PATRICK B. O`NEILL
During the formative years of the Association for Canadian Theatre History, its members recognized the need for establishing basic records of dramatic activity within communities. Most members believed that a series of local studies and performance calendars, detailing the theatrical history of various towns and cities across the country, would engender a true basis for investigating the larger patterns of Canada's cultural development. Unfortunately, few such studies were undertaken and fewer completed. If nothing else, Theatre Lethbridge reminds us of why the founders of the association placed such importance on the preparation of local studies and calendars of performances. Mann documents the history of theatre in Lethbridge, provides new insights into the cultural setting of theatre on the Prairies and within Canada, and challenges us to rethink some established beliefs and attitudes.
Our collective knowledge of theatre in Western Canada comes largely from Ross Stuart's The History of Prairie Theatre, and to read Mann and Stuart together quickly demonstrates the importance of local studies. Theatre Lethbridge implicitly questions both theories and facts offered in Stuart's work. This is less a negative criticism of the earlier work than a result of different methodologies of research. Stuart's excellent work is a summary of earlier research-published secondary sources and newspaper clippings held and identified by the major archives and libraries in Western Canada. Mann became the resident archivist for the Playgoers Club in 1979, and during ten years assembled all the available data on the arts in Lethbridge. It is only natural that the material accumulated by Mann questions some of the conclusions that were drawn by Stuart.
In discussing the professional theatre on the Prairies during the nineteenth century, Stuart reported that "the few theatre companies appearing in the West at this time travelled only in the summer" (41). Contrary to this assertion is the evidence in Mann's Appendices. Of the twenty professional theatre productions to appear in Lethbridge prior to 1900, nine arrived in the spring, two in the fall, four in the winter and only six in the summer months; and of the twenty-seven professional theatrical entertainments that arrived during the same period, five were spring arrivals, ten autumn, seven winter, and only five summer. My own study of theatre in Regina for the same period revealed that only twenty of the seventy-three visits of professionals took place in the summer months while the month of March alone saw eleven visits. The long held assumption that the majority of touring on the Prairies occurred during the summer is certainly open to question, and only upon completion of additional local studies will it be answered definitively.
In more specific terms, Stuart's book reported the demise of the Playgoers of Lethbridge, which began in 1923, after almost thirty years, and the demise of the Our Town Workshop, formed in 1963, in 1969, "because the developing university drama department already satisfied the needs of the small audience" (128). First, the reported demise of the Playgoers is countered in Mann's Appendix F-1 that lists sixty-six productions by the group between March 27, 1963 and December 31, 1989. Mann ties the existence of the Workshop to the active direction of Fred and Joy Pritchard and attributes its disbanding in 1968 to 1) their withdrawal for personal reasons; 2) the culmination of competitive festivals after the Alberta Drama League ceased; and 3) increasing theatrical activity among other local groups (but not just the University of Lethbridge as suggested by Stuart). Indeed the experience here suggests that we must question the validity of all thumb-nail descriptions of various amateur groups in existing surveys. Only from studies of all the major amateur groups identified by Stuart, in a manner similar to Mann's detailed work, will an accurate understanding of amateur theatre on the Prairies emerge, and with that an index of the cultural receptiveness of the region. The same conditions apply to other regions in the country.
The value of reading these two works together, however, is not in the discovery of discrepancies, but the recognition of potential avenues for additional research. Although Mann's study exceeds the bounds of earlier studies of regional theatre history, the work by its very definition does not explore fully the relationship between Lethbridge and other parts of the Prairies and Canada. Mann's theatrical appendices document Stuart's observation that Calgary's Grand Theatre attractions in 1919-20, which he listed in full, also travelled to other Prairie communities. The similarity of offerings leads one to wonder about the interdependence of all the professional theatres, and begs for someone to study the professional touring routes on the Prairies during the first part of this century-a difficult task to undertake until more calendars of performances are completed.
A second avenue of exploration might be the influence of the emerging Regional Theatres upon smaller centres. Between 1955 and 1980, twenty-five theatre companies visited Lethbridge; of these productions five (three from Theatre Calgary, one from the Citadel Theatre, and one from the Catalyst Theatre) originated in Alberta, one in British Columbia, one in Saskatchewan, one in Quebec, two in the United States, and fifteen in Ontario (seven of which were by the Canadian Players). One opera production originated from the Western Opera Association, Edmonton, while one came from New York and seven were brought to Lethbridge by the Canadian Opera Company. Similarly, with regard to musicals, only two originated in Alberta while one came from British Columbia, one from Ontario, one from Prince Edward Island (Anne, what else?), and three from the United States. Although most of Stuart's book for this period focuses on the development of the Regional Theatres in the major centres, from these numbers it appears that Alberta's Regional Theatres placed little priority on touring. Missing from both Stuart's and Mann's work is a consideration of the role that groups from outside the Prairies have played in the development of theatre in Alberta since the Second World War. Perhaps, that topic might be worthy of a graduate thesis.
A reading of Dr. Mann's study clearly indicates that the publisher's primary market for this work will be the citizens of Lethbridge since the text and the detailed appendices undoubtedly contain names of parents, relatives and friends of everyone who has ever lived there. This same wealth of local detail tends to overwhelm readers from other parts of Canada and makes for heavy reading at times. It is unfortunate too that the publisher did not include a guide to the appendices in the table of contents, and that the index does not include these appendices. Despite the difficulty some might have in reading the work, however, Dr. Mann's book should be purchased by all serious students of Canadian theatre history. Theatre Lethbridge provides the raw data that will prove invaluable for a better understanding of theatre on the Prairies, and, without a doubt, it will feature prominently in all future studies of Canadian theatre history.