bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Bill James: Playing With Space, or, The Intimacy of Extremes
Authors: Hunt Nigel
Published: June 2023

It is curious but notable that Bill James’s works, or at least his two major multi-disciplinary creations, Geography and Atlas Moves Watching, have not been lauded by theatre artists and audiences in Toronto the way aesthetically comparable pieces by Gilíes Maheu’s Carbone 14 have been in Montreal (and on tour to Toronto and many other cities). Perhaps the circumstances which have led Bill James to create his work with a dance company and be regarded as a dance choreographer rather than as a theatre director or auteur – whereas Maheu’s work, despite its obvious dance influences and his frequent use of dancers as well as or instead of actors, has been readily included as theatre – can be attributed to less rigid categorization in Montreal’s performance scene. Whatever the reason, it seems to me that the result is that theatre artists experimenting with non-naturalistic theatre in Toronto tend not to look to multi-disciplinary dance groups for stimulation and inspiration despite the quantity and, frequently, the quality of work on view.
Winnipeg Close-ups / 1, Wooing Winnipeg
Authors: Johnson Chris
Published: June 2023

In some Winnipeg quarters, Manitoba Theatre Centre bashing is a popular activity, rivalling even fed-bashing, that all-time Western favourite. Reasons for the popularity of these two regional blood sports are not dissimilar: the bashee is seen to be big to the point of being bloated, remote, “foreign.”
Alberta Voices / 3, Acting in Edmonton: A CTR Roundtable
Authors: Houston Andrew , Philpott Wendy
Published: June 2023

What’s it like to be an actor on the Prairies? According to Marianne Copithorne, Patricia Darbasie and David Mann, it’s pretty good – in fact, it’s worth its weight in wheat. These actors speak of a theatrical nucleus which provides them the sustenance to flourish artistically. They have found a community which supports their talents while offering them a freedom not normally found in the marketplace the theatre has become in Canada.
Selkirk Ave
Authors: McManus Bruce
Published: June 2023

Caution: copyright 1990 by Bruce McManus. This play is fully protected under the copyright laws of Canada and all other countries of the Copyright Union and all performances are subject to royalty. Change to the script is expressly forbidden without the written consent of Bruce McManus. Rights to produce, film or record, in whole or in part, in any medium, in any language, by any group, amateur or professional, are retained by Bruce McManus. Interested persons are requested to apply for permission and terms to Bruce McManus, 181 Home St., Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3G 1X2.
Toronto, Straight Talk: A Response to Ban This Show
Authors: Wilson Ann
Published: June 2023

“Robert Mapplethorpe Exposed,” promised the posters for Ban This Show, the new play which opened the 1990/91 season of Toronto’s Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. Written and directed by the theatre’s artistic director Sky Gilbert, the play deals with the life and work of Robert Mapplethorpe, the American photographer who died in 1989 of an AIDS-related illness. Ban This Show seemed particularly timely, the production coinciding with the trial of the director of Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Centre on obscenity charges in connection with an exhibition of Mapplethorpe’s photographs. Gilbert identified with Mapplethorpe as a fellow artist whose preoccupation with the representation of homoeroticism has been seen as controversial. Gilbert pointed out that his work has also been controversial. Last year Revenue Minister Otto Jelinek told a business audience, “Some of these ridiculous grants are enough to make me bring up.” The minister’s example was a $60,000 grant to Buddies for Drag Queens on Thai, “that’s homosexuals, I take it,” he added. These comments suggest that Jelinek is a Canadian ally of US Senator Jesse Helms who has attracted attention for his relentless, to say nothing of self-righteous, attacks on the funding policies of the National Endowment for the Arts, singling out Mapplethorpe’s work as examples of the alleged mis-spending of public funds.
Letters
Authors: Clark Sally
Published: June 2023

In Barbara Godard’s article “(Re) Appropri ation as Translation” (CTR 64), she states several times and at length, that my play [ebanne of the Witches is an adaptation of Michel Toumier’s novel Gilles & Jeanne. My play deals with the same subject matter but it is certainly not an adaptation. The English version of Toumier’s novel was not available in Canada until a year after my play was written. I heartily disagree with Toumier’s view of events and am quite frankly shocked that anyone could read my play and think I was in agreement with Toumier, let alone adapt his premise for the stage. If [ehanne of the Witches was an adaptation, I would have stated that fact in the front page, as I did with The Trial of Judith K.
New Wave Clowns / 2: Clowns for a Fin de Siècle Mump and Smoot… with Wog
Authors: Drennan Barbara
Published: June 2023

When we think of clowns, the image we conjure has a red nose and white face. But Smoot’s face is yellow with a wide area of red around the eyes which creeps up to his “hairline,” over the bridge of his nose and down into the hollows of his cheeks. The edges of this eye mask are blended into the yellow without outlined definition. Does Smoot “see red” or do the horrors of the world make his eyes blush? This choice of clown make-up is an extension of a worldwide mask tradition which itself is worthy of detailed study. In their face makeup, Mump and Smoot carry the two traditions of European clown and West Coast Indian. The red nose signals “clown” to us but in style the face painting reads Native influence. These two traditions have been appropriated by the actors in order to create new forms which are the lifelines of their clown characters. The same holds true for their costumes.
Searching or Shopping?: “New” Performance Destinations in Edmonton
Authors: Badir Patricia , Johnson Lise Ann
Published: June 2023

In October of 1990, we wrote to CTR, proposing an article that examined new performance in Edmonton outside of both the professional theatre and the Fringe. Personal aesthetic, informed by our shared academic background, led us to search out performance within a context unclaimed by the theatre community. Alan Filewod responded to our proposal, “I would love something from Edmonton that doesn’t talk about the Fringe.” We agreed.
Exploring the Fringe / 1: The Self-Determined Audience
Authors: Paterson Erika
Published: June 2023

The Canadian Fringe Festivals are a uniquely new form of theatre within the realms of “fringe” theatre, other Fringe Festivals, and Canadian theatre in general. As a theatre event the Fringes are unique in terms of their actual and ideological relationship to institutionalized theatre; their economical and philosophical relationship with artists and audience, and most significantly, their neglect or rejections of “normally” imposed artistic value / criteria. As a festival event the Fringes are uniquely situated somewhere between official celebration and popular celebration. And the audience, whether it is understood as a theatre audience, or Festival participants, is unusual by its ever-increasing size, its modes of participation, and its influence on the artists and the work they produce for the Fringes.
Rockwood Community Animation and Social Action in The Spirit of Shivaree
Authors: Little Edward
Published: June 2023

The village of Rockwood, the centre of the main population base of the Township of Eramosa, is located about an hour’s drive west of Toronto. Rockwood’s population is about 2,000. The total figure for the township is less than 5,500. From June 19 to July 1, 1990, The Eramosa Community Play Project (ECPP), in conjunction with Colway Theatre Trust of England (CTT), presented The Spirit of Shivaree, a community play fusing historical reflection with contemporary issues, and involving a core group of professionals, 130 local performers, 20 crew and almost 1,000 volunteers. The performances utilized the ruins of a 19th-century woollen mill located in the Rockwood Conservation Area and were based on a script by area resident Dale Hamilton with music and lyrics by James Gordon. The production budget was over $100,000 and, with every performance sold out, approximately 3,500 people witnessed the event. The entire project, including creation of the script, spanned a period of almost two years.
Is Shakespeare Still Our Contemporary?
Authors: Elsom John , Knowles Richard Paul
Published: June 2023

In 1961 the Polish critic Jan Kott published a collection of essays on Shakespeare that became known in English as Shakespeare Our Contemporary. Although it was often reviled by academic critics in Britain and North America, that volume has had more impact on the production of Shakespeare in the twentieth century than any book of criticism before or since. Twenty-five years after its publication, the International Association of Theatre Critics held a public seminar at the Young Vic in London “to celebrate the … anniversary,” “to honour Jan Kott … and also in a friendly way to take him to task.” Is Shakespeare Still Our Contemporary? is the proceedings of that seminar, transcribed and edited by John Elsom.
Life Before Stratford: The Memoirs of Amelia Hall, Six Plays by Mavor Moore
Authors: Mew Diane , Moore Mavor , Sperdakos Paula
Published: June 2023

It is appropriate that Amelia Hall should have been the first Canadian, and the first woman, to speak on the Stratford Festival stage when she played Lady Anne in Richard III, on 13 July 1953. That first Stratford company was predominantly Canadian, made up of actors who, like Hall, received their training and experience under difficult circumstances, in a country with virtually no indigenous professional theatre tradition. The Stratford Festival was a watershed in the development of the Canadian professional theatre, but it could not have come into being without the pioneering work of a dedicated group of Canadian theatre people – many of them women – who prepared the ground for professionalism. Amelia Hall – actor and director – was one of those people.
From the Centre of the Circle the Story Emerges
Authors: Kane Margo
Published: June 2023

Moonlodge is my attempt to explore and mine the stories from within my experience. Using clown and song and dance and storytelling, it draws on the living tradition of sharing profound human experience to inspire. It is a statement of health, humour, and empowerment. Its major thrust is victorious celebration, affirmation.
An Old Indian Trick is to Laugh
Authors: Baker Marie Annharte
Published: June 2023

To be able to laugh at oneself is one of the greatest gifts of an Aboriginal heritage. For even the one who is the teensy bit Indian, the gift of this self-clowning is humungous. Sometimes our laughter is our only weapon. In spite of efforts to declaw, detooth, detail the Coyote or trickster within us, we continue to find some thing about our oppression as Aboriginal people funny. It is even called “gallows humour” by critics because our many inhibitions usually repress what might be a trickster’s agenda to combat stress, chronic fatigue, tension headaches and many other conditions that arise from not giving your trickster a thorough and vigorous workout.
Janis Spence: Chickens, Cats and the Responsibility of Love
Authors: Lynde Denyse
Published: June 2023

St John’s, Newfoundland has discovered a new and exciting voice in playwright Janis Spence. With a background during the 70s and ‘80s at the LSPU Hall in collective creation and directing, her experience is not unusual for local artists; but, unlike most, she has taken this on-the-job training and applied it to the craft of playwriting with impressive results. After acting in collectives with the Mummers and then with the Resource Centre for the Arts, directing and collaborating on Live Soap with Cathy Jones, … And this is Bob and Irene with Greg Thomey and Dorothy and fames with Rick Boland, Spence realized that writing was what she wanted to do. In 1987, while writing another version of Live Soap, this time with Greg Thomey, Spence began to write on her own. She is aprolific artist, writing and directing Chickens in ‘88, Cat Lover in ‘90, Naked Bungalow, a collaborative project with Elizabeth Pickard and John Whalen in March ‘91 and Ghost Town, a working title for a play scheduled for the 1991–92 RCA season.
A Woman’s Comedy
Authors: Herst Beth
Published: June 2023

Caution: copyright 1991 by Beth Herst. This play is fully protected under the copyright laws of Canada and all other countries of the Copyright Union; all performances are subject to royalty. Changes to the script are expressly forbidden without the written consent of the playwright, Beth Herst. Right to produce, film or record, in part or in whole, by any group, amateur or professional, in any medium, in any language are retained by Beth Herst. Interested persons are requested to apply for permission and terms to Beth Herst, c/o Tarragon Theatre, 30 Bridgman Ave., Toronto, Ontario, M5R 1X3.
Double Take: The Story of the Elgin and Winter Garden Theatres
Authors: Russell Hilary , Johnson Stephen
Published: June 2023

Double Take is an intelligent, accessible, well-documented, and attractively illustrated history, designed to increase appreciation for and understanding of the Elgin / Winter Garden theatre complex on Yonge Street in Toronto. The complex is unique, not only because it is the only example in Canada of an eccentric turn-of-the-century architectural phenomenon, the “stacked” theatre, but because it was recently purchased by the provincial government of Ontario, restored with care and accuracy at great expense, and re-opened in 1989 as a venue for live theatre. Any such manifestation of cultural generosity on the part of a government certainly deserves a publication; this book, more than a souvenir of the theatre’s re-opening, may be seen as a souvenir of and defence for such government financing.
Canadian Women Playwrights: (Inter)national Contexts
Authors: Wilson Ann
Published: June 2023

In 1985, Bob Wallace, then editor of CTR, proposed a special issue on “Feminism and Canadian Theatre .” The current issue is, in many ways, a return to some of the questions raised in that issue. Sadly, the complaints which recur throughout the 1985 issue echo through th is one: women feel that they are writ ing in isolation; their work is still not receiving the critical attention which it should, either from journalists or academics because it is being produced in smaller venues.
The Scenography of Hillar Liitoja Childish Glee
Authors: Gilbert Sky
Published: June 2023

I have had the privilege of working on two of Hillar Liitoja’s productions as an actor: on The Panel (an early version of Sick), and Hamlet. Describing Hillar’s process is fascinating but it is also an inscrutable quest; so much is left to chance and the mysteries of Hillar’s inspiration. And yet working with this genius is a truly collaborative process. Paradoxically, one feels at the same time very much a part of the process and at the same time at the mercy of a rather sadomasochistic hallucinatory imagination.
The Musical Coast / 2: Faust: A theatre that feels like music
Authors: Corness Jeff
Published: June 2023

I cannot identify any one particular influence as being solely responsible for my embarking on a new operatic treatment of Faust. It seems rather to have been the result of a convergence of ideas and directions from all parts of my life and career as a composer. As a P.K. (Priest’s kid) in Vancouver I spent many a rainy Sunday morning pondering over whether God really wanted me to go to church or not. Ever since I can remember, I’ve wanted to know the truth, even as I harboured a growing suspicion that there may not be such a thing. My heros became those figures in whose torment I saw a confusion similar to my own: Cain, Judas, Pontius Pilate, Noah’s drowned friends, etc. I remember driving my father crazy with questions about them. I still do. Only now he shrugs in the places where he used to have answers. I would ask him “Why doesn’t God just appear in the sky waving a big sign – ’This way to heaven’?” It all seemed like such a riddle to me. It seemed only natural to challenge God for the definitive answer, but as I grew older I became paralysed by what seemed to me an endless array of ’human’ answers to these questions: “Sit on a rock and stare at the sun all day”; “say thirty-five Hail Marys and count your beads”; “be a vegetarian and recycle”. Who is right? And assuming that there is one right, is everyone else wrong?
Toronto A Woman’s Comedy Male Plots or Female Experience?
Authors: Herst Beth
Published: June 2023

Approximately two-and-a-half years ago I began writing a play. That’s a difficult enterprise under any circumstances, and this particular play carried the additional challenge of being inspired by the life of a real person. My subject was the playwright Aphra Behn, an Englishwoman who, in the 1670s and 80s, became the first woman to earn her living as a professional writer.
Canadian Brash: New Voices in Fiction, Drama, Poetry, Lilies, or The Revival of a Romantic Drama, The End / A Day At The Beach
Authors: Sherman Jason , Bouchard Michel Marc , Gaboriau Linda , Palmer John , Gilbert Reid
Published: June 2023

Canadian Brash presents an exciting – sometimes challenging – sampling of contemporary writing in all genres. Although the work is often postmodern in approach, it generally fits within traditional genre definitions and, with some exceptions, moves within narrative structures to closure: this is not writing as avant-garde as can be found in the little mags, nor is it writing which avoids the narratological or standard grammars of usage. It does, however, extend the cultural and political grammars of Canadian society to redefine gender roles, friendship, family love, sexual love, and responsibility, often in themes or subtexts which concern homosexual issues.
Feeling as Opposed to Memorizing One’s Role
Authors: Blondin John
Published: June 2023

The Native Theatre Group of Yellow-knife was formed in January 1987 by interested natives wishing to see a native company depicting native issues, by native people, with native people and for native people. There was a lot of theatre happening in the North at that time; the problem was that very little of it, or practically none of it, had native content. This gathering of interested individuals made sure that the mandate of the new theatre company was clear: there had to be more native content in theatre put on by the natives themselves.
Why I Went North
Authors: Wyatt Rachel
Published: June 2023

Why did you go North in the first place? I went there to find an inukshuk.

I went there to find an inukshuk.

The storm was still raging and the damaged boat was drawn up on the shore. The four people were out of food and there was no telling when the winds would settle and let them continue on their journey. A polar bear had been around for days, watching, waiting, and when it came snuffling round the tent that morning, the old hunter shot and killed it.
Learning the Hard Way in the Far Far North: Declaring a culture off-bounds a fascist idea
Authors: Valpy Bruce
Published: June 2023

My experience with theatre in the North has been a dismal one. The spirit of the stage came to me one night in bed in Old Town, that part of Yellowknife down the hill from uptown’s mini-metropolitan skyline. In Old Town, not so many years ago, cheery well-made shacks were disguised as prospecting history and a third-world standard of living was lauded as a free-spirited existence. I lived there because of the cheap rent.
The Theatre of Frustration: Super Realism in the Dramatic Work of F.X. Kroetz and Michel Tremblay
Authors: Usmiani Renate , Ripley John
Published: June 2023

This volume, another in the Garland Studies in Comparative Literature series, attempts a comparative examination of the Bavarian playwright Franz-Xavier Kroetz and Quebecois dramatist Michel Tremblay as exponents of Super Realism. “The purpose of this book,” the author tells us, “will be to show that there indeed exists, to use Kandinsky’s terms, a similarity of both ‘inner mood’ and ‘external forms’, created not by direct influence, but by a similarity of ideals, goals, and literary approaches.” She demonstrates convincingly that the themes, language, characters, structure, and settings of both dramatists have a good deal in common; but whether they espouse a style that may be unequivocally identified as Super Realism is open to challenge.
On the MAP: Scenes from Plays Workshopped Through the Playwrights Development Program of the Manitoba Association of Playwrights, Beautiful Lake Winnipeg
Authors: Runnells Rory , Arrell Douglas , Hunter Maureen , Perkins Don
Published: June 2023

On the MAP contains nineteen excerpts from works by sixteen Manitoba playwrights, all of whom took part in the Playwrights Development Project (PDP) between 1982 and 1987. In his candid and provocative introduction, Douglas Arrell acknowledges that the project generated considerable excitement, but argues that because they were not focused towards production, the PDP workshops resulted in many unfinished plays, a few of which are represented here. But then, what is wrong with a workshop that stops unpromising works-in-progress – which a few of these appear to have been – from consuming valuable production time and money?
Who’s Speaking Here? Tremblay’s Scots Voice
Authors: Salter Denis
Published: June 2023

Since 1979, Martin Bowman and Bill Findlay have co-translated four of Michel Tremblay’s plays into Scots: Les Belles-soeurs (The Guid Sisters), Hosanna (as Hosanna), Le vrai monde? (The Real Wurld?), and, most recently, La maison suspendue (The House Among the Stars). In October 1992, Glasgow’s Tron Theatre Company presented its production of The Guid Sisters (directed by Michael Boyd) at the Centaur Theatre in Montreal, where it was both a critical and a popular success with sold-out performances during its three-week run. Despite finding the Scots translation somewhat difficult for the uninitiated, the critics were uniformly enthusiastic at this experiment in cross-cultural understanding. Gaëtan Charlebois in the Mirror (15-22 October) declared that “the Scots dialect is merely a perfectly acceptable stand-in for East-End French (indeed, it captures the sense of the work and its musical dialogue better than the currently available Canadian translation)”; and Pat Donnelly remarked in the Gazette (3 October) that although the language was “occasionally incomprehensible”, the play lost “nothing in translation”. Meanwhile the French press revelled in the experience of hearing Québécois authenticated into Scots. “Attention événement!” Robert Lévesque announced in his review for Le Devoir (2 October). “Pour la première fois à Montréal, on peut voir une production étrangère du ‘classique’ de Michel Tremblay, Les Belles-soeurs. Et cette production est superbe!”
South Africa In Search of a Character
Authors: Crail Archie
Published: June 2023

Once, during my student days in 1968, I had been to this village. We had been in search of a party then. Somebody had mentioned that he knew a girl who was celebrating a twenty-first birthday party that Saturday night. Fifteen of us had climbed into a Volkswagen minibus and drove a thirty-mile journey from Alice to the Kat River Valley.
Bag Babies, Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet), The Half of It
Authors: Stratton Allan , MacDonald Ann-Marie , Krizanc John , Johnston Denis
Published: June 2023

On the economic front, we see the gap widening between the affluent and the poor, and money brokers fiddling while the environment burns. In the eternal struggle between the sexes, familiar rules change with increasing speed. The three plays reviewed here are all comedies which tackle such serious issues. And although humanism is one of the traditional “isms” in question, the plays stand or fall on the characters they place at the crux of their social issues.
Pochsy’s Lips
Authors: Hines Karen , Balcovske Sandra
Published: June 2023

In creating Pochsy ’s Lips I became one of a growing breed of writers who perform their own plays. or performers who write their own shows. Whatever. Why we are compelled not only to bare our souls as writers, but also to be physically present while that baring occurs, probably has something to do with the fact that the double-duty risk involved goes hand in hand with a kind of freedom and control that is impossible to attain when one is doing only one of those jobs.
Stratford, Ontario Kate Reid 1930-1993
Authors: Eulogy David William’s
Published: June 2023

Kate first appeared on this stage in 1959 as Celia in As You Like It. Irene Worth was Rosalind, Douglas Rain was Silvius, William Hutt was Jaques, Douglas Campbell was Touchstone, William Needles was the banished Duke and Butch Blake was not Adam but Sir Oliver Mar-text. In 1992 she appeared here as Mistress Overdone. In between there was a multitude of roles: Lady Macbeth, the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet, Madame Ranyevskaya in The Cherry Orchard, Kate in The Taming of the Shrew, Jaquenetta in Michael Langham’s legendary production of Love’s Labour’s Lost and many others.
Hosanna, La Maison Suspendue, Joe Beef (A History of Pointe Saint Charles), The Dunsmuirs: Alone at the Edge
Authors: Tremblay Michel , Tremblay Michel , Fennario David , Langley Rod , Loiselle Andre
Published: June 2023

Michel Tremblay’s Hosanna unfolds as Claude Lemieux, alias Hosanna, returns home from a masked ball where he expected to create a sensation by making his entrance as Elizabeth Taylor in the role of Cleopatra. Instead, he suffers a bitter humiliation as the other drag queens arrived at the ball also disguised as Cleopatra. As he slowly removes his Cleopatra costume, Claude goes through a process of self-recognition at the end of which he realizes, along with his boyfriend Cuirette, that “the important thing is that you be yourself, that’s all” (p. 87).
Beyond Rhetorical Nationalism: Michael Springate at the Prairie Theatre Exchange
Authors: Johnson Chris
Published: June 2023

Murmurings about “central Canadian cultural imperialism” mingled with the cigarette smoke in the bars frequented by the Winnipeg theatre community when, two years ago, the Prairie Theatre Exchange (рте) announced that Michael Springate would succeed Kim McCaw as artistic director. Springate is a Montrealer who, on his appointment, became the second anglophone Montrealer to head a major Winnipeg theatre, following Steven Schipper at the mtc. He is a Montrealer / internationalist not only by the circumstance of birth but, so it would seem, by aesthetic choice, having associated with Carbone 14 and Necessary Angel, having founded companies like The Painted Bird Ensemble, the Montreal Improvisational Theatre, and Le Nouveau Théâtre Anglais de Montréal, and having chosen to write a play about Ezra Pound, who is a far cry from Nellie McClung or Louis Riel. Perhaps most damning, he came to pte from a job with the theatre section of the Canada Council, which confirms his sympathy for the Montreal / Ottawa axis, and suggests that he is out of touch with regional aspirations. Above all, there was doubt whether he could work with, or would even cast, local actors, and of whether he could speak to a Winnipeg audience.
Toronto Towards a Director-Centred Theatre
Authors: Gilbert Sky
Published: June 2023

I’m going to discuss something that’s not very popular right now, and not very politically correct: director-centred theatre. But I think the sad and sorry state of directing in Canada is a situation that must be addressed, and the only way to address it is to focus on the importance of directing to the art of theatre.
Toronto Boundaries
Authors: Hill Lynda
Published: June 2023

Boundaries: Bound: to move with leaps, to rebound, to jump. Bound: tied closely, connected, having a binding, obliged, determined, resolved. Bound: boundary, an area near a boundary, to limit, to name a boundary – “out of bounds”, forbidden.
Press Pass: Second City: Playing to the Top A conversation with Nick lohne
Authors: Snyder Liz
Published: June 2023

I chose to interview Nick Johne to get the lowdown on what it’s like to be a young comic working the grind in Toronto. I have known Nick for almost ten years. The first night I met Nick was at a (then) popular bar called the Bullring on campus at the University of Guelph. He and a friend did a comedy routine on the dance floor after the music stopped – I suppose as an interesting way to meet women. He claims that he was an outsider but that since he was funny he got invited to the cool parties. I went to the cool parties because he invited me. I guess that makes me an outsider’s outsider?
The Interview
Authors: Bick Tamara C. , Healey Michael
Published: June 2023

The Interview was first produced in its entirety at the 1993 Summerworks Festival in Toronto. This production was directed and drama turged by Mary Pat Mombourquette, with Tamara C. Bick as the sole performer, in August at the Tarragon Extra Space. Prior to this presentation, Ms Bick experimented with various monologues at the Theatre Resource Centre’s monthly Soirées. The essence of developing a play, in short segments, in front of a live audience, carries itself over to the completed play. Each scene is a story which can stand on its own or be part of a greater whole. The thread which binds the play together is the acknowledgement of its theatricality. Each scene begins with the illusion that the actor is going to step out of character. As the monologue develops however it becomes apparent that the actor has taken on another role. During performance, audience response was an integral part of the play’s structure. The spectator is not asked to suspend disbelief but to enter the spirit of the play. Mary Pat Mombowquette
The New Singing Theatre
Authors: Bawtree Michael , Greenberg Joel
Published: June 2023

Michael Bawtree’s The New Singing Theatre: A Charter for the Music Theatre Movement is an intense book, filled with his considerable experiences which have informed the theories and principles that are introduced and developed. Reading the book was not uninteresting although I must say that the best descriptives I can offer are “worthy subject material” and “the author’s sincerity is never in doubt”.
Comedy: What makes funny?
Authors: Filewod Alan
Published: June 2023

Bob Hope cracking wise; Don Rickles roasting hecklers; Howie Mandel in those diapers, Sandra Shamus peering through a pair of Y-fronts. Bathed in a pool of light with mike in hand, the stand-up comic is our most pervasive icon of comedy. Perhaps the most memorable image, the one that fixes the comic as a lone voice exposing social hypocrisy and laughing through the pain, is Lenny Bruce. More than anyone else, Lenny cemented the association of comedy with risk in North American culture – although in his case, risk meant more than an occasional bomb or badly timed gag. Busted onstage and dying in a toilet, Lenny Bruce remains the romanticized archetype of the comedian whose act is a public defiance of social hypocrisy.
Dialogue on Training
Authors: Christmann Mark , Jacobs Tanja , Wright David
Published: June 2023

Various programs offered across Canada by colleges, universities, theatres and private studios indicate possible routes for actor training, but how do actors consider ongoing training? Questions of fundamental, introductory training versus professional development are put into perspective by this dialogue. Mark Christmann and Tanja Jacobs address a potential restructuring of production strategies, personal responsibility for artistic growth and, consequently, the perception of the profession of a performing artist.
Rhythms of Learning: Expectations and aspirations
Authors: Greenberg Joel
Published: June 2023

There are a variety of ways to train as a theatre professional. The two most popular methods are via the university liberal arts program, where a student majors in Drama, and via professional conservatory programs. In Canada the latter route is offered by the National Theatre School, the degree programs at York University, Concordia, University of Alberta and Windsor among others, and diploma programs at colleges and Quebec’s CEGEP institutes. The liberal arts degree in Drama is available throughout the country at a number of universities offering comprehensive programs with varied approaches. How the professional path differs from the liberal arts approach is the subject of this article which will include observations about the different kinds of learning that occur in each milieu. My purpose is not to determine which approach is “better”, but to consider in what ways the different climates stimulate and train students who are, with few exceptions, not all that unlike each other.
Penelope
Authors: Graphics Guppy
Published: June 2023

A new age began when it became possible to study the history of women, a subject previously neglected or dismissed as impossible. The explosion of feminism in the 1970s played an important part in this enterprise, as did progress in anthropology and the history of mentalites. A vast effort of documentation was begun, as texts were reread in order to lay the groundwork for a history of women ... to learn more about the feelings of women, about their sexuality, and about their private lives . And, I would add, it was to give women a place in history as well as a history of their own. [Pantell 465
Mirror Game
Authors: Foon Dennis , Luther Alice Hamilton
Published: June 2023

Dennis Foon’s Mirror Game is a serious and thought-provoking drama on the subject of abusive behaviour. The story centres around four teenagers – Bob, Sara, Maggie and Luke – all of whom are victims of neglect and abusive behaviour in the home and school settings. The play demonstrates how their treatment is later reflected in their relationships with one another.
Actor Training
Authors: Rewa Natalie
Published: June 2023

Though Canadian actors, designers, playwrights and technicians are articulate about the programs that they have experienced, the discussion of theatre training by those who offer it is sporadic. The most comprehensive account of the theory and practice of theatre education in Canada is the 164-page Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Theatre Training in Canada which was commissioned by the Canada Council and its Advisory Arts Panel and published in 1978. A major implication of the study was that theatre training had to be more closely allied with practice if it was to be more effective. What would a similar study of theatre training – supposing that any agency were interested in funding it – discover today?
Perspective on Scenography Scenes, Seen, Unseen
Authors: Rewa Natalie
Published: June 2023

The paradox of scenography in Canada (and elsewhere) is that the acute attention paid to design by producers is in inverse proportion to that found in reviews and criticism. A common explanation of this phenomenon is that English-language theatre is based in a literary tradition which has developed its own peculiar critical apparatus – one that marginalizes artists such as set, lighting, costume and sound designers by eliding performances with dramatic texts, and largely ignores the visual and aural experience of spectating. As an editor of CTR since 19881 have often noted this disparity between performances and reports and would like to reflect on the difficulties of analysing scenographic design.
Has Canadian Theatre a Future?
Authors: Moore Mavor
Published: June 2023

Could there be a worse moment for prognostication? Millenarianism – the paranoia that links the end of a thousand man-years with a global apocalypse – is epidemic and unreachable by reason. All over the globe new winds blow wildly and old anchors drift or break loose. It would be easier to make a stab at prophesy if we could get a handle on any one of the three elements in our title; but each of them is unprecedentedly unstable. The nation has never been dicier, the theatre never daffier and the future never dizzier. This decade is unhinging some of the oldest and most traditionally solid of societies. For Canadians, who have so resolutely scorned their past achievements in favour of wistful promise, it could well be devastating.
Coming Home
Authors: Juliani John
Published: June 2023

Long-term readers of CTR may remember John Juliani’s impassioned response to the appointment of Robin Phillips to the Stratford Festival. In our inaugural issue, CTR capped an interview with Phillips with a similar interview with Juliani, who announced his new position as artistic director of the Strazione National Theatre of Italy. Coincidentally, Juliani has returned home from his 20-year stint just as CTR celebrates its 20th birthday. We asked Vancouver CBC producer John Juliani to interview John Juliani on his return.
Serpent in the Night Sky; Amigo’s Blue Guitar; Tessera 11 (Winter/Hiver 1991) “Performance/Transformance”
Authors: Warren Dianne , MacLeod Joan , Jones Heather
Published: June 2023

Among other things, Warren’s and MacLeod’s plays enact the shifting complexities of brother/sister relationships. In Warren’s play, Serpent in the Night Sky, Duff and his sister Stella endure the ongoing oppression of Gator, a bully and petty criminal. When Joy enters their world, however, the dynamics begin to change. Joy and Duff meet in Montana and return together to northern Saskatchewan. After spending a night together in a motel while on the road, they decide to get married. The play opens with “Preacher on top of his church, watching the night sky” and Duff and Joy entering Duff’s living room, the main set. Duff’s sister Stella and Gator soon appear, Stella having just received $15,000 in lottery winnings. Stella’s and Duff’s mother, Marlene, has gone back to the woods. Joy manages to liberate Duff and Stella from Gator and to reconcile them to each other and Duff to their mother, Marlene. Preacher – a character both comic and thematic in function – performs a marriage ceremony of sorts for Joy and Duff and they begin a journey to the west coast, or to the end of Joy’s fifty dollars, whichever comes first. Warren reworks the formula in which a stranger (in this case an innocent instead of a villain) enters a quietly desperate situation and transforms everyone’s lives for the better, and successfully blends it with the more ambitious invocation of myth in Preacher’s search for “the serpent in the night sky”.
The Wolf Plays; The Ugly Man; Thirteen Hands
Authors: Fraser Brad , Fraser Brad , Shields Carol , Moser Marlene
Published: June 2023

Generalizing makes for generations: a lumping together of people, a coagulating of characteristics through time and place. Perhaps most meaningful for those who are within them, generations provide the security of a group identity, and the possibility of temporarily establishing a meaning for why things are the way they are. Risks run rampant, however. In the need to establish a pattern, the individual becomes lost. Or, in the manner of Coke Classic, the same tradition may simply be reinvented for a new market.
From Cultural Concerns to Community Action
Authors: Cardinal Donna
Published: June 2023

An artist in Victoria makes his way to a corner of his cluttered studio, switches on the computer, logs on to the network, and reads and responds to the day’s postings by peer learners he is accompanying as they explore the issues of culture and cultural transformation in their communities across Canada.

A museum director in a remote northern town sits back at the end of a busy day, logs on to the same network, and uploads an image he has been exploring in his own mind of a museum that speaks to today’s cultural and social issues. He is thinking of offering this image as a contribution to the province’s cultural policy development process.
Theatre and the Information Superhighway: A View from the Ivory Tower
Authors: Mullaly Edward
Published: June 2023

I mentioned to a colleague the other day that I was writing a short paper on “Computers and Theatre”. His instant response was “Oh, are you for them or against them?” This alternative had not entered my mind.

It doesn’t matterin the least whether we’re for or against them. Computers have become part of the fabric of our existence. They are the turbo chargers on the engine of research. While they allow us to do nothing that we could not do without them, they allow us to do it much more quickly. We could search through each issue of the MLA Bibliography for articles on Tennessee Williams, but it’s much quicker to have the computer talk to a CD-ROM. I could search through periodicals on Canadian theatre to find who has said what recently,butit’s more useful to enter citations into a data base which remains memory resident in my own computer. If I want to do textual analysis of Shakespeare’s plays, I could type the text into WordPerfect, but it’s much quicker to download the scripts from the Internet directly onto my hard drive. I’m justlabouring the obvious when Isay computers have moved us from an era of movable type to an era of movable information.
Toronto Global Change and Exchange: Technological Development
Authors: Poole William D.
Published: June 2023

On 8-11 June 1995, the International Society of Performing Arts Administrators (ISPAA) will hold its International Congress in Toronto. The Toronto Congress will be the third in a series of four congresses exploring the theme Global Change and Exchange. The particular focus of the Toronto Congress will be Technological Development. More specifically, the Congress will explore how these developments are affecting and are inherently linked to Revenue Development, Audience Development and Artistic Development. In addition to the world-wide ISPAA membership, it is anticipated that a large number of Canadians involved in the arts, cultural industries and related fields will attend the Congress. The Congress is not limited to ISPAA members nor does subscription to the Congress entail ISPAA membership. It is therefore open to all interested parties. Material promoting the Congress will be published in both English and French. For further information about the Toronto Congress, please contact: William D. Poole, Director, Centre for Cultural Management at the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario N2L3G1: 519 888-4567, ext. 5057; Fax: 519 746-3956; email: bpoole@watarts.uwaterloo.ca .
Alberta Plays and Playwrights
Authors: Holt Faye Reineberg , Nothof Anne
Published: June 2023

Alberta Plays and Playwrights is a scrupulously democratic catalogue of 350 plays by 100 Alberta playwrights, compiled by Alberta Playwrights’ Network to acquaint theatre directors, playwrights, educators, students, and audiences across Canada with the rich resources of Alberta theatre. As Brian Paisley, founder of the Edmonton Fringe Festival, has commented, it seems that in Alberta there is a manuscript stuffed under every mattress. The catalogue is clearly designed and accessible: playwrights are listed alphabetically with a brief biography, address and phone number, followed by succinct synopses of their plays, including genre, length, cast requirements, production dates, awards and publishing information, and most important, information on accessing a script, whether published or unpublished.
Arts Funding The Alberta Horizon
Authors: Roy Denise
Published: June 2023

Hard to believe that this month marks the fifteenth anniversary of my move to Alberta to work for Catalyst Theatre – I suppose that soon I’ll have to start calling myself an Albertan! Some of the defiant and proud Western attitude has certainly rubbed off on me by now. I know this is true because I am no longer upset by the looks of disbelief and/or pity from my fellow Canadians when I admit that, yes – I choose to pursue a career in the arts in Alberta.
Confessions of Disguise/Disguises of Confession: Looking at Primus Theatre’s The Night Room
Authors: Mark Lisa Gabrielle
Published: June 2023

Primus Theatre’s production of The Night Room is an articulation of space and body, of desire, of fear. Speaking what cannot be spoken.

I enter a billowing tent that breathes and sighs, wandering around the maze-like corridors of the tent before I am seated. I have lost my sense of direction by now. The labyrinth pulsates. The audience is seated in a chamber inside the labyrinth, complicit. Warm with desire. Drawn in. (Quartered).
Self-imposed Marginality
Authors: Vulovič Mima
Published: June 2023

The theatre season of the year I arrived in Canada was marked by The Kiss of the Spider Woman. Later, while watching it receive all the Tonys that it did, I noted, in front of a fellow actor, how unimaginable it would be for, say, Peter Brook, Eugenio Barba and Heiner Muller – in short, the established theatre people in Europe – to rejoice in a standing ovation to a piece that through “sizzling” song and dance “celebrates” the tragedy of a gay man and a revolutionary in a Latin American prison. And how this still remains the most important distinction in the “culture of theatre” between the two continents, in terms of both ethics and aesthetics, as obvious and banal as the comparison may seem. I was promptly instructed then that, yes, there is “them” – commercial theatre, and there is “us” – fringe theatre, serious theatre to be exact, and although both may constitute the theatre culture at large, the distinction is quite clear, here in North America, too.
The Letter: or, A Jury of Her Peers, Part Two
Authors: Wilson Ann
Published: June 2023

In a letter dated 28 June 1994, Mary Pat Mombourquette and Sue Morrison, the Co-Artistic Directors of the Theatre Resource Centre were informed that the Canada Council had “decided, on the recommendation of the Theatre Advisory Committee, and the Theatre Section not to participate in the activities of the Theatre Resource Centre with a Multi-Year Operating Grant” (Letter). The letter, which had two signatories – Kevin McKendrick, a Theatre Officer at the Council, and Catherine O’Grady, Head of Theatre Section – clearly detailed the reasons for the decision and ended by offering suggestions about the other types of funding from the Council to which the TRC might apply.
Cyber:\womb A contemporary domestic science-fiction drama in two acts
Authors: Laxdal Vivienne
Published: June 2023

Playwright’s Note

This play was inspired by my questions and concerns about reprod uctive technology and genetic engineering. My fascination with the Cyberpunk movement and my feehngs of being left behind or on the “outside” also came into creative play.

I wonder about the context of “soul” within these new methods of creating and altering life. Is anybody thinking abou t that? Should we?
Modern Canadian Plays, 3rd ed., 2 vols; You’re Making a Scene: Scenes from Canadian Plays; Eureka! Seven One-Act Plays for Secondary Schools
Authors: Wasserman Jerry , Hamill Tony , Gilsenan Marion , Jansen Ann , Ferry David , Lewis Jacquie Johnston , Warren Dianne , Nunn Robert
Published: June 2023

In our review article, Rob Nunn considers the disparate goals of three anthologies: canonizing Canadian drama (Wasserman), collecting dramatic scenes (Hamill), and promoting regional drama (Johnston Lewis and Warren). From the Greek words anthos, meaning “flower” and legein, “to gather”, “anthology” describes a collection of the “flowers” of Greek verse, the gathering up of small choice poems. Of course, gathering implies judging, selecting, and rejecting. And in the age of post-modern drama, Canadian and otherwise, these activities are permeated with ideological agendas. “Choice” becomes exceedingly problematic when we recognize that principles of judgement and selection are no longer “natural”, no longer unscrutinized. What do anthologists reject, exclude, make standard? What is “standard”? CTR considers three anthologies here because the impulse to anthologize, it seems, is as old as the Greeks. But, given the increasing difficulty to justify “judgement”, does the anthology have a future? JTG