Re: Viewing Feminist Theatre in the (Re)Main(s)

Abstract

Re: Producing Women’s Dramatic History: The Politics of Playing in Toronto is the first book-length solo effort from D.A. Hadfield, co-editor of Canadian Drama and the Critics and teacher of English, drama and theatre at the University of Guelph and St. Jerome’s University (Waterloo, ON). A reincarnation of her doctoral dissertation, Hadfield’s text offers a comprehensive rendering of the strategies employed by seven feminist productions staged in Toronto during the 1980s and early 1990s. As the title suggests, the productions are thematically linked by content concerned with a re-visioning of women’s history and historiography. The book’s emphasis is not literary, however; rather it focuses on how the productions negotiated “a complex journey through both pages and stages” (9), generating “historiographical remainders” (10), successfully accessing the mainstream and reproduction and consequently gaining admission to the annals of Canadian theatre history. As the title further indicates, Hadfield’s interrogation is a political one. By analysing “textual residues” (publicity materials, photos, programs, reviews, box office receipts and theatre records), the author explores how “the politics of the theatrical process influences the quality and the type of historiographical remainders” (10) and how these, in turn, affect visibility, reception, publication and the assumption that what is being produced is “quality” theatre. This approach, outlined in the preface, provides the means for tracing “the process of creating a theatrical ‘success’” (9).