Irish Theatre: Conditions of Criticism

Abstract

It is apposite that this collection of essays about (and of) Irish theatre criticism is appearing in the pages of a theatre journal published in Canada, for it was a work of Canadian theatre scholarship that inspired the conference at which these papers were first presented. In the titular essay of Producing Marginality: Theatre and Criticism in Canada, Toronto critic Robert Wallace places the practice of contemporary, mainstream theatre criticism in Canada in the larger context of Canadian society and cultural politics, exposing the implicit ideologies behind a critical practice that he judges to be far too determined by individual taste and a "common sense" approach. An honest and functional critical practice must start with an acknowledgement that ''judgment is relative and evaluation is political", argues Wallace, quoting John Leonard's call for a "Canadian theatre criticism that is partisan, subjective and interested - as it is now - but explicitly so," a criticism, Wallace continues, that "recognizes its symbiotic connection to Canadian theatre".