Collective Encounters: Documentary Theatre in English Canada by Alan Filewod, and: The Proceedings of the Theatre in Atlantic Canada Symposium ed. by Richard Paul Knowles

Abstract

seems a bit worn out by the battle, and his suggestion that MacDiarmid is valuable because his poetry “serves as a measure, delineating a clear approach to the world (or rather, clear approaches) via poetry to which the approaches of other poets can be compared” (212) seems a bit lame. Why not go directly to the major players in the battle of making the language which would de­ scribe the nature of the twentieth-century cultural dilemma? And why not take MacDiarmid as he is, a peculiar bird, often silly, sometimes stupid, but once in a while, writing with a sharp intensity and aesthetic power that he was constantly searching for throughout his career. The Baglow book is a great help in following MacDiarmid through the labyrinth, much of it of his own making. N O T E 1 M. H. Abrams, gen. ed., The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 5th ed., voi. 2 (New York, 1986), p. 2239. C h a r l e s p u l l e n / Queen’s University Alan Filewod, Collective Encounters: Documentary Theatre in English Can­ ada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987). 214. $30.00 cloth; $14.95 paper Richard Paul Knowles, ed., The Proceedings of the Theatre in Atlantic Can­ ada Symposium (Sackville: Centre for Canadian Studies, Mount Allison University, 1988). 266. $9.95 The welcome publication of Alan Filewod’s Collective Encounters: Docu­ mentary Theatre in English Canada and of The Proceedings of the Theatre in Atlantic Canada Symposium edited by Richard Knowles adds to the grow­ ing list of monograph-length studies concerned with the history of theatre and drama in Canada. Both works offer detailed analyses of their specific and well-defined special topics, a refreshing change from the overly generalized, albeit necessary, surveys which have characterized the field since the pioneer­ ing efforts of Murray Edwards’s A Stage in Our Past (1968), E. Ross Stuart’s History of Prairie Theatre (1984) and, more recently, Benson and Conolly’s English-Canadian Theatre (1987). Alan Filewod’s introductory overview of the development of alternative theatre in English Canada condenses and focuses material also dealt with to some extent in Toby Ryan’s Stage Left (1981) and Renate Usmiani’s Second Stage (1983). Filewod argues that the Canadian collective theatrical form represents in localist terms an emerging nationalism. John Gray’s keynote address in the Proceedings provides a per244 sonal documentation of the nationalist awareness developing in the period Filewod discusses. Filewod’s localism-as-nationalism position is also supported by the remarks of various other participants in the Theatre in Atlantic Canada Symposium who argue against the validity of the mediating regional, “Atlan­ tic Canada” designation in favour of a localized focus which better reflects the various and varying theatre communities within each separate province, espe­ cially in terms of government funding. Alan Filewod’s Collective Encounters examines six plays which provide the most widely known examples of collective theatre in English Canada: Thea­ tre Passe Muraille’s The Farm Show, Toronto Workshop Production’s Ten Lost Years, Globe Theatre’s No. 1 Hard, 25th Street Theatre’s Paper Wheat, The Mummers Troupe’s Buchans: A Mining Town, and Catalyst Theatre’s It’s About Time. Before launching into the particular analysis of each play which forms the main part of the text, Professor Filewod provides a back­ ground study of the major figures in and influences on the collective creative activity in the English Canada of the 1960s and 1970s. In this overview of theatrical origins and in the histories of the creation of each play Filewod makes a significant contribution to the study of English-Canadian theatre and drama. This background material connects the theatrical context of English-Canadian collective theatre and the international scene, specifically in terms of the work of Erwin Piscator’s “epic theatre,” the Theatre Work­ shop of Joan Littlewood in London and the Living Newspaper Unit of the Federal Theatre Project in New York. Since the activity of these groups is, I suspect, better known than the Canadian movement, Filewod’s examination of the influences at work here provides a useful orientation of as well as an introduction to the...