ture (Toronto: Anansi, 1972); D. G. Jones, Butterfly on Rock (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970) ; John Moss, Patterns of Isolation in English-Canadian Fiction (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1974). 2 Frank Davey, “Surviving the Paraphrase,” Canadian Literature, 70 (Autumn 1976), 5-133 Leslie Fiedler, Love and Death in the American Novel (New York: World Publish ing, 1962), p. xii. 4 Dick Harrison, Unnamed Country: the Struggle for a Canadian Prairie Fiction (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1977), pp. 73-99. PAUL d en h a m / University of Saskatchewan Renati Usmiani, Gratien Gelinas (Agincourt, Ont.: Gage, 1977). vii, 88. $3-25 J. Stewart Reaney, James Reaney (Agincourt, Ont.: Gage, 1977). ix, 102. $3-25 Patricia Morley, Robertson Davies (Agincourt, Ont.: Gage, 1977). vii, 74. $3-25 If there are not quite two solitudes in Canadian theatre, there are certainly two almost independent areas of activity. As background to the Gelinas book, Renati Usmiani distinguishes between the tradition of theatrical performances and that of playwriting. But a more useful distinction in our own modem theatre is between practitioners and professors. Practitioners are concerned with particular productions and the creativity and funding necessary to develop them. These actors, directors, playwrights, and tech nicians are concerned far less with posterity than with the exigencies of the production on which they are working. On the other hand, say an ivory tower or so removed from the dust and grime of backstage, the theatre historians are minutely examining the creative work being done to see if this script or that can help buttress a theory of garrison mentality or Scandinavian (or whatever) influence on Canadian theatre of the fifties, sixties, or seven ties. Like a music critic attempting to review a concert for which he has read the score but hasn’t heard the performance, such theatre critics discuss broad aspects of our developing drama from a position approximately one library away from any particular theatre. In other words, they are not examining theatre at all, they are examining dramatic literature. Nowhere is the need for a knowledge of specific productions more needed than in a discussion of Reaney’s plays, particularly the Donnelly trilogy. “ Reaney’s vision comes fully alive only on the stage,” James Noonan correctly observes in the ‘scholarly apparatus’ of Sticks and Stones. Both the detailed 502 stage instructions and the large number of production pictures included for reference in all three volumes of the trilogy show an editorial awareness of this same point. And Geraldine Anthony, General Editor for this Profiles in Canadian Drama series, claims (with strong risk of hyperbole) that “Reaney’s free-form theatre [is] the most unique in Canada.” Thus a study of Reaney which states in its preface that it will concentrate on the scripts rather than on the performances is indeed a curious item to include in a series on Canadian Drama. What Reaney (fils) purports to provide is a “freewheeling study” of Reaney’s (pere) drama. In the process, he continually confuses the random with the significant. His exposition is imprecise. His lack of logical structure is irritating. His avoidance of any critical stance is insufferable. He finds no difficulty, for example, in speaking of Reaney’s school plays as the “simpler forms” of his drama, and then outlining a section of the plot of one of these “ simpler forms” as follows: Indeed, only Beatrice’s clandestine adventures with reading look toward a future for the island children. For History and her children the opposite is true: the limitless possibilities of the prairie horizon and the night sky correspond to the society she is building out of the flood. Love and structure (embroidery, constellations, mothers and fathers) are set against the fashionable wooziness of Progessaurus (fingerpainting, The Little Engine That Could, child psychiatrist). Within the motif of the circle (Progessaurus) against the line (History) are the lessons and actions of the maturing students. Form (geometry, grammatical structure, “The Hummingbird,” the waltz) with Hilda, versus energy (chem istry, self-expression, “The Tyger,” twisting the night away) with Charley. The ultimate futility of Charley’s approach is apparent in the ironic image of his well-adjusted young drivers, roaring around and around their test track...