Canadian Theatre Review Research Articles

Critical Disengagement: The Epistemic and White Supremacist Violence of Theatre Criticism in Canada and the USA

This article examines recent controversies sparked by the critical reception of work by Global Majority theatre artists in Canada and the USA, including Yolanda Bonnell, Yvette Nolan, and Antoinette Nwandu. It argues that, when faced with works that fall outside of their presumed expertise and experience, critics commonly resort to a strategy of critical disengagement, which displaces the focus from the work and refuses to evaluate it on its own terms. Through an analysis of case studies, we elucidate the concept of critical disengagement and its three distinct categories, ‘othering,’ ‘imposing’, and ‘self-staging’. These acts are representative of larger patterns in dominant theatre criticism practices, which are descended from neoclassical and Enlightenment formulations of criticism, and centre around the ideals of fair judgement and critical objectivity. When applied to the work of Global Majority theatre artists by a largely white critical establishment, they enact, consolidate, and reproduce what Gayatri Spivak calls epistemic violence. During this pivotal moment, as theatre communities in the Global North respond to calls for racial justice and decolonization, this article sheds light on the often overlooked role of criticism in sustaining white supremacy within theatre production and reception, and stresses the urgent need to re-imagine critical practices. Signy Lynch is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Toronto Mississauga and recipient of the Governor General’s Gold Medal (York University, 2022). She has published articles on theatre criticism and intercultural theatre in Contemporary Theatre Review, Canadian Theatre Review, and Theatre Research in Canada. Michelle MacArthur is associate professor at the University of Windsor’s School of Dramatic Art. She has published articles in Contemporary Theatre Review, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Theatre Research in Canada, Canadian Theatre Review, and several edited volumes. She is the editor of Voices of a Generation: Three Millennial Plays (Playwrights Canada Press, 2022).

Dramaturgies of Emergence: Decentralized Collaboration of Participatory Theatre

adrienne maree brown (Emergent Strategy) says that “relationships are everything.” The recent popularity of participatory theatre shows in Canada demonstrates just how true that is. These performances make direct audience interaction an essential feature of their dramaturgical design, with audience actions fundamental to propelling the performance experience. As these dramaturgies proliferate, they have given rise to a specific form of participatory theatre focused on decentralized collaboration and democratic audience agency, which I call dramaturgies of emergence. In emergent participatory performances, relationships manifest as networks of people – audience and artists – working together in a decentralized mode of iterative collaboration. With algorithmic dramaturgies to guide them, this autopoietic participant network generates the aesthetic and experiential aspects of the performance, and distinguishes emergent dramaturgies from other forms. By distributing the act of generating performance, it decentralizes agency over that creative process, distributing it throughout the networked participants to create outcomes no single member could generate alone.
 These dramaturgies of emergence embrace both relational modes of the established scientific process of emergence, and the political values of decentralization, playfulness, adaptability and collective leadership associated with the form by brown and others. By embracing these processes and values as their core mode of making meaning in a social setting, dramaturgies of emergence embrace the fundamental relationality of theatre, and ask us to playfully engage in those relationships. They allow audiences to authentically represent themselves in art while still creating something that is fundamentally collective, and provide a democratic mode of collaborative creation much needed in the often highly individualistic society we find ourselves in today.
 
 Works Cited
 Aarseth, Espen J. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore: John Hopkins
 University Press, 1997.
 Apter, Michael J. Danger: Our Quest for Excitement. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2007.
 Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press,
 2010.
 brown, adrienne maree. Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. Chico: AK
 Press, 2017.
 Fischer-Lichte, Erika. The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics. Translated
 by Saskya Iris Jain. Abingdon: Routledge, 2008.
 Kuling, Peter. “Tilted Dramaturgy: Combined Spectatorship, Playwriting and Role-Playing in
 Bully-Pulpit’s Fiasco.” Canadian Theatre Review 178 (Spring 2019): 44-47.
 DOI: 10.3138/ctr.178.008.
 Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor Network Theory. Oxford:
 Oxford University Press, 2005.
 “Lost Together.” Unspun Theatre. Updated 2021.
 http://www.unspuntheatre.com/index#/lost-together.
 “Necessary Dream.” Up In the Air Theatre. Updated May 2021.
 https://www.upintheairtheatre.com/necessary-dream.
 Owen, David. “Performing the Game: Demystifying Live-Action Role-Play.” Canadian Theatre
 Review 178 (Spring 2019): 32-37. DOI: 10.3138/ctr.178.006.
 “Roll Models.” Play/PLAY: Dramaturgies of Participation. Updated September 2021.
 https://www.dramaturgiesofparticipation.com/roll-models.html.
 Salen, Katie and Eric Zimmerman. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge: MIT
 Press, 2004.
 Sicart, Miguel. Play Matters. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014.
 “Worktable.” SPIN. Updated July 2021. https://spinspin.be/kate-mcintosh/worktable/.

Drag on Pointe: Dancer, Television Sensation, and Drag Superstar Brooke Lynn Hytes Is Queering Ballet

Before her star-making turn on RuPaul’s Drag Race, Canadian drag artist Brooke Lynn Hytes an was accomplished ballet dancer. The performer, born Brock Hayhoe, trained at Canada’s National Ballet School and danced professionally with both the Cape Town City Ballet and the esteemed drag dance troupe Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. This article explores how Hytes has transported ballet’s deep repertoire of feminine signifiers onto drag stages, including Drag Race and the drag pageant Miss Continental. In doing so, Hytes has furthered the hallmark of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo—queering ballet. In particular, Hytes has queered the practice of pointe work, a technique traditionally reserved for woman ballet dancers that functions as one of ballet’s most potent feminine signifiers. By incorporating pointe work into her drag dance, Hytes has revealed the practice to be a fiction of femininity, not unlike the drag queen’s make-up and wig. This article additionally charts Hytes’s pre- Drag Race career, her success since appearing on the show, and her contribution to drag culture in Canada. In a Q&A with Canadian Theatre Review accompanying the piece, Hytes speaks about fusing drag and ballet, her early experiences in the Toronto drag scene, and her hopes for the forthcoming Canadian edition of Drag Race, Canada’s Drag Race.

Alan Filewod, ed. The CTR Anthology: Fifteen Plays from Canadian Theatre Review

Alan Filewod, ed. The CTR Anthology: Fifteen Plays from Canadian Theatre Review

Editorial: Indigenous Methodologies/Settler Responsibilities

"Editorial: Indigenous Methodologies/Settler Responsibilities." Canadian Theatre Review, 178(), pp. 66–67

A Ryga-Rita Rethink

This article is an edited transcript of a panel convened at the Ryga Arts Festival, held in Summerland, British Columbia, in 2017, about Ryga’s groundbreaking 1967 play The Ecstasy of Rita Joe. Issues discussed include the play’s legacy fifty years after its premiere and how twenty-first-century issues such as appropriation of voice have impacted the play’s continued production on Canadian stages. The panel, chaired by Canadian Theatre Review founding editor Don Rubin, includes contributions from the play’s original composer-singer-actress Ann Mortifee, opera composer Victor Davies, film-maker Gina Payzant, and writer-critic Patricia Keeney.

Developing New Musicals & Supporting New Writers

Canadian Theatre Review sits down with The Musical Stage Company’s Artistic & Managing Director Mitchell Marcus and Intern Artistic Director Kevin Wong to talk about the development of Canadian musicals and Canadian musical theatre writers. They discuss how The Musical Stage Company (formerly Acting Up Stage Company) has supported the development of Canadian Musical Theatre in the past through projects like its NoteWorthy program and the production of Reframed at the Art Gallery of Ontario. They also discuss The Musical Stage Company’s new initiatives: the Dan Fund, and the Crescendo Series, a three-year writer’s residency. Marcus and Wong explore the challenges and rewards of developing new musical theatre works in Canada from the perspective of an arts administrator (Marcus) and a composer-lyricist (Wong). Topics explored include whether Canadian musicals need the approval of Americans, The Musical Stage Company’s place in an emerging network of new musical theatre development in Canada, and the challenges of supporting new musical development over a long period, particularly through the middle of the development process.

Riding the Cyclone: One Actor’s Take on the Rollercoaster Journey of Atomic Vaudeville’s Ride the Cyclone

Canadian Theatre Review interviews Kholby Wardell, who has played the role of Noel Gruber in every iteration of the musical Ride the Cyclone, by Jacob Richmond and Brooke Maxwell, from its first workshop in 2008 in Victoria, BC to its Off-Broadway run at the MCC Theater in the 2016–17 season. Wardell discusses the development process of the show and articulates some of his thoughts about how the show has evolved over its many iterations. He also discusses differing audience responses to the show, its comedy, and its core themes, and he talks about the many contributions made to its development by a variety of theatre artists in Canada and the US.

The Next Generation

Canadian Theatre Review interviews three participants from the CMTWC (Canadian Musical Theatre Writers Collective) 2016–17 Writers Workshop. Deanna Choi, Richard Lam, and Colin Simmons discuss their experiences working with the various instructors from the Workshop (including Leslie Arden, Jim Betts, and David Warrack). They also share their thoughts about writing musicals, what (if anything) defines a Canadian musical, and the importance of promoting diversity in musical theatre performance and creation.

“I’m asking, queer 2 queer: are we family?”: Reflections on Canada’s First National Queer Theatre and Performance Conference

The editors of Canadian Theatre Review invited bisexual, genderqueer playwright, performer, and curator Katie Sly to offer their reflections on participating in Q2Q, Canada’s first national symposium on queer theatre and performance. In their article, “I’m asking, queer 2 queer: are we family?” Katie examines the charged and contentious energy of the conference, and offers that within queer performance circles, there is not sufficient inter-generational understanding, and there is not enough of a universally aligned perspective on how racism, ableism, and transphobia are enacted in queer spaces, for queer theatre professionals across this country to call each other kin. Rather than seeing this as a failing of the queer performance community or Q2Q, however, Katie posits that contentions that arose at Q2Q are a direct indication of why this national symposium was necessary, and that the repetition of Q2Q is an essential component in building a more compassionate, empathetic, and aware queer performance community, in which we can honour our personal biographies of struggle and oppression surrounding being queer, while also realizing that our biographies do not divorce us from systemic advantages based on race, being cisgender, and other visible and invisible identities.

Good Pain and Bad Pain: Talking About Writing Musicals (in Canada)

In this article, Canadian Theatre Review interviews Canadian musical theatre writers Anika Johnson, Barbara Johnston, Britta Johnson, and Colleen Dauncey about their work. They share their thoughts on the craft of writing for the musical theatre, the importance of Fringe Festivals in developing new musicals at the grassroots level, the challenges of integrating dance into an already resource-starved development process, and how being young women shapes their approach to writing.

In Development: The Joys and Challenges of Fostering New Musicals

Canadian Theatre Review interviews Adam Brazier, Artistic Director of the Charlottetown Festival, and Tracy Michailidis, founder of Musical Works in Concert, about the development of new musical theatre works in Canada. They share their insights on the workshopping process, and the development of new Canadian musicals. Brazier discusses his approach to restructuring programming at the Charlottetown Festival to support of new musical development, and his plans for the 2017 Charlottetown Festival Conference, which will feature presentations of several new works in development. Michailidis discusses the origins of Musical Works in Concert, and shares her thoughts on collaboration and workshopping.

The Preposterous Posthumous Predicament of Paulie Peel

A twenty-five minute excerpt of The Preposterous Posthumous Predicament of Paulie Peel was presented as a staged concert as part of REFRAMED, a partnership between The Musical Stage Company (formerly Acting Up Stage) and The Art Gallery of Ontario. Writers Julie Tepperman (book) and Kevin Wong (music & lyrics) were invited by Mitchell Marcus, Artistic & Managing Director of The Musical Stage Company, to develop a new musical in response to a painting from the AGO’s collection. They chose The Young Biologist by Paul Peel. The staged concert was performed directly under the painting in the Richard Barry Fudger Memorial Gallery, 12-17 April 2016. Included in this issue of Canadian Theatre Review are the script for the twenty-five minute excerpt and the sheet music for two songs.

How to Write About Theatre: A Manual for Critics, Students, and Bloggers by Mark Fisher

Reviewed by: How to Write About Theatre: A Manual for Critics, Students, and Bloggers by Mark Fisher John Patrick Bray How to Write About Theatre: A Manual for Critics, Students, and Bloggers. By Mark Fisher. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015. Paper $29.95. 296 pages. The Fall 2016 issue of Canadian Theatre Review focused solely on the state of theatre criticism. Contributors discuss the ways in which the role of the theatre critic has greatly diminished (if not disappeared entirely) due to funding cuts and changes in technology, as well as how some professors have attempted to keep theatre criticism alive in their classrooms, at least as a foundational skill to be used in theatre classes. Mark Fisher, however, takes a different path in his book, How to Write About Theatre: a Manual for Critics, Students and Bloggers. Rather than lament the passing of yesteryear's criticism printed in periodicals, Fisher seeks to educate the next wave of critics by embracing the multitude of platforms available via the internet; and Fisher is successful. Perhaps the most telling line from the introduction is his statement, "Opinions are commonplace; it is analysis that makes a critic" (5). For Fisher, critical thought does not need to evaporate in one hundred and forty characters or fewer; on the contrary, Fisher offers excellent examples of how one may perform a thoughtful analysis of a theatre event in a single tweet (6). In approachable and fastidious prose, Fisher guides the reader through twenty chapters in which he demonstrates how one can perform theatre criticism that is analytical and accessible, regardless of the intended audience or medium of delivery. At the same time, the reader should have an understanding of how they must take responsibility for any of thoughts they post either online or in print. The first five chapters unpack the history of criticism, styles and approaches, finding one's audience, and finding one's voice for that audience. Though excellently written, these chapters may generate more interest from scholars and teachers, rather than students, as Fisher spends time discussing the historical roster of characters who populate theatre and memory studies texts—from early luminaries such as Richard Steele, Joseph Addison, Aaron Hill and Williams Popple, to George Bernard Shaw, John Lahr, Christopher Jones (who wrote the foreword), and numerous figures in between. In these early pages, Fisher expertly suggests the critic follow the three questions offered by Alessandro Manzoni, which originally appeared in his introduction to Il conte de Carmagnola (1819): "What did the author set out to do? Was this a reasonable ambition in the first place? Has the author achieved what they set out to do?" (19). As Fisher notes, Goethe usually gets credit for these questions. For his purposes, Fisher adapts them into "What were the theatre makers trying to do?", "How well did they do it?", and "Was it worth it?" (23). These questions serve as a solid starting point for discussion, and Fisher gives each further consideration as he identifies the various roles a critic may play (after all, criticism is a kind of performance). "The critic as reporter," for example, may focus on the first question (30); the "critic as judge" may focus on the second (31); while the [End Page 157] "critics as consumer guide" may focus on the third (36). Fisher weighs the pros and cons for each approach, leaving the reader to come to their own conclusion about what style may work best. Writing about the latter, Fisher rightfully contends that most consumer guides do at least imply the larger the price for an item, the better the quality; however, in theatre that is simply not the case, as "there's little reason to suppose a person who spends £200 will enjoy themselves twenty times more than the person who spends £10" (33). Fisher states, "A strategy more likely to succeed as consumer guide is to write for a defined market whose tastes broadly coincide with their own" (33). This advice is insightful, as tastes (like ticket prices) do tend to vary. For example, the website Theatre is Easy features reviews by budding critics who cover Off- and Off-Off-Broadway performances. Their target audience will...

I Really, Really Mean Something: Ten Micro-Plays about Theatre

These are ten very short plays about theatre and the way theatre deals with criticism of itself within the community and the industry. The main theme is honesty. They are a bit silly, a bit of satire, and just a little tiny bit preachy. These plays have been specially commissioned for Canadian Theatre Review 168, with the exception of Face Acting, which was developed in a Canada Council Residency with Outside the March in 2015.

Introduction: Performance Futures

In its scope of interest, Canadian Theatre Review is a forwardlooking entity, concerned always with developments in performance in Canada, the writers attentive to trending theatrical events and perspectives that are innovative and cutting-edge. Each issue of Canadian Theatre Review is a report from where we are now. Immediately now. But thinking about the temporal situation of now inevitably entails awareness of how we got to now and speculation about where we go next. The recent Progress: International Festival of Performance and Ideas, presented by Toronto’s SummerWorks in partnership with the Theatre Centre, embodied a similar impulse. In a reflexive interview on the festival’s name, curator Michael Rubenfeld was asked to consider the question, “What is progress?” In his response, Rubenfeld lauded the concept of progress and recognized its power for change but resisted the notion that progress always and necessarily entails growth, offering instead a secondary definition connoting “increasing in scope or severity” (Poon). That same intonation is at work here in this issue on the topic of performance futures. By bringing together a bold cadre of avant-garde voices, we aim to enrich the ecology, stimulating consideration of how change happens, envisioning what kinds of changes we hope for and what kinds of changes we fear. Contributors to this issue were tasked with considering these futures, not at long range but in the middle distance. These futures are not a thousand years away, nor even a hundred years. We asked them to look around the next corner, to peek ahead a mere fifteen years from now to 2030—a future we can reasonably expect to experience. A future with one foot in the present. And as we look to this near future, our current situation with all its challenges and opportunities comes into sharp focus. Writing about nowhere places and not-yet places, Jacques Ranciere says that utopia is a space of dynamic ambiguity, negotiating the relationship between the world as it is and the world as it ought to be. On the one hand, it is, as a non-place, radical and category-breaking, “the extreme point of a polemical reconfiguration of the sensible”; on the other, “it is also the configuration of a proper place, a non-polemical distribution of the sensible universe where what one sees, what one says or does are rigorously adapted to one another” (40). It by Jenn Stephenson

A Photographic Journey through Digital Technology in Canadian Performances

This photo essay showcases digitally mediated performances across Canada. Just as books on the subject of digital performance have featured an impressive and varied breadth of shows under that umbrella, like Steve Dixon’s book sporting the same title, this slideshow highlights a diverse range of performances—from zombie-infested augmented reality games to technology-enhanced cooking displays to interactive web games created for theatre festivals. This is not an exhaustive list but rather a sampling of recent productions that, like the other shows discussed in this issue of Canadian Theatre Review, demonstrate how theatre creation is shifting in response to today’s digital media and game-savvy audiences. The journey through these images starts with the use of social media to engage spectators even before they enter the theatre space, moves inside the theatre to productions that use visual and aural media enmeshed with live bodies, and then out again to site-specific performance in real-world and online spaces, which are augmented in evocative ways by digital technologies.

Theatre / Research / Canada

Theatre Studies in Canada is a young field, but already it has come a long way since the founding in the mid-to-late seventies, in rapid succession, of: Canadian Theatre Review (1974); Canadian Drama/L’art dramatique Canadien (1975), later folded into Essays in Theatre/Études théâtrales and later still dissolved; the Association for Canadian Theatre History (1976), subsequently The Association for Canadian Theatre Research, and now the Canadian Association for Theatre Research; and Theatre History in Canada (1980), now Theatre Research in Canada. Behind these name changes are many stories, and behind those stories are many shifts in the understanding of the disciplines and fields that constitute readers of this journal as a community of scholars.

Canadian Theatre Review Constitutes Performance Studies

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...

Performance Studies in Canada

Performance Studies in Canada (Introduction to Views and Reviews), by Natalie Alvarez In Search of PS North: Performance Studies in Canada, by Laura Levin Outskirts to Mainstream?: Performance Poetry on the Move, by Naila Keleta-Mae (No) Performance Studies in Canada, by Susan Bennett Towards Locating the Alchemy of Convergence in the Native Theatre Classroom, by Jill Carter Études théâtrales and Performance Studies in Quebec, by Erin Hurley Canadian Theatre Review Constitutes Performance Studies, by Ric Knowles