Theorizing New Play Development in Canada

Abstract

I’d like to begin with some of my favourite stories about play development in Canada. The first takes place in 1907, the inaugural year of the Earl Grey Musical and Dramatic Competition, which was begun by then-Governor General Earl Grey to encourage Canadian theatre. Betty Lee, in Love and Whisky: The Story of the Dominion Drama Festival, recounts the development of that year’s winning play, Allan Danvers, devised and presented by a group from Winnipeg. At a loss to find a suitable script that would fit the allotted ninety-minute time limit, the man charged with the production, one Major Devine, decided that the group must create a new play. As Leyden Shiller, a cast member, tells it, “‘[t]he plot of Allan Danvers was blocked out by Major Devine over a plate of devilled kidneys in the old Marriagi Hotel. It was finished with the help of two collaborators, [local newspapermen] Ernest Beaufort and Wilson Blue‘” (qtd. in Lee 69).