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Marginality and English-Canadian Theatre

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Robert Nunn
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Le théâtre canadien anglais a toujours été et est encore un art marginal. Bien que certaines transformations culturelles et économiques–nous pensons, par exemple, à la poussée exponentielle de la culture de masse–aient contribué à marginaliser le théâtre, au Canada aussi bien que dans le reste du monde, nous considérons que cette marginalisation constitue un élément positif de la culture post-coloniale et postmoderne. Le théâtre Canadian anglais, plus que tout autre, est un produit presque exclusif des théâtres «à cote», ou alternatifs. Trois pièces récentes, deux écrites en anglais (Love and Anger de George F. Walker et Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing de Tomson Highway) et une en français (Á toi, pour toujouis, ta Marie-Lou, de Michel Tremblay dans la traduction de John Van Burek et Bill Glassco), présentent en raccourci l'esthétique actuelle du nouveau théâtre canadien, qui est ici analysé dans les rapports complexes entretenus entre les divers courants d'activité théatrale, tant au point de vue de la représentation de ces pièces que par rapport à leurs structures textuelles.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1992 , pp. 217 - 225
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1992

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References

Notes

1. Hutcheon, Linda, The Canadian Postmodern (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

2. Hutcheon, , pp. 3–4.Google Scholar

3. Ashcroft, Bill, Griffiths, Gareth and Tiffin, Helen, The Empire Writes Back (London: Routledge, 1989), p. 12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. Salter, Denis, ‘Declarations of (In)Dependence: Adjudicating the Dominion Drama Festival’, Canadian Theatre Review 62, (Spring 1990), 11–18.Google Scholar

5. See Czarnecki, Mark, ‘The Regional Theatre System’ in Contemporary Canadian Theatre: New World Visions, ed. by Wagner, Anton (Toronto: Simon and Pierre, 1985), pp. 35–48.Google Scholar

6. Within an essay of this length I must simplify. For a fuller and richer treatment see Filewod, Alan, ‘Alternate Theatre’ in The Oxford Companion to Canadian Theatre (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 16–20Google Scholar, and ‘Erasing Historical Difference: The Alternative Orthodoxy in Canadian Theatre’, Theatre Journal 41, 2 (1989), 201–10.Google Scholar Filewod examines the historical determinants of this division between regional and alternative theatres, and questions the value of a paradigm that glosses over inconsistencies and differences and obscures the existence of other kinds of theatre, notably fringe and popular.

7. Burrows, Malcolm, ‘Marketing the Megahits’, Canadian Theatre Review 61 (Winter 1989), 5–12.Google Scholar

8. Wallace, Robert, Producing Marginality: Theatre and Criticism in Canada (Saskatoon: Fifth House Publishers, 1990), pp. 107–76.Google Scholar

9. Wallace, , p. 159.Google Scholar

10. The abrupt firing of artistic director Guy Sprung by the board of Canadian Stage Company in June 1990 brought the issue to a head. See Bronwyn Drainie's report on a forum called ‘Up Against the Boards: The Power Play for Canadian Culture?’ held in Toronto on 25 September 1990 (Globe and Mail, 29 09 1990).Google Scholar

11. Walker, George F., Love and Anger (Toronto: Coach House Press, 1990).Google Scholar

12. Walker, , p. 69.Google Scholar The allusion is to Toronto's Skydome stadium.

13. Telephone conversation with the author, 1 Oct. 1990. For a study of the early years of Factory Theatre (originally Factory Theatre Lab) see Johnston, Denis W., Up the Mainstream: The Rise of Toronto's Alternative Theatres (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990).Google Scholar

14. In this respect Factory Theatre's marginal location within the urban geography is typical of the location of most companies producing original Canadian plays, as is the fact that the building has been adapted from its original purpose. Former churches, factories, warehouses, gasworks, etc. house most of Canada's alternative theatres.

15. Indeed, Factory Theatre came perilously close to closing in 1988, a fate that has befallen a number of excellent theatres as money became tighter.

16. Walker, , p. 44.Google Scholar

17. In something of an experiment, it was produced by the Live Entertainment Corporation of Canada, producer of The Phantom of the Opera. The commercial run opened on 2 May 1990 and closed on 30 June.

18. Tremblay, Michel, À toi, pour toujours, ta Marie-Lou (Montréal, Leméac, 1971)Google Scholar; Forever Yours, Marie-Lou, trans, by Burek, John Van and Glassco, Bill (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1975).Google Scholar

19. MacDuff, Pierre, ‘Le Théâtre de Quat'Sous’ in Oxford Companion, p. 533.Google Scholar

20. Five further translations of plays by Tremblay ran at Tarragon and two other translations had runs there after playing elsewhere.

21. See Bush, Steven and Wilson, Ann, ‘From a Conversation: Notes on Playing Shakespeare’, Canadian Theatre Review 54 (Spring 1988), 4–6.Google Scholar See also The Empire Writes Back, p. 3Google Scholar: ‘A privileging norm’ was enthroned at the heart of the formation of English Studies as a template for the denial of the value of the ‘peripheral’, the ‘marginal’, the ‘uncanonized’. ‘Literature was made as central to the cultural enterprise of Empire as the monarchy was to its political formation.’

22. For a discussion of the power of the Church in Quebec before the Quiet Revolution, see Le Quebec: un pays, une culture by Françoise Tétu de Labsade (Montréal: Boréal, 1990), pp. 161–175.Google Scholar

23. Usmiani, Renate, Michel Tremblay (Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1982), pp. 70–78.Google Scholar

24. Forever Yours, Marie-Lou, p. 54Google Scholar and A toi, pour toujours, ta Marie-Lou, p. 70.Google Scholar

25. de Labsade, , pp. 95–9.Google Scholar

26. Reviews were mixed. Ray Conlogue (Globe and Mail, 19 06 1990, p. A12Google Scholar) praised the production, singling out its powerful cast; Robert Crew (Toronto Star, 18 06 1990Google Scholar) felt that the play was ‘sandbagged by the choice of venue’, the ‘arena-like Third Stage’. Hervé Guay (Le Devoir, 31 07 1990Google Scholar) considered that the play fared badly in its recasting in terms of Anglo-Saxon puritanism and American-style naturalism.

27. Highway, Tomson, Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing (Saskatoon: Fifth House Press, 1989).Google Scholar

28. Wigston, Nancy, ‘Nanabush in the City’, Books in Canada 18, 2 (03 1989), 7–9.Google Scholar

29. Highway, , p. 12.Google Scholar See Paul Radin's classic study The Trickster (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1956).Google Scholar

30. In Highway's earlier play, The Rez Sisters, Nanabush was played by a man. The author explains that in the Ojibway and Cree languages, there is no gender. Hence a creature of visions and stories like Nanabush is ‘theoretically neither exclusively male nor exclusively female, or is both simultaneously’ (p. 12).

31. Highway, , p. 13.Google Scholar