak French. Nonetheless I thought I would direct a show about translation, a show that featured two anglophone performers from Toronto and two francophone performers from Montreal and in which one of the central performative activities was translation from English to French and back again. Strangely enough, this idea first occurred to me in Norway.
Down Dangerous Passes Road (Le Chemin des passes-dangereuses)
Authors: Bouchard Michel Marc , Gaboriau Linda
Published: June 2023

Caution: Copyright Michel Marc Bouchard, translation copyright Linda Gaboriau, 1999. This script is protected under the copyright laws of Canada and all other countries of the Copyright Union. Changes to the script are forbidden without the written consent of the author and translator or their agent(s). For copyright information and permissions please contact Des landes, Dickinson et Associés Inc, 4171, avenue Hampton, Montréal, QC H4A 2L1.
Special Festivals Review Section
Authors: Dicenzo Maria , Knowles Rie
Published: June 2023

The eighth edition of the Theatre Festival of the Americas (FTA) got off to a rough start. On opening night, after the festivities and the seemingly endless number of welcomes from politicians and sponsors at the Monument National had ended, the bulk of the opening night audience made its way over to Usine C, where Paula de Vasconcelos’s Les Bacchantes was scheduled as the main opening night event. Less than fifteen minutes into the show, however, the power went out, and some time later the performance was cancelled, leaving organizers scrambling to rearrange tickets for reviewers and others. The next day – the day before its scheduled opening – word came that another of the festival’s headline events from Montreal, Brigitte Haentjens’s production of Malina, was cancelled altogether when adaptation rights were oddly and belatedly refused by the estate of Ingeborg Bachmann.
Legal Advocate’s Report on the Findings of The Squeegee Project, 9 June 1999
Authors: Zweig Rina
Published: June 2023

In writing this report, I would like to challenge you, whether you are part of the justice system, the Ministry for Children and Families, a counsellor, psychologist, etc., or part of a concerned public, to act on the findings presented here.
Zine Theatre
Authors: Filewod Alan , Martyn Sarah
Published: June 2023

Zine is a concept that emerged out of fan cultures that circulated underground and self-published magazines, taking apart and re-assembling the texts of popular iconography. In a larger sense, zine describes a cultural strategy that repudiates the institutional structures in which art is commodified and counters the dominant paradigms of cultural production by establishing new communities of meaning and circulation. This issue of CTR imports the idea of zine to the theatre as a way of approaching theatrical performances that stand outside the normative boundaries of “the theatre.”
Funding Agencies for Italian Canadian Theatre Projects
Authors: Ceolin Mark
Published: June 2023

For a small, newly formed theatre company in Toronto, the first several years can prove to be its making or unmaking. The most innovative ideas and promising actors alone cannot always sustain a group in the absence of the funding necessary to move from conception to production. It is commonly understood that arts funding from municipal, provincial and federal sources is not to be expected during the start-up year, forcing producers to look elsewhere for the dollars necessary to create their first project or season. With respect to the creation of a corpus of works giving representation to Canadian citizens of Italian ancestry, it is fortunate that resources do exist; at the same time it is ironic that, in trying to create theatrical work that promotes a sense of Canadian identity in ethnic communities, an artist attempting to bridge gaps between inherited and adopted cultures often finds help most forthcoming from cultural agencies set up to promote foreign concerns in Canada.
A Modo Suo (A Fable): A Production History
Authors: Migliarisi Anna
Published: June 2023

Tony Nardi and I recently met to discuss his second play, A Modo Suo (A Fable), written in an Italianized Calabrian dialect and published here for the first time in an English translation by Antonino Mazza. The play was first staged at Canadian Stage Company’s Theatre Upstairs on Berkeley in April and May of 1990. It was produced independently by Tony, actor Mary Long and me and co-directed by Tony and Italian commedia master Alberto Fortuzzi. It featured Tony in the central role of Raffaele; Mary Long; Frank Crudele; Dom Fiore; Lucy Filippone; and me as Linda, the daughter. While A Modo Suo (A Fable) secured substantial funding from both government and private sources, was the subject of over twenty articles and reviews and received a Dora Mavor Moore Award nomination for Best New Play in the Small Theatre Division, from a historical point of view the production is important because it provided a focus for a number of questions about the production, reception and critical evaluation of plays written in a language other than English or French that are as relevant today as they were a decade ago. The mere fact that the play was performed in Calabrese by a group of professional Equity actors in an English-language mainstream theatre in downtown Toronto rather than in a local Italian church basement by amateurs caused a stir among the English and Italian media.
On the Streets with Cobblestone Youth Troupe: A Dossier
Authors: Forth Laura J. , Company Mixed
Published: June 2023

Mixed Company is a Canadian Centre of Theatre of the Oppressed and an established popular theatre company since 1983.1 Based in Toronto, this not-for-profit theatre is a member of the Toronto Theatre Alliance and the Theatre for Young Audiences Association of Ontario. In addition to our regular professional season, Mixed Company also works with communities and individuals to develop options, alternatives and solutions to key social issues through an interactive dramatic process. Mixed Company’s mandate is to use theatre as a tool for social change, and to this end we blend the work of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed with the teachings of the Deer Tribe Metis Medicine Society to create a unique style of Forum Theatre. The utilization of these “Sweet Medicine” teachings has been approved by the elders of the Deer Tribe Metis Medicine Society in Phoenix, Arizona.
Returning to Uncertain Sacrifice
Authors: Tansey Claire
Published: June 2023

It is a defamiliarizing experience to return to Uncertain Sacrifice after eight years; in fact, I was quite reluctant to revisit the script – and my production journal – which both hold so many emotional memories. Uncertain Sacrifice is the result of six months of tears and rage from a group of ten teenagers struggling with life. It is a raw, youthful text that documents what I can now interpret as the politicization of a group of young actors. The process, if not the content, politicized us in that we came to realize our own agency in the unique forum of theatre: a potent space where body and voice are empowered
Le théâtre adolescent
Authors: Graham Catherine , Beauchamp Hélène
Published: June 2023

Le théâtre adolescent is both a description of why, how and with whom teenagers engage in theatrical projects and a manifesto about what such projects should be and what they should help young people to achieve. The subtitle “Une pratique artistique d’affirmation” (“An Artistic Practice of Affirmation”)1 summarizes Beauchamp’s theory that adolescents who engage in the production of a play immerse themselves in a true work of art through which they reflect on their life and on their world. According to Beauchamp, this endeavour helps them to transcend their reality and express their view of the universe with a voice of their own. As a creative and learning process, it allows them to discover their personal strengths, to make changes in themselves and to expand their sphere of influence.
Lighting from Character: The Art of Jeffrey Dallas
Authors: Mcintosh Duncan
Published: June 2023

If creating theatre is like writing on water, then lighting design produces the shadow that reveals fleetingly what we have written. In the last part of the twentieth century, there was a master light designer who not only created some of the most memorable productions in the Canadian theatre but also developed a unique philosophy of repertory stage lighting. At the Shaw Festival, there is a scholarship for design apprenticeship in his name. His contemporaries have strong, vivid memories of his work and style. Kevin Lamotte, the present Head of Lighting at the Shaw Festival, says, “He taught me to be confident, to be bold.” Who was this Jeffrey Dallas?
Discipline Makes Better Art: Michael J. Whitfield Talks about Repertory and Opera Lighting with Allan Watts
Authors: Watts Allan
Published: June 2023

Michael J. Whitfield is a prominent international lighting designer who is currently Head of Lighting Design at the Stratford Festival of Canada. Michael is a member of Associated Designers of Canada. Allan Watts recently talked to him during a rehearsal break at the Stratford Festival.
Reviewing the Role of the Dance Critic in Toronto
Authors: Cornell Katherine , Saxton Nadine
Published: June 2023

It is time to review the role of the dance critic. During the Not Just Any Body dance education conference, held at the National Ballet School in Toronto in November 1999, it was clear that the dance community’s perception of the critic differs greatly from the critics’ perception of their own role. Even the Toronto critics expressed opposing points of view on their position and the power they have.
Smudge
Authors: Bulmer Alex
Published: June 2023

Caution: Copyright Alex Bulmer. This script is fully protected under the copyright laws of Canada and all countries of the Copyright Union. Changes to the script are forbidden without the written consent of the author. Rights to produce, film or record in any medium, in any language, by any group, are retained by the author. The moral right of the author has been asserted. For information regarding production rights, contact Nightwood Theatre Company, 9 St. Nicholas Street, Sixth Floor, Toronto, Ontario M4Y 1W5.
Theatre of Commitment in Francophone Canada
Authors: Beauchamp Hélène
Published: June 2023

It is not a new festival, but it has changed its name from the rather descriptive “Les 15 jours de la dramaturgie des régions” (reviewed in CTR 102) to the more catchy “Festival du Théâtre des Régions” (FTR). Founded by the Association des Théâtres francophones du Canada (ATFC) and the Théâtre français of the National Arts Centre (NAC), the Festival exists to bring together those professional companies and artists who write, create and produce theatre in French from Vancouver to Moncton and Caraquet. The Festival provides a showcase for selected productions, as well as precious time for discussions between companies and artists on co-producing and touring and official meetings with groups like the Canada Council, the National Theatre School and the Centre des auteurs dramatiques. In addition, Ontario’s Théâtre Action (TA), the West’s Association des Théâtres francophones de l’Ouest (ACTO) and the Association des Théâtres francophones du Canada hold their general meetings and elect their officers at the Festival; this year Guy Mignault of the Théâtre français de Toronto was elected president of ATFC for a two-year mandate.
body/absence/body: Symptomatologies
Authors: Newman Michelle
Published: June 2023

The theatre is the realm of incarnation, of flesh, of body. Yet it is also the realm of the disaster, of loss, re-membrance. The disaster of that absence upon which this remembrance, desire, is contingent. The disaster of this embodiment, still this body, and the beloved’s not-being-there. Above all, beyond all, the disaster of forgetting, as the theatre itself sometimes forgets its own origins in loss and absence. Forgets how “representation [always] entails the absence of the represented”: by now, almost axiomatic in theory, but how does this involve the body of the actor in theatre? (Doane 29).
DynamO Théâtre: Moving Images of Teenage Life
Authors: Lavoie Bernard
Published: June 2023

If theatre consists of good story telling, then the acrobatic performances of DynamO Théâtre create great theatre. Ever since it was created in 1981, this company of jugglers, acrobats, mimes and clowns (who have since lost their traditional colourful make-up) has worked to create a language that can integrate elaborate movement with story telling. At the time of its founding (explains Robert Dion, who co-directs the company with Jacqueline Gosselin), the artistic team felt that creating an elaborate and challenging approach to movement was not enough. They also wanted to make use of the physical tools developed through their experimentation to explore a different form of story telling. DynamO Théâtre was at a crossroads. It either had to stick to a format resembling a collection of circus numbers or move to a more theatrical form of presentation. DynamO Theatre needed to find a way to orchestrate movement and virtuosity toward meaning and, if possible, emotion. Their solution: to fuse physical performances into full-length theatre presentations.
Live and Kicking: A Disabled Audience Member Contemplates the Body in the Audience and on the Stage
Authors: Buckley Joanne
Published: June 2023

As a person who loves live theatre and tries to get to as much of it as is humanly possible, and as a person who happens to be physically disabled (in a wheelchair with cerebral palsy), I have thought plenty about the role of the body – mine and theirs, the audience member and the practically double-jointed, rubber-bodied performer for whom physical risk seems nothing on stage. People notice that the physical reality of live theatre is a dominant force for me: I shriek at the sight of actors wrestling a life-like lizard in front of me in Night of the Iguana at the Tom Patterson Theatre in Stratford; I am astounded at Susan Strohman’s gifts as a choreographer, whether she is teaching folks to do some high stepping in the London production of Oklahoma or shepherding actors and actresses dressed as old ladies and wielding walkers on the Broadway stage of The Producers. For me, one of the perks of live theatre is that it involves real risk to the physical body – theirs, not mine. Granted, some of it – maybe most of it – is illusion, though not as much as in the World Wrestling Federation. Still, actors do fall off stages from time to time; there are often doctors standing in the wings, and, to top it off, they can do what I can’t, sometimes eight shows weekly, and that is at least part of the magic of performance.
Visualizing the Music
Authors: Pegley Karen , Graham Catherine
Published: June 2023

One of Canada’s most famous opera productions recently returned to the stage of the Hummingbird Centre in Toronto after an eight-year odyssey of touring that has brought the Canadian Opera Company acclaim from critics around the world. First mounted in Toronto in 1993, Robert Lepage’s staging of Bluebeard’s Castle and Erwartung has travelled to New York, Edinburgh (where it won the prestigious £50 000 Scotsman Hamada prize for drama and music), Melbourne, Geneva, Hong Kong, Vancouver, and Cincinnati. As is by now well-known, Lepage bases his theatrical creation on the use of “resources,” ranging from pieces of text to familiar objects to artistic images in other media. What is striking in his stage direction of these two short operas, restaged for this production by François Racine, is the way Lepage treats the music itself as a resource. In this staging it would seem that the musical patterns of the score guide the creation of a series of visual images much more than do the verbal signs of the libretto. The result is a complex presentation of visual and aural images that strikes the audience as fantastically original without ultimately challenging the rather traditional messages of these psychoanalytically inspired operas.
Establishing Our Boundaries: English-Canadian Theatre Criticism
Authors: Wagner Anton , Carson Neil
Published: June 2023

This impressive volume is not, as the title might suggest, an anthology of reviews of Canadian theatrical productions, but a respectful (even reverential) study of those much-maligned chroniclers of the theatre scene – the critics themselves. Not for Anton Wagner and his collaborators the usual curt dismissal of newspaper reviewers as ignorant hacks. For Wagner, the best of these critics have functioned “as cultural healer[s] not only of local theatre institutions and their audiences, but also of [their] community at large by shaping and elevating the public’s artistic and moral taste” (Wagner 22). His aim is to record their “largely forgotten” contribution to the development of Canadian culture.
Chinese Theatre in Canada: The Bigger Picture
Authors: Yoon Jean
Published: June 2023

Gee, you know . . . I’m not Chinese. I’m Korean. And while I speak Mandarin, have performed in Chinese Canadian plays, billeted Chinese Canadian playwrights, and know my way around the dim sum cart as well as or maybe even better than the guest editor of this issue, I am, last I checked, still not Chinese. Yes, I maintain a passionate interest in the advancement of Chinese Canadian arts, but as a Korean Canadian artist, I situate myself within an Asian Canadian arts scene – one that is fluid, vibrant and inclusive.
The Spirit of China Lives in Canadian Theatre
Authors: Chua Derrick
Published: June 2023

Spring 2001 was an auspicious and unprecedented time for Chinese Canadian theatre in Toronto. In a span of less than two short months, three separate yet distinct shows opened in three of the leading theatres in Toronto. The common thread tying these three shows was that each dealt with the experiences of Chinese people immigrating to and living in Canada.
Gold Mountain Guest: A Director’s Diary
Authors: Hong John James
Published: June 2023

It’s funny, I’ve only become more in touch with my Chinese heritage since I became a theatre professional. I grew up in a tiny farming community in southern Alberta, the son of a Chinese shopkeeper, whose own father came to this country to build the railway. My grandfather abandoned the harsh railway life and walked through the Rockies, finally settling in the hamlet of Cluny (population 87), which sits on the bald Alberta prairie about halfway between Calgary and Medicine Hat. As the only Chinese family in such a small town, I spent my youth trying very hard not to be Chinese. My mother was Caucasian, so I gravitated toward her Irish heritage much more than my father’s traditions. Fast-forward several years: upon finishing my theatre training at the University of Calgary, I got my initial professional work because I was Chinese. I was confused . . . suddenly being Chinese was a good thing. I was fortunate to be cast in two separate productions of Madama. Butterfly, one at Alberta Theatre Projects, and then at the Arts Club Theatre in Vancouver, where I now live and work. I got several more parts because of my Chinese background and through that I delved deeper into the history and adventures of the Chinese side of my family; what had been a badge of shame as a child has grown into one of great honour.
One Side of the River: A Chinese Odyssey
Authors: Loughran Keira
Published: June 2023

As a third-generation Chinese Canadian, I never considered Chinese culture my own. Sure, I could use chopsticks and count to ten in Cantonese, but my Caucasian friends ordered better dim sum than me. As an actor, I shied away from Chinese projects, pushing instead for colour-blind casting for roles I felt more connected to.
I
Authors: Ng John
Published: June 2023

Caution: Copyright John Ng, 2002. This script is protected under the copyright laws of Canada and all other countries of the copyright union. Changes to the script are forbidden without the written consent of the author. Rights to produce, film or record in any medium, in any language, by any group, are retained by the author. The moral right of the author has been asserted. For copyright information contact: John Ng, 1509–470 Laurier Ave., Ottawa, ON K1R 7W9.
Views & Reviews
Authors: Graham Catherine
Published: June 2023

In this issue, three different contributors discuss how our perceptions of theatre and of the world are governed by the organization of bodies in space, whether geographic, scenographic or imaginary. Guy Sprung opens with an interesting overview of his company’s experience as the only North American company from north of the Mexican border participating in the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre in early September of this year. Through his discussion of his initial impressions of Cairo, of the organization of the festival and of the plays presented by some of the Arab companies present, Sprung makes it clear that a shift in geographical space cannot help but make one question the dominant perspectives of one’s own society. In contrast, he also notes how recent colonial history inflects the performance choices of many of the companies present; an interesting observation that might include his own choice to produce Beckett’s Fin de Partie/Endgame as the only Canadian entry in the Festival. In the end however, the question of control of space in the turbulent Middle East and its effects on everyday life in the region are foremost in his mind as he finds himself watching CNN coverage of the events of 11 September in an Arab cafe, where most of his fellow observers consider the Arab world, and not New York, to be the centre of their cultural space and cultural history.
Editorial
Authors: Chan Jennifer Kay
Published: June 2023

Never before have I been so happy to be dateless for dim sum. Last spring, many of my Asian theatre friends were busy with acting work, as several Chinese shows were being mounted within a very short time-frame. Was the timing of these Sino-productions merely coincidental, or had Chinese Canadian theatre come of age?
Québécìté: A Libretto in Three Cantos (First Draft)
Authors: Clarke George Elliott
Published: June 2023

This script, commissioned to he performed at the Guelph Jazz Festival 2003, is still at the draft stage and will be edited during the process of setting it to the music of dd Jackson.
Issues of the Night Time
Authors: King David
Published: June 2023

Issues of the Night Time was first produced at the Firehall Theatre, Vancouver, British Columbia in the summer of 1985. The cast was comprised of Barbara Pollard and Bill Dow. The production was directed by John Cooper. The four piece band included Robbie King, John Cooper, David King and John Fuhrman. Set design was by Georgianna Chappell.
The Good Life
Authors: Brooks Daniel
Published: June 2023

Caution: Copyright Daniel Brooks. This script is fully protected by under the copyright laws of Canada and all countries of the Copyright Union. Changes to the script are forbidden without the written consent of the author. For information regarding production rights, contact Daniel Brooks at Tarragon Theatre, 30 Bridgman Ave., Toronto, ON M5R 1X3.
Turning an Elephant into a Microphone: A Conversation on Translation and Adaptation
Authors: Clarke George Elliot , Glassco Bill , Massing Conni , Sherman Jason , Thompson Judith
Published: June 2023

The following panel discussion took place on 18 October 2002, as part of the Celebrating Canadian Plays and Playwrights Conference and Festival at a rehearsal hall beside the Studio Theatre in Stratford, Ontario. The discussion was transcribed by Jesse Stewart and edited by Ric Knowles.
Theorizing New Play Development in Canada
Authors: Tihanyi Deborah
Published: June 2023

I’d like to begin with some of my favourite stories about play development in Canada. The first takes place in 1907, the inaugural year of the Earl Grey Musical and Dramatic Competition, which was begun by then-Governor General Earl Grey to encourage Canadian theatre. Betty Lee, in Love and Whisky: The Story of the Dominion Drama Festival, recounts the development of that year’s winning play, Allan Danvers, devised and presented by a group from Winnipeg. At a loss to find a suitable script that would fit the allotted ninety-minute time limit, the man charged with the production, one Major Devine, decided that the group must create a new play. As Leyden Shiller, a cast member, tells it, “‘[t]he plot of Allan Danvers was blocked out by Major Devine over a plate of devilled kidneys in the old Marriagi Hotel. It was finished with the help of two collaborators, [local newspapermen] Ernest Beaufort and Wilson Blue‘” (qtd. in Lee 69).
The 3rd Africanadian Playwrights’ Festival
Authors: Shaver Andrew
Published: June 2023

The 3rd Africanadian Playwrights’ Festival, that took place from 22–27 April 2003, was one of those rare cultural gatherings under the rubric of a Festival, that managed to celebrate, question and advance theatrical practice through the creation of a forum for discussion and debate, performance and reception, all integrated by a conceptual fluidity that blurred traditional lines of demarcation between academic criticism and vital artistic practice.
Theatre Without Borders
Authors: Astle Robert , Philpott Wendy
Published: June 2023

While preparing to teach advanced clown at Concordia University, Canadian performer (Heart of a Dog), director and teacher Robert Astle was faced with a surprising dearth. He found no recent publications on clown, mask, physical and other forms of mechanically based theatre practice in this country. Astle knew first hand this was no reflection of what is really happening, but these theatre practices, by their slippery natures, can slip through the cracks of documentation and seem to defy classification of genre or ism. They are, as Astle’s book of interviews clearly shows, a theatre without borders.
Often the only things left from a performance are the pictures
Authors: renaud Yves
Published: June 2023

As a stage photographer I cannot be a control freak. I depend on things such as light, set design, cast, costumes and stage direction, over which I have no say. I’m left with choosing the best angles, the best moments in the show, photo-wise, and framing.
FemFest
Authors: Borody Claire
Published: June 2023

From 7-15 June 2003 the Colin Jackson Theatre at Winnipeg’s Prairie Theatre Exchange was home to FemFest: an eight-day festival celebrating women playwrights and their plays. The event was organized by Hope McIntyre, Artistic Director of Sarasvàti Productions, who also serves as the Chair of the Women’s Caucus for the Playwright’s Guild of Canada and the Outreach Director for the International Centre for Women Playwrights. The festival was born out of McIntyre’s need to take action that would contribute to a change in the publishing and production trends revealed by two major surveys of playwrights in Canada.
Playing for a Just World
Authors: Varma Rahul
Published: June 2023

On the night of December 2, 1984, Union Carbide’s pesticide plant in Bhopal, India exploded, engulfing large parts of the city in a deadly poisonous gas, Methyl Iso Cynide (MIC). Men, women and children died by the thousands. By morning the death toll was four hundred, by sunset twenty-five hundred, and by the following day numbers had no meaning. Bhopal had become the world’s largest peacetime gas chamber. More than twenty-thousand people have died to date and the figure is still rising. Clear evidence linking Warren Anderson, the CEO of the now-defunct Union Carbide, to the Bhopal disaster has been disclosed and affirmed in a court of law (Sarangi); yet Anderson still has not been tried and is enjoying life as a free man in the United States.
Disability Arts and the Place of Mental Illness on the Stage
Authors: Johnston Kirsty
Published: June 2023

In March 2003 a festival at Toronto’s Harbourfront Theatre featured a wide variety of theatre and other performing arts groups all committed to the project of re-imagining the place of mental illness on stage.1 The Madness and Arts 2003 World Festival, organized by Toronto’s Workman Theatre Project (WTP) and co-presented with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, operated with an activist mandate: to gather artists from around the world who involve people with mental-illness experience in their work, who write about and perform plays with mental-illness themes or problems at their core and who actively seek to address assumptions about and the public stigma attached to mental illness. This is an activist agenda because it seeks both to connect artists with mental illness experience and interests and also to challenge negative stereotypes about mental illness.
TRAPS
Authors: Nolan Yvette
Published: June 2023

Caution: Copyright Yvette Nolan. This script is protected under the copyright laws of Canada and all other countries of the Copyright Union. Changes to the script are forbidden without the written consent of the author. Rights to produce, film or record in any medium, in any language, by any group, are retained by the author. The moral right of the author has been asserted. For performance rights contact the Playwrights’ Guild of Canada.
The Origins of Black Theatre in Montreal
Authors: Bayne Clarence S.
Published: June 2023

Montreal’s early experiences of Black theatre go back to the minstrel shows of the 1850s at the Odd Fellow’s Hall and the Garrick Club Theatre. These shows seldom involved Black artists. The companies consisted of white performers, who painted their faces black to adopt the facial traits of the Black performer. These minstrel shows presented caricatures of Blacks, in an extremely racist and demeaning light. In 1851, a Black group, called the Real Ethiopian Serenaders from Philadelphia, added to this buffoonery and the demeaning of Blacks, through its Shaker burlesque act. Garry Collison writes that parodies like the [Real] Ethiopian Serenaders’ “Shaker Burlesque” or the standard comic lecturer who spouted gibberish “played flagrantly to the white racist beliefs in the intellectual inferiority of blacks” (Collison 180). Far from educating its audiences as to the social value of Blacks and Black culture, the shows served to implant images of Blacks as childlike, of low intellectual capacity, and incapable of being assimilated into white society and civilization; as capable merely of a clownish, clumsy imitation of white culture (Collison 180). The minstrel shows continued to be a very popular form of theatrical entertainment throughout the later part of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Their racist social content received very little critical disapproval in the press of the time. In fact, historian Robin Winks considers this to be one of the principal instruments by which Canadians had, by the end of the nineteenth century, learned to be racist in their perception of and attitudes towards Blacks. It took approximately eighty years, after the 1851 appearance of the Ethiopian Serenaders at the Royal Theatre, before we began to see the emergence in Montreal of the social, political and economic conditions from which a theatre movement initiated by Blacks, for Black expression, development and pride could take root.
The AfriCanadian Playwrights’ Festival
Authors: Sears Djanet
Published: June 2023

I have a dream, a longing in my heart. A dream that one day, at any given time of the year, I will be able to find at least one play that is filled with people who look like me – telling stories about me, my families, my friends, my communities and my cultures. I was seventeen the first time I read a book by an author of African descent and nineteen the first time I attended a Black play. I have also grown to believe that stories, in all of their forms, are nutrition for the soul. So this dream, this wish, while it comes out of a need for my progeny to have a different experience from my own, is also based on a very personal desire for my own continued nurturance. The AfriCanadian Playwrights’ Festival was founded as a means to enable this dream.
Staging Lieutenant Nun
Authors: Schweitzer Marlis
Published: June 2023

The late August sun descends, as a troupe of actors dressed in military garb untie rowboats from their moorings and begin to paddle 100 metres toward shore. In the distance, the Olympic Mountains emerge from the ocean, silhouetted against an orange and pink sky. Seagulls cry overhead. A Canadian flag flaps in the breeze. One of the actors begins to strum softly on a guitar, and the other performers join him in a haunting Spanish song about love and death. The music is faint at first, but grows ever stronger as the boats approach the shore. It is a breathtaking and delightfully theatrical moment.
Making the Invisible Visible
Authors: Maxwell Victoria
Published: June 2023

There is something very mischievous about the possibility of being invisible. You can sneak unseen into places that perhaps wouldn’t normally allow you entrance, do activities without the permission of those who have the power to say “no.” These are some of the strange advantages of wearing the mantle of an invisible disability. Psychiatric disorders, chronic illness, epilepsy, dyslexia all are what have been called “invisible disabilities”; that is, those conditions that remain hidden from view. Some consider it a benefit to have a disability that goes undetected; that I can choose when and if to reveal. Those in wheelchairs or with cerebral palsy do not have this choice. Perhaps, it means I avoid discrimination until I disclose my illness. But it may also mean that I live in fear of being “outed.”
Iris’ Tours: Pitfalls, Potholes and Chutzpah
Authors: Bissett Aubry , MeQueen-Fuentes Glenys , MacNaughton Chris
Published: June 2023

Some events are so monumental that they demand theatrical presentation. Some people are so dynamic that they need a stage. With Aubry Bissett, both are true.
Drama in the Maritimes: Tides (Plays) Are Strong
Authors: Belliveau George
Published: June 2023

During a keynote address at the 2004 Shifting Tides: Atlantic Canadian Theatre conference, Mary Vingoe noted how, despite the fact that the population of the Atlantic region is small and that the arts are severely underfunded (making it a challenging place to work for theatre artists), Atlantic Canada arguably produces the country’s best English dramatic poets. The recently published anthology Marigraph: Gauging the Tides of Drama from New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island clearly illustrates and supports Vingoe’s claim. This welcome collection, edited by Bruce Barton, highlights ten contemporary plays from the Maritime provinces. A number of the writers included in the anthology, such as Wendy Lill, Daniel MacIvor and Kent Stetson, are nationally and internationally recognized playwrights, while some of the others have been producing fine work for a number of years within the Maritimes despite not being nationally recognized (yet!). Each play has had at least one professional production, and it is easy to imagine its stage potential in a reading. Like Jerry Wasserman’s Modern Canadian Plays, this anthology provides educators, researchers, producers, practitioners and the general public a diverse collection of plays that, I think, read, play and teach well, in addition to enlightening the mind and spirit.
A Selection of New Plays From Playwrights Canada Press
Authors: Read Robyn
Published: June 2023

Linda Griffiths’ Chronic is the story of Petra, a Web designer in her thirties, suffering from what appear to be the symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome. Defined as chronic, rather than a hypochondriac or one who is suffering from a critical illness, Petra’s disease is never given an exact name. What the play explores are the possible causes of her condition – repression, guilt, stress – and how it affects her relationships with others: her boyfriend Chris, who wavers between faithful and unfaithfulness, her competitive female co-worker Amber, her high-strung workaholic boss Oscar, her non-traditional doctor Diane, and even the Virus itself. Though the Virus seduces Petra, she knows that the Virus is unpredictable, an unknown that cannot be trusted. As an infection that frequently plagues both people and computers and can have a lasting impact, the Virus is a vehicle that Griffiths uses to explore the repercussions of “the wave of new connectivity” in contemporary society (13).
The Actuals of Drama and Dreams
Authors: Houston Andrew
Published: June 2023

In the mid-1960s, when Richard Schechner first began working as a theatre practitioner and educator in New York City, he found himself under the spell of “happenings” created by a variety of young artists in unique locations across the city. In particular, he was captivated by the creations of Allan Kaprow; of which he said, “Kaprow’s work, more than any other I know, has the simple quality of “happening” - of something that is. By ever so slight a change or heightening he converts everyday actions into ‘mysteries’” (Performance Theory 65). The concept of Kaprow’s “mysteries” had a profound effect on Schechner’s thinking about the deep structures present in performance, from around the world and throughout time. Schechner recognized that “happenings introduce us to the idea that art is not a way of imitating reality or expressing states of mind. At the heart of what Kaprow calls a mystery is the simple but altogether upsetting idea of art as an event - an ‘actual’” (Performance Theory 36).
A Politics in Search of a Poetics: The Aesthetic Questions of a Popular Theatre Artist
Authors: Mendel Tessa
Published: June 2023

As a popular theatre worker in Nova Scotia — meaning essentially that my work is marginalized, unrecognized, and often even I am not sure how to describe what I do – I crave the opportunity to reflect deeply on my practice as it relates to my values and my understanding of why I do this work. Given this, I was very excited to have the opportunity to come together with fellow Popular Theatre workers, from other countries and the rest of Canada, at Rencontres Internationales de Théâtre d’intervention (RITI), hosted by Théâtre Parminou, in Victoriaville, Quebec, in June 2004. Did I say popular theatre? Interventionist theatre, activist theatre, community-based theatre, theatre for social change — we can’t even decide on a name, and at any gathering, seem to spend an inordinate percentage of our time trying to define ourselves and our work.
“At War with Commercial Entertainment Mediocrity”: Interview with High Performance Rodeo Founder and Curator Michael Green
Authors: Bennett Susan , Farfan Penny
Published: June 2023

Michael Green: Well, the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that it was born of frustration, really. In our [One Yellow Rabbit’s] third or fourth year or whenever it was that we did the first festival, we had just been thrown out of the third theatre — the third facility — that we had upgraded ourselves to be able to have an audience come and see a show. The first place was the back space at the Off Centre Centre gallery, which is where One Yellow Rabbit was born — that and [Calgary nightclub] Ten Foot Henry’s. Then, we had graduated from there — they were losing the space, the building was being sold — and so we had to find another place. The second place [the ION Centre] was an old auto repair garage on the 17th Avenue, and we shared that place with [performer] David Cassel’s companies for about a year or two anyway. We had a falling out with David Cassel, so we decided to take ourselves elsewhere and then we found another place. It was the second — no, it was the third floor of a building that’s still there and it’s called the SkyRoom. It’s a club, but it was called the SkyRoom during the prohibition. It was a booze can, and so there was a beautiful hardwood floor and amazing recessed details in the plaster ceiling. So we did our best to bring it back to maybe what it might have looked like and then started doing theatre in there.
Memory from the Deep Rodeo Barrel
Authors: Clarke Denise
Published: June 2023

Memory takes me back to the years before the Rodeo began. I was, at the time, an independent “theatre-dance” artist, which was what we named the particular kind of dance mixed with onstage talking that I was tackling in 1983. You could also get away with “dance-theatre” as a handle, and I used “dance-drama” for a good while too — all this to give a sense of the kind of naming and defining we were up to in our early creative practices.