Canadian Theatre Review Research Articles

It Was Not Death for I Stood Up…and Fragged the Dumb-Ass MoFo Who'd Wasted Me

It Was Not Death for I Stood Up…and Fragged the Dumb-Ass MoFo Who'd Wasted Me

Missed Stories

One look at my twelve-letter, five-syllable surname and you’ll know I’m not Chinese. However, I am what is stereotypically referred to as “ethnic.” My background is not typically white, middle-class, English-speaking or any of the other “norms” of Canadian society. And just like the Chinese Canadians this issue of Canadian Theatre Review is focused on, my “people” and their stories have been missing from the theatrical stages of this country.

Disney North: The Lion King

It may seem odd - and perhaps even downright inappropriate - to find a review of Disney’s blockbuster show The Lion King in Canadian Theatre Review. Notwithstanding CTR’s spectacular history in showcasing, archiving and promoting the work of Canadian theatre artists, it strikes me that The Lion King, maybe despite itself, makes an interesting contribution to contemporary theatre in Canada. Certainly the sheer numbers of tickets sold for this production - one can expect to wait around five or six months for “good” seats - suggest this point in a couple of different ways: The Lion King will be seen by more Canadians than any other play in 2000-2001 (and, in all likelihood, beyond); moreover, its non-Canadian audience (the audience on the Saturday night that I saw the production had a big contingent from Michigan) brings its tourist dollars into the Princess of Wales Theatre and thus directly supports the many Canadian actors in this show.

Editorial

The theme of this issue of Canadian Theatre Review was suggested by Marc Maufort, a professor at Université Libre de Bruxelles whose area of specialization is Canadian and Australian theatre. I want to thank Professor Maufort for reminding the editors that Canadian practitioners and their work have an impact beyond the boundaries of Canada. Professor Maufort’s own commitment to Canadian drama serves as a salient reminder that Canadian studies is an important part of the curricula of universities located in countries which were once the Commonwealth, and now, as the relationship between the imperial centre and its colonies is being rethought through postcolonial studies, drama written by Canadians is being positioned in site-specific ways. As Geeta Budhiraja’s commentary on two productions directed by Robert Fothergill, a Canadian playwright and academic, suggests, within the particular space of an academically sponsored institute, Canadian drama reads as “foreign,” so that the audience identifies with in it ways that resonate with its experience. Joanne Tompkins suggests that the classes in which she teaches Canadian drama in Australia, a settler colony like Canada, offer the discursive space to address commonality and difference between Australia and Canada.

Staging the North: Twelve Canadian Plays

Because of the diverse perspectives provided by both visitors to and residents of these various Northern “stages,” Staging the North: Twelve Canadian Plays challenges the existence of any monolithic idea or myth of the North. “Degrees of North,” Sherrill Grace’s valuable introduction to this anthology, indicates that the editors were aiming for this kind of interrogation when selecting plays for inclusion: “Whose North? What stage?… Which playwrights? Staging for whom? The ‘true North,’ like the ‘we’ who guard it in the Canadian national anthem, is a complex, changing, and problematic term” (ix). Staging the North successfully captures the “complex, multiple identity” of the North and, by implication, Canada (xxi). The winter 1992 issue of Canadian Theatre Review, devoted to “Arctic Theatre Makers,” observes that “throughout the North, theatre has evolved from the oral traditions of storytelling” and that therefore scripted plays are unusual (3). Sherrill Grace and her co-editors have compiled a useful anthology with extensive introductions to each play and playwright and a representative sampling of regions, terrains and outlooks. There is, however, unity in this diversity, if not a pattern in the mosaic: the indebtedness that all twelve plays have to the oral and visual traditions of those art forms indigenous to the North.

Dramatic Discourse at Talonbooks: Narratives on the Publisher-Author Relationship

The emergent interest in Canadian literary studies in the role of publishing can be seen as a reflection of confidence in the value of Canadian literature. It can also be seen as a continuation of an ongoing attention to the complex dynamics involved in creation, production and readership of text. Both the Spring 1997 issue of Open Letter, devoted to an examination of Coach House Press, and Sam Solecki’s 1998 Imagining Canadian Literature: The Selected Letters of Jack McClelland, for example, by the very act of chronicling the histories of their respective presses, assume the validity of the fiction, non-fiction and poetry whose publication they record, pay tribute to those responsible for making that work public and provide insight into publishing processes. A more recent study, the Spring 1999 issue of Canadian Theatre Review, themed “Publishing Canadian Theatre,” acknowledges and examines the contributions of such drama publishers as Playwrights Canada Press and Talonbooks, but functions primarily – and significantly – to generate interrogation into the distinct nature of drama publication. As editor Ann Wilson writes, “this issue is only the beginning – raising questions and offering insights with no definitive analyses” (3).

NONE IS TOO MANY

Jason Sherman was born in Montreal in 1962, the seventh of eight sons . He graduated from York University’s Creative Writing Program in 1985 and, that same year, founded What Publishing which produced what, a literary magazine which he edited from 1985-1990. While Sherman is probably best known for his rapid achievement of acclaim as a dramatist, his venture with what marks his alternate career as a journalist whose reviews, essays and interviews which have appeared not only in the journal he edited, but in The Globe and Mail, Canadian Theatre Review, Theatrum, among others . In addition, Sherman edited two anthologies for Coach House Press: Canadian Brash (1991) and Solo (1993.) A prolific writer, Sherman’ s League of Nathans was produced by Orange Dog/Theatre Passe Muraille in 1992; Three in the Back, Two ill the Head, a 1994 co-production of Necessary Angel, Tarragon Theatre and the National Art s Centre, was honoured with a Governor General’s Award in 1995. The Retreat was mounted by Tarragon Theatre in 1996. Reading Hebron was produced by Factory Theatre in 1996, and None is Too Many was produced by Winnipeg’s Jewish Theatre and the Manitoba Theatre Centre in 1997. He writes the dramatic series PMO heard monthly on CBC’S Morning side and This Morning. He has been a playwright-in-residence at Tarragon Theatre since 1992.

China's Theatre of Dissent: A Conversation with Mou Sen and Wu Wenguang

Mou Sen, thirty-two, is the artistic director of the Beijing-based Xi Ju Che Jian (Garage Theatre). His production of File Zero, based on the documentary poem of the same title (Ling Dang An) by the thirty-nine-year-old avant-garde poet YuJian, has toured, since its premiere at the Kunsten Festival des Arts in Brussels in May 1994, to fifteen cities throughout Europe and Canada. Plans are under way for an extensive U.S. tour in 1996. Complicated negotiations are taking place to present File Zero in mainland China, as well, where its subtextual critique of dominant ideologies-in combination with its unique stylistic mixture of documentary realism and symbolic stage images-are guaranteed to make it controversial. In this interview, Denis Salter speaks both to Mou Sen and to the actor (and sometime documentary filmmaker) Wu Wenguang, who narrates one of four bureaucratic 'files or personal stories that make up the dramatic structure of File Zero. They discuss the difficult evolution of the project-although rehearsals began in Beijing, they had to continue in Brussels in preparation for the premiere there-and the problems they faced, along with two other actors, in figuring out how to transform a KaJkaesquestyle documentary poem-exploring the nightmarish postmodern world where people's identities are regulated by the classified files that governments compile on them secretly throughout their lifetimes-into a piece of effective theatre. They also discuss the difficulties-political andfinancial-they regularly encounter as dissident artists in a culture that of course remains dangerously repressive. Although Mou argues, near the end of the interview, that File Zero is not a subversive work, its concluding scene of mass destruction seems a direct comment on the suppression of the student revolt in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Indeed, it has broader implications: it functions as a visual parable for any incident, in China or elsewhere, in which people destroy-and are in turn destroyed by-technologies of oppression. Denis Salter teaches theatre at McGill University in Montreal. He has published widely on Canadian and Quebec theatre, postmodern and postcolonial performance theory, Victorian stage history, modern drama and theatre, and Shakespeare in performance in edited collections of essays and in many journals including Theatre Research in Canada, Canadian Theatre Review, Essays on Canadian Writing, andJeu. He is currently working on a research program that reexamines problematic keywords in (Canadian) theatre historiography.

United Sistahs

For Canadian Theatre Review Dirk McLean met with both Sharon Lewis (co-writer, director) and Maxine Bailey (co-writer, producer) between shows on the final day of Sistahs at the Poor Alex Theatre in Toronto. The following are highlights from that conversation: What were the reasons for forming Sugar ‘n’ Spice Productions?

Praxis Makes Perfect: The Secret Origins of T.P.I (or why we started an electronic journal)

Dear Editors of Theatre Perspectives International, I am guest editing an upcoming issue of Canadian Theatre Review, the theme of which will be Computers and Drama. As a subscriber on Candrama, I saw the announcement for your new electronic journal on theatre – an exciting prospect for you, and a timely one for our issue. Would you consider writing an article about your efforts? You may choose any slant you wish, of course, but some questions that you might consider: your project's genesis; its purpose, how you see computers aiding the dissemination of information on drama, how this journal might intersect with other technologies (say, CD-ROM), any drawbacks, etc. You may wish to address what impact it may have on Canadian theatre/drama.

Canadian Canons: Essays in Literary Value; The CTR Anthology: Fifteen Play from Canadian Theatre Review; George Bernard Shaw and Christopher Newton: Explorations of Shavian Theatre; A Vision of Canada: Herman Voaden’s Dramatic Works 1928-1945

... to the new format for CTR’s book review section. As you may notice, we have made several changes, this introductory commentary among them. To apprise readers of recent developments in Canadian theatre and drama publishing, CTR has now increased substantially the number of pages that it devotes to book reviews. As well, these reviews are longer, allowing the reviewers greater scope to reflect and comment upon pertinent questions, issues, and challenges. Accompanied by pictures of the book covers, a major review article will lead this section each time. In this issue, for example, Richard Plant addresses the idea of canons and canonizing in Canadian theatre, and discusses how most of the authors in these volumes appear to accept some kind of canon formation, while others interrogate, and even reject, the notion.

Christopher Newton: Unsure But Incredibly True

Thirty years ago, in June 1964, a young actor stepped on to a make-shift stage upstairs in the Court House in Niagara-on-the-Lake to play a character auspiciously named “A” in Shaw’s Village Wooing. After a circuitous route through many of the regional theatres in Canada, he returned in 1980 as the Artistic Director destined to set the Shaw Festival on a productive new course. That young man was Christopher Newton, and his career to date spans three of the most interesting decades in Canadian theatre, touching many of the groups that have shaped what Canadian theatre is today — Canadian Players, Manitoba Theatre Centre, Stratford Festival, Theatre Calgary, Vancouver Playhouse. Looking at these thirty years in the life of one actor-director puts a personal face on the recent history of theatre in Canada; listening to his story, frequently told in his own words, we catch some of the great changes that Canadian Theatre Review has documented since 1974.

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

Alan Filewod, ed. <i>The CTR Anthology: Fifteen Plays from Canadian Theatre Review</i>

The CTR anthology: fifteen plays from Canadian Theatre Review

The CTR anthology: fifteen plays from Canadian Theatre Review

Canadian Theatre Review. Edited by Alan Filewod, Associate Editors Natalie Rewa, Ann Wilson. Nos. 61–64, Winter 1989–Fall 1990.

Canadian Theatre Review. Edited by Alan Filewod, Associate Editors Natalie Rewa, Ann Wilson. Nos. 61–64, Winter 1989–Fall 1990.

Undermining the Centre: The Canon According to "CTR"

Since its founding in 1974, Canadian Theatre Review has made a major contribution to the canon of Canadian drama, in its critical discourse and publication of new plays. Under three successive editorial regimes its notion of what constitutes the canon has changed radically. In its first phase, CTR was committed to legitimizing the canon; in its second phase, the notion of the canon was broadened to include marginalized voices; today CTR is effectively committed to interrogating the very idea of a canon.

Notions of Nationalism

What’s in a name? The short response is, quite a lot. For example, the title of this journal, Canadian Theatre Review, indicates an assumption that there is a homogeneous theatrical practice which can be called “Canadian.” But is this the case? And if so, how might we begin to examine the implications of a theatre which is defined by the political construct “nation”? The answers to these questions may at first seem so evident that the questions might be viewed as rhetorical. I can imagine a response along the lines, “Of course there is a Canadian theatre. Why else would there be journals like CTR, Canadian Drama, a reference book like The Oxford Companion to Canadian Theatre and the anthologies of Canadian drama which have appeared in recent years?” But this sort of response can be turned on itself so that these periodicals and books are not evidence of the existence of Canadian theatre but rather of the desire for Canadian theatre, for a theatre which defines use as a nation thereby giving us a sense of identity. (For an excellent discussion of the implications of the creation of a Canadian dramatic canon see “Voices (off): Deconstructing the Modern English-Canadian Dramatic Canon” by Richard Paul Knowles, forthcoming in The Canadian Canon: Essays in Literary Value. Ed. Robert Lecker. Toronto: U. of Toronto Press.)

Gender, Sexuality and Theatre To Become The Ideological Function of Gay Theatre

Since Canadian Theatre Review published a special issue on homosexuality and Canadian theatre in 1976, the changes in gay life in North America have been enormous. While the social stigmatization of homosexuality and the concomitant oppression of lesbian and gay peoples still exists as much in Canada as in other countries, the gains of the gay liberation movement, both here and around the world, have led more Canadian artists to openly address the impact and significance of homosexuality in and on their work. Discussing the topic in a panel organized by CTR in 1975, playwright and director John Palmer stated an attitude prevalent amongst gay people working in Canadian theatre at that time: “Nobody minds that you are gay… . As long as it isn’t mentioned” (Freed 12). And Ed Jackson, then arts editor for The Body Politic, Canada’s national gay magazine, which has since closed its doors, answered the question “Could a gay theatre get funding?” by adroitly assessing the situation of gay theatre in Canada then and now: “I think you would have to try twice as hard… . There are always people who will jump on a government funding agency for giving money to homosexuals. They’ve done it in the past and they’ll continue to do it for some time … (Freed 12). Jackson also acknowledged, however, that “Things have changed, and are continuing to change. That’s why it might now be possible to have a gay theatre here” (Freed 11).

Erasing Historical Difference: The Alternative Orthodoxy in Canadian Theatre

lenge to an established mainstream informs the most common perception of modern Canadian history. It is inscribed in critical discourse, in the funding policies and assessment procedures of the federal and provincial arts councils, in the rhetoric of the theatres and, for most of its history, in the editorial analysis of the Canadian Theatre Review. By questioning the critical paradigm of I wish to suggest a need to reappraise the ideological forms by which the recent history of Canadian has been constructed, and in the process of that argument, I want to reconsider the general usefulness of theatre as a critical term. This inquiry begins with the idea that in the context of Canadian at least, terms like alternative and mainstream obscure rather than clarify historical forces. These terms enabled critics to define an emerging movement a decade ago but they have outlived their function, and their continued use draws attention to their essentially metaphoric nature. Rather than constantly redefining such terms to align them with changing conditions, perhaps their fundamental validity should be questioned.

Letters

I write in reference to my stage-play Ten Lost Years which was published in Canadian Theatre Review in the Fall 1983 issue [CTR 38]