Canada’s Workers’ Theatre

Abstract

Searching for an aesthetic theory in Canadian theatre history is an even more nebulous task than defining a national identity. Certainly there is no through line or continuum of thought, any more than there is a direct progression of theatrical activity. And if one was to affix a symbolic animal to Canadian theatre history, one would have to scorn the industriously democratic beaver who has helped to shape the placid, toothy and banal smile of our national image. Rather the socializing rabbit, leaping and bounding in all directions and producing little pockets of prolific activity, would be a more fitting electorate to the Canadian menagerie. The rabbit’s indiscriminate creativity might also suggest a valuable lesson to the kind of higgledy-piggledy proliferation of theatre evident in the last five to ten years. For we seem to have a burgeoning, hoppity-hop theatre society with everyone disclaiming support for the entire, incestuously related family. Sex in Canadian theatre, though, has generally been banned if overt (I Love You Baby Blue) or tittered about if discreet (Spring Thaw, somehow implying wilt down rather than spring up). So in the true Canadian spirit we must turn to more serious analysis to find what is legitimate in Canadian theatre — especially since our only genuine dramatic ideology has come from seriously committed, or at least politically astute, theatre groups.