ALBERT-REINER GLAAP
Not long ago, it would not have occurred to Europeans interested in theatre that there was a lively theatrical scene in Canada. The plays written in the wake of Canadian nationalism and regionalism in the late 1960s and 1970s were hardly of interest to European audiences. They were too specifically Canadian, dealing as they did with life on the prairies, with Western settlement, ice hockey, the Parti Québécois, or the problems of people living in the faraway outports of Newfoundland. Since the early eighties, however, new topics and new approaches have altered the characteristic features of Canadian plays. Cultural differences have increasingly been thematized, and more and more playwrights are voicing their different experiences from marginalized positions. Experiments count more than ever before; there has been a remarkable influx of new voices, and innovative concepts are being developed by women playwrights.
Generally speaking, the reason Canadian plays are now beginning to attract theatre people in Europe, and particularly in Germany, is that playwrights in Canada, like playwrights anywhere, are writing about events, problems, issues, and topics relevant to theatregoers in general. They are speaking now on two levels: a specifically Canadian level and a universal level. Needless to say, the universal always comes through the particular. For example, a play like Brad Fraser's Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love is more than a portrait of the Canadian urban jungle. Indeed, it is a compassionate study of young adults groping for meaning in a senseless world, and this struggle can take place anywhere.
CANADIAN PLAYS IN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES
The fact that productions of Canadian plays in German theatres are still exceptions to the rule is due to a lack of knowledge of Canadian plays and their authors. Promotion of Canadian plays in European countries has been left to chance and individual interest. Invariably, an artistic director from Germany or a theatre agent from some European country on a visit to Canada sees a production of this or that play, which instills in him/her the wish to see it in a European theatre. He/she has the play translated into the respective target language, but finds it difficult to interest a theatre in mounting it. It would, therefore, behove playwrights from other countries who would like to see their plays staged in German-speaking countries to ask their agents to find and enter into association with a German agent, who should have some idea which theatre(s) might be interested in which play(s). Such an agent could then send the script of a play (written in English or French) to various artistic directors and dramaturges, and find an adequate translator, if a particular theatre wants to produce the play.
Needless to say, the European country in which the greatest number of Canadian plays has been staged is Great Britain. Looking at the issues of Theatre Record1 in the 1990s, one comes across the names of playwrights and plays familiar to theatregoers in Canada, such as Michel Tremblay's The Real World (Soho Poly, 1990), Forever Yours, Marie-Lou (Old Red Lion, 1994 and BAC, 1992), Albertine, in Five Times (Bridewell, 1995 and BAC1, 1997), Hosanna (White Bear, 1996); Ann-Marie MacDonald's Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) (Turtle King, 1994, Grace, 1997, and Bridewell, 1998); Judith Thompson's White Biting Dog (Loose Change Theatre Company, 1993), Lion in the Streets (Hampstead, 1993), I am Yours (Hampstead, 1998), The Crackwalker (Gate, 1992); George Walker's Featuring Loretta (Hampstead, 1998); George Seremba's Come Good Rain (Tricycle, 1994); and Brad Fraser's Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love (Hampstead, 1993).
Although only a handful of plays have so far found their way into German theatres (e.g. Billy Bishop Goes to War by John Gray with Eric Peterson, Münster, 1988) and The Orphan Muses by Michel Marc Bouchard (Neuss, 1997), some Canadian playwrights have in recent years visited various parts of Germany, read scenes from their plays, and entered into discussions with university students and theatre people, including Henry Beissel, Michel Marc Bouchard, Shirley Cheechoo, Ken Gass, Christopher Heide, Tomson Highway, Daniel David Moses, Yvette Nolan, Sharon Pollock, Rick Salutin, Jason Sherman, Judith Thompson, and Drew Hayden Taylor. With financial support from the Department of Foreign Affairs in Ottawa, some playwrights have also been invited to address the Annual Conferences of the Association for Canadian Studies in German-Speaking Countries.
Considering that today's high school students will constitute our future theatre audiences, it is a welcome development that according to the more recent ministerial guidelines for the teaching of English and literature in English in some of our "Bundesländer"—these being equivalents of the Canadian "provinces"—contemporary Canadian literature is required reading. Canadian plays, short plays in particular, are increasingly being considered for classroom work in grades 11 to 13. English annotated school editions of Drew Hayden Taylor's Toronto at Dreamer's Rock and Henry Beissel's Inook and the Sun were published in the 1990s. These editions contain study aids and background material, and are accompanied by handbooks for teachers. A similar annotated edition of Anne Chislett's Flippin'In was published in 2001. As such texts are to be used in English as a foreign language courses, it goes without saying that they must not contain insurmountable linguistic barriers that impede the student's motivation. Clearly, activities during the last decade to promote specifically Canadian drama have been taking place at three different levels: university, secondary school, and, last but not least, the theatre.
CRITERIA FOR THE SELECTION OF CANADIAN PLAYS
Plays are primarily written for the theatre and Canadian plays for Canadian theatres. Not all of them are of interest to European audiences, which raises the question as to what criteria should be used to select Canadian plays for production in theatres in German-speaking countries. One of the first obvious steps to finding out what criteria would be important to Germans was to interview theatre directors, dramaturges, and other specialists in our theatres. I asked questions like, "What themes/issues/problems interest you in particular?"; "What plays would you seriously consider for production in your theatre?"; "According to your knowledge of public demand, what plays would stand a chance of being produced in your theatre?" Based on the answers to these questions, the following list of criteria paved the way for the ensuing project:
With reference to these criteria, a list of sixty play titles was compiled. The list was then discussed with experts in Canadian theatres with a view to shortening the list further to a manageable number (i.e., twenty-five) and ending up with a non-canonical list. Considering the wide variety of theatrical activities across Canada and the cultural polyphony stemming therefrom, any attempt to restrict the choice to plays from Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver would have given a one-sided picture. During a six-week trip across Canada from coast to coast in 1996, I was able to speak with 121 experts working in the field of theatre. Seventy-nine of these recommended that twenty-five plays be selected for a handbook in German for professionals in German theatres titled Stimmen aus Kanada. 25 Kanadische Dramen für Deutsche Bühnen ("Voices from Canada. Twenty-five Canadian Plays for Theatres in German- Speaking Countries") published by WVT (Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier) in 1997.
In the book, the twenty-five plays are listed in alphabetical order by author's name, with the following additional information:
The basic thrust of the book is to introduce artistic directors and theatres in Germany to a selection of Canadian plays by providing background information on these plays. Interested theatres can then decide whether any of the plays lend themselves to production in a German version. Needless to say, the final selection of the twenty-five plays was not completely objective, but is nevertheless meaningful in the sense that it is based on recommendations from seventy-nine (out of 121) theatre experts in various Canadian regions and towns. Three of the twenty-five plays included in the book are written by Native Canadians, six by French-Canadians, and the remaining sixteen by English-Canadian playwrights. The complete list is as follows:
Chaurette, Normand: Les Reines/The Queens
Clark, Sally: Moo
Dubois, René-Daniel: Being at Home with Claude
Foon, Dennis: New Canadian Kid
Fraser, Brad: Unidentified Human Remains and The True Nature of Love
French, David: Jitters
Garneau, Michel: Les Guerriers/Warriors
Gault, Connie: Sky
Gray, John/Peterson, Eric: Billy Bishop Goes to War
Highway, Tomson: The Rez Sisters
Laberge, Marie: Aurelie, ma Soeur/Sisters
Lebeau, Suzanne: Les Petits Pouvoirs/Little Victories
Lill, Wendy: Sisters
MacIvor, Daniel: House
MacLeod, Joan: Toronto, Mississippi
Mighton, John: Possible Worlds
Moses, Daniel David: Almighty Voice and His Wife
Murrell, John: Farther West
Panych, Morris: Seven Stories
Storey, Raymond: The Saints and Apostles
Taylor, Drew Hayden: Someday
Thompson, Judith: Lion in the Streets
Tremblay, Michel: Albertine, en Cinq Temps/Albertine in Five Times
Verdecchia, Guillermo: Fronteras Americanas
Walker, George F.: Zastrozzi
Although the book is dedicated to these twenty-five plays, it also contains a chapter in which thirty additional Canadian plays are each given a brief mention. Here, comments consist of two or three explanatory sentences regarding their content.
The critical work prior to the selection of the plays and during the process of producing the book was undertaken in various university libraries and at the Playwright's Union of Canada (PUC) in Toronto. At this point, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Angela Rebeiro and Tony Hamill of PUC, who provided indefatigable assistance during the sifting through and sorting of the wealth of background material I had accumulated.
Theatres everywhere are on the lookout for plays with substantial issues, innovative approaches, and insightful dramaturgical concepts. This applies also to plays written by contemporary Canadian authors, and certainly to those included in the book. The fact that they are Canadian plays should be of minor importance to European theatres; what makes them attractive is that they surprise by their freshness, their wide variety, and their unfeigned originality. Most of them are not cast in a specific traditional mould and are based on gripping concepts. Above all, they meet the five criteria set out by European specialists themselves.
HOW THE SELECTED PLAYS MEET THE fIVE CRITERIA
1. Gripping Concepts/New Directions
Judith Thompson's Lion in the Streets is not so much a play, as it is a series of razor-sharp vignettes loosely linked by making one character from each scene a protagonist in the next. These scenes amount to a mosaic of ordinary people trapped in an urban jungle from which there is no escape. Not all these scenes are plausible in a conventional sense, but they are not meant to be easily accessible.
Brad Fraser's provocative urban drama Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love is constructed cinematographically: two acts of short scenes and cross-cuttings. It is half horror story, half romance. Communication in the true sense of the word does not exist any more; messages on answering machines are more important.
Tomson Highway's The Rez Sisters is a good example of how the spoken word is translated to Native theatre writing. Here, the author brings the Trickster figure to the stage to both instruct and entertain. He is the mediator between the physical and the spiritual worlds and appears in different shapes. Through him, Highway wants white audiences to experience the power of the Native voice.
Fronteras Americanas by Guillermo Verdecchia soon develops into a dialogue between the two stage personae: Verdecchia as himself, an Argentinian- Canadian writer, and Wideload, an exaggerated, stereotypical incarnation of a clichéd Latin gang member. The two are played by the same actor. Narrative passages and reflective comments are periodically interrupted by Wideload, who is the pivot around which the play revolves. Music and slides contribute to the effect on the audience. A slide of "An Idiosyncratic History of America," a portrait of Christopher Columbus, passport photos, and quotations of Bolivar, Fuentes, and Paz are projected onto a screen. References are made to historical facts and sociological data, and Wideload is the witty commentator. Here theatre is being deconstructed.
House by Daniel MacIvor is a monodrama. A man stands alone on the stage, grabs a stool, and hurls it madly around. He does this over and over again until he finally sits and thanks the audience for coming and not staying at home in front of the television. In the following one-hour monologue, the man tells stories from his unsatisfactory life, of his father, mother, wife, and sister. His stories have one thing in common: they accentuate his isolation and confusion. The narrator frequently loses his thread and tries to find it again using word associations, which then spark off his anecdotes. This mosaic of impressive reflections was not scripted; it was worked out in a workshop in 1992.
2. General Human Interest/Problems of Today's World
Canadian plays dealing with general human problems are of particular interest to German theatres. 7 Stories by Morris Panych, for instance, deals with contemporary city living. A man, who remains unnamed throughout the play, is standing on the window ledge of an apartment building preparing to launch himself into oblivion. Other inhabitants of the seventh floor keep distracting him from his intention. Instead of helping him, they pester him with their own problems. It turns out that every one of the inhabitants of his block is crazier than the man himself. 7 Stories is comical, farcical, and serious at the same time.
Marie Laberge's Aurelie, ma Soeur also deals with human problems of our times humorously and sympathetically. This two-hander's central theme is the love between a young woman and her adoptive mother, as well as their sisterly relationship that goes beyond normal familial bonds. It also provides insights into French-speaking theatre in today's Quèbec, and shows that human relationships can survive in the most unexpected forms, however small-minded and bigoted the society in which we live.
Angels in America (Millenium Approaches and Perestroika), two plays by American playwright Tony Kushner, have contributed to raising public consciousness about the current AIDS epidemic. The Canadian playwright Raymond Storey's The Saints and Apostles is also about AIDS, but about human relationships in a time when people are confronted with this contemporary health crisis almost every day. This play is not so much about the sufferers, those who are medically doomed, but rather about those who seem to be tired of hearing about people who have no future on this earth. Storey does not attempt to solve any issues, only to raise them. "What would you do?" he is reported to have asked. "How would you redefine your priorities, if the first person you ever really loved was the most dangerous person in the world for you?"
Michel Tremblay's Albertine, en Cinq Temps/Albertine in Five Times is one of the few plays that has been staged in a German university (Augsburg)— and very successfully so. At seventy, Albertine moves into a senior's home and reflects on her life, which is characterised by failure and disappointment. Five actresses portray Albertine, respectively, as a thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, and seventy- year-old. The Canadian context is the working-class area of Montreal in which the author grew up. Albertine, en Cinq Temps, however, is one of those Canadian plays that starts from specifically Canadian themes and arrives at the universal (here, the problem of growing old). And for this reason, it is also of great interest to audiences outside Canada.
3. Multiculturalism
In a country like Germany, which has only just begun to develop into a multicultural society, plays dealing with intercultural understanding and problems are of particular interest to theatre audiences.
Dennis Foon's New Canadian Kid, which illustrates the problems and sense of isolation of non-English speaking immigrants in Canada, lends itself very well to productions in German theatres. Nick could be a Turkish boy or a young man from what used to be the Soviet Union, and the other characters could be Germans who speak their particular regional or social variety of German that sounds like gibberish to the audience.
Judith Thompson's Lion in the Streets, discussed earlier under the first criterion, must be given another mention here. The play deals with problems of identity, crises in a multicultural neighbourhood of the big city, and the isolation of a young Portuguese girl, which in this play seems a kind of microcosm of what happens in the larger context. Fronteras Americanas also springs to mind. Verdecchia asks the audience to re-evaluate how they look at others and themselves. This play is not merely a skit about clichés and prejudices. It is also not a complaint about cultural confusion. Rather, it is a way of reorientating people in their new multicultural society, wherever that may be.
First Nations people play an important role in the Canadian cultural mosaic of our time. And it is through their plays that Native writers give remarkable insights into the fabric of their cultures and lifestyles. Not long ago, many Europeans—Germans in particular— most of whom had never met or seen a North American aboriginal, all too often turned to stereotypes and clich´-ridden statements when they entered into discussions about Native people. Their stereotypical images were often rooted in television Westerns and led to a romanticization of Indians. Drew Hayden Taylor's plays can help transcend such images. Someday, for instance, deals with the so-called "scoop-up operation" of the sixties, a Government programme that took Native children from their families and put them up for adoption. Taylor wrote this play to make visible and audible the feelings of Native people, their bitterness, and their anger. Generally speaking, however, he wants to show that Native people are—except for language and cultural differences—just like all people. Taylor considers himself to be a Native who writes about those aspects of culture that bridge the gap between Natives and non-Natives.
4. Universal Themes
There are an increasing number of Canadian plays that, for other reasons, lend themselves particularly to productions in German theatres. Jitters by David French, first staged in Toronto in 1979, might be produced as a Canadian counterpart to the very popular Noises Off written by the English playwright Michael Frayn. It is not just a new treatment of a well-known theme, backstage life. It is about theatrical life in the Canada of the early eighties. Jitters marks an important stage in the development of Canadian theatre because it reflects the ability of Canadian theatre tradition to finally laugh at itself. It harkens back to the era of nationalist self-examination when Canadian theatre seemed entangled in identity crises, while struggling to free itself from the influences of Broadway and the West End.
Billy Bishop Goes to War by John Gray and Eric Peterson is about Canada's role in the First World War, heroism, and patriotism. It is "dedicated to all those who did not come back from the war, and to all those who did and wondered why" (from the Foreword in the printed edition of the play). This play could be integrated in a German theatre with a sequence of plays on the First and Second World Wars.
5. Re-writings
In this day and age, Canadian literature, and Canadian drama in particular, is not focused on the Old World anymore; it is no longer point-of-arrival writing. It offers viewpoints of the New World and looks at the world from a Canadian perspective. It is now, to a great extent, point-of-departure writing. A special example of this is the broad variety of ways in which Shakespeare's plays appear in contemporary Canadian adaptions and rewritings. Normand Chaurette's Les Reines/The Queens is indicative of the imagistic style one discovers in many contemporary French-Canadian plays. Djanet Sears' Harlem Duet (to be included in a proposed enlarged and revised English version of Stimmen aus Kanada. 25. [kanadische Dramen für deutsche Bühnen]2) is a prelude to Shakespeare's Othello that recounts the relationship between Othello and his first wife Billie (before Desdemona), seen from a black woman's point of view. Interwoven with the main narrative are the thematically related stories of two other young couples played by the same actors. Sears's play amounts to variations on the relationship between Othello and Billie during the days of slavery, the Harlem Renaissance, and the present. Another Canadian rewriting of a Shakespeare play is included in the English version of Stimmen aus Kanada: Ann-Marie MacDonald's Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) is one of five additional plays.
Needless to say, the plays assembled in the recently published Stimmen aus Kanada are non-canonical. The list of twenty-five must be updated at regular intervals. Generally speaking, Canadian plays deserve much more attention in European theatres than has so far been paid to them. Benedict Nightingale, theatre critic for The Times in London, writes in his review of the 1993 Hampstead Theatre production of Judith Thompson's Lion in the Streets: "Does anybody think of Canada as a big quiet backwater notable for Mounties, lumberjacks, mountains and maple leaves? If so, he or she has not been keeping abreast of that nation's theatrical exports [...]." It is high time to publicise these exports in Europe.
NOTES
1. Theatre Record (published 1981-1990 as London Theatre Record) is printed in
England and published every two weeks and indexed annually. Writer and
Publisher: Ian Herbert, 305 Whitton Dene, Isleworth TW 7 7 NE, Middlesex,
England.
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2. This version was published in March 2003. For details see under "Works Cited".
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WORKS CITED
Beissel, Henry. Inook and the Sun. Ed. Albert-Reiner Glaap. Frankfurt: Diesterweg, 1988.
Chislett, Anne. Flippin'In. Ed. Albert-Reiner Glaap. Berlin: Cornelsen, 2001.
Glaap, Albert-Reiner. Stimmen aus Kanada. 25 kanadische Dramen für deutsche Bühnen. Trier: WVT (Wissenschaftlicher Verlag), 1997.
—. ed. Voices from Canada. Focus on Thirty Plays. German Trans. Nicholas Quaintmere. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2003.
Nightingale, Benedict. Rev. of Judith Thompson's Lion in the Streets. The Times. 21 April 1993. n. pag
Taylor, Drew Hayden. Toronto at Dreamer's Rock. Ed. Albert-Reiner Glaap. Berlin: Cornelsen, 1995.