Bruce Barton, Natalie Corbett, Birgit Schreyer Duarte, and Keren Zaiontz, eds. New Canadian Drama: Volume 9: Canadian Devised Theatre: Reluctant Texts from Exuberant Performance

Abstract

BRUCE BARTON, NATALIE CORBETT, BIRGIT SCHREYER DUARTE, and KEREN ZAIONTZ, eds. New Canadian Drama: Volume 9: Canadian Devised Theatre: Reluctant Texts from Exuberant Performance Ottawa: Borealis, 2008. 295 pp. In 1993 when I began my apprenticeship as a performer, information in English on how the creative artists at the forefront of theatrical production actually worked was scarce. The few books authored by leading practitioners purposefully steered away from the nitty-gritty of procedures. Works by Barba, Brook, Chaikin, Grotowski, and Schechner mentioned the techniques of performance creation only obliquely. While leading composers of the same generation took pains to share their tools and conceptual approaches--consider the detailed writings of Cage, Feldman, Stockhausen, and Xenakis--the theatre makers kept their cards close to their chests. For those of us lucky enough to read French, Les Voies de la creation theatrale provided some respite, offering such wonders as the translated text of Kantor's The Dead Class, details of Barba's Kaspariana or an exhaustive analysis of Grotowski's Constant Prince. Today everything is different; videos of the major productions of the late twentieth century are widely available, practitioners author increasingly accessible manuals about their own work, and scholars situate contemporary practice in its local and international ecologies. The recent opus by John Nobbs of Australia's Frank Theatre, A Devil Pokes the Actor, provides an excellent example of the former, while Delgado and Rebellato's Contemporary European Theatre Directors offers the latter. To this party comes Canadian Devised Theatre: Reluctant Texts from Exuberant Performance, the kind of book I would have committed any number of sins to get my hands on twenty years ago, if only it had existed back then! Volume 9 of the New Canadian Drama series (Borealis) edited by Bruce Barton, Reluctant Texts presents the scripts of four performances: What the Thunder Said by Bluemouth Inc. Presents, Boca del Lupo's The Perfectionist, The Confessions of Punch and Judy by Bobgan, Kowalchuk and Wells, and Robert Plowman's collaboration with Zuppa Circus Theatre Radium City. Reluctant Texts traces the theatre of original creation, currently referred to as 'devised theatre,' in a manner that aims to be both accessible and thorough. The scripts of each of the plays are supplemented by introductory scholarly essays, thorough descriptions of staging, textual commentaries, storyboards, diagrams, musical scores, photographs, and extended artists' statements. At the heart of this book is the relationship each editor draws between the material traces of the productions and the intentions, aspirations, and pragmatism revealed by the voices of the artists themselves. Keren Zaiontz's presentation of Bluemouth's What the Thunder Said is a skillful layering of accounts: what was said, how it was said, what was done, where it was done, and how the artists involved in creating it felt about it. The scripts and staging notes of two different productions of What the Thunder Said are placed side by side with artists' commentaries diverting and enriching the reader's progress. The subdivided and variegated pages of the account are a joy to navigate, revealing a new detail or a new path between details with each reading. Boca del Lupo's The Perfectionist as described by Birgit Schreyer Duarte continues this compelling presentation, which results, at least for me, in a fascinating suspension of temporal sequencing. While as a reader I know that the performance lies in the past, the inclusion of source materials, of sketches and comments from the gestation and creation of the piece leave me happily unconcerned that I have missed it and rather give me the sense the work is continuing somewhere in some fortuitous 'fourth time' beyond the past, present, and future. I have not seen either What the Thunder Said or The Perfectionist but I attended Bobgan, Kowalchuk and Wells's Confessions of Punch and Judy and a staged reading of Plowman and Zuppa Circus's Radium City, to which these chapters certainly do justice, at the Catskill International Festival of New Theatre produced by NaCl Theatre in Highland Lake, New York. …