bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
New Theatre / New Crises
Authors: Filewod Alan
Published: June 2023

As this issue goes to press, Canada finds itself in the grip of war and recession. And this after a year of Meech Lake, the GST and Oka. The remarkable thing about our present theatrical culture is not that artists are having trouble keeping up to the moment (the theatrical responses to the abovementioned events are, we hope, percolating now) but that the oppressive force of recent developments hasn’t discouraged the arts more. The most recent federal budget, with its crippling cutbacks to cultural programs, is a case in point; after all, the combined federal subsidies to all the theatres in Canada might - just might - buy and equip one fighter jet. To find theatrical innovation and adventure flourishing in such times surely attests to the determination and commitment of our artists.
Another Glimpse: Excerpts from a Conversation with Tomson Highway
Authors: Loucks Bryan
Published: June 2023

I am an old friend of Tomson who has seen him grow and develop as a man who follows the road of what western society calls an artist. He uses his imagination and voice as a vehicle for the thoughts, feelings, dreams and struggles of his own life and that of our relatives and friends.
Appropriation and the Plastic Shaman: Winnetou’s Snake Oil Show from Wigwam City
Authors: Mayo Lisa
Published: June 2023

Spiderwoman Theater’s first encounter with Winnetou came while on tour in Germany. We were approached several times and asked if we knew Winnetou, and what we thought of him. People were astonished when we said we’d never heard of him. “But he is so famous,” they said. As children in Germany, Holland and Italy, everyone had read about the adventures of Winnetou. “Oh we love him! We love the Indians!” they’d declare. “You have not heard of Winnetou??”
Winnipeg Angry Enough To Spit But With Dry Lips It Hurts More Than You Know
Authors: Baker Marie Annharte
Published: June 2023

It seems easy for the perpetuators of racism and sexism to orchestrate our manoeuvres; easy enough to split us and keep our stances separate and at odds. OKKKanada used to be the sole culprit but before we blame others for what I think is going on in my noggin and neighbourhood, we must be the watchdog of our own behaviours, examine our own attitudes. Our internalized racism and sexism seems to get financial rewards, literary or artistic awards.
Theatrical Diversity on Turtle Island A tool towards the healing
Authors: Mojica Monique
Published: June 2023

This issue is dedicated entirely to Native th eatre in the Americas. As such, the articles were commissioned largely from within the Native th eatre community in the firm belief that we are articulate enough to talk about our own work, analyze our own trends, and interpret our own symbols
Women’s Circle: Women’s Theatre
Authors: Heather Jane
Published: June 2023

This article is based upon individual interviews conducted by Wendy Philpott with each member of Catalyst Theatre’s Women’s Circle Collective: Marilyn McLean, Community Co-ordinator for Catalyst Theatre, actresses Patricia Darbasie and Patricia Drake, actress and animator fane Heather, director fan Selman, researcher and dramaturge Lise Ann Johnson and writer Shirley Barrie. The article was written by fane Heather and fan Selman with assistance from Lise Ann Johnson and Wendy Philpott.
The Actor’s Survival Kit, Behind The Scenes: a Canadian Scene Book, vols. 1 & 2
Authors: Newhouse Miriam , Messaline Peter , Ross Mary , Cameron Ron , Greenberg Joel
Published: June 2023

Actors’ handbooks are available in many formats: how to speak, how to move, where to look for work, which training methods will provide lifetime careers, etc. Simon & Pierre has recently published two more guidebooks – one for the young acting student and teacher (in two volumes), and one for the aspiring professional. Both are a welcome addition to the scene if for no other reason than that they speak from a Canadian perspective. This, however, is not their only strength.
Seeing Theatre
Authors: Rewa Natalie
Published: June 2023

In 1979 the Associated Designers of Canada published a catalogue of their exhibition for the Prague Quadrennial. The work of five designers, seven puppetry troupes and ten architectural projects from across Canada was chosen to celebrate what Tom Doherty, then president of the ADC, called a “distinctly Canadian attitude to theatre”.
Body Polities: English-Canadian Acting at National Theatre School
Authors: Salter Denis
Published: June 2023

Canada. The late fifties. Post-war prosperity continues unabated. The arts can no longer be treated as an expendable luxury reserved for just an elite social class. They belong to everyone and are becoming a serious matter. The momentous founding of the Canada Council in 1957 means that reliable financial and moral support is now available in unprecedented quantities for the first time in our cultural history. Colonial anxieties are at last receding, to be quickly replaced by post-colonial savoir-faire. Many people are working hard to establish large-scale permanent organizations – ballet companies, symphony orchestras, theatre companies, museums, art galleries, colleges, universities, and training schools – dedicated to the development, dissemination, and preservation of certifiably Canadian culture.
Table Stakes: Gambling with New Play Development
Authors: Flaherty Kathleen
Published: June 2023

When I work as the dramaturge in a workshop, I like to sit away from the table where everyone else sits. I feel more capable of objectivity there, less susceptible to the moment-by-moment heat and energy of the process. I am less likely to join in the inevitable spiralling brainstorm that erupts over a line, a scene, an image in the play. After all, as anyone who knows me will attest, it’s hard to stop me once I get started. And if I leap into the maelstrom, how can I do my job as structural analyst and “friend of the playwright”? Away from the table, there is room for the implied images to develop in the air. The play is not trapped on the page. And by forcing myself to avoid participation in discussions and to listen, I inadvertently catch a lot of subtext. As a student of science, I know that even this physical arrangement is part of the process. The actors may feel that I am judging them, or that they need to perform for me. That changes what happens in the workshop.
Winnipeg: The Anthropology of Performance: An Interview with Richard Fowler
Authors: Fowler Richard
Published: June 2023

After high school I went to the University of Alberta in order to prepare for a degree in medicine. I decided that since I was going to spend most of my life in the sciences I would do my pre-med as a BA, taking a lot of language courses and classics in order to broaden my base. So I did an honours BA in romance languages at the same time as I was doing my pre-med. During my last year I took a drama course. I had a wonderful time and as a consequence I changed my mind. I dropped the idea of going into medicine altogether and decided to become an actor instead. I did a BFA in acting and went out to work. At that time it never entered my consciousness that being an actor could imply that you could do it yourself, that you yourself could be the creator. The only thing I knew how to do at that time was to audition for the various theatres. You sent in your picture and your bio, you visited all the artistic directors and you tried to sell yourself. At that time I also thought that working on a play was all the theatre could be. As an actor, what you did was to be in a play at a theatre. I ended up basing myself in Vancouver where I worked for many years, working for whoever would hire me.
Guysborough Mulgrave Road Co-op Theatre: The View from Inside the Electrolux
Authors: Munday Jenny
Published: June 2023

As you come around one of the many curves on Route 16, just as you pass the Old Mulgrave Road on the left, there’s a road sign, on the right, that reads: “Guysborough 8”. Every time I pass it, I wonder, “Eight what? Eight kilometres? Eight miles? Eight light years?”
Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love, Love and Anger
Authors: Fraser Brad , Walker George F. , Nunn Robert
Published: June 2023

Unidentified Human Remains examines a general condition, a shared predicament. In a sense it is a play about Edmonton as a collective personality, that is, not Edmonton per se so much as the culture that has produced it and other large cities which exude the postmodern condition: a disbelief in master narratives, a thorough-going scepticism that settles in the blood and marrow. The script calls for seven characters whose lives impinge on each other more or less in a system of parallel plots exploded into fragments. These characters remain on stage, and those not in a scene punctuate it with single words and fragments of sentences. Although this format can be a little confusing to read, it is lucid in performance, like a piece of counterpoint for seven instruments. Stage directions indicate opportunities for visual and verbal echoing, though if the play can be faulted, some of these parallels are too schematic.
Rogers and Me: The Making of From Fogarty’s Cove
Authors: Knowles Ric
Published: June 2023

I’m not a big fan of musicals. I am, however, a fan of the music of Stan Rogers, the great Canadian folksinger and songwriter who was the driving force behind the Canadian folk music revival in the 1970s and early 1980s. I’m also a member of the Mulgrave Road Co-op Theatre, which is located in the town of Guysborough, in northeastern Nova Scotia, and is dedicated to creating original theatre about the part of the world that Stan Rogers’ family was from, the area that he named “Fogarty’s Cove”. In fact, the connection is closer than that. Like Stan Rogers, and like the Mulgrave Road Co-op, I found my creative inspiration in the landscape, seascape, and people of the Chedabucto shore. Like Stan Rogers, I am from Ontario, but have family connections with that shore – the man who made Rogers his first guitar, his uncle Lee Bushell, happens to be my wife’s uncle, too, by marriage. And like both Stan Rogers and many members of the Co-op, I am concerned about what it means to come from away and make art out of the “raw materials” of a picturesque and culturally rich but economically troubled area at a time when the death of the fishery threatens a whole way of life. I am concerned about the folksinger, playwright, or theatre company as offshore dragger.
Beyond the Brochures: Training for Music Theatre
Authors: Manning-Albert Jacqui
Published: June 2023

Music theatre training. It can be a studio in the mountains, where a group of music theatre artists are developing a new Canadian opera, with violinists on stage, scheduled to premiere in Cardiff, Wales. It can be a group of young people and veteran professionals, brushing up their song and dance, one day for a summer Las Vegas-style revue at a Georgian Bay resort, and the next day for a new musical by Cliff Jones. And music theatre training can be a group of writer-composers hiding away in school portables with their computers and synthesizers, writing and rewriting songs and scenes.
The Trap of Cultural Specificity: Seeking Intercultural Solidarity
Authors: Cowan Cindy
Published: June 2023

Before my move in the fall of 1989 to the remote community of Pangnirtung, NWT I had worked for over ten years with the Mulgrave Road Co-op Theatre, a community-based theatre located in northeastern Nova Scotia – another isolated area, but at least Guysborough has a road you can drive away on! While I scrambled to get jobs as a playwright and actress, my husband, Ed McKenna, worked as the company’s general manager. During that time we became parents – suddenly rehearsals were places where I nursed and babies projectile-vomited. Moving to Northern Canada provided all of us with an opportunity to “get a life”.
But Who’s Dennis Miller?
Authors: Blackburn Lisa
Published: June 2023

For the first time in five years the Friends of the Northern Storytelling Festival didn’t have to hunt for acts. All the participants in the July 1992 festival were chosen from unsolicited letters and portfolios; they actually had to turn people down. This doesn’t mean life has become easier for the staff and volunteers of the festival. For co-ordinator Michele Emslie, the work doesn’t even slow down until long after the stories are over, and by the fall the fundraising starts again.
“Excellence / Access” and “Nation / Community”
Authors: Watt David
Published: June 2023

Like the work produced within the ambit of the Canadian Popular Theatre Alliance, Australian community theatre had its origins in the radical theatre of the 1960s and 1970s. The two most productive and influential groupings were those formed within and around the Australian Performing Group (APG) in Melbourne, formed in the late 1960s, and the Popular Theatre Troupe (PTT) in Brisbane, formed in the early 1970s. The initial nucleus of the APG was a group of activists from the most radical of the university campuses, Monash University, which, through avid reading of The Drama Review, threw together an odd, and not always happy, amalgam of US agitprop, Grotowski, and a concern with popular performance styles, to produce a broadly left-wing theatre which veered between the populist and the avant-garde. The Popular Theatre Troupe drew much of its original inspiration from the work of British director and animateur Albert Hunt, who was invited to Brisbane and assisted in establishing the venture. Hunt’s work gave the early ventures of the PTT a style built around large scale outdoor events of a participatory nature, although the company eventually moved towards a small nucleus performing touring agitprop shows. In the case of both companies, their legacies lie at least as much in the energy they generated around their edges as in the shows they produced: alumni of both were important in establishing many of the community theatre companies which began to appear towards the end of the 1970s.
Celebrity by Association: Tectonic Plates in Glasgow
Authors: Carson Christie
Published: June 2023

Robert Lepage has consistently dealt with the theme of cross-cultural understanding and promoted the idea of developing an international theatrical dialogue through collaboration. To Lepage, coming in contact with culture is a way of defining one’s own cultural identity. Lepage’s collaborative production of Tectonic Plates, commissioned initially for Glasgow’s City of Culture celebrations but picked up in its exploratory stages by the World Stage Festival in Toronto, is an illustration of these ideals put into practice. What this production attempted to do was create a cross-cultural theatrical dialogue by incorporating artists from English Canada and Scotland into the creative process. What I will show through an analysis of this production’s creative process is the way in which collaborators were included in the Toronto and Glasgow versions of Tectonic Plates and how far that process went towards creating a meaningful cross-cultural dialogue. I would like to question how the process could create a truly collaborative dialogue given the fact that Lepage retained the role of director and therefore ultimate creative control. It is also important to question why the theatre communities in both English Canada and Scotland were so eager to embrace an externally imposed approach to inter-cultural learning, rather than creating one of their own.
Toronto Breaking Ground: Notes from the Circle
Authors: Gomez Mayte , Vries Marion de
Published: June 2023

It was an ordinary Friday evening in Toronto, and the city still enjoyed a bit of mild weather on the second day of October. For a group of theatre artists gathered in the lobby of the Helen Gardiner Phelan Theatre at the University of Toronto, this was anything but an ordinary night. We had been called to participate in “Breaking Ground”, a weekend conference subtitled “A Forum for Theatre Groups and Artists of Diverse Cultures”, organized by Theatre Ontario with the support of the Cultural Affairs Division of the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto, the University College Drama Program the multicultural committees which already exist in organizations such as Theatre Ontario or the TTA. Whatever form we eventually take, we knew that we wanted to take action, and we thanked Jean Yoon for calling us together, for allowing us to meet and discuss, for brainstorming with us, for making the whole thing happen.
Montreal Defending NTS
Authors: Reis Kurt
Published: June 2023

Denis Salter’s “Body Politics” (CTR 71), is a hyperbolic diatribe which misrepresents the nature of theatre training in general and the English Section of The National Theatre School in particular.
Press Pass: Second City: My Ribs Hurt A conversation with Sandra Balcovske
Authors: Behnan Lorraine
Published: June 2023

When I was asked to do this article on Sandra I thought about the style and approach I might take. After all, Sandra has been a friend and associate for over fifteen years. We worked for Catalyst Theatre and Second City together in Edmonton. I feared the usual “I ask, you answer” format would be too artificial and contrived. Also, at Second City we were taught not to ask questions in our scenes but to give information in statement form. You may appreciate my dilemma. So after a period of internal struggle I decided to go with the “I ask, you answer” format.
Rebels in Time: 3 Plays by Ken Mitchell, I Had a Job I Liked. Once.
Authors: Ken Don , Vanderhaeghe Guy , Brask Per K.
Published: June 2023

Saskatchewan must have the highest number of produced and published playwrights per capita of any province in Canada. Playwrights such as Connie Gault, Kim Morrissey, Barbara Sapergia, Dianne Warren, Rod MacIntyre, Ken Mitchell, Archie Crail, Geoffrey Ursell, (until fairly recently) Rex Deverell, and (until even more recently) Greg Nelson, among others, have graced Saskatchewan with their habitation. Many of these playwrights are also accomplished in other genres and now Guy Vanderhaeghe, celebrated for his prose fiction, has joined their number by adding playwriting to his substantial abilities.
Method Actors: Three Generations of an American Acting Style, Setting Free the Actor: Overcoming Creative Blocks
Authors: Vineberg Steve , Brebner Ann , Greenberg Joel
Published: June 2023

Method Actors, the new book by Steve Vineberg, is without question among the very best books ever written about acting. Its exploration into the Method is, by turns, informative, historical, gossipy and enlightening without ever losing sight of the central topic.
Class Acts: Six Plays for Children
Authors: Hamill Tony
Published: June 2023

Class Acts: Six Plays For Children represents the various types of plays in the Canadian TYA repertoire. Included in the collection are The Secret Garden (1991), Paul Ledoux’s adaptation of the children’s classic which goes beyond a sketchy plot summary of the novel to a play with well developed characters and structural complexity. The audience easily transcends into Mary’s world and is carried by the emotional turmoil of the characters.
CTR: The Moment of Conception
Authors: Rubin Don
Published: June 2023

I don’t remember the exact moment of conception though I do remember some of my partners in the act. Their enthusiasm. Their commitment. But then the early seventies was a time of enthusiasm and commitment. For me. For them. For so many people across this mad land that we loved with Trudeauian enthusiasm and hope. It was that belief in the possibilities of this country that we wanted to share with the world.
Viewing Canadian Theatre / Canadian Theatre Reviewing
Authors: Filewod Alan
Published: June 2023

When Don Rubin founded CTR in 1974, I was one of his undergraduate students, already standing in the light of his enthusiasm. Rubin’s passion for the cause of Canadian theatre was evangelical in its intensity, and I entered the orbit of his new theatre magazine as a confirmed acolyte. For the ensuing twenty years, CTR has been a constant, sometimes cool, sometimes hot, part of my life. When I was a student editorial assistant, CTR was one of the sites of my apprenticeship; some time later it accorded me my first professional publication; over the years it recorded my development as a critic (from young hothead to older ranter). I’m still not quite sure how I ended up as an editor of CTR, but having my name on the masthead has given my affair with the journal a classic narrative curve. (Now it only remains to be deposed. Watch this space.)
Bored to Distraction: Auto-performance and the Perniciousness of Presence
Authors: Wilson Ann
Published: June 2023

... the fact is that most of the time when I go to the theater, I am bored to distraction. – Daniel Day-Lewis (qtd in Welch 62) This is probably the only thing which Daniel Day-Lewis and I have in common: like Day-Lewis, most of the time when I go to the theatre, I am bored to distraction. In this cranky critical mood, the thought of writing for an anniversary issue of CTR, an occasion which would seem to demand a witty, gracious response to Canadian theatre, seemed impossible. Over the past few years, I have developed an interest in the phenomena of solo performance, much of which I find particulary tedious. I could explain this boredom in facile enough terms: I am not terribly interested in this performer’s life. But I don’t think that’s the full explanation. Solo performances are often excruciatingly boring because they involve a simplistic sense of theatre, evident in their production of subjectivity in the theatre.
Public Lies
Authors: Fothergill Robert
Published: June 2023

In a union hall in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, an itinerant projectionist, Todd Parker, is setting up to present a program of films from the National Film Board. 1942.

Todd: Well, isn’t this a good looking audience! I was saying to Mr Campbell, I was saying as we were corning along, I’d be glad enough of a dozen souls on a night like this. I was in a union hall over by Stellarton the other week, and nobody showed up at all! Well, there’d been a bit of a mix-up about the dates, eh? So there I was, lugging in all my gear, well I know it’s not “Gone With The Wind” we’ve got here, but I’d thought they’d be pretty excited to see a few Canadian movies! It’s not every day that folks get a chance to see five different movies, and one of them in technicolour, yes sir! One of them in technicolour.
Three We’ll Miss: The Heart of CODCO
Authors: Peters Helen , Gilbert Sky , Sexton Tommy , Peters Helen
Published: June 2023

Tommy Sexton was a performer from the age of 10 playing Alice in St Bon’s school production of Alice in Wonderland until his death at 36 playing himself in a proposed television movie, Adult Children of Alcoholics. He began acting professionally with the Newfoundland Travelling Theatre Company in 1970 and his professional writing and acting career included CODCO stage plays (1973-88), White Niggers of Bond Street (1979), the Wonderful Grand Band (1980-83), Two Foolish to Talk About (1983-84), S&M Comic Book (1985-86) and the CODCO television series (1987-93). But Tommy Sexton was more than the sum of these productions; he was more even than the cast of characters he created, who range from Nanny Hynes to Duncan (“Queen’s Councillor and closet hairdresser”) to take-offs of Barbara Walters and Crystal Carrington. He was an intelligent, committed and consummate professional writer and actor. In a preliminary audience testing for CODCO’s television series, a test audience in Peterborough, Ontario voted Tommy best actor and best actress. Newfoundland loved him and during the past five years readers of the Newfoundland Herald almost consistently voted him best actor.
Interactive Media: Virtual Reality and the Actual Performer
Authors: Atkins Stephen
Published: June 2023

What is the first thing you think of when someone says Virtual Reality and Interactive Media? Chances are that you flashed upon an image of people strapped head-first into a computer-generated reality wearing a control glove on one hand and a head-mounted, video display unit over their eyes, people gesturing and turning their heads with the odd, haunted quality of the somnambulant or demonically possessed. This is the image of interactive technology that, in my observation, is shared by a large number of Canadian theatre artists. Much of the popular media given interactive computer environments focuses on an immersive Virtual Reality and how it will change our lives; that our work and play will not be limited by the confines of space and our “meat bodies”, as William Gibson calls them.1 At first appearance, the principles behind interactive media are at odds with theatre on almost every level. Theatre is very much about the presence of body as well as mind. VR seems to be a toy for a culture in love with gadgetry, one whose narcissistic envy of ideal, supermodel bodies causes it pain every time it looks into a mirror. Theatre artists are probably very wise to be cautious of a technology that threatens to bring not only electronic colonization of the body from the machine, but also cultural colonization from Silicon Valley.
Publishing Drama in the Information Age
Authors: Atwood Peter
Published: June 2023

All professions have their social obligations, and when the question of “connections” arises at such gatherings, as it invariably does, my response usually receives a curious, momentarily confused look. At a gathering of publishers, the fact that Blizzard Publishing specializes in theatre and drama provokes a quizzical, often unspoken, “Why? People don’t read plays, do they?” And at gatherings of theatre people, the fact that I represent a publisher provokes a similar response, “Why? What does that have to do with theatre?”- and the conversation usually lags. Publishing drama is a cross-disciplinary activity, or even a meta-disciplinary activity (a discipline about another discipline), and I should not be surprised to find myself on the outskirts of these two worlds, not wholly belonging to either. The exception, of course, is with academics; they know exactly what to do with me.
The Cybertheatre of Computer Games
Authors: Filewod Alan
Published: June 2023

We call them computer games, but the label is a futile attempt to fix definition on a phenomenon marked by accelerated change, which is driven by technological innovation and which in consequence impels more change. There are thousands of computer games on the market today, although most of them are not in fact games in the technical sense of the term. They range from little hand-held electronic puzzles to multi-media simulations that require top of the Une hardware to run and hundreds of megs of storage space on CD-ROM. On your home computer you can explore murky dungeons, liberate galaxies, manage cities and empires, fly (or crash) Harrier jumpjets and imperial starships, play hockey, torpedo battleships, race the Indy 500, undress porn stars, play chess, plot strategy and refight the battle of Stalingrad.
Computers Keep Your Office Tidier
Authors: Knowles Richard Paul
Published: June 2023

Judith Thompson is author of numerous scripts for radio, television, and film, as well as four major stage plays. She has won several major awards for her writing, including two Governor General’s Awards, for White Biting Dog and for the collection, The Other Side of the Dark. Her plays have been produced across Canada (including Quebec, in French translation), the United States, Britain, Sweden (in translation,) and Australia. She is Associate Professor of Drama at the University of Guelph, where she teaches acting, directing, and playwriting. The following conversation with Richard Paul Knowles, who keyed in the script of Lion in the Streets and the script changes made during the extended script development workshop in the Spring of 1990 that led to its première production at the du Maurier World Stage, was recorded at Judith Thompson’s home in Toronto on 3 August 1994. The process of transcription and editing was made smooth, seamless, and historically invisible through the use of an IBM PC (WordPerfect 4.2).
Praxis Makes Perfect: The Secret Origins of T.P.I (or why we started an electronic journal)
Authors: Reifsnyder David , Zeiger E. James
Published: June 2023

Dear Editors of Theatre Perspectives International,

I am guest editing an upcoming issue of Canadian Theatre Review, the theme of which will be Computers and Drama. As a subscriber on Candrama, I saw the announcement for your new electronic journal on theatre – an exciting prospect for you, and a timely one for our issue.

Would you consider writing an article about your efforts? You may choose any slant you wish, of course, but some questions that you might consider: your project's genesis; its purpose, how you see computers aiding the dissemination of information on drama, how this journal might intersect with other technologies (say, CD-ROM), any drawbacks, etc. You may wish to address what impact it may have on Canadian theatre/drama.
Re: Some Technical Requirements of ‘Sanity Clause‘
Authors: Miller Mary Jane
Published: June 2023

David Barlow is a writer/producer and director who started out at the CBC as a unit manager and before that was a stage manager in Canadian theatre. He went on to be an Associate Producer on the series King of Kensington in the seventies, then co-creator, co-producer and writer of the successful series Seeing Things, 1980-86. He co-produced and directed Breaking All the Rules in 1987, and wrote the script for the feature film The Prom, released in 1990. He has written for the series Max Glick and ENG and most recently was story editor for CBC’s North of 60. He was co-producer and co-director of necessity on Sanity Clause in 1989.
ahdri zhina mandiela: encountering signposts
Authors: Lee Angela
Published: June 2023

The diaspora, particularly the “dark diaspora” as it pertains to people of African descent, has been central to the work of performance poet, playwright, director ahdri zhina mandiela. In January of this year, she was at work shooting a video/film anthology on Black women in theatre and generously took time to contribute to this issue of CTR.
Into the Margins...
Authors: Gale Lorena
Published: June 2023

I left Montreal seven years ago because I was yearning to grow in new directions. I was born in Montreal. As an actor and director, I was rooted in the black community and grew into the dwindling english language theatre community, my professional growth and development being generously nourished by both. I was striving to attain a level of mastery as an artist that could only be developed through continuous exploration and exercising of craft.
United Sistahs
Authors: McLean Dirk
Published: June 2023

For Canadian Theatre Review Dirk McLean met with both Sharon Lewis (co-writer, director) and Maxine Bailey (co-writer, producer) between shows on the final day of Sistahs at the Poor Alex Theatre in Toronto. The following are highlights from that conversation: What were the reasons for forming Sugar ‘n’ Spice Productions?
Black Theatre in Canada / African Canadian Theatre
Authors: Lee Angela
Published: June 2023

In the world context, “Black Theatre” emanates from an authentic cultural perspective in much the same way as Kabuki Theatre of Japan, the Habimah Theatre of Israel, or the Abbey Players of Ireland. Such theatre speaks first to its own, and then (as any good art), to all other humanity.

One historically unique challenge to socially, politically and otherwise situating “Black Theatre” for general understanding and appreciation has been its complex, diasporic existence. Although Africa provides ontological clarity and linkage to all Black art (aesthestics), the tendency to reduce it to a ‘singular experience’ has often served to undermine rather than illuminate its inherent richness, diversity and complexity. Each particular context evolves its own artistic expression, which then becomes part of the larger world view. The Johannesburg Market Theatre, the Trinidad Theatre Workshop, Bahian theatre (Brazil),Yoruba theatre (Nigeria) and Blacktheatre in the United States, all share/dessential elements, but each evolves unique expression. The same is true of “Black Theatre” in Canada.
Singularities, Bibliography of Theatre History in Canada: The Beginnings to 1984
Authors: Goodwin Jill Tomasson , Ball John , Plant Richard , Kandiuk Mary
Published: June 2023

In the Preface to A Bibliography of Canadian Theatre History 1583-1975, published in 1976, editors John Ball and Richard Plant note the lack of an “extensive bibliography of published materials relating to Canadian theatre history”. While their earlier work was a laudable effort, their “revision and continuation” of this work, published in 1993, deserves to be recognized as the first comprehensive bibliography of Canadian theatre history. More than tripling the number of entries listed in the first edition and its 1975-76 supplement, this handsome and impressive volume is comprised of over 10,800 entries. Coverage has been extended to 1984, and, as the editors state in the Preface, “nearly one-third of the present volume consists of titles published before the appearance of [the] original work but collected since then”.
Theatre Lethbridge: A History of Theatrical Production in Lethbridge, Alberta (1885-1988)
Authors: Mann George , Day Moira
Published: June 2023

Mann’s Theatre Lethbridge tends to sit on the reader’s stom ach like a bowl of good Scottish porridge: warm, substantial and nutritious, but a little on the heavy, bland side. Part of the difficulty is that this exhaustive 439-page history of theatre in Lethbridge, Alberta between 1885 and 1988 sits awkwardly between two genres of historical writing. On one level, it clearly aims at being a scholarly study of theatre in Alberta’s third largest city with some degree of social, historical and economic analysis. (Mann is a former sociology professor at the University of Lethbridge.) Yet, it also attempts to function as a local history celebrating the efforts and achievements of the local citizenry, past and present, who made theatre happen in the deep south of the province. (Mann and his family were also very active participants in the local community theatre scene, with two of Mann’s children moving on to professional theatre careers elsewhere.)
From Psycho to Cyber Strategies: Prosthetics, Robotics and Remote Existence
Authors: Stelarc
Published: June 2023

The body needs to be repositioned from the realm of the biological, to the cyberzone of interface and extension – from genetic containment to electronic extrusion. Strategies towards the post-human are more about erasure, rather than affirmation – an obsession no longer with self but an analysis of structure. Notions of species evolution and gender distinction are remapped and reconfigured in alternate hybridities of human/machine. Outmoded metaphysical distinctions of soul/body or mind/brain are superseded by concerns of body/species split, as the body is redesigned – diversifying in form and functions. Cyborg bodies are not simply wired and extended but also enhanced with implanted components. Invading technology eliminates skin as a significant site, an adequate interface or barrier between public space and physiological tract. The significance of the cyber may well reside in the act of the body shedding its skin. As humans increasingly operate with surrogate bodies in remote spaces they function with increasingly intelligent and interactive images. The possibility of autonomous images generates an unexpected outcome of human/machine symbiosis. The post-human may well be manifested in the intelligent life form of autonomous images.
Training to Survive, I The Making of Survivors:The Space Within
Authors: Beauchamp Hélène
Published: June 2023

A theoretical path, where the reader “fills in the blanks” with exercises and elements of theatrical practice s/he knows; an architectural plan where you open for yourself all or some of the windows and doors that are drawn in; a map for a voyage where one can choose to travel on any of the secondary roads and tracks leading off from the main one.
Training to Survive, II: Training, Growth, and Healing: A Strategy for Living
Authors: Walling Savannah
Published: June 2023

Training our voices and bodies in a studio. Training our ability to work with an audience in performance. Cultivating our personal power and performance presence. Training ourselves to make our work economically viable. Training ourselves to be smarter and more creative and to come up with new models for survival. Participants at the “Survivors of the Ice Age” Symposium were themselves engaging in a collective training exercise in survival.
The Last Things in the Sled
Authors: Fletcher Jennifer , Thompson Judith
Published: June 2023

On this sunny February day, Judith arrives by bicycle at the small cafe off Bathurst Street. She whirls into the bustling lunchroom to find Jennifer Fletcher sitting at a table by the window. Over a month has passed since the completion of the Tarragon’s Public Workshop of her new play, Sled.
The Art of the Community Play
Authors: Oram Jon
Published: June 2023

CTT [Colway Theatre Trust] wants to help communities create a work of art. Others might simply wish to produce a community event. Why the insistence on art? If I am an artist trying to help people share my vision, or even just asking for money, I find I frequently have to justify myself.
“You’ll Become Part of Me”: Solo Performance
Authors: Gilbert Reid
Published: June 2023

Speculations on whether solo performance is properly a species of theatre, or a variant of performance art, or an extension of the dramatic monologue, soliloquy, or aside go to the heart of what constitutes theatre and are problematic. They are, of course, further complicated by, but related to, contemporary discussions of the performative moment. Attempts to explore the performative - to separate the performative utterance from the constative utterance, for example - may provide a useful starting point for an attempt to explore what makes a solo turn theatrical rather than recitative.
The Terrible But Incomplete Journals of John D.
Authors: Verdecchia Guillermo
Published: June 2023

Interested parties please write to the author at: 1830 Graveley St., Vancouver, B.C V5L 3B3. (604) 255 5100. Fax (604) 255 5103. e-mail 72102.447 @Compuserve.com

The Terrible But Incomplete journals of johll D. was created for Rumble Theatre’s Wireless Graffitti, a unique live-to-air radio theatre event. First presented at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre in October ’96, The Terrible But Incomplete journals of John D. featured :
A Subtle Politic
Authors: Peerbaye Soraya
Published: June 2023

At the 1997 Desh Pardesh Festival, five artists from diverse cultural and theatrical backgrounds gathered to discuss theatre as a forum for community building. They were Gloria Eshkibok, former President of the Board of Directors of De-bah-jeh-mu-jig Theatre; Dipti Gupta, President of Teesri Duniya Theatre; Sheila James, independent playwright, director, community activist and former Artistic Co-Director of the Company of Sirens; George Seremba, the Ugandan-born playwright of the acclaimed Come Good Rain; and Sarah Stanley, co-founder of Die in Debt Theatre and currently the Artistic Director of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. Time proved to be too short to speak to their multifaceted passions, but all those in attendance felt privileged to have gained an understanding of their vitally political visions. Here were artists whose projects, through their creation and production, had brought together communities marginalized by virtue of their race, nationality, class, gender, sexual orientation and other factors. These projects represented many different theatrical traditions - street theatre, theatre of protest, storytelling, naturalistic drama, and Shakespearean and classical Greek texts - yet all of them could be encompassed by the phrase “community theatre.”
Excerpt from a Canadian monsoon
Authors: James Sheila
Published: June 2023

The Company of Sirens produced a retitled a Canadian monsoon, in June 1996 at the Theatre Passe Muraille Main Space with the following creative team: Sheila James, Director; Sharon Fernandez, Producer; Olivia Rojas, Associate Director; Brenda Guldenstein, Set Design; Anita James, Costume Design; Andrea Lundy, Lighting Design; Beatrice Campbell, Stage Manager; Kristen Gilbert, Production Manager; Suman Goyal, Assitant Stage Manager; musicians, Ravi Naimpally and Parmela Attariwala; and a cast including Bina Sharif, Catherine MacNally, Gail Maurice, Sharon Lewis, Sonia Dhillon and Sean Tagore.
The Drama of Our Past: Major Plays from Nineteenth-Century Quebec
Authors: Doucette Leonard E. , Rewa Natalie
Published: June 2023

Leonard E. Doucette’s volume implies an intriguing question about the relationship between dramatic history and nationhood. Does the “our” of the title refer to Canadians or to Quebecers? Doucette’s project is to bring six French-language plays out of obscurity to an English readership to supplement the narrative of the cultural imagination in Quebec and its implications beyond that province. Doucette has made judicious choices in selecting the six plays for this anthology, since these works manifest the dynamic tension of the political and cultural dialogue between English and French in an originary form rather than as adaptations of plays from elsewhere. As we Canadians negotiate the next stage of our postcolonial experience, this volume is an intriguing piece of the puzzle.
Blood On Steel: “Joyride” and “Heartspent and Black Silence”, Westray: The Long Way Home, The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum
Authors: Melski Michael , O’Neill Chris , Schwartz Ken , Lill Wendy , Devine Michael
Published: June 2023

Michael Melski is a young Atlantic Canadian writer who has experienced success at the Fringe and New Play Development Festival level. Published by his regional university press, Blood On Steel is the kind of youthful writing which marks a playwright with clear, but as yet not fully developed, talents.
Learning to Hate the Bingo Scenario
Authors: Kugler DD
Published: June 2023

May 1998. Playwrights, directors, designers, actors, dramaturgs, administrators, even academics like me, gather at the Canadian Theatre Conference in Saskatoon. One breakout session on dramaturgy evolves into a lively discussion on the dramaturgy of artists such as designers and choreographers. The artists are articulate and passionate about their contribution, or potential contribution, to scripts. No one, however, mentions the playwright – until, at the very end, an artistic director describes a particular developmental process in which, he says, “even the playwright might take part.”
The Wines of Tuscany
Authors: Alexandrowicz Conrad
Published: June 2023

The Wines of Tuscany was first produced by the Playwrights’ Theatre Centre, in co-production with Wild Excursions Performance, as part of the 1996 New Play Festival at Performance Works on Granville Island in Vancouver. The text, direction and choreography were by Conrad Alexandrowicz. The cast was Shawn Macdonald and Shaun Phillips. Costume and set design were by Catherine Hahn, lighting design by Del Surjik, sound design by Conrad Alexandrowicz and Ron Samworth. The stage manager was Mary Kavanagh. Special thanks to Sylvia Alexandrowicz for financial support that made the production possible and to Donna Spencer, who produced the piece twice subsequently at the Firehall Arts Centre.
Rhubarb-o-rama! Plays and Playwrights From the Rhubarb! Festival
Authors: Boni Franco , Dickinson Peter
Published: June 2023

As theatre festivals go in Canada, Toronto’s Rhubarb! has always been something of an anomaly. Not only does it take place at the wrong time of year (late January or early February, instead of the customary summer months), it absolutely refuses to take itself too seriously, or to let others do so: a loosely juried, Equity-exempt showcase for independent theatre, Rhubarb! has also, since 1986, banned critics from reviewing performances. The more dissident meanings attached to the name itself encapsulate something of the original festival participants’ sense of anarchy and spirit of experimentation: produced for the past twenty years by Buddies in Bad Times Theatre (in conjunction with Nightwood Theatre for five of those years), Rhubarb! was (and still is) all about taking the buzz and bedlam at the back of the stage and placing it front and centre, an aesthetic strategy that often proved bitter medicine for Toronto’s more staid audience members during the festival’s early years.
EDITORIA
Authors: Wilson Ann
Published: June 2023

The genesis of this issue of CTR, a consideration of aspects of publishing drama in Canada, was the simple observation that a number of playwrights are turning from writing plays to writing fiction. As an editor of this journal, and as an academic, I was curious about what it means to playwrights to see their work in print, particularly what it means to see plays in print.
In Review
Authors: Charlebois Gaëtan , Mullaly Edward
Published: June 2023

Five years ago, according to the Internet Domain Survey, there were two million host addresses on the World Wide Web. Today there are more than forty-three million hosts, and each of these hosts can contain hundreds of individual sites. The cheapness and immediacy of Web publication has begun to attract the editors of scholarly journals; partially in response to the unending cuts in library subscription budgets, over 3500 journals now publish electronically. This trend has been supported by the Canada Foundation for Innovation, which has recently made available twenty million dollars to license electronic delivery of scholarly journals to university libraries (Berkowitz 19). The pull of Internet publication, which has already led numerous theatre professionals to devise their own Web homepages, has, understandably, begun to lure Canadian theatre editors. The unadvertised electronic edition of Theatre Research in Canada has attracted 1000 hits since it became available worldwide on the Atlantic Canada Theatre Site (acts) last year – a hit figure larger than its annual subscription run. Ball and Plant’s Bibliography of Theatre History in Canada has directly reached only those scholars and libraries fortunate enough to procure a printed copy; since ecw Press and the editors recently and most generously allowed acts to convert this fundamental research tool to an electronically searchable database and publish it (along with the editors’ annual updates), it has become freely and instantly available to researchers worldwide.