bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Celebrating Twenty Years
Authors: Filewod Alan
Published: June 2023

With these words, Don Rubin launched CTR in 1974, and twenty years later we’re still trouping on. Twenty years is a long run for a theatre magazine in Canada. In fact it’s a record. Hence this celebration issue.

These past twenty years have seen vast changes in Canadian theatre; many names have come and gone, careers have started and ended, literally thousands of new plays have played to ever more demanding audiences. The topography of the theatre as a public institution has undergone radical changes since 1974. Through all these years, CTR’s successive editors have worked to be at the wavefront of change.
Information Theatre
Authors: MacLeod Douglas
Published: June 2023

In the theatre of information everything counts. Long before the actors take the stage, the theatre is gathering information for the coming performance. As the audience mills about the lobby, video cameras are silently rolling – a man in a green jacket checks his coat – and a series of discreetly placed microphones tape the conversations of unsuspecting theatregoers – a woman is overheard to say, “I hate all this technology.” Even credit card purchases at the bar are recorded. In a darkened control centre deep within the building, a team of directors monitors all these activities. They collect scraps of conversations and capture gestures, adding them to a database of other performance information gathered from the previous presentations of the work.
CyberShaw: A 19th-Century Mandate Meets 20th-century Technology
Authors: Johnston Denis
Published: June 2023

The Shaw Festival is unique among Canadian theatres, and virtually unique among world theatres as well. It is one of only five major repertory theatres in the English-speaking world: the others are the Stratford Festival, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, and the twin flagships of British classical theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National. In addition, the Shaw Festival is the only one of these companies to have chosen a specific period of history as its mandate: it produces only plays written during the lifetime of Bernard Shaw. The company describes this mandate as “plays by Bernard Shaw and his contemporaries (1856-1950) – plays about the beginning of the modern world”.
Leaping into the 21st Century: Computer Technologies for Dance
Authors: Warner Mary Jane , Stitt Norma Sue Fisher
Published: June 2023

Technology and dance are not strangers to one another. In the seventeenth century, mechanical devices such as changement à vue and cloud machines resulted in a spectacular form of theatre. In the 19th century the development of gas lighting, the pointe shoe and the use of wires had a tremendous impact on dance technique and the performance environment of dance, creating an atmosphere which drew the audience into a fantasy world. More recently, technology has been used to inform the dance world of the realities of the physical demands of dance through electrodes attached to the body and linked to the computer. Information gathered on the use of muscles, stress placed on joints, and cardiovascular measures have increased awareness of how we have taught and how we might teach in the future.
Sanity Clause
Authors: Grande Louis Del , Ross Neil
Published: June 2023

Al Stage curtains part to reveal a Guinea-pig sitting - or standing - in front of a white background as the Boswell Sisters sing “Crazy People” and the opening credits roll.
Dying to be Thin; Blue Dragons; Hunter of Peace; The Glorious Twelfth
Authors: Goodwin Jill Tomasson , Carson Linda , Armstrong Gordon , Stearns Sharon , Storey Raymond , Page Malcolm
Published: June 2023

In the review article, Malcolm Page reviews for us the products of a new publishing house in Victoria: Scirocco Drama. As the book review editor, I applaud Scirocco’s daring. To start up a publishing company in these less than ideal economic times, and one that specializes in Canadian drama, testifies to an admirable entrepreneurship and to a belief in the number and variety of our playwrights.
Someday; Castrato
Authors: Taylor Drew Hayden , Nelson Greg , DiCenzo Maria
Published: June 2023

Drew Hayden Taylor’s Someday is based on a short story he wrote for The Globe and Mail. Published as the annual Christmas story on 24 December 1990, it had the distinction of being the first piece of fiction to ever appear on the front page. De-ba-jeh-mu-jig Theatre Group (Manitoulin Island) produced the play in 1991 and it premièred at the Wikwemikong Reserve, Ontario, an appropriate setting for a play which takes place “in a fictional Ojibway community on the Otter Lake Reserve, somewhere in central Ontario”. The location is left deliberately vague because the play deals with the painful reality of families torn apart by state intervention; as the production notes assert, it could “take place in any Native community in Canada”. The action of the play revolves around a mother, Anne Wabung, and her daughter Barb who lives with her on the reserve. Rodney, a friend of the family, functions as a framing/narrator figure, generating much of the humour, while filling in the background. As Christmas approaches, events take a surprising turn for the Wabungs – Anne not only wins a five-million-dollar lottery, but even more significantly, she is reunited briefly with the daughter who was taken away from her as a baby by the Children’s Aid Society 35 years earlier.
Making It Happen A Commercial Model for Self-Production
Authors: Dempsey Shawna , Miliari Lorri
Published: June 2023

Lorri Miliari and I became friends in 1986. I arrived at the first day of rehearsal for Michi’s Blood (a Crow’s Theatre Production), and found her, the stage manager, knee deep in water in Harbord Street’s Ohm Performance Space. Flooding was a new foible to Ohm, but neither of us were particularly surprised, and together, stoically, bailed it out.

I had begun my professiona l wo rk in theatre in 1984, stage managing for D.O. Kugler, and acting as summer administrator for Nig htwood Theatre. In both of these capacities, my duties included countless tasks that one would not usually consider part of these job descriptions. This was to be the case during my six years as a worker in alternative and children's theatre. Everybody did everything because we had to. Lorri's career was not dissimilar. At the age of sixteen she learned to run a lighting board one afternoon, so that she could operate it that evening for one of the first annual Rhubarb! festiva ls. Through these do-or-die situations we both acquired a tremendous number of skills, all of which enabled the presentation of live art. Mopping the floor of Ohm was yet another adventure in how to make theatre happen.
Fourth Season at 4th Line: A Conversation with Robert Winslow
Authors: McCarthy Beth
Published: June 2023

In 1992, returning to the farm where he grew up, Robert Winslow started the 4th Line Theatre Company. Named after the concession road where the farm is located, the theatre is just outside of Millbrook, 20 minutes south of Peterborough, Ontario. Only in its fourth season, the theatre company has already enjoyed immense popularity. The Cavan Blazers, the flagship show, launched Winslow and 4th Line into a series of environmentally-staged plays that incorporate local stories with outdoor staging that transcend the historical context from which they are derived.
Thinking About Boards: Survival Tips for the Theatre
Authors: Bouzek Don
Published: June 2023

Think about a Christmas Carol For a moment picture Alastair Sim poking his head out the window, looking down at some poor street kid, laughing and telling him to buy a big turkey for Bob Cratchit. Later he will offer Cratchit a pay raise and a doctor for Tiny Tim.

Usually I get caught up in the Christmassy feel of all this. I seldom think about the fact that it might be Cratchit’s right to have food on the table, decent medical care for his kids and a living wage. All this without having to ease his employer’Sconscience for years of abuse. It’s the Victorian view of life - social services are the result of the largesse of those with money.
Edmonton’s Chinook Consortium Programming for “The New Excitement”
Authors: Perkins Don
Published: June 2023

For some of its members, it’s a chance to move in from the Fringe and establish themselves in a fairly substantial sidestream, if not exactly the mainstream, as “the cutting edge of what’s happening in Alberta Theatre”. For others, it’s the “next generation of Edmonton theatre artists staking out a home for themselves”, a chance to move Generation X theatre out of a nomadic Mactheatre existence and into something with a real future.
Contemporary British Drama, 1970-90: Essays from “Modern Drama”
Authors: Zeifman Hersh , Zimmerman Cynthia , Noonan James
Published: June 2023

This volume is an important commentary on many of the recent playwrights on the British stage. It consists of twenty-one articles by as many critics, on fourteen recent dramatists. Some of the more prominent playwrights get more than one article – there are three on each of Pinter, Stoppard and Bond, and two on Shaffer – and one on each of the ten others – Ayckbourn, Hampton, Storey, Gray, Griffiths, Churchill, Brenton, Hare, McEwan and Edgar. And there are two articles on socialist drama.
Writing “Angélique”
Authors: Gale Lorena
Published: June 2023

Historically, Marie Joseph Angélique was a slave who, in 1734, set fire to her mistress’s home in Montreal to avenge her impending sale, and cover her escape with her white lover. The conflagration destroyed a substantial portion of the city and she was subsequently captured, tried and hanged.
Tokyo Festival of Canadian Drama
Authors: Akihiko Senda , Poulton Cody
Published: June 2023

For many years now, Canadian theatre has really been an unknown quantity for most Japanese theatre-goers. Economic relations between Canada and Japan have been deep and long-lasting but cultural, especially theatrical, ties between the two countries have been few and far between.

When you ask Japanese people about English-language theatre, virtually to the man (or woman) they will think of hit plays and musicals from Broadway and the West End. British and American theatre and musicals are extremely popular on the Japanese stage, both as touring shows and local productions translated into Japanese. This flood of hit shows from England and the United States has left Canadian theatre almost completely in the dark.
Evidence to the Contrary; Big-Time Women from Way Back When, includes Jehanne of the Witches A Woman’s Comedy; Playing Bare
Authors: Pedneault Hélène , Gaboriau Linda , Clark Sally , Herst Beth , Champagne Dominic , Tepperman Shelley , Cottreau Deborah
Published: June 2023

When this packet of plays spilled onto my desk, I first asked why these scripts were mailed to me for collective consideration. What common ground did they share? The most obvious and least enlightened response is that all four plays are written by relatively well-known Canadians. There is, however, one significant difference: Hélène Pedneault and Dominic Champagne are francophone writers from Québec; Sally Clark and Beth Herst are anglophone writers who reside in Ontario. This alone rules out the possibility that the playwrights speak from a mutually shared cultural perspective – as contentious an idea as it may be. In addition, the fact that Pedneault, Clark, and Herst are female and that Champagne is male, seriously undermines the prospect that the dramatic material is written in the feminist vein. (I admit, I have read convincing criticism which supports the claim that men can be feminists.) What further distinguishes the two French from the two English plays lies in their alleged influences: Pedneault and Champagne lean towards a European-style examination of individuals in the devastating throes of an existential crisis; Clark and Herst opt for historically cloaked, feminist examinations of social mores and female relationships.
Maple Leaf in the Pear Garden
Authors: Lau William
Published: June 2023

During the Tang Dynasty in China, Emperor Hsuan Tsung (712-755) founded the Pear Garden Academy, the first professional music and dance performance troupe within the royal court. This important institution is considered to be the origin of Chinese opera. Subsequently the performance of Chinese Opera was referred to as the “pear garden profession” and opera performers were known as the “children of the pear garden”.
Migrant Eyes: Canadian Views on Prague’s Post-Revolutionary Theatre
Authors: Irwin Kathleen
Published: June 2023

Interviewer Kathleen Irwin spent three months in Prague last spring completing an MA/European Scenography at the Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design in London, England. She used this opportunity to speak with fellow Canadian theatre professionals who find, in the immigrant situation, a chance to express their own emigre aesthetic.
In the Ring
Authors: Dickson Dalpé
Published: June 2023

In the Ring translated by Robert Dickson was first performed in the Tom Patterson Theatre of the Stratford Festival from 22 June to 13 August 1994.
Two Weeks, Twice a Year, YP Three: Three Plays from Young People’s Theatre
Authors: Thomas Colin , Lazarus John , Roca Maristella , Wing Paula Adele , Greenberg Joel
Published: June 2023

This quartet of plays for young audiences provides a valuable overview of the current state of children’s theatre writing. The four plays have received major productions as well as glowing critical and audience response. Three of the four have also won prestigious awards. How fortunate, then, that Scirocco Drama (Two Weeks, Twice a Year) and Playwrights Canada Press (YP Three)have seen fit to publish these works
Performing Asian Canadian in Vancouver
Authors: Yhap Beverly
Published: June 2023

The scene opens in the dark and stays that way for what feels uncomfortably long until Voice A says:

A: Hey, people! I came for a show. (beat)Come out, come out, wherever you are! B: Sssssh! Can’t you see - it hasn’t started. If you’d be quiet, may be the lights would goon and - A: Was I talking to you? B: You wereventing …
Two Rabbits on the Rim An Interview with Blake Brooker
Authors: Doolittle Joyce
Published: June 2023

The One Yellow Rabbit Performance Theatre was formed in 1981 “to produce vital and surprising original theatre entertainments”. Blake Brooker, Michael Green, and Gillian Raby were the first artistic directors. Green and Brooker currently run the company with Grant Burns, longtime business manager. Denise Clarke has been associated with the company since its beginnings as actor and choreographer and, lately, playwright. She and Brooker married in 1989. One Yellow Rabbit occupies a black box space along the Plus-15 Walkway of the Calgary Centre for the Performing Arts called The Secret Theatre. One Yellow Rabbit has toured extensively in Canada and abroad.
Muenbotoke
Authors: Druick Don
Published: June 2023

I dedicate this essay to Michael Goldberg, video producer extrordinaire, who first showed me the way into Tokyo culture, and who lives there still. For all his help and friendship these many many years.
Singapore: Notes from a Phantom Tour
Authors: Fallis Alex
Published: June 2023

I began rehearsals for the Singapore and Hong Kong leg of the international tour of The Phantom of the Opera. Rehearsals were in Toronto for two weeks then off to Singapore. About half the cast was at the rehearsals in Toronto, so I really didn’t have a sense of the show. Many scenes were never done, and most other scenes were understaffed. Luckily for me, most of the people in my main scenes were new to the tour as well, so I did get to do them with all characters. It was odd to be at rehearsals with close to twenty people and realize that it was only half the cast.
Singular Voices: Plays in Monologue Form, The Hope Slide / Little Sister
Authors: Hamill Tony , MacLeod Joan , Chung Kathy
Published: June 2023

In CTR 79/80 Ann Wilson wrote that solo performances highlight the theatrical production of subjectivity and exemplify the “ideology of presence” prevalent in conventional concepts of theatre. Defining auto-performances as those in which the performer’s and character’s identity are conflated by the use of the pronoun “I”, she points out that a significant quality of these works is their confessional nature and the association of confessions with the production of “truth”. She also suggests that a sense of personal authenticity is at stake for the author/performer in such auto-performances.
JEU, #70 mars 1994, Prornethée Enchaîné, Carta de Ajuste ou Nous N’Avons Plus Besoin de Calendrier, Original Soundtracks of Theatrical Performances
Authors: Vois Michel , Eistob Kevin
Published: June 2023

Over the past decade, translations of plays by Michel Tremblay and Robert Lepage have given Québécois theatre a firm international foothold. The Guid Sisters(the Scots translation of Tremblay’s Les Belles Soeurs) earned critical praise at the Edinburgh Festival (1987); equally enthusiastic reviews supported Lepage’s Dragon Trilogy at the Los Angeles Theatre Festival (1990) and his Needles and Opium at the Chicago International Theatre Festival (1994). As the renown of this identity-conscious region’s dramatic repertoire has grown abroad, Quebec’s theatres have been producing plays by overseas authors and artists from Quebec’s international and immigrant communities. The recent Festival de Theatre des Ameriques brought theatre professionals from five continents to Montreal. Far from abdicating its noteworthy support for homegrown dramatic talent, Quebec’s theatre community is striving to nurture its own as it evolves towards new ethnic and global crossroads.
Montreal: Festival de Theatre des Ameriques, May-June, 1995
Authors: Rewa Natalie , Sidnell Michael J.
Published: June 2023

The Festival de theatre des Ameriques is remarkable for the range and quality of the performance spaces that it has available and deploys to such good effect. This is partly due to an extraordinary proliferation of performance spaces in Montreal over the last ten years, unequalled in any other city in Canada in this respect; and it is partly due to the enterprise of Marie Helene Falcon, the Festival’s Director, in acquiring the use of a variety of venues and matching them to specific productions. Her programming has always brought the spectators into performance spaces of various kinds, shapes and sizes and she has often exploited not only the physical attributes of the locations but their local cultural resonances. In 1991, for example, Hip Hop Waltz of Eurydice, the late Reza Abdoh’s brilliant, postmodern reworking of cultural icons for an AIDS-conscious spectatorship was performed in the Clarke Theatre of Concordia University, an all-purpose assembly hall, with few of the markings of a traditional theatre. Similarly, in 1993, Robert Wilson’ s production of Gertrude Stein’s When Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights was performed in UQAM’s newly-completed Salle Pierre Mercure, which architecturally reinforced the spatial rhythms of Wilson’s mise en scène. By contrast Tadeusz Kantor ’s production by Cricot 2 of La Classe morte, featured during the 1991 FTA, was accommodated at the historically significant Theatre Denise Pelletier, where an exhibition of the company’s posters was also mounted. In 1991, when the FTA took the relationship between theatre and dance as one of its themes, it featured Marie Chouinard’s first choreography for a troupe of dancers at the Monument-National, while Falcon also introduced Festival audiences to the possibilities of more intimate dance performances in the new Agora de Danse at UQAM, with Rebis, Alvaro Restrepo’s ritualized dance exploration of space and the spoken word, done in homage to Garcia Lorca.
Toronto Why Theatre: Questions and Answers
Authors: Walker Craig Stewart
Published: June 2023

Over the four days of the conference Why Theatre: Choices for the New Century (University of Toronto, November 1-5, 1995), the phrase “why theatre” became a convenient lodestone for all the thoughtfulness, passion, cynicism, anxiety and simple churlishness which usually lurk beneath the surface of any large academic gathering. Given that the author of the title was Professor Pia Kleber, one of the country’s most energetic and enterprising enthusiasts of theatre, one might have thought that only the profoundly dull-witted or clinically paranoid would suppose it to be hostile. Yet the umbrage expressed by a good number of participants, both academics and practitioners, demonstrated a surprising degree of defensiveness. This was clearly a boil that needed lancing.
The Orphan Muses; Heart of a Dog, Z: A Meditation on Oppression, Desire, and Freedom
Authors: Bouchard Michel Marc , Gaboriau Linda , Astle Robert , Limbos Agnes , Szumigalski Anne , Bonham R. A.
Published: June 2023

One of Quebec’s distinguished young playwrights, Michel Marc Bouchard, has tried his hand at a range of theatrical forms, from black comedy to political allegory, and yet admits the consistent thematic thread of “victims become executioners”. A family drama first staged in 1988,The Orphan Muses (Les Muses orphelines), incorporates recent textual revisions. Linda Gaboriau’s translation is crisp and vital, important qualities in a play that frequently comments on writing and language.
Comedy: The Mastery of Discourse
Authors: Purdie Susan , Goodwin David
Published: June 2023

Perhaps nothing is more difficult to explain than a joke. So when I opened the cover and read Susan Purdie’s first words – “this book investigates what is happening when someone finds something funny” – I braced myself. “Theorists”, as the quip goes, “sometimes need to make an appointment to see a joke” – even those who champion “jouissance” and “the play of signification”. I wondered, then, what a Lacanian-inspired, feminist-oriented, ideologically- committed explanation of “funny” might look like.
Brave New Words at Theatre New Brunswick
Authors: Munday Jenny
Published: June 2023

Brave New Words, Theatre New Brunswick’s annual script development workshops, originated as part of the Interact Program, introduced at TNB by Sharon Pollock, then Artistic Director. Interact included outreach programs to local writers, public readings in various venues, second stage shows, and the Brave New Words workshops with Kathleen Flaherty acting as dramaturge.
240 Cups of Play Development
Authors: Smith Peter , Ann Johnson Lise
Published: June 2023

Last May, the staff of Playwrights’ Workshop Montreal set aside a day littered with the three “Cs” (coffee, contraband cigarettes, and croissants) in order to evaluate the work we had done during the 1994-95 theatrical season. We had started out the year as a brand new PWM team (comprised of Artistic Director Peter Smith, General Manager Rebecca Scott, Associate Director Lise Ann Johnson, and Associate Dramaturge Deena Aziz), and had enthusiastically plunged into an eclectic season of workshops, translations, and artistic exchanges. In the spirit of evaluation, Peter popped the big question: “How do we get better at what we do?” It turned out to be a query with a philosophical heart. How, in general, do people discover, learn, and improve? Propelled by caffeine, nicotine, and sugar in equal and excessive amounts, we bandied about numerous theories, finally agreeing upon a few common notions. Foremost, we agreed that in order to get better at something, one had to avoid assuming there was only one way to do it. With this in mind, we looked back over the year. In September, we had devised a mission statement which stated the following:
Dramaturgy: A Nightwood Conversation
Authors: Roberts Diane
Published: June 2023

The following excerpts are taken from a two-hour conversation with Diane Roberts, Kate Lushington, Monique Mojica and Dawn Obokata.
Women Playwrights in Regina: A Panel Discussion with Kelley Jo Burke, Connie Gault, Rachael Van Fossen, and Dianne Warren
Authors: Farfan Penny
Published: June 2023

Kelley Jo Burke’s plays include Goddessness (1990), Fat Girls (Wear All Sizes) (1991), and Charming and Rose: True Love (in Amazing Plays, Blizzard, 1992). She has also written extensively for radio. Her docu-drama Chorus of Angels was aired on CBC Radio’s Ideas in 1995.
Harlequin in Hogtown: George Luscombe and Toronto Workshop Productions, Eric Steiner: A Life in the Theatre
Authors: Carson Neil , Jack Steven , Johnston Denis
Published: June 2023

“What are you going to do about George?” This became the question I always waited for, ten years ago, when I was beavering away at a thesis on Toronto’s alternative theatres. Passe Muraille, the Factory, some others. As if there were no alternative theatres before Garrard and Futz. As if the young bucks had invented it all themselves. I had learned a bit about George, of course; but the more I tried to make sense of my story, the more George’s theatre didn’t fit. Strange to tell, however, no one (who had been there) ever told me that I absolutely had to include George. Perhaps other people couldn’t make him conform to historical patterns any more than I could. They just asked, “What are you going to do about George?” and they looked dissatisfied whatever my answer was that day.
Bernard Shaw Theatrics
Authors: Laurence Dan H. , Rae Lisbie
Published: June 2023

Another volume of Bernard Shaw’s letters? With a four-volume set of his collected letters and several previous editions of selected correspondence already in print, the wonder is not that enough other letters exist to fill this volume, but that it is only one in a projected series of ten volumes. Editor Dan H. Laurence estimates that a full correspondence would rival Voltaire’s, at over fifty volumes. General Editor Percy J. Smith began the present series, entitled Selected Correspondence of Bernard Shaw, with his own Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells, which was released in the spring through a collaboration between the University of Toronto Press and the Academy of the Shaw Festival. This dialogue between Shaw and Wells reveals much about Shaw as a person and a friend.
Survival Spaces: Space and the Politics of Dislocation
Authors: Knowles Richard Paul
Published: June 2023

I want to begin by telling you very briefly about a few work experiences out of which my thoughts about space, place, location, and dislocation have emerged:
Far Away Home
Authors: Fowler Richard , Kitt Donald , Kowalchuck Tannis , Lawson Stephen , Randoja Karen , Wells Ker
Published: June 2023

The first production by primus Theatre created specifically for children, Far Away Home premiered in Winnipeg in October, 1995 as a co-production of primus Theatre and the Winnipeg Children’s Museum, directed by Richard Fowler, with the following cast (in order of appearance):
Moi, Feuerbach
Authors: Wolford Lisa
Published: June 2023

Alternative theatre in the latter half of the twentieth century has tended, by and large, to be a medium dominated by directors, whether auteurs in the style of Robert Wilson or leaders involved in the development of collective creations with stable ensemble groups. While it is certainly possible to point to exceptions in this trend, a list of landmark productions by experimental artists in recent years (leaving aside the work of solo performers) would tend to highlight the work of a number of extraordinary metieurs-en-scene whose names often function as a type of metonymic representation for the ensembles under their direction. I have in mind such artists as Robert Lepage, Elizabeth Le Compte, Reza Abdoh, and Anne Bogart, among others. With the exception of notable figure s such as Ryszard Cieslak and Yoshi Oida, who develop a quasi-iconic status in their own right, the work of individual actors is rarely a primary focus of attention.
New Theatre North Playwrights Festival
Authors: Nolan Yvette , Shantz Valerie
Published: June 2023

It is 20 April 1996, the last day of Nakai Theatre’s New Theatre North Playwrights Festival and Miche Genest is writing what will be voted the Best Yukon Play – The Fasting Girl – in the 24 Hour Playwrighting Competition, the last event of the NTN Festival.

So wha t? There are 24 Hour Playwrighting Competitions across the country. Ofte n, for the playwright and the sponsoring company, this represents the end of the play; the thea tre rarely has the resources to fur the r develop the fruits of the com pet ition, much less prod uce them. For Yukon playwrights there are few opportu ni ties to develop a scrip t; Whitehorse’s Nakai Theatr e is the only professional theatre north of 60 and the only one with a man date to develop new northern writers and sto ries. As the company that held the first Canadia n 24 Hour Playwrighting Compe tition, Nakai Thea tre also has stockpiled ten years’ worth of scripts with little or no means to develop them.
Judith Thompson Casebook
Authors: Watts Allan
Published: June 2023

In CTR 71 (Interrogating Theatrical Practice), I Richard Paul Knowles called for an ongoing dialogue about the material conditions which inform the process, performance and perception of theatre. Several subsequent issues, notably CTR 78 (Acting Training), CTR 82 (Creative Economies), CTR 84 (Canadian Theatre Artists Speak), and CTR 87 (Practising Canadian Dramaturgy), have focused on the practice of artists in our theatre. This issue, the first in CTR’s history devoted to the work of one playwright, continues this exploration with a casebook on Judith Thompson, featuring an inside look at the writer’s process and collaboration with actors in the workshop of Sled, her latest play.
The Art of Witness in Popular Theatre
Authors: Salverson Julie
Published: June 2023

Popular theatre is traditionally a movement from the grass roots where people outside mainstream culture “tell their stories” through all stages of the process: to each other, to the artists and cultural animators who work with them, and to an audience. It is a public and distinctly pedagogical enterprise, with aims historically rooted in the efforts of disenfranchised peoples throughout the world to stage and realize alternatives to the status quo. I have worked in this field as an animator and playwright since the early 1980s, primarily in Toronto and Vancouver. Recently, a concern has risen amongst me and my colleagues about how little we understand of what actually happens inside the process of telling and listening. People who bring their stories to popular theatre have often lived through incidents of psychic and social disruption that may result in them carrying a living memory of trauma. What might this mean to our practice?
KA’MA’MO’PI CIK/THE GATHERING
Authors: Fossen Rachael Van , Wildcat Darrel
Published: June 2023

Caution: Copyright 1997 by Rachael Van Fossen and Darrel Wildcat. This play is fully protected under the copyright laws of Canada and all other countries of the Copyright Union. Changes to the script are expressly forbidden without the written consent of Darrel Wildcat and Rachael Van Fossen. Rights to produce, film, or record in any medium, in any language, by any group, are retained by the authors. For information regarding rights, please contact: Rachel Van Fossen, 3140 Victoria Avenue, Regina, Saskatchewan, S4T 1L2 or Darrel Wildcat, Box 912, Hobbema, Alberta, TOC IND.
Editorial
Authors: Wilson Ann
Published: June 2023

The focus of this issue of CTR is Canadian adaptations of the Colway-style community play. Colway Theatre Trust was created by the English playwright Ann Jellicoe in the late 1970s to serve as the organization which would sponsor this form of play development.
A Setting for THE HOUSE OF MARTIN GUERRE
Authors: Garnhum Ken
Published: June 2023

There is a bowl of fire in the middle of the floor. The walls are red here inside but outside they are green. Five neat haystacks hover in a V formation over five small beds. There is one cloud or stars. A barn with a thatched roof and two queues of music stands wait to make an appearance. The bride sits to the right under a paper crown against an improvised cloth of honour that is hung from a rope and fastened on the left by a pitchfork stuck in the hay. The groom is serving bowls of cereal from an unhinged door. Entertainers are playing bagpipes and looking at the food with hungry eyes. All scenes will have a deep diagonal accent like a Pieter Breughel painting. Peasants will dance with sticks build beds and be the wind. There are paintings hidden in the floor. Coloured fabrics hang in the air on beams. Beehives are baskets. Brooms. Rakes. Fire. Death.
A Clash of Symbols: When I Put on What I Want to Put on
Authors: Forsyth Louise H.
Published: June 2023

Et puis tous les moyens sont bons pour me rejoindre. Et si je n’viens pas à moi, c’est moi qui irai à moi.2 - Marie Savard, Bien à moi 43 Le monologue était une caractéristique du théâtre de femmes à ses débuts. Quoique les gens moins gentils ne disaient même pas « monologue » , ils disaient « témoignage ». « Le théâtre de femmes, ce n’est pas de l’art, c’est du témoignage : un paquet de femmes qui racontent leur vie. » 1 - Pol Pelletier, Joie 22

Marie Savard’s Bien à moi was created with Michel Tremblay’s La Duchesse de Langeais at the Théâtre de Quat’Sous in Montreal in February 1970. The almost universal reaction to Savard’s extraordinary monologue was that the character was deranged, incoherent and uninteresting. Savard later said, “C’était une féministe qui s’ignorait et heureusement d’ailleurs. Elle se serait sentie bien trop seule à cette époque” (11).4
Solo Performance
Authors: Knowles Ric , Lane Harry
Published: June 2023

This issue began from a sense not only that the number of theatre productions with only one performer has grown rapidly in the 1980s and 90s, but also that some of our most provocative theatre experiences have resulted from the encounter between the audience and the solo actor: Pol Pelletier’s Joie, Guillermo Verdecchia’s Fronteras Americanas, Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan’s dress pieces, and Daniel MacIvor’s House, to name only a few. While we have not assembled the statistics, we have little doubt that they would show a huge increase in solo-performer theatre productions in the last ten years, not only in Canada but in other countries in the world. It is surely significant that two anthologies of solo scripts, together with innumerable individually published monologues and solo plays, have appeared in Canada in the last three years (Solo, ed. Jason Sherman for Coach House Press in 1994; and Singular Voices, published by Playwrights Canada Press, also in 1994).
Towards an Ontological-Democratic Theatre: A Manifesto
Authors: Brask Per
Published: June 2023

1. Contrary to the anti- or postmodern theatre, ontological democratic theatre proposes that there is, after all, a ground of Being, and that human Being is given by our condition of interdependence, which has always been the case, but which, since August 6, 1945, has become irrefutably physicalized.
EDITORIAL
Authors: Wilson Ann
Published: June 2023

The title of this issue of CTR, “Regions, Regionals and Regionalism,” invites readers to recon sider regional theatres and their place within Canadian culture in the late 1990s. The history of regional theatres in this country is complex, partially because there is no clear definition of what the term actually mean s, as Mark Czarnecki notes (35). As a result, so-called “regional theatres” - those large subsidized theatres in urban centres - are without a clearly defined , common mandate. Perhaps this is as it should be, but the absence of a common mandate makes the task of assessing the success of regional theatres difficult.
Contributing to Canadian Theatre
Authors: Varma Rahul
Published: June 2023

Recent years have seen a significant shift in the sensibilities of art critics and central institutions. Multiple art forms and the artists who practise them are being recognized. The root cause for this shift may be the fact that the concerns of those from many different cultures now living in Canada are being addressed. This shift reflects Canada’s willingness to represent the full picture of Canada’s art scene and also alerts us to a movement away from a politics of homogeneity, characterized by monoculturalism, biculturalism and xenophobia, and towards a politics of heterogeneity, characterized by multiculturalism and diversity. One thing is certain: this new trend offers marginalized artists and cultural workers of the diaspora the opportunity to provide a creative response to the issues of identity, dignity (self-esteem, self-respect and self-confidence), artistic innovation and representation. In short, an artistic revolution is underway.
I Believe in Zapping the Audience
Authors: Parameswaran UMA
Published: June 2023

Rana Bose is a playwright who lives in Montreal. He is the co-founder and artistic director of Montreal Serai, a collective that publishes a magazine and produces at least one major play each year. He was born in Calcutta in 1950, educated at St. Xavier’s School and took his engineering degree from Washington University in the United States. He came to Montreal in 1977 and is now a senior executive in an engineering company. He has written and produced nine plays since 1986. They include Baba Jacques Dass and Turmoil at Cote-des-Neiges Cemetery (1986), The Death of Abbie Hoffman (1991), and Five or Six Characters in Search of Toronto (1994).
Clown Scenes
Authors: Rémy Tristan , Sahlins Bernard , Drennan Barbara
Published: June 2023

For those of us born in whiteface with red noses and baggy pj’s, Clown Scenes appears as a rare gem in the treasure trove of theatre books. A collection of classic clown turns with detailed physical lazzi is a unique piece of theatre history that should also attract the Canadian mainstream. Anyone interested in the structure of a gag – theatre students, playwrights, drama critics, method actors, newsreaders and even politicians – could benefit from this collection by European circus masters.
Editorial
Authors: Watts Allan , Wilson Ann
Published: June 2023

Canada, as this issue of CTR indicates, has a richly diverse culture of puppetry. As many of the contributors emphasize, puppetry can be very simple; no wonder, then, that many of Canada’s internationally renowned puppeteers first came to love puppets as children who fashioned their first puppets from sticks, cloth, paper bags and crayons.
Canadian Operatic Voices
Authors: Hamilton Stuart , Kehler Grace
Published: June 2023

Stuart Hamilton – a vocal coach, a pianist, the founder of Opera in Concert, and the highly engaging host of the CBC’s Saturday Afternoon at the Opera Opera Quiz – spoke with Grace Kehler about voice types, singers and opportunities for Canadian singers.
Editorial
Authors: Kehler Grace
Published: June 2023

Word association with opera: opulence, vocal virtuosity, passionate scripts, evocative scenery, orchestral beauty. Even in a relatively modest presentation, such as chamber opera, or in its avant-garde forms of music theatre, this genre connotes excess. Originally the product of aristocratic or courtly patronage, opera remains in the twentieth century a lavish appeal to the senses, a generally costly conjunction of drama, music, voice and spectacle. Often more extravagant in its requirements than even the dramatic theatre, given the need for orchestra, opera would seem to be at odds with the current financial restraints in Canada and with the onerous political cant about quantifiable usefulness. As individual provinces and the country as a whole scramble to establish a balanced budget, arts and humanities groups are asked to account for themselves as culture becomes incorporated into a great ledger in which fiscal feasibility translates as the prime sign of merit. Fortunately, though, opera in Canada still evokes a surplus of performative acts and possibilities affected by, but not solely delimited by, use and budgets. This issue of CTR explores some of the diverse meanings of opera in Canada and its ability to generate meaning for contemporary audiences and theatre professionals, several of whom obligingly lent their distinctive voices to our receptive ears. Further, we have attempted to signal the range of operatic occurrences through articles offering detailed readings of staged opera and its crucial non-musical components (such as set design, costumes, and marketing) as well as through surveys of the topics that recur in contemporary operas. If a renegade from the current political climate, opera itself has infused political acuteness with emotional poignancy in its thematic explorations. For instance, George Elliott Clarke and James Rolfe graphically and movingly expose the atrocities of Nova Scotian slavery in Beatrice Chancy, the full libretto and musical excerpts of which are included here. Opera, retaining its original capacity for formal revision and for the exploration of diverse passions, continues to express desires obstreperous, dangerous, joyful and lusty.
Gestation and Resurrection: My First Play in Print
Authors: Miles Kate
Published: June 2023

Some playwrights refer to their plays as their babies. In my case, I would have to say that my first play, I Hate You on Mondays, had the gestation period of an elephant and the life span of a fruit fly. Reflecting on its publication six-and-a-half years after its conception; I am experiencing a resurrection of sorts and some postpartum anxiety.
Running
Authors: Heather Jane
Published: June 2023

Commissioned by CUPE Locals 30 and 474, Edmonton, Alberta, August 1995

Caution: Copyright Jane Heather. This script is fully protected under the copyright laws of Canada and all other countries of the Copyright Union. Changes to the script are expressly 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: Jane Heather, 9728 – 81 Avenue, Edmonton, AB T6E 1W2.
Icaria Created by Varrick Grimes, Sondra Haglund, Alex McLean, Elizabeth Rucker and Ker Wells; directed by Ker Wells
Authors: Jarvis Alastair
Published: June 2023

Few companies seem willing to embark upon the sort of work that can be seen to resist totalizing statements of what the show was “about.” With Icaria, Number 11 Theatre acknowledges and embraces the fact that the creation of the theatrical event is a collaboration between the performers and the spectators. The result is in an experience that is at once beautiful and deeply moving.
EDITORIAL
Authors: Filewod Alan
Published: June 2023

The partnership of theatre and labour evokes images of heroic proletarian actors and workers joined in solidarity, staging agitprop at picket lines. This is an image that comes to us through many scenes, from the Blue Blouses of the Bolshevik revolution, from Piscator in the dying days of the Weimar republic, from the agitprop troupes of the 1930s. It is an image of the young George Luscombe performing on a truck to striking workers in the 1940s, of Teatro Campesino in the fields of California, of the Mummers Troupe in mining towns in Newfoundland. But while it, is heavily imbued with romantic nostalgia, it does not reflect the reality of most labour-engaged theatre work.
Body weight correction of adolescent girls by health fitness tools
Authors: Zhdanova Olga , Chekhovska Liubov , Luzhna Maryana , Stefanyshyn Markiian
Published: June 2023

The health condition of teenagers tends to deteriorate. In Ukraine, 30-40% of the population suffers from obesity, of which 15-17% are children and adolescents. In order to solve the mentioned problems, innovative modern fitness programs should be implemented, which would meet the needs of teenagers, contribute to increasing the level of their motor activity, improve general well-being, and save time. EMS training is one of these. In pediatrics, electrical stimulation is used for obesity. The modern vision of the use of electromyostimulation is a type of rehabilitation fitness, "fitness of the future".

The purpose of the study was to correct the body weight of adolescent girls under the influence of EMS training. The study was conducted in the fitness club "JUSTFIT" with girls 15-16 years old (n=15) twice a week for 30 minutes. The pedagogical experiment has been lasted for 6 months. During the training, a special wireless EMS suit was used with pads on the hips and chest to which the electrodes were connected. Low-frequency electrical impulses were applied to them, which caused muscle contraction during exercise. EMS training included a warm-up (on the orbiterk), the main part (circular training in a moderate mode: cardio and strength training) and the hang up (relaxation - lymphatic drainage massage). The trainer individually selected the load, strength of impulses and formed the training process. EMS training gives quick results, thanks to the simultaneous training of all muscle groups during physical exercises.

A statistically significant difference was established between the average values of all anthropometric indicators of girls 15-16 years old at the beginning and at the end of the pedagogical experiment (р<0.05). Therefore, EMS training is considered a popular and effective fitness program.
History on the combination of the development of the sport of shaking in Mykolaiv
Authors: Martsincovskiy Igor
Published: June 2023

The development of the sport of chess in Mykolaiv begins with the legendary game between the Swedish king Karl XII and the Ukrainian hetman Ivan Mazepa on the banks of the Southern Bug on a rest stop on their route after the defeat in the Battle of Poltava in 1709 (modern yacht club). Mykolaiv was formed as a center of shipbuilding, where the Main Headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet and the ports of the Russian Empire were located, and its residents became shipbuilding engineers, naval officers, scientists, industrialists, diplomats, who were the first to introduce the game of chess among the townspeople. The very first public chess battles took place in the summer Maritime Meeting, and later in the constructed buildings of the "House of Flagships and Captains" (since 1824), Mykolaiv Maritime Astronomical Observatory (since 1829), yacht club (since 1887). On June 28, 1887, the "Chess Society" was founded in Mykolaiv, which did not last long, but was revived in December 1901. The members of the Society held chess games among themselves, for the fi rst time held a city-wide chess tournament in 1902, took part in European chess tournaments and won. The society held competitions of chess problems, collected literature and materials, published endgames of famous chess players and its own materials in local, metropolitan and European chess periodicals. Historical and political vicissitudes of the beginning of the 20th century with wars and revolutions that led to economic ruin, the death of people, the emigration of a significant part of the intelligentsia, did not contribute to the development and spread of chess sports in Mykolaiv during this historical period.