Canadian Theatre Review Constitutes Performance Studies

Abstract

Canadian Theatre Review Constitutes Performance Studies Ric Knowles (bio) The quarterly Canadian Theatre Review (CTR) is a crossover journal in a couple of senses: it attempts to reach a readership of academics, theatre professionals, and serious audience members, and it crosses the boundaries between “theatre” and the broad range of things now understood to come under the rubric of “performance.” I want to argue that since its founding in 1974, CTR has functioned as a barometer of how the drama/theatre/performance evolution/continuum has played out in Canada, and since 1986 how performance studies1 have been constituted. At the moment of its founding by American draft resister Don Rubin, with the encouragement of TDR editor Richard Schechner, and generally throughout its first twelve years under Rubin, CTR understood itself to be an avidly post-colonial Canadian nationalist version of TDR (The Drama Review)—extending so far as to imitating the three-letter title and consecutive issue numbering system (Rubin 6). There was even a short period from Winter 1982 to Spring 1983 (vols. 33–37) in which Schechner—together with Martin Esslin, Roman Szydlowski (from Poland), and Claes Englund (from Sweden)—was on the editorial advisory committee, and Schechner contributed an essay (as did Eugenio Barba) to volume 35. CTR did, however, consciously reject the use of “drama” in its title, opting for what the editors then understood to be the broader and less “literary term,” “theatre” (Rubin 7). From its first issue—in which Canadian director John Juliani is reported to have challenged Robin Phillips, the latest British director to be appointed to head Ontario’s Stratford Festival, to a duel (Phillips 64)—CTR has been combative, prone to issuing performative utterances in its efforts to constitute a (variously defined) field. Through its first twelve years, under Rubin, the journal was primarily focused—apart from a brief obsession with Poland—on the development of a Canadian national dramaturgy. It moved away from that focus after Rubin was succeeded by Robert Wallace as editor in 1982–3. In 1986, twelve years and forty-seven issues into the run, it published a volume on “Issues in Performance” in the editorial for which Wallace used the phrase “performance studies” for the first time in CTR’s history. Since then, CTR can be understood, without fanfare or indeed explicit articulation, to have further broadened its scope and mandate to be more or less identical, in terms of its coverage (albeit with a Canadian focus), with that of TDR: according to Wikipedia, TDR: The Drama Review is a quarterly journal focusing on performances in their social, economic, aesthetic, and political contexts. The journal covers dance, theatre, music, performance art, visual art, popular entertainment, media, sports, rituals, and performance in politics and everyday life. (“TDR (Journal)”) Click for larger view View full resolution Ric Knowles in conversation with an audience member during the “Performance Studies in Canada” plenary panel at PSi 16. Photo by Ren Bucholz So too does CTR, but with less fuss. There have not been, in Canada (or in the UK), the turf wars engaged in the US between Theatre Studies and Performance Studies, partly because there has not been in Canada (or the UK) the institutionalization of Performance Studies of the kind or to the degree that there has been in the US, with the concomitant struggle over resources that institutionalization necessarily entails, and the institutional need to carve out turf. All CTR issues are special issues, in that all are “themed,” and over the years and subsequent editors the journal has published issues that cover the full gamut and more of TDR’s reported subject range—on Issues in Performance (twice—Spring 1986 and Winter 1989); Popular Theatre (Winter 1997); Para-theatre in Popular Culture (Spring 1989); Dance/Theatre (Winter 1990); Music Theatre (twice—Fall 1992 and Fall 1998); Computing (Winter 1994); Solo Performance (Fall 1997); Performance Tirades (Spring 1996, really an issue on performance art); Zine Theatre: Raves, Parties, and Streets (Spring 2000); military and other Reenactments (Winter 2005); One Yellow Rabbit’s High Performance Rodeo (Fall 2005); Site Specific Performance (Spring 2006); Liveness and Mediatized Performance (Summer 2006); Spoken Word Performance (Spring 2007); Performance Art (Winter...