ANDRÉ LOISELLE
In the mid-1980s, three excellent anthologies of Canadian plays appeared on the shelves almost simultaneously: Richard Perkyns's Major Plays of the Canadian Theatre (1984); Richard Plant's Modern Canadian Drama (1984); and Jerry Wasserman's Modern Canadian Plays (1985, revised 1986). Together, these three collections assembled some of the most significant theatrical texts produced in the country, and bore witness to the vitality, diversity and maturity of Canadian dramatic literature. Although these anthologies were, in many respects, of equally high calibre, Jerry Wasserman's publication distinguished itself from the rest with its provocative introduction, which offered one of the most readable and perceptive brief histories of theatre in English Canada available anywhere. It should not come as a surprise, therefore, that in his revised and expanded two-volume version of Modern Canadian Plays, published in 1993-94, Wasserman would conserve in its virtual integrity the informative prefatory text first printed almost a decade ago.
The only noticeable modifications made in the minimally revised introduction, prefacing volume one, are meant to accommodate the plays added to the dozen works comprised in the original edition, in particular, John Van Burek's and Bill Glassco's translation of Michel Tremblay's Les Belles-Soeurs (1968). In the first edition, Wasserman did not include any plays from Québec and, as if to pass over in silence this important gap in his compilation, he limited his few opening comments on French Canadian drama almost exclusively to Gratien Gé1inas's Tit-Coq (1948). Having finally acquired the rights to anthologize Tremblay's landmark piece, he now incorporates it in his description of Canadian drama's evolution and thus succeeds in drawing an even more comprehensive picture of theatre in this country than in the original version.
Most importantly, mention of Les Belles-Soeurs in the new introduction undergirds Wasserman's thesis that the year 1967 marked a turning point in the history of the Canadian stage. In the original forward, he singled out the premieres of George Ryga's The Ecstasy of Rita Joe (1967) and John Herbert's Fortune and Men's Eyes (1967) as watershed events that changed drastically the complexion of English Canadian drama in 1967. With Les Belles-Soeurs, he can now suggest that 1967-68 represents a unique conjunction where francophone and anglophone theatrical practices came together and concurrently started forging ahead towards new goals. Such simultaneity in the emergence of ground-breaking plays intimates that, in the late 1960s, English Canada and Québec were both subject to trends and movements that transcended cultural differences. Unfortunately, the editor does not push any further his exploration of the vacillating relations between our two 'national dramaturgies.'
The addition of Les Belles-Soeurs and of another landmark Canadian drama, David French's Leaving Home (1972) (which replaces French's Jitters in the first publication), to the already impressive list of plays gathered by Wasserman- The Ecstasy of Rita Joe, Fortune and Men's Eyes, David Freeman's Creeps (1971), Passe Muraille's 1837: The Farmer's Revolt (1973), Sharon Pollock's Walsh (1973), James Reaney's The St Nicholas Hotel, WM Donnelly, Prop (1974), and Michael Cook's Jacob's Wake (1974)- renders Modern Canadian Plays, Volume I the most complete anthology of Canadian "master works" from the late 1960s and 1970s in print today. In comparison with these canonical works, the last play of the volume, Erika Ritter's Automatic Pilot (1980), which was also in the original edition, might appear as an odd choice, hardly comparable in its dramatic construction and social commentary to 1837 ... and Walsh. Keeping in mind that the late 1970s and early 1980s were characterized by a resurgence of the apolitical comedy of manners, one can appreciate Wasserman's attempt to make room for this type of popular theatre. Nevertheless, this lone excursion into light entertainment comes across as somewhat tokenistic. One almost wishes the editor had simply dispensed with Ritter's fun piece altogether, and closed the volume with a slightly more challenging work like George F. Walker's Zastrozzi (1977), which begins, instead, the second volume.
Besides Zastrozzi, Wasserman retains in volume two John Gray's Billy Bishop Goes to War (1978) and David Fennario's Balconville (1979) from the first edition. To these, Wasserman adds an attractive assortment of 1980s plays, ranging from the realism of Joan MacLeod's family drama, Toronto, Mississippi (1987), to the post-modern aesthetics of Robert Lepage and Marie Brassard's Polygraph (1988). Perhaps because the 1980s have witnessed fewer landmark productions but a much greater proliferation of styles than the 1970s, the introduction to volume two is less successful than its predecessor in synthesizing the theatrical phenomena that have shaped the stage over the last decade. However, the anthologist usefully identifies the two developments that demarcate most prominently 1980s English Canadian drama from its antecedents, namely, the remarkable increase of plays by women and the advent of a distinct Native voice in the theatre.
Significantly, whereas the first volume counts only two works by women, six female playwrights are featured in the second volume. Along with MacLeod's and Brassard's respective dramas, we find Pollock's memory play, Doc (1984), Wendy Lill's captivating monologue, The Occupation of Heather Rose (1986), Judith Thompson's haunting naturalistic work, I Am Yours (1987), and Sally Clark's absurdist tragi-comedy, Moo (1988). Admittedly, one regrets the absence from this group of other important plays of the period, like Ann-Marie MacDonald's Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) (1989). But none of the texts included could easily be discarded to make room for other works (incidentally, having dropped Automatic Pilot would have freed a spot for one of these better plays). In counterpoint, there is little doubt that Wasserman discerningly selected the single most striking work to come out of the new Amerindian dramaturgy: Tomson Highway's Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing (1989).
Unquestionably, Jerry Wasserman and Talonbooks deserve praise for publishing an anthology that brings together in such a reader-friendly format twenty of the most important plays of the Canadian dramatic repertory. But in spite of the inclusion of Les Belles-Soeurs and Polygraph, Québec drama remains conspicuously under-represented in this two-volume collection. Some playwrights from Québec, like Michel Gameau, have been present on the English Canadian stage since the mid-1970s, and in the 1980s the plays of René-Daniel Dubois, Jovette Marchessault and Normand Chaurette became common properties in Toronto. One would thus expect to find, alongside Leaving Home and I Am Yours, Garneau's Quatre à quatre (1974) or Dubois's Being at Home with Claude (1985). As it stands, however, Modern Canadian Plays admits as "Canadian" only those Québécois authors who have been fully appropriated by anglophone culture: Tremblay and Lepage. In its equivocal treatment of Québec drama, this otherwise remarkable anthology reflects the pleasantly vague politics that have defined Canada for too long.