Playwrights Canada Press Research Articles

Jenn Stephenson, ed. Solo Performance

JENN STEPHENSON, ed. Solo Performance. Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English. Vol. 20. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2011. xxxvi + 206pp. The end of the collection Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English will make way for New Essays on Canadian Theatre. The titles announced already signal the prominence of a plural--even multicultural--vision of the theatrical phenomenon. Since this perspective was quite obvious in the Press's preceding collection and without yet having had the chance to define its contribution through several published volumes (as of this writing only the first, Asian-Canadian Theatre is out), it is difficult to predict how this new series will innovate in its approach. Perhaps the collections' composition will be modified. We know that in the past, Playwrights Canada Press tended to bring together texts published elsewhere on a given theme, accompanied by a small number of additional studies commissioned by the director of the publication when deemed necessary. Rather than speculate about the future, however, let's focus instead on Solo Performance, the penultimate title published in 2011 and edited by Jenn Stephenson. The choice of this Queen's University professor to supervise the work was hardly surprising given that her monograph Performing Autobiography in Canadian Drama is to be published shortly by the University of Toronto Press. Indeed, there is a very close link between the two books, with the biographical and autobiographical constituting, in both cases, a central focus of discussion. There is no room here to summarize all the articles in Solo Performance. Suffice it to say, however, that they extend over a long temporal continuum--1972 to 2011 specifically--and cover a vast geographic area, from Newfoundland to British Columbia, while examining stage practices for both mainstream and marginal audiences. To be sure, these articles demonstrate a more pronounced interest in the latter, since, as many authors emphasize, the oneperson show and autobiographical performance are often an inexpensive way to render art more accessible to those artists and audiences usually excluded from the conventional theatrical field. Stephenson's work, moreover, clearly highlights those excluded from mainstream theatre: more than half of the eighteen texts are devoted to them. This emphasis therefore gives the impression of a theatrical institution open to minorities, marginal elements, and certain highly diverse aesthetics. One senses implicitly that the situation isn't all roses by the number of times the authors insist on the position of resistance to authoritarian discourse, a resistance defended by the solo performances analyzed. Although the word WASP isn't spelled out, we have no doubt who governs this society as those marginalized by gender, race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality speak in these one-person performances. The other striking characteristic of many of the studies is to show precisely how the solo performance is viewed as an act of survival by those who write about and interpret it. Renate Usmiani highlights this when she affirms that this genre [m]ost often, [...]is used to underline the isolation in which a character moves, and his/her state of alienation (9). This collection of texts is not merely theme-based, however. Some of the most thought-provoking articles focus on the theory and aesthetics of these one-person-shows. The contributions of Ann Wilson, Ric Knowles, and Jennifer Harvie, as well as those of Sherrill Grace and Katherine McLeod stand out. …

Fronteras Imaginarias: Theorizing Fronterizidad in the Simulated Illegal Border Crossings of El Alberto, Mexico

Spring 2011 23 Fronteras Imaginarias: Theorizing Fronterizidad in the Simulated Illegal Border Crossings of El Alberto, Mexico Natalie Alvarez1 “Oye, Gloria, aguantaras hasta California?” (“Hey, Gloria, can you make it to California?”). I was expecting the significance of this tourist’s question to be diffused by nervous laughter, as we crouched, huddled along a dusty path in amongst brush in the dead of night with little moonlight and only our coyote to guide us. The question, instead, was met with awkward silence as we tried to catch our breath. Two hours into this night trek through the desert canyon of El Alberto, Mexico in the heart of the Valle del Mezquital—with our field of vision limited to the person next to us, but imaginatively reaching all the way to the border some seven hundred miles north of the site of this fictional border crossing—the prospect of “making it” “for real” is, in fact, unimaginable. This question, “Can you make it to California?” uttered in the context of this simulated border crossing was an invitation—or perhaps a reminder—for all of us tourists huddled there to immerse ourselves “in the role” of illegal migrant and to try to amplify in our imaginative vistas—by hours, by degrees of hunger, thirst and fatigue, by levels of fear, injury, and threat—this mere fragment of an experience into the kind of journey that it might be, or could be, “for real.” In the time that has passed since this caminata nocturna, or “night walk” as the simulation is called, the question, “Can you make it to California?” remains there in that silence both awkwardly and ominously, a hollow echo of a question undoubtedly uttered in desperation by some of the roughly 600,000 plus migrants who attempt to cross illegally into the United States every year.2 If we think of the border as an interpellating force that hails and constitutes the identities to whom it grants passage or expels, a regulatory force that has come to constitute transnational migrant identities and fronterizas/os in movement across national boundaries, then what constitutive acts take place in a reenactment of this passage? How does a reenacted border crossing lay bare the performative force of the border? Furthermore, in this laying bare what questions does it compel us to ask about the construction of cultural identities made in the image of what Marcial Gonzalez refers to as “the most repressive and racist symbol of demarcation and exclusion produced by capitalism, nationalism, and imperialism—namely, the Natalie Alvarez is an assistant professor at Brock University’s Department of Dramatic Arts, where she teaches in the theatre praxis concentration. She has two edited books (forthcoming) on Latina/oCanadian theatre and performance with Playwrights Canada Press and is currently working on a SSHRC-funded manuscript project titled Enactments of Difference: Simulation and Performance from Military Training to Dark Tourism. 24 Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism border”?3 I’d like to situate the simulated border crossing in El Alberto, Mexico, as a social imaginary and praxis—that is, as a repertory of collective practices and symbolic representations with material impacts on the community—that not only constitute cultural identities but also develop a critical realism seeking to dismantle, paradoxically, the very borders that constitute them.4 The caminata nocturna takes place every Saturday night at the Parque EcoAlberto—an adventure tourism park run by the indigenous community of the Hñahñu in the municipality of Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo, roughly three hours north of Mexico City. The rugged valley that surrounds the park’s site, thick with cacti and bushes, swamp, and steep, rocky climbs, becomes the obstacle course for a largely improvised game in which some eighty-two members of the Hñahñu community take on a variety of roles in the simulation. These community members play either the coyotes (or polleros), guiding the tourists who have paid roughly twenty US dollars each for this five- to seven-hour journey, or the US border patrol, undermining the performative power of the oppressor in an instance of Boalian Theatre of the Oppressed.5 As these “border patrol officers” chase participants in police cars, they...

Queer Theatre in Canada (review)

Reviewed by: Queer Theatre in Canada Emily A. Rollie Queer Theatre in Canada. Edited by Rosalind Kerr. Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English, vol. 7. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2007; pp. xix + 282. $30.00 paper. Rosalind Kerr's Queer Theatre in Canada explores the queering of the English Canadian stage. Bringing together a variety of Canadian perspectives on the topic, Kerr's text aims "to put together important pieces of the puzzle" (vii) that have contributed to and now comprise contemporary Canadian queer theatre in English. The Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English series, to which this volume belongs, was established in 2005 by general editor Ric Knowles to recognize the burgeoning field of English Canadian theatre studies. While some volumes in the series focus on individual artists such as Judith Thompson and George Walker, most others focus on larger areas of study such as Aboriginal, feminist, and African Canadian theatre. Intended to "carve out both familiar and new areas of work" in English Canadian theatre, the volumes in the series reprint important scholarly essays and "attempt to fill in . . . significant gaps by highlighting work from and about marginalized communities" (iv). Considering that no full-length study of English Canadian queer theatre currently exists, Kerr's Queer Theatre in Canada fits nicely within the series's parameters and fills a decided gap in Canadian theatre scholarship. Featuring twenty-one essays from major Canadian theatre artists and scholars, the anthology takes a critical and remarkably comprehensive look at the past and present state of Canadian queer theatre. Kerr (who is also the editor of Lesbian Plays: Coming of Age in Canada) begins with a critical introduction in which she succinctly explains and identifies the "points of intersection between gay and lesbian theatre and queer theory" (viii). With engaging and accessible writing, she effectively situates this work within the larger field of queer theory, then draws attention to the ways this theory impacts each essay, creating an overall sense of cohesion and illuminating their common themes. Like other volumes in the series, Queer Theatre in Canada features no thematic chapters or formal divisions of its contents; rather, the essays are organized chronologically, according to the date of each piece's original publication. Twelve of the twenty-one essays were originally published between 1972 and 2005; the remaining nine were commissioned by Kerr specifically for this volume in an attempt to fill historical gaps and offer perspectives not recognized in previous queer scholarship. As a result, the chronological organization of the text proves somewhat misleading, for many of the later essays, although written more recently, explore historical, rather than current, queer performances. The text begins with two essays that reflect foundational moments in the development of English Canadian queer theatre. Neil Carson's 1972 article, "Sexuality and Identity in Fortune and Men's Eyes," examines the play by John Herbert that many consider to be the first Canadian play to explicitly address homosexuality. Directly following Carson's article, Robert Wallace's "Homo Creation: Toward a Poetics of Gay Male Theatre" (originally published in French in 1988 and translated into English in 1994) further articulates early conceptions of a queer Canadian theatrical sensibility and, in conjunction with Carson's article, effectively lays the groundwork for the subsequent essays. The rest of the book approaches queer theatre from a variety of theoretical and practical angles. Reid Gilbert analyzes the staging of the gay male body in works by Robert LePage, Terrence McNally, and David Drake, illustrating the continued debate surrounding theatrical portrayals of sex and gender, while Susan Bennett offers a compelling account of the critical response to Canadian productions of Angels in America. While several plays discussed here—such as Angels in America—are not of Canadian origin, the authors analyze these texts through a distinctly Canadian lens, considering Canadian productions and connecting issues raised by the texts to a Canadian conception of queerness. Other essays, such as Susan Billingham's insightful reading of Tomson Highway's Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, focus specifically on Canadian playwrights' work. Still other articles explore broader performance-based events: from Darrin Hagen's observations on homophobia and masculinity in World Wrestling Federation wrestling...

Developing Nation: New Play Creation in English-Speaking Canada (review)

Reviewed by: Developing Nation: New Play Creation in English-Speaking Canada Marlene Moser (bio) Bruce Barton , editor. Developing Nation: New Play Creation in English-Speaking Canada. Playwrights Canada Press. xii, 210. $25.00 By collecting and organizing the articles in this volume, Bruce Barton has identified a significant area of practice that is worthy of further study. The title is a tantalizing promise: connecting an idea of 'nation' in English-speaking Canada, at least, to 'new play creation,' a question that the reader must ultimately answer alone. This collection of writings is also an important step in measuring the 'elastic term of dramaturgy,' beginning a fascinating conversation that one hopes will continue to develop. The introduction carefully lays out the terrain to be investigated, perhaps too carefully, as at times it appears to be more an apologia for what is not included or what is not yet done, rather than a concrete, critical analysis of what these writings tell us about the development of new play creation in English-speaking Canada. The 'cultural materialist' framework Barton embraces could be more aggressively deployed here. The introduction sketches out ways in which the cultural landscape has changed over the years, but stops short of presenting a sustained argument and refers us to 'Further Reading.' Barton presents the rationale for his organizing principle (chronological) as well as the rationales for [End Page 531] the three alternative organizational approaches he includes as appendices: alphabetical, regional, and thematic. An alphabetical listing is useful; a regional one less so, to my mind, as these can be easily discerned; and the thematic organization suggested here needs much more development and argumentation to be effective. Why separate out 'identity' practices from 'movement-based' dramaturgy, when a play like This Is for You, Anna, for example, covers both territories (and doesn't merit a reference in this volume)? A further niggling criticism of the introduction is the page-number referencing to quotations. As these are taken from the original published source and not the writings in this edition, this practice sends us blindly foraging through the current collection to find and contextualize the references on our own. Most articles are drawn from practitioners, and most have been previously published in the Canadian Theatre Review over the past twenty years - a monopoly that Barton acknowledges. Barton also asked a number of practising dramaturges to respond and reflect on their practice. These are new entries, not previously published. A few critical articles are also included. For me, the most effective writings are those that are the most engaged, moving back and forth between a practice of thinking and doing: Beth Herst's questioning of the 'workshop alternative,' Sky Gilbert's discussion of 'opportunity without interference,' and Sandra Tomc's detailed account of the Laidlaw Report are some of the more compelling reads. Barton's and Hansen's accounts pursue the application of dramaturgy to movement-based work. Extending this more fully to site-specific works would also add another dimension to this collection. Although other academic writing has been mostly nudged into the 'Further Suggested Reading,' several questions nevertheless come forward: What do we make of the 'invisible' versus 'visible' practices of dramaturgy, for example? To what extent is 'workshop-it is' a result of granting practices? But these questions perhaps indicate the richness of the volume: there are still these cultural practices to be teased out. Another rather simple question is about the conflation of 'new play creation' and 'dramaturgy' that pervades this volume. Aren't dramaturges used on 'old' plays, as it were, and how is their practice and insight useful here? This approach is really addressed only by Rachel Ditor in her article, which is in part about her experience with Hedda Gabler. Territory for another volume, perhaps? Overall, the book is a very useful addition to library collections, of many sorts. To have these essays here side by side allows us to see when and how the workshop process became so important to many companies and the different approaches and politics of new play development. I look forward to the further critical work that a collection like this will surely inspire. [End Page 532] Marlene Moser Marlene...

Feminist Theatre and Performance , and: The Masks of Judith Thompson , and: George F. Walker , and: Theatre in British Columbia (review)

Reviewed by: Feminist Theatre and Performance, and: The Masks of Judith Thompson, and: George F. Walker, and: Theatre in British Columbia Nancy Copeland Susan Bennett , editor. Feminist Theatre and Performance. Playwrights Canada. xvii, 161. $25.00 Ric Knowles , editor. The Masks of Judith Thompson. Playwrights Canada. xi. 149. $25.00 Harry Lane , editor. George F. Walker. Playwrights Canada. xv, 205. $25.00 Ginny Ratsoy , editor. Theatre in British Columbia. Playwrights Canada. xxii, 228. $25.00 Taken together, these four anthologies from Playwrights Canada Press represent a range of approaches to configuring drama scholarship. Three of the four are volumes in the ongoing series Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English, while the fourth, The Masks of Judith Thompson, is a companion to an earlier Critical Perspectives volume dedicated to Thompson's work. George F. Walker, edited by Harry Lane, like the other Critical Perspectives volumes, is intended to complement collections of plays issued by various Canadian publishers, in this case the anthologies of Walker's work published by Talonbooks, in order, according to the series' general editor, Ric Knowles, to 'facilitate the teaching of Canadian drama and theatre.' Lane's anthology combines scholarship on Walker's work extending from 1978 to 2006 with three interviews with the playwright at different stages of his career. In keeping with the series' approach, most of the material is reprinted, although two of the pieces are published for the first time, including a commissioned article on This Is Wonderland, by Amanda McCoy. The collection begins with some of the earliest critical assessments of Walker's work: Ken Gass's introduction to Walker's Three Plays of 1978 and Chris Johnson's influential 'George F. Walker: B-Movies beyond the Absurd,' first published in 1980. The subsequent articles provide comprehensive coverage of the stages of Walker's career, including a substantial body of criticism of the work prior to the East End Plays, up to his most recent work, Heaven and This Is Wonderland. The articles demonstrate the extensive body of serious critical commentary on Walker, including the work of such prominent critics as Robert Wallace, Ric Knowles, Reid Gilbert, Jerry Wasserman, Denis W. Johnston, and Craig Stewart Walker, and document the gradual articulation of Walker's post-modernism and, more recently, his post-colonialism. These essays also represent a range of theoretical approaches, including Knowles's influential analysis of Walker's 'dramaturgy of the perverse' from The Theatre of Form and the Production of Meaning, Gilbert's Lacanian post-colonial analysis of two of the Suburban [End Page 422] Motel plays, and Ed Nyman's queer reading of Theatre of the Film Noir. Surprisingly absent, however, is any reference to the casting, which was such an important feature of Walker's early work, notably the contributions of Walker 'regulars' David Bolt and Peter Blais. Only D.A Hadfield contributes performance criticism to this collection, and her focus is on characters in The Power Plays who do not appear in the cast lists. This absence is, presumably, a shortcoming of the available criticism, rather than of the selection process. Lane's collection simultaneously provides a rich and stimulating overview of Walker's work and in-depth analyses of individual plays. Ginny Ratsoy's Theatre in British Columbia, intended as a companion to Playing the Pacific Province: An Anthology of British Columbia Plays, 1967–2000, which she edited with James Hoffman, is at the opposite pole from George F. Walker's focus on an individual playwright. Ratsoy has interpreted her subject broadly, producing an anthology that encompasses many different sub-topics. The articles are arranged chronologically, from 1983 to 2006, but in her introduction Ratsoy identifies alternative groupings: 'broad views,' 'theatre companies,' specific play-wrights and plays, and 'specific communities perform themselves.' Malcolm Page and Denis Johnston give overviews of theatre in the province; Renate Usmiani writes about Tamahnous Theatre and Savage God in the 1960s and 1970s and Bruce Kirkley about Caravan Farm Theatre; Uma Parameswaran writes about South Asian theatre and Sibohan R.K. Barker about Black playwrights; David Diamond gives a 'historical overview' of Headlines Theatre; Margo Kane and R.A. Shiomi write about their experiences as theatre practitioners from 'specific communities'; James...

Building a Shared Legacy: Exploring the Roots of Lesbian Drama in Canada

Rosalind Kerr’s volume of eleven ground-breaking Canadian plays by lesbian or queer-identified playwrights is a long-overdue contribution to theatre studies in Canada as well as to the broader world of LGBTQ studies. Although collections such as Don Shewey’s Out Front: Contemporary Gay and Lesbian Plays (Grove Press, 1988), Eric Lane and Nina Shengold’s The Actor’s Book of Gay and Lesbian Plays (Penguin, 1995) and Ben Hodges’s Forbidden Acts: Pioneering Gay and Lesbian Plays of the 20th Century (Applause, 2003) have already alerted readers to some of the most important plays by British and American authors, works by gay and lesbian Canadians have been largely overlooked. With Kerr’s Lesbian Plays: Coming of Age in Canada and Sky Gilbert’s complementary volume, Perfectly Abnormal: Seven Gay Plays (2006), Playwrights Canada Press has clearly set out to give queer Canadian playwrights the profile they deserve.

Modern Jewish Plays. Ed. Jason Sherman. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2006.

In his search for plays to include in his anthology, Modern Jewish Plays, editor Jason Sherman didn’t start out with a sense of how these plays would come together under a common theme. What he discovered was something quite exciting. All the playwrights share “an interest in writing politically-charged plays about a tiny piece of land in a part of the world that has been, for the last half-century, the source of so much misery for the people who live in it, and the source of much commentary from those who don’t” (363). The plays that follow feature a discussion and debate about violence, identity and responsibility that are blatantly missing from Canadian stages. Each play beautifully dramatizes the intricacies and complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without shielding the audience from its violence or offering a resolution. With the exception of Hand in Hand, all the plays share an emphasis on the overt theatricality of the stage and its capacity to blend and blur distinctions between fiction and reality. These conventions become the means by which the politics are foregrounded so that the audience is engaged and complicit with the action both onstage and in the outside world.

The Season for Speech: A Review of Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English, Vols. 1, 2, and 3

Aboriginal Drama and Theatre, African-Canadian Theatre and Judith Thompson are the first three books in the Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English series from Playwrights Canada Press. Under general editor Ric Knowles, these three collections serve to “facilitate the teaching of Canadian drama and theatre in schools, colleges, and universities across the country for years to come” (iii).

Beyond Kids’ Stuff: A Review of Mermaid: A Puppet Theatre in Motion, by Alice Walsh (Kentville, NS: Gaspereau Press, 2005); Provenance, by Ronnie Burkett (Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2005)

Since its modest beginnings in 1971, Mermaid Theatre of Nova Scotia has maintained its commitment to “tell a good story, tell it simply, tell it well and tell it often” (Morrow). The story of the evolution and success of this company that creates and produces theatre for young people using puppetry, mask, dance, music and original scripts has been carefully and meticulously documented by Alice Walsh. As Walsh notes in her historiography, Mermaid: A Puppet Theatre in Motion, the company has evolved from a small experimental troupe touring shows in local schools in the Annapolis Valley to one that annually produces theatre for young people internationally. In the 2004/5 season, Mermaid toured twenty-seven states and five provinces and returned to Japan for the seventh time in its history (Mermaid). In fact, the company has toured so continuously and extensively across the globe that in 2001 it earned provincial and national Export Awards usually reserved for the industrial manufacturing sector. In 2005, the company repeated this performance as the recipient of the Canada Export Award. Current artistic director Jim Morrow concedes that, although being recognized as producers of a “product” is somewhat disconcerting to the artistic minds of Mermaid, as Nova Scotian ambassadors of puppet theatre for young people, the company “do[es] export a good energy from Atlantic Canada” (qtd. on 129).

A Selection of New Plays From Playwrights Canada Press

Linda Griffiths’ Chronic is the story of Petra, a Web designer in her thirties, suffering from what appear to be the symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome. Defined as chronic, rather than a hypochondriac or one who is suffering from a critical illness, Petra’s disease is never given an exact name. What the play explores are the possible causes of her condition – repression, guilt, stress – and how it affects her relationships with others: her boyfriend Chris, who wavers between faithful and unfaithfulness, her competitive female co-worker Amber, her high-strung workaholic boss Oscar, her non-traditional doctor Diane, and even the Virus itself. Though the Virus seduces Petra, she knows that the Virus is unpredictable, an unknown that cannot be trusted. As an infection that frequently plagues both people and computers and can have a lasting impact, the Virus is a vehicle that Griffiths uses to explore the repercussions of “the wave of new connectivity” in contemporary society (13).

Contemporary Echoes from Playwrights Canada Press

Aaron Bushkowsky points out in the introduction to his collection The Waterhead, and Other Plays that he likes to write about dysfunctional families. These plays are no exception. The book contains a memory play, The Big Blue Bird, in which a man remembers his grandfather and his father; an extended monologue for a male actor, which bears the title of the collection, The Waterhead; and finally, a slightly shorter monologue for a female, entitled Between Mothers. As a collection, these pieces work effectively to illuminate the pain and confusion experienced by each member within a dysfunctional family: grandfather, father and son in the first; son and potential father in the second; mother and daughter in the final piece. Bushkowsky’s characters all long to bond with family members in some impossible, idealized way, and their attempts are frustrated by human imperfection. The plays are dark, their worlds plagued with mental illness, physical illness and even death. Within them, families are revealed to be rather arbitrary arrangements, where individuals are absorbed in their own problems, and the gaps between people can never be fully bridged.

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Cultural Divide?: Brett Bailey and Third World Bunfight's iMumbo Jumbo

June 01 2004 Why Did the Chicken Cross the Cultural Divide?: Brett Bailey and Third World Bunfight's iMumbo Jumbo Judith Rudakoff Judith Rudakoff Developmental dramaturge for theatre and dance as well as a writer, educator, and contemporary theatre historian. Her new work creating dramaturgical methodologies has been used in England, Cuba, South Africa, and at York University, where she coordinates the graduate and undergraduate programs in playwriting and dramaturgy. She is the only foreigner to have been declared an honorary member of Cuba's Teatro Escambray and the first Canadian recipient of the Elliott Hayes Prize in Dramaturgy for her collaboration on Sampradaya Dance Creations' production of Revealed by Fire (2000). Her most recent book, with American Lynn M. Thomson, is Between the Lines: The Process of Dramaturgy (Playwrights Canada Press, 2002). Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Judith Rudakoff Developmental dramaturge for theatre and dance as well as a writer, educator, and contemporary theatre historian. Her new work creating dramaturgical methodologies has been used in England, Cuba, South Africa, and at York University, where she coordinates the graduate and undergraduate programs in playwriting and dramaturgy. She is the only foreigner to have been declared an honorary member of Cuba's Teatro Escambray and the first Canadian recipient of the Elliott Hayes Prize in Dramaturgy for her collaboration on Sampradaya Dance Creations' production of Revealed by Fire (2000). Her most recent book, with American Lynn M. Thomson, is Between the Lines: The Process of Dramaturgy (Playwrights Canada Press, 2002). Online Issn: 1531-4715 Print Issn: 1054-2043 © 2004 Massachusetts Institute of Technology2004 TDR/The Drama Review (2004) 48 (2 (182)): 80–90. https://doi.org/10.1162/dram.2004.48.2.80 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Search Site Citation Judith Rudakoff; Why Did the Chicken Cross the Cultural Divide?: Brett Bailey and Third World Bunfight's iMumbo Jumbo. TDR/The Drama Review 2004; 48: 2 (182), 80–90. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/dram.2004.48.2.80 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAll JournalsTDR/The Drama Review Search Advanced Search This content is only available as a PDF. © 2004 Massachusetts Institute of Technology2004 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Honouring the Word

Caution: Copyright for this script remains with its creators, and copyright for the individual scenes remains with the playwrights who are identified as authors; in the case of material where publishers acquired rights, those rights remain with the publishers. This script is protected under the copyright laws of Canada and all other countries of the Copyright Union. Changes are forbidden without the written consent of the creators/author(s)/publishers). Rights to produce, film or record in any medium, in any language, by any group, are retained by the creators/author(s)/publisher(s). The moral right of the creators/author(s)/publisher(s) has been asserted. For performance rights contact the Playwrights’ Guild of Canada. All previously published material is reprinted here with permission. The plays were first published by Sister Vision Press (dark diaspora . . . in dub); Scirocco (Riot, Harlem Duet); Talon, for Blizzard (Consecrated Ground); Playwrights Canada Press (Angélique, yagayah, Prodigals in a Promised Land, da Kink in my hair, Sistahs, Whylah Falls); Mercury Press (Coups and Calypsos); and Gutter Press (Lambton Kent).

Celebrating Canadian Plays and Playwrights

On a cool weekend in October 2002, a virtual who’s who of Canadian drama and theatre in English – scholars, actors, directors, dramaturgs and above all playwrights – gathered in Stratford, Ontario, to celebrate Canadian plays written primarily in English. This issue of Canadian Theatre Review is the first of two dedicated to the discussions and paper presentations that took place at that event, this one dedicated for the most part to history and to established writers and their works, the next (issue 115) to experimentation, new approaches and alternative voices. The Celebrating Canadian Plays and Playwrights Festival and Conference, the inspiration of playwright and director Paul Thompson and the Stratford Festival’s Education Manager, Pat Quigley, was organized as part of Stratford’s fiftieth anniversary celebrations by Quigley and her staff, Trish Cuthbertson and, especially, Melanie Kamphuis, working with Ted McGee of St. Jerome’s College, University of Waterloo, Angela Rebeiro, the Publisher of Playwrights Canada Press, and myself.

Questionable Activities: The Best. Edited by Judith Rudakoff. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2000. $19.95

In Questionable Activities Judith Rudakoff brings us not only an important contribution to contemporary Canadian theatre studies, but a model for that most highly prized of university activities: the creation of a productive link between research and teaching. Rudakoff’s volume is the result of her work with theatre students at York University. As she explains in the preface to the book, the seventeen interviews that compose the piece are a selection of some of “the best” interviews conducted by students in a senior seminar in Canadian theatre at York University. Rather than ask her students to write a standard term paper on Canadian theatre, Rudakoff has, since 1989, been sending them out to do guided research on a topic in Canadian theatre that interests them. The importance of this strategy lies not only in the educational values it promotes. Asking students to put themselves in the position of “infiltrating and finding a place in the world of theatre-making in Canada today ”makes an important claim for the role of critics and historians, and particularly for new generations of “theatre historians/critics/chroniclers” in the development of Canadian theatre (i-iii).

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).

Perspectives from Playwrights Canada Press: An Interview with Angela Rebeiro

Angela Rebeiro is Executive Director of Playwrights Union of Canada and the publisher of Playwrights Canada Press, publishing imprint of the PUC. She has been with the organization since 1992. Ginny Ratsoy interviewed Angela Rebeiro in August of 1998 in Toronto. The interview was updated in early December.

Toronto Playwrights Union of Canada and Playwrights Canada Press: A Profile

In the late 1960s, Canada’s regional theatres – those established by the federal government to celebrate the 1967 Centennial – had a general reputation for offering few opportunities for Canadian work to appear. Artistic directors of these houses tended to be primarily European-born – Christopher Newton at Theatre Calgary and Heiner Piller at Neptune Theatre, for example – and were inclined to produce remounted Broadway hits and musicals or popular foreign-stage classics. Theatre companies like Edmonton’s Citadel Theatre, Winnipeg’s Manitoba Theatre Centre and Nova Scotia’s Neptune Theatre were ostensibly created to present Canadian theatre, but the repertories broadened and playbills often told a different story, listing productions by Shaw, Miller, Wilde, Chekhov and Shakespeare with the rare Canadian play. As a result, there was virtually no space on our regional stages for new Canadian works and little interest on the part of Artistic Directors to actively search out and develop this genre.

Another Perfect Piece, Beyond the Pale: Dramatic Writing from First Nations Writers and Writers of Colour, Monologues: Plays from Martinique, France, Algeria, Quebec

It is not every day I have the pleasure of commenting on the work of 140 playwrights. The first two books are publications of Playwrights Union of Canada, which has approximately 350 members, receiving, in 1996, 136 new scripts from members and non-members. With funding from the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council, the Union, through its publishing imprint Playwrights Canada Press, publishes six to seven plays a year in trade book format. It also maintains a list of cerlox-bound copyscripts. This year, for sale in book stores, it will also start publishing copyscripts that sell well in a form analogous to the Samuel French format. Daniel David Moses’ Almighty Voice, for example, is about to be issued in this format. In addition to publishing single scripts, the Press also publishes anthologies, including in 1997 a collection of Newfoundland dramas, the largest and most costly project in the Press’s history, a conscious decision to bring Atlantic Province theatre - well, at least one Atlantic Province - to “mainland” Canada. The East has certainly been under-published in the last decade or longer.

Solo Performance

This issue began from a sense not only that the number of theatre productions with only one performer has grown rapidly in the 1980s and 90s, but also that some of our most provocative theatre experiences have resulted from the encounter between the audience and the solo actor: Pol Pelletier’s Joie, Guillermo Verdecchia’s Fronteras Americanas, Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan’s dress pieces, and Daniel MacIvor’s House, to name only a few. While we have not assembled the statistics, we have little doubt that they would show a huge increase in solo-performer theatre productions in the last ten years, not only in Canada but in other countries in the world. It is surely significant that two anthologies of solo scripts, together with innumerable individually published monologues and solo plays, have appeared in Canada in the last three years (Solo, ed. Jason Sherman for Coach House Press in 1994; and Singular Voices, published by Playwrights Canada Press, also in 1994).