"A Golf Club for the Golden Age": English Canadian Theatre Historiography and the Strange Case of Roy Mitchell

Abstract

This article contends that through the work of academics committed to recording and discussing the efforts of the alternate theatre movement, the narrative of English Canadian theatre history was subsequently revised. As a result, two suppositions were established which form the implicit basis of much research into contemporary English Canadian theatre history. They are: (1) the significant development of an English Canadian dramatic literature by a movement of professional and postcolonial theatre-makers signaled the theatre's "coming of age", and therefore (2) a specific set of events from 1968 to 1975 constitute the "golden age" of English Canadian theatre history. The narrative as it stands, therefore, clearly and unfairly privileges the achievements of the alternate movement at the expense of numerous other, equally vital historical voices. This article will focus on a particular individual who serves as a prime example of this exclusion; the director and theorist Roy Mitchell (1884-1944).