bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Beijing Opera in Canada
Authors: Hernandez Catherine
Published: June 2023

When I started my research on Beijing Opera and its survival in Canada, I thought I was going to write its obituary; I thought I’d stumble upon a dying relative and in turn have to carve out its epitaph. But what I found was that it was in fact alive and well here in the new world with its fibres interwoven proudly into our nation’s diversity.
Into the Heart of Beijing Opera
Authors: Specht Heidi
Published: June 2023

Pangaea Arts Society is an intercultural, interdisciplinary world arts company based in Vancouver, British Columbia. In the year 2000, Pangaea Arts developed and produced Into the Heart of Beijing Opera, a theatrical performance and workshop demonstration. Performed in both English and Mandarin, this bilingual production featured an excerpt from a famous Chinese opera and gave young Canadian audiences an indepth look into this ancient art form through educational demonstrations and audience participation. The artists involved were director and performer Yuan-Tzeng Hsia, performers O Sheng, Lee Hsiao-Ying Hsia and Heidi Specht, as well as stage manager and translator Ying Wang.
Half-Chinx Taking Over the World
Authors: Rio Bobby Del
Published: June 2023

Caution: Copyright Bobby Del Rio, 2002. This script is protected under the copyright laws of Canada and all other countries of the copyright union. Changes to the script are forbidden without the written consent of the author. Rights to produce, film or record in any medium, in any language, by any group, are retained by the author. The moral right of the author has been asserted. For copyright information contact: Bobby Del Rio, 152 Bedford Park Avenue, Toronto, ON M5M 1J1.
Canada Dry!: A Canadian Theatre Company in Egypt
Authors: Sprung Guy
Published: June 2023

Last September Infinitheatre, my small Montreal “risk theatre,” took a bilingual production of Beckett’s Fin de Partie/Endgame to the thirteenth Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre. We had originated our production in Old Montreal, in the unheated shell of a former foundry where temperatures dipped to freezing in the November chill. With the breath of the actors visible in the air, the audience huddled together under blankets to watch the love/hate power struggle of Hamm and Clov. Hamm was played by a Francophone (Jean Archambault) and Clov by an Anglophone (Sean Devine); this allowed us to graft together Beckett’s own French and English versions. Language became part of the battleground as the characters switched between French and English in mid-dialogue with the frequency and ease we Montrealers do in our daily existence. Clov’s constant threat: “Je te quitte,” the mantra of anglo Quebec, took on a very specific resonance. Somehow word of our production reached the Egyptian Consul in Montreal and we were invited to participate in what Egyptians consider one of the great international cultural events of the Arab world.
Shakespeare in a Blender
Authors: Schagerl Jessica
Published: June 2023

As a collective with four to six members at any one time, A Company of Fools’ mandate is to create innovative and accessible pieces based on the works of William Shakespeare. The company, which currently consists of core members Margo MacDonald, Scott Florence, Elizabeth Logue, Stéfanie Séguin and Al Connors, interprets this mandate two ways: as full-length shows performed with their own spin (most often using elements of clown) and as “Shakespeare in a blender” (a collage piece, a show made up of a collection of themes from Shakespeare or Shakespeare rewritten with improvisational elements involved.) In both instances, the result is generally irreverent – a function of the very physical, presentational and interactive style of the players. Described variously as a Shakespeare comedy troupe, an antidote to boring, conventional Shakespeare, and (by one of the members) as what happens when “the Marx Brothers make coffee for the Monty Python gang at a slumber party where everyone is watching Bugs Bunny” (Florence, Interview), Ottawa’s A Company of Fools has maintained its entertaining, exuberant take on Shakespeare by not taking their source material too seriously. Through their adaptations of Shakespeare, especially the re-workings of scenes in new contexts with unexpected twists, the Fools – as they are commonly called in Ottawa – seem to epitomize a most Canadian attribute: their cultural productions do not disrupt Shakespeare as a dominant cultural figure but playfully adapt his writing and situations for their own comedic ends.
Loreena McKennitt, Merchant of Song
Authors: Rhijn Judy van
Published: June 2023

It has always been a challenge to make Shakespeare’s plays relevant, adapting them to current tastes and times. His themes may be universal but the Elizabethan idiom in which he writes became a burden even to the generation that followed his, and in The Merchant of Venice, in particular, Elizabethan attitudes to race and gender, among other things, require mediation before contemporary audiences. In overcoming the historical and cultural divide, a director can be assisted by a musical score that appeals to contemporary audiences and connects them to the Shakespearean experience. One Canadian artist who brings both musical authenticity and considerable popular appeal to a production is Loreena McKennitt. Although popularly known as a Celtic musician, McKennitt’s reservoir of sources encompasses the Shakespearean era and the wider European world where he set many of his plays. In theatre, her distinctive musical style has been effectively used to adapt Shakespeare to modern tastes.
Adaptation as Rite of Passage: A Shakespeare Pageant
Authors: Fischlin Daniel
Published: June 2023

A Shakespeare Pageant was written by Sister Mary Agnes, who was born Mary Ives in a well-to-do Boston family in 1861, and died in 1939. Sister M. Agnes, as she was known, taught English from 1909 to 1928 at St Mary’s Academy (founded in 1874), an all-girls private Catholic high school in Winnipeg. The work, subtitled “A Dialogue for Commencement Day” and first published by St. Mary’s Academy in 1915, was located as part of the “Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare” research project funded by the Premier’s Research Excellence Awards (PREA) in Ontario. The project’s purpose is to recuperate the vast archive of “Canadian” theatrical practices associated with adaptations of Shakespeare. A significant unwritten history exists with regard to how Canadian society used theatre in a multitude of contexts. Here I refer to theatre in its broadest contexts, beyond mainstream, urban and high culture – including theatre produced and performed by marginalized communities, workers’ theatre, theatre performed in high schools and community centres and private homes, to list only a few. The “Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare” project intends, through identification and study of the archive, to come to some clearer understanding of the myriad ways in which adaptations of Shakespeare address ideas of Canadian nationhood as it was reflected in various theatrical practices at different stages in Canadian history. To the long-troubled (and troubling) question of how to identify what it means to “be Canadian,” such an archive posits all sorts of theoretical and practical solutions that emerge from the very diversity of writing and performance practices associated with this particular archive. Adaptation here is a useful marker of the extent to which divergence from an iconic cultural referent and performance practice (like Shakespeare and Shakespearean theatre) also signals new cultural formations and thus new subjectivities as mediated (and produced) by the adaptive process.
A Shakespeare Pageant: Dialogue for Commencement Day
Authors: S. M. A.
Published: June 2023

Caution: Copyright 1915, St. Mary’s Academy, Winnipeg, MB. This script is protected under the copyright laws of Canada and all other countries of the Copyright Union. Changes to the script are forbidden without the written consent of the copyright holder. Rights to produce, film or record in any medium, in any language, by any group, are retained by the copyright holder. The moral right of the author has been asserted. For performance rights, contact St. Mary’s Academy, 550 Wellington Crescent, Winnipeg, MB R3M 0C1. http://www.stmarysacademy.mb.ca/
Editorial
Authors: Fischlin Daniel , Knowles Ric
Published: June 2023

People have been working on “what to do with Shakespeare” – a more accurate, if more awkward term than “adapting” – for over four hundred years. Even in England in his own lifetime fellow playwrights were citing, rewriting and contesting the work of this “upstart crow.” His younger colleague and collaborator, John Fletcher, went so far in 1611 as to write The Woman’s Prize; or The Tamer Tamed, a fanciful sequel and arguably protofeminist response to The Taming of the Shrew. Since then, reproductions, homages, appropriations, exploitations, citations, translations, adaptations and tradaptations of various kinds, dramatic and otherwise, have surfaced in an astonishing range of historical periods and cultural contexts, ranging from respectful updatings and popularizings in classic cartoons and mainstream modern dress productions to resistant rewritings such as, archetypically, Aimé Césaire’s postcolonial La Tempête. “Shakespeare” has been appropriated in the service of everything from “Ye Olde” faux Tudor “Shakespeare Arms” pubs everywhere, through conservative cultural critiques such as Robertson Davies’ Tempest Tost, to armaments advertising that links Shakespeare’s Globe, early modern imperialism and Britain’s contemporary global arms trade; from journalistic accounts of the O.J. Simpson trial (Othello) through, in Canada, pop-music, de- or re-contextualized settings of Hamlet’s “Never Doubt I Love” by singer/songwriter Melanie Doane, to irreverent, almost gratuitous gestures directed at the Shakespearean high-cultural sheen, as in the album title, Shakespeare My Butt, by the rock group, Lowest of the Low (which includes no other references to Shakespeare). The gesture positions Shakespeare on the wrong side of the Pink Floyd rock culture anthem, “We don’t need no education/We don’t need no mind control,” an agent of what Louis Althusser has taught us to call the Ideological State Apparatus.
Directing Red Mango: a Blues Conversation with John Cooper
Authors: Watts Allan
Published: June 2023

Allan Watts talks with John Cooper, director of Red Mango, written by Charles Tidler, and performed at the Belfry Theatre, Victoria, British Columbia in April, 2000.
Zulu Time
Authors: Bligh Kate
Published: June 2023

I should state at the outset that I have followed Robert Lepage’s work with respect and admiration for the last ten years. I first saw his Dragon’s Trilogy in London, England in 1992. It moved me to tears and open-mouthed wonder. The comments here will therefore reflect my experience and expectations of his work, yet my impression is that most of Lepage’s theatre is intended for new, rather than theatre-literate, audiences. For this I admire him the more.
The Community as Witness
Authors: Simm Teresa
Published: June 2023

With the publication of her anthology of ten plays written by members of the African Canadian community, Djanet Sears has launched a challenge to all those who concern themselves with theatre and the construction of history in this country. Testifyin’: Contemporary African Canadian Drama: Volume I speaks to the pressing need for practitioners and members of the public alike to question popular misconceptions concerning the nature and scope of dramatic literary output and theatre practice here in Canada. Sears brings together works by such accomplished figures as George Elliott Clarke, George Seremba, Austin Clarke, Walter M. Borden, M. Nourbese Philip and ahdri zhina mandiela, while showcasing the plays of earlier, as well as emergent dramatists, h. jay bunyan, maxine bailey, sharon m. lewis and Andrew Moodie.
Messages from Urjo
Authors: Knelman Martin
Published: June 2023

Urjo Kareda was known as a great man of the theatre, a brilliant critic and a passionate advocate for the arts, but to me he was much more than that. Above all, Urjo was a one-of-a-kind friend whose generosity included giving me a continuing education for thirty-five years, sharing with me his feelings about the operas, plays, movies and books which he was always devouring. And in case that sounds frightfully high-toned, 1 should add that Urjo was a talented gossip whose sharp-tongued, sarcastic observations often made me laugh. Urjo’s talent for repartee made friendship itself into an art form.
Legacies: Richard Rose’s Vision of Tarragon Theatre
Authors: Mckinnie Michael
Published: June 2023

Richard Rose is the new artistic director at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto. One of Canada’s most accomplished directors and dramaturgs, Rose was the artistic director of Necessary Angel Theatre Company for more than twenty years. He talked to Michael McKinnie about being Urjo Kareda’s successor and about his plans for Tarragon. Their conversation took place at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto on 29 August 2002.
Views & Reviews
Authors: Graham Catherine
Published: June 2023

If there is one thing that those of us who never knew Urjo Kareda personally learned from him, it is the importance of nurturing new relationships in, and new approaches to developing, Canadian theatre. The articles in this Views & Reviews section come very much out of that same spirit. We start with Kim Renders’ testimonial to her friend and colleague Svetlana Zylin, a woman who, like Kareda, had a huge influence not only on the people with whom she worked directly, but on the many more of us who knew indirectly of her passion and determination to create a place for women in the burgeoning Canadian theatre scene of the last quarter of the twentieth century. I am one of those who never met Zylin, but whose own interest in theatre was encouraged by stories of how Zylin had made a place for new projects and new people in the Canadian theatre scene and who never lost her passion for life or for art in Canada. Lynne Fernie’s article in CTR 43 on her struggle to be accepted as a director in a world where her Master’s thesis production could be rejected on the basis that a play whose characters are all female (Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba) does not reflect the human condition, made her a legend to women of my generation. Her work across the country in the theatres large and small and in theatre institutions like Playwrights’ Workshop and the Manitoba Arts Council allowed many of us to be touched by her vision and generosity. Her death is a great loss to Canadian theatre, but her dedication to creating a world of theatre that can open itself to new visions and new people will have its impact for years to come.
Celebrating Life: In Memory of Svetlana Zylin
Authors: Renders Kim
Published: June 2023

On 7 October of this year, friends, colleagues and admirers of Svetlana Zylin gathered at Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille to remember, reminisce and celebrate her life. It was my honour to have the opportunity to speak as a part of the evening.
Questionable Activities: The Best. Edited by Judith Rudakoff. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2000. $19.95
Authors: Graham Catherine
Published: June 2023

In Questionable Activities Judith Rudakoff brings us not only an important contribution to contemporary Canadian theatre studies, but a model for that most highly prized of university activities: the creation of a productive link between research and teaching. Rudakoff’s volume is the result of her work with theatre students at York University. As she explains in the preface to the book, the seventeen interviews that compose the piece are a selection of some of “the best” interviews conducted by students in a senior seminar in Canadian theatre at York University. Rather than ask her students to write a standard term paper on Canadian theatre, Rudakoff has, since 1989, been sending them out to do guided research on a topic in Canadian theatre that interests them. The importance of this strategy lies not only in the educational values it promotes. Asking students to put themselves in the position of “infiltrating and finding a place in the world of theatre-making in Canada today ”makes an important claim for the role of critics and historians, and particularly for new generations of “theatre historians/critics/chroniclers” in the development of Canadian theatre (i-iii).
Language and Racism: Wendy Lill’s The Occupation of Heather Rose
Authors: Petropoulos Jacqueline
Published: June 2023

The subject I wish to address is not one that has been addressed very often in studies of Canadian theatre, but it has become increasingly important to a growing number of scholars, artists and activists involved in the fight against the policies and practises of racism that continue to shape Canada as a nation even into the twenty-first century. As a starting point for exploring the relationship between language and racism, I turn my attention to a well-known Canadian play, Wendy Lill’s The Occupation of Heather Rose. While I recognize that Lill’s play is not the most politically radical or influential discussion of this topic to be produced in recent years, I believe nevertheless that its critical deconstruction of the language of racism offers an important glimpse into the racist ideologies that inform the dominant white cultural perspective in Canada.
Performing Canada: The Nation Enacted in the Imagined Theatre
Authors: Philpott Wendy
Published: June 2023

Forcing the idea of Canadian-ness is an old habit in this country. Cultural, government or commercial institutions push products of national identity; they make policies, mandates and strategies that shoehorn these enigmatic and changing phenomena into tangible and material expressions of nationhood. Alan Filewod’s recent book, Performing Canada: A Nation Enacted in the Imagined Theatre brings this interesting problem of authentic and imagined production and reception into a stimulating critical perspective. Published as the first in a sub-series of monographs entitled “Critical Performance/s in Canada,” I enjoyed the study not just for its articulation and painstaking critique of our nation’s theatre and our theatre’s nation, but also for any omissions or assumptions which invite further study and healthy debate.
Canadian Theatre and Monuments
Authors: Tompkins Joanne
Published: June 2023

The representational power that the Stratford Festival holds in the history of contemporary Canadian theatre cannot be overestimated. Stratford has long been a monument of (and to) theatre in Canada, partly because of the distinctive architectural design of the Festival Theatre, and partly – perhaps more likely – because of its manufactured story of origin.1 In Performing Canada: The Nation Enacted in the Imagined Theatre, Alan Filewod explains how Stratford came to be “the template which ... governed the dominant model of professional theatre structures in Canada” (56) and Canadian theatre itself. This monumentalization is all the more interesting given that, for Filewod, Stratford has actually “contributed little to the overall development of theatre in Canada” (57) beyond a location for symbolic value. It does, however, provide the basis for a useful oppositionality: Canadian theatre – developed to some extent in the shadow of Stratford – now casts shadows itself. This paper focuses on three plays that open dialogues with monumental images of the nation: The Death of General Wolfe by Brian Quirt, Angélique by Lorena Gale and Sled by Judith Thompson.
MAPping New Play Development in Manitoba
Authors: Longfield Kevin
Published: June 2023

The 1970s saw the flowering of Canadian playwrights almost everywhere except Manitoba. Although a few locally written plays found the stage during this period, Manitobans had to wait an extra decade before they could expect to see local scripts on a regular basis. Why was Manitoba so late in developing a playwriting tradition?
Playwriting Madness: New Play and Playwright Development at Toronto’s Workman Theatre Project
Authors: Johnston Kirsty
Published: June 2023

Is there meaning in madness? Can we know it? What is madness? What was madness? What is the history of madness? What is the history of how people have seen madness? Is it a disease, or is it simply a private religion, a little harmless deviance of thought and action? Which is better, psychiatry or no psychiatry? Are we all, in our own obscure ways, mad, and is madness really so close to sanity?
Eternal Hydra
Authors: Piatigorsky Anton
Published: June 2023

Caution: Copyright Anton Piatigorsky. This script is protected under the copyright laws of Canada and all other countries of the copyright union. Changes to the script are forbidden without the written consent of the author. Rights to produce, film or record in any medium, in any language, by any group, are retained by the author. The moral right of the author has been asserted. For performance rights, contact the author at 272 Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6J 2V8.
High-Gravel-Blind
Authors: Dunn Paul
Published: June 2023

Caution: Copyright Paul Dunn. This script is protected under the copyright laws of Canada and all other countries of the copyright union. Changes to the script are forbidden without the written consent of the author. Rights to produce, film or record in any medium, in any language, by any group, are retained by the author. The moral right of the author has been asserted. For performance rights, contact the author at Apt #1, 15 Douglas Street, Stratford, Ontario, N5A 5P3.
Aside from satisfying the theatre, you must satisfy yourself
Authors: kam Ken
Published: June 2023

I enjoy taking pictures in the theatre. Usually I show up at rehearsal with no idea of the subject of the photo shoot, but I prefer it this way - it is a surprise every time. Of course, this kind of thinking and attitude only comes with experience.
I want to captrue the moment that lives on
Authors: Lee Trudie
Published: June 2023

Working in the arts as a photographer is like working on your chops as a musician. I’ve always felt it’s kept me looking at things with a fresh perspective. It’s a privilege to walk into the theatre just days before opening night and take in an intimate dress rehearsal. I try to capture the essence of the play. There is such a comfort between myself and the stage that I feel like I disappear while I’m shooting.
In This Moment: The Evolution of “Theatre for Living”
Authors: Diamond David
Published: June 2023

It is part of Headlines Theatre’s mandate – one of my responsibilities as Artistic and Managing Director, to steer a theatre company that responds to and creates in this moment in a metaphorical language known as “Theatre.” We are a company1 that creates within a vast array of circumstances, with many different cultural groups, in varied geographic locations around North America and throughout the world. Most important, we create with people in community, who are experiencing, both as individuals and as a collective, their own perceptions of life.
La ultima puesta del sol / The Last Setting of the Sun
Authors: Garcia Freddy , Grant Cynthia
Published: June 2023

A bilingual piece that shows how a teenaged actor involved himself in theatre, an act that ultimately led to his exile. Beside his comrades, he established his career and a small theatre company in the middle of the civil war in EI Salvador.
Views & Reviews
Authors: Houston Andrew
Published: June 2023

In a world increasingly concerned with security and the problems of how we might perceive one another’s identities, activism in the form of maintaining an open mind has never been more important. Perhaps such an activism begins with an inquiry into knowledge that asks: How do we know about each other? or How do we know about our world? An activism that worries our pat assurances of such knowledge might then proceed to an understanding that most of what we know comes to us through various forms of representational knowledge, be it media, history and other discourses or even our own immediate perceptions. Given that these forms are predicated upon a stable relationship between the person trying to know and the object of understanding, our activism of open-mindedness would then run into the obsessive need for recognition in our world; that is, in the moment of recognition the individual finds a tremendous comfort and reassurance in the self-sameness of identity or in the familiarity of the object. Thus, the forms in which we perceive the world are a problem to an activism of open-mindedness insofar as they are often designed to furnish a sense of security, the comfort of recognition, and a sense of self-sameness between an individual and the world.
Black Theatre in Nova Scotia: In Search of a Sustainable and Viable Presence
Authors: Borden Walter
Published: June 2023

Black Theatre was officially established in Nova Scotia in 1967, when the late Dr. Evelyn Garbary, a former Abbey Theatre and London stage actress and my great mentor, entertained the idea of bringing together a group of people to present the play Coming Here to Stay. Written by her friend David Griffin, it told the story of the refugee Blacks who immigrated to Nova Scotia from America between 1812 and 1830.
Reigning Words: Black Playwrights in BC Theatre
Authors: Barker Siobhan R.K.
Published: June 2023

Tidalectics’ describes an Africanist way of seeing history as a slate that has been reused after previous writings have been erased, “where generations overlap generations and eras wash over eras like a tide on a stretch of beach. There are changes but they grow out of slight misduplication of the pattern” (Kamau Braithwaite, qtd. in Compton 17).
1. From Life of the Party
Authors: Atwell Gerry
Published: June 2023

Caution: Copyright Gerry Atwell © 2003. 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 the author. Rights to produce, film or record in any medium, in any language, are retained by the author. The moral right of the author has been asserted. For permissions, copyright, and performance rights, contact the author at gatwell@mb.sympatico.ca
Madness and Method in This Room Is Moving
Authors: Catlett Mallory
Published: June 2023

This Room Is Moving is a double bill that features Harold Pinter’s first play, The Dwarfs, and a new play, Beat, compiled by Screaming Flea Theatre from the writings of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs. Both plays are inspired by the formative years of their authors and the rooms they moved through.
Canadian Road Trip: An Oblique State of Mind
Authors: Proehl Geoff
Published: June 2023

I caught a salmon today. We go home tomorrow and I was the only one to catch a fish on this entire trip to the salmon capital of North America.

I grew up in a logging town in northwest Oregon, and my standards for natural beauty are high. I look out my bedroom window and see hills of trees. I walk down the railroad tracks and I am at the river, in it. But as I drove this week with my aunt, uncle and cousin to Washington and then British Columbia, I had to admit that what I saw out the window of the camper was more lush and green than what I had grown up with.
simpL Politics, Simply Art: Karl Valentin, Peter Froehlich,Troubled Waters
Authors: Whittaker Robin
Published: June 2023

Ottawa playwright/actor/professor Peter Froehlich could hardly have premiered his latest creation, simpL – about the art and life of German beer-hall legend Karl Valentin (1882–1948) – at a more opportune time. Staging a play about Munich’s famous apolitical comedian, just one week after Ottawa’s city council voted on a proposed 79 per cent cut to the municipal arts budget might have sent cultural Shockwaves through the Nation’s Capital or activist Shockwaves through the city’s theatre-going public, or even rallied together the city’s arts community behind this ideologically controversial yet touching play, in a unified and sustained show of support. But in Ottawa, 2004, this was not the case. Instead, Froehlich’s play holds a mirror up to the city’s ironic place of patronage between apathy, politics and the role of the theatre artist in troubled times.
“Serving the Whole”: An Interview with Ottawa Playwright Peter Froehlich
Authors: Whittaker Robin
Published: June 2023

Two weeks before rehearsals began, Peter Froehlich (Merz; Hank Williams, the Show He Never Gave; The Beaten Track) and I discussed the ways in which his new play presents representational challenges for the playwright/actor/professor. For one, the work adapts diverse “sketches” by Munich beer-hall sensation Karl Valentin and weaves them through moments in his life. For another, the sketches are translated into English from a difficult Bavarian dialect. For another, the play was going into rehearsals while Ottawa considered slashing four-fifths of its municipal arts funding – a proposal that would have decimated English-speaking professional theatre organizations in the city. Froehlich’s project interrogates how “we” translate a/political art across the very spatial and temporal borders that connect us to, Froehlich maintains, “one of the most important narratives of the way we put the world together.”
The Memory of Terrible Things
Authors: Hall Craig
Published: June 2023

Have you ever told an innocuous story, perhaps a tale of your youth that you’ve regaled friends with a hundred times, and had a new listener react with disgust or even horror? Have you ever looked back on one of your own actions only to realize that perhaps you shouldn’t have gotten away with it? What is the most terrible thing that you nave ever done? Were your actions justified?
Carnival Diablo: The Sideshow in Canada
Authors: Skidmore Jamie
Published: June 2023

Imagine if, when you were a fourteen-year-old, your grandfather had pulled a long, corked, chemical flask from his inner jacket pocket after eating Christmas dinner. Envision further your aged grandparent withdrawing the stopper from this vial, extracting a long surgical needle, inserting it into his nose, and driving it deep into his skull. Now picture your grandfather suggesting that, “You try it!”
Theatre as a Weapon against Mass Delusion, The Adventures of Ali and Ali and the Axes of Evil
Authors: Kerr Rosalind
Published: June 2023

About two-thirds of the way into their “divertimento for warlords,” when the two state less refugees Ali and Ali are taken to task for failing to stick to their contract to provide “an uplifting multicultural drama with some songs,” they call upon their embedded critic, a French intellectual, to speak in their defence. The giant face of the dapper, coffee-drinking JeanPaulJacques Beauderrièredada (Guillermo Verdecchia) fills up the screen behind them and pronounces that

the tactic of Ali and Ali is to provoke an excess of reality; their hypothesis is that the system itself will commit suicide in response to multiple deadly farts (which in the symbolic of the irreal are pure utterances dependent on no referents). (49)
Denise Clarke’s Body of Fact
Authors: Houston Andrew
Published: June 2023

In the shadow of 9/11, in the fall of 2001, Denise Clarke set about creating an interpretive dance that might offer a reflection of where she found herself in the landscape of troubling times. Using a method of physical improvization she calls “fifty repetitions,” she wanted to explore what was on her mind but let her body do the talking. This approach to creating physical theatre is remarkable for its potential to tap into a performer’s intuitive and subconscious reserves. But what makes Sign Language a truly stunning commentary on life after 9/11 is the way in which Clarke creates a “physical conversation” with her audience: how the psychosomatic subtext is less about representing the sensational violence of our time and more about exploring the violence of sensation.
Unlikely Thespians: The Historical Re-enactors of the Royal George Society
Authors: Suthren Victor
Published: June 2023

On a sunny June weekend in 1985, the sparkling waters of Georgian Bay off Midland, Ontario, were full as usual of powerboats and sailing yachts, coursing the waters of one of the finest boating venues in Canada. Cleaving through the middle of their clustered white fibreglass hulls was a dark little wooden schooner of early-nineteenth-century rig, its tan canvas heeling it over in a fresh breeze as it tacked in incongruous Georgian dignity through the wakes of thundering “cigarette boats” and gleaming sailing machines. The schooner was HMS Bee, a replica of a British naval supply schooner of the year 1817, maintained at a nearby historic site by the Province of Ontario. Crewing it were men and women in the quaint, anachronistic garb of Regency-era sailors, as different in their canvas duck trousers, billowy shirts and sensible straw hats from the bikini-clad passengers of the hurtling powerboats as it is possible to imagine. The Bee’s crew were the first members of a newly formed society of historical re-enactors with the ponderous title of “Ship’s Company and Landing Party, His Britannic Majesty’s Ship Royal George.” They were another manifestation of a distinctly North American and European phenomenon: the hobbyists who seek to recreate historical times by placing themselves within those times as accurately costumed and equipped participants.
The Face of Re-enactment
Authors: Filewod Alan
Published: June 2023

The specificity of re-enactment conceals its universality because we see re-enactment in its particularized instances. For most people this is the mediatized image of the Civil War re-enactors who have become such a familiar cultural presence in North America. The particular set of interconnections operating in Civil War re-enactment, with its texts of historical pride, renegotiated patriotism, gun culture machismo and conservative politics, has become the dominant image of re-enactment, but it is far from accurate.
Women in Fish: Collaborating with History
Authors: Perry Mia
Published: June 2023

Women in Fish – Hours of Water is a project that has been in the making for two-and-a-half years. By the time I joined in July of this year, it was, in theory, a live radio docudrama in conjunction with a theatrical installation to be held on Galiano Island. In reality, the project became a collaboration among writer Marie Clements, a team of fourteen creative and technical crew, seven performers and the community of Galiano Island. Setting up the performance and exhibition space took over a week, with performers arriving two days before the opening night and the first day of rehearsals being the last. The creation involved an interactive installation, Women in Fish, that was open to the public every morning, after which the performers and designers would gather to rehearse and plan the evening’s show, Hours of Water. Hours of Water comprised six acts, performed over five nights.
Being Disabled?
Authors: Fortin Tyler
Published: June 2023

I was one of the first kids-with-a-disability (cerebral palsy/CP) to be fully integrated from day one into the British Columbia school system. I spent one week in French class in grade eight. After the first week, the teacher told me, “Pick another topic,” because learning French would be difficult for me. This was a major event in my life because I shifted over to Drama Eight. Ever since that day, performing has been an essential part of my life. With the experience of high school drama, I went on to performing with Theatre Terrific. That’s a Vancouver-based theatre company that has a mix of performers who are disabled and able-bodied people. I toured the whole province in two school tours with Theatre Terrific. I also started doing background (extra) work in the local Vancouver (Hollywood North) film industry. As I started to add more credits to my résumé, I went to an agent to try to get representation. I was told that I had great talent but that they only had auditions for disabled roles once a year.
My Continuing Adventures as a “Challenged” Playwright
Authors: Janz Heidi L.
Published: June 2023

An instructor in a play writing course once challenged me with the question, “Why do you always write about disabled characters?” Being a rather timid undergrad student at the time, I fear that my response was somewhat banal: I said something to the effect that I believed that, in one way or another, all good writers bring their lived experience to their writing. What I now wish I had said in response was, “I suppose I always write about disabled characters for the same reason that non-disabled writers always write about non-disabled characters.”
Challenging Bodies: Very Physical Theatre
Authors: Irwin Kathleen
Published: June 2023

The Canada Summer Games, based in Regina in August 2005, and the University of Regina’s Transdisciplinary Fund are enabling the production of a unique performance experiment called Challenging Bodies. This project, part theatre, part dance, part multimedia event, attempts to investigate the link between the spark of creative imagination and the act of fully realized physical expression. As well, it will attempt to problematize the notion of physical excellence by celebrating movement, however limited in scope, and enhancing and amplifying that movement through sophisticated technology. Indeed, inasmuch as the project is developing within a university environment, it is also part research, which attempts to intersect with communities that do not, typically, engage in shared dialogue. A multidisciplinary collective of theatre and intermedia artists, academics, choreographers, musicians, computer scientists, kinesiologists and otherwise-abled performers is initiating a process of exploration and experimentation that will, by presenting a high-calibre performance inclusive of physical difference, challenge spectators and provide an intriguing alternative to the competitive athleticism of the Summer Games.
The Truth about Theatre from the Inside Out
Authors: Bieber Ruth
Published: June 2023

My name is Ruth Bieber and I am the artistic director of my own theatre company. I am divorced, am the mother of two sons, and hold a Master’s Degree in Education, with a specialization in theatre and disability. And oh yes, I am blind.
Stepping from the Wings
Authors: Fitzgerald Wanda C.
Published: June 2023

When we speak of “seeing” a play, it is perceived as though sight were essential for either enjoying or participating in the theatre, an assumption that a small group of theatre artists in Toronto is trying to correct.
Stage Ability: A Terrific Theatre Experience
Authors: Lafferty Liesl
Published: June 2023

In April 2001, when I became the artistic director of Theatre Terrific Society, western Canada’s oldest theatre company for people with disabilities, the company had been dormant for over a year. I had no previous experience in the disability field, so I really had to start from scratch. My only assets were the habits I had developed as a dramaturge/director of questioning the things that were unclear and following the things that flowed. I hoped the same rules would apply here.
How Much Fun Is That?
Authors: Bradley Pat
Published: June 2023

When I was asked to contribute to this edition of CTR, addressing working conditions in the country’s theatre, my task was not to come up with something to write about but to narrow the ideas down to something both doable and (I hope) useful. I decided to focus on what kind of working conditions, in general and on average, theatre companies offer both to staff and to freelancers. I began with a question: What constitutes good conditions of work? The consensus in the exhaustive literature on the subject is that quality of work life is comprised of a number of elements, including career and employment security, health and well-being, developing skills and competencies and maintaining a work—life balance. Based on that model, can the Canadian theatre claim to be an enlightened workplace?
Freelancer or Employee? The Implications of the Canadian Revenue Agency’s Recent Decisions
Authors: Doiron Jerry
Published: June 2023

There has been much discussion over the past couple of years regarding the tax status of artists in Canada. Two cases, in particular, have generated a lot of attention: one case in Winnipeg, where three different members of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet were deemed to be employees of the company, and a second, in Thunder Bay, where an actor who had appeared at Magnus Theatre on a Canadian Theatre Agreement Engagement Contract was deemed to be an employee of that company (Canadian Actors’ Equity Association). Until these rulings, there had been a widespread supposition that performing artists, especially members of Canadian Actors’ Equity Association, were freelance (Equity). Because these determinations flew in the face of past practice, alarm bells rang. Although Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA) determinations are made on a case-by-case basis, a ruling pertaining to one individual (such as one dancer from the Royal Winnipeg Ballet) can be used as precedent to rule against another individual — and indeed, all dancers in the Royal Winnipeg Ballet or any other dance company.
Bridges and Boundaries: Locating Work and Process
Authors: Rudakoff Judith
Published: June 2023

My work is hyphenated: I am an academic-artist, documentarian-practitioner who works in theatre-dance within this culture-that culture. Over the past two decades, I have worked as a developmental dramaturg on three continents.The work with which I am involved is, increasingly, site-specific, culturally diverse and transdisciplinary. The relationship between source and artistic creation continues to shape my evolving dramaturgical practice, a practice that currently focuses on unconventional methodologies that include the application of universally recognized principles and non-prescriptive visual prompts that encourage individualized responses. I live in one of the most diverse cities in the world, Toronto. I teach playwriting and dramaturgy at York University, where the student population of 50,000 reflects the city’s wide range of cultures. The pedagogy and the resulting projects in my courses are a result of and a reaction to my theoretical, academic study of theatre as well as my practical experience. My academic training has provided me with the skills to incorporate my field work into an educational setting, both as practical work and in a theoretical context.
Making Shakespeare Work in the Twenty-First Century: An Interview with R.H. Thomson
Authors: Ormsby Robert
Published: June 2023

In response to the Ontario Conservative government’s 1998 de-listing of Shakespeare and all other authors as mandatory for the provincial curriculum, R.H. Thomson and Marvin Karon formed On Board with the Bard, a workshop that brought professional actors to Toronto-area schools to rehearse scenes from Shakespeare’s plays with students.
Practical Ideas Aplenty in Pura’s Stages
Authors: Belliveau George
Published: June 2023

The most effective and useful books for teachers contain practical approaches that are grounded both in classroom experience and in pedagogical theory and/or research. Stages: Creative Ideas for Teaching Drama is mostly a ‘how-to book for introductory drama classes, and in that role it succeeds. In her brief introduction, Pura states that the idea of the book came from a student, who suggested she compile the numerous drama-based exercises into a book rather than continually providing photocopied handouts at the end of the activities. Among the many recipe cards, which were the storage for her activities, Pura selects a diverse collection of useful drama activities that are suitable (and adaptable) for children and adults of all ages. The target audience for this book includes classroom teachers, drama teachers, pre-service teachers, substitute teachers, and workshop facilitators, among others.
One Yellow Rabbit’s High Performance Rodeo, 1987-2005: A Chronology
Authors: Mendelsohn Judith
Published: June 2023

1987: One Yellow Rabbit’s Secret Elevator Experimental Performance Festival (2-8 February)1 • Windsor Viney (music performance art) — Calgary2 • Sky Gilbert reading from his Maracas and other works (play and poetry readings) —Toronto • Buzzard Luck, Rusty Buster’s Dimple & Wiener Review, by Michael Stirling Green and Gary Stromsmoe (performance art) — Calgary • TheVoltage Junkie, by Martin Guderna (film) — Vancouver • Dying to be Famous, by Sheri-D Wilson, performed with Laura Parken (performance poetry) —Vancouver
Canadiana or the Quintessence of Queer
Authors: Bateman David
Published: June 2023

“Queer” can refer to the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when the constituent elements of anyone’s gender, of anyone’s sexuality aren’t made (or can’t be made) to signify monolithically… . At the same time, a lot of the most exciting recent work around “queer” spins the term outward along dimensions that can’t be subsumed under gender and sexuality at all: the ways that race, ethnicity, postcolonial nationality criss-cross with these and other identity-constituting, identity-fracturing discourses (Kosofsky Sedgwick 8—9)
Liberators, Occupiers and Population
Authors: Green Michael
Published: June 2023

I met directors Maarten Verhoef and Feico Sobel during the autumn of 2003 at the Informal European Theatre Meeting in Birmingham, UK. They were looking for international partners to share in their vision of a theatrical project to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the Liberation of Holland from the Nazis at end of World War II. Already aware of Canada’s role in this historic event, I agreed to introduce the project to the rest of One Yellow Rabbit.
Two Minutes
Authors: Duyns Don , Klinkenberg Rob
Published: June 2023

Caution: Script copyright Don Duyns. Translation copyright Rob Klinkenberg. This script is protected under the copyright laws of Canada and all other countries of the Copyright Union. Changes to the script are forbidden without the written consent of the author (translator). Rights to produce, film or record in any medium, in any language, by any group, are retained by the author (translator). The moral right of the author (translator) has been asserted. For performance rights, please contact Het Huis van Bourgondië, Hoogfrankrijk 27, 6211 RK Maastricht, The Netherlands. Tel: 043—321 99 60 / Fax: 043—325 51 13 / info@carlosbulosan.com
A Bracing Gust of Faithless Mirth: Azimuth Theatre
Authors: Kozlinski Wojtek
Published: June 2023

On a bare black stage, two characters await the arrival of another. They pass the time bantering, teasing and pondering their predicament. They are, of course, waiting for … Dad. Half-brothers Stevie and Darryll will not go to sleep until Dad, the famous shlockmeister novelist Jed McGriffen, comes to tell them their bed-time story. For some reason, Dad is late.
Stop, hey, what’s that sound, Everybody look what’s going down …
Authors: Dunning Alan
Published: June 2023

As audience members file into One Yellow Rabbit’s Big Secret Theatre, they are greeted by a dimly lit stage, empty except for a large projection screen and spotlighted tables filled with laptops and other less apparent electronic technology, cameras, clocks toys and various props. On a screen behind the tables, a large projection of a street corner in south west Calgary shows an everyday street scene. The camera is unmoving, framing a mid-morning, grey, urban scene that loops endlessly. A man waits for the lights to change so that he may cross the street; another pushes a cart; cars drive by and stop at the traffic lights. Once finished, it all starts again. The repetitive passing of the people in the loop provides a metronomic beat for the evening’s performance.
Nothing Hidden: The Cameras Bare Their Best
Authors: deGroot Anton
Published: June 2023

When live musicians perform, they engage themselves and the audience in a journey. They carry the mind and spirit away from the here and now, suspending them both in the music. As musicians present their art, they carry listeners through the emotional highs and lows that score the songs. They seduce, enrage, give joy and sometimes pass on messages that could not be achieved in any other medium. There is something in the air at a live show that cannot be recorded or reproduced: A relationship is developed when a band looks a crowd in the eyes, one that is electrical and wholly unique.