ANNE NOTHOF
In his cogent introduction to The CTR Anthology, Alan Filewod addresses the inherent limitations of anthologies, and the inevitable process of canonization which they inscribe. Offering to restore to the public "a number of significant plays that have gone out of print"; and to give "a representative overview of the development of Canadian drama and theatrical practice as recorded by the several editors of CTR since 1974" (xi), Filewod acknowledges that any canon is necessarily limited by subjective criteria, but that the values enshrined are identifiable. In his summary of the editorial ideologies, he identifies Don Rubin's "essentialist" notion of Canadian theatre "that defined itself in terms of historical experience and localism" (xiv), Robert Wallace's focus on marginalization through specific thematic issues, and his own "interrogation of vocabularies and conceptual frameworks within which Canadian theatre operates" (xv).
Filewod's narrative of Canadian drama is evident in the intertextuality generated by the apposition of the anthology's plays. It begins with the late Michael Cook's The Head, Guts and Sound Bone Dance, (CTR 1, 1974) a play as tragically pertinent today as it was twenty years ago in its depiction of the dying fishing industry and inevitable social dislocations in land. In his starkly compelling maritime tragedies, Cook, who emigrated from England, demonstrates the veracity of an "outsider's" point of view in commenting on the Canadian scene. In Henrick Ibsen on the Necessity of Producing Norwegian Drama, John Palmer gives this point a further ironic twist by using a dead foreign playwright defending productions by Strindberg and Chekhov to state the case for a Canadian national drama, and to decry foreign ownership of the theatre. Palmer's compelling argument is tested, however, by the next play, a performance piece by Hrant Alianak featuring two women and a "monkey" who are abused by three men in a shack in Havana. Even if Passion and Sin, with its interminable beatings, stabbings, and rapes, were played as black farce or construed as political satire, Ibsen would be hard pressed to justify this play in terms of national drama.
Despite Arthur Milner's contention that Canadian drama is politically moribund, most of the plays in this anthology have at least a political subtext. The most highly politicized, Zero Hour, in which three CIA agents in a Costa Rican jail engage in verbal sparring over the truth of their relationships and their political involvement in Nicaragua, is in fact by Arthur Milner. In radical contrast to Alianak's sadistic sexual gymnastics, George Walker's mordantly ironic Rumours of Our Death explores the possibilities of political satire through witty, articulate speech, while Ten Lost Years, a depression play by Jack Winter and Cedric Smith, provides another jaundiced look at the ineptitude of Canadian politicians through anecdote and song.
The politics of place, or the condition of "being at home" is evident in all three "gay" plays in the anthology- Polygraph, Being at Home with Claude, and Lola Starr Builds her Dream House. The latter exploits the selfdelusion and sado-masochism of a "Hollywood star" as an acting opportunity for playwright, Sky Gilbert, who revels in the "abnormal." In Filewod's narrative of Canadian drama, passionate or obsessive love is a creative and imaginative force, but is construed as deviant in a repressive society. In This is For You, Anna, a mother shoots her daughter's murderer at his trial; in Love is Strange by Paul Ledoux and David Young, an Alberta farmer's belief in the words of a popular singer's love songs almost destroys him; and in Jennie's Story by Betty Lambert, a young woman's sexuality is used and then destroyed by the Church. In both Being at Home With Claude by René Daniel Dubois, and Polygraph by Marie Brassard and Robert Lepage, sexual intercourse takes on political and emotional climax. Newhouse by Richard Rose and D.D. Kugler also suggests that hypocrisy is the greatest sin, but in this exploration of love and death through contemporary equivalents of Don Juan and Oedipus, travesty supersedes tragedy, and political point is undercut by absurdity.
Most of the plays in The CTR Anthology inhabit the "margins" of Canadian society, and even attempts to define a specific cultural style are given in terms of immigrant experience. In Boom, Baby, Boom by Bauta Rubess, a young Latvian woman adapts to life in Toronto in the 1950s by haunting a jazz club which celebrates the genius of black American musicians. Only Cindy Cowan's "A Lady From the Sea," which reconstitutes the Sedna myth in terms of environmentalist and feminist issues, attempts to incorporate Canadian indigenous mythology.
Filewod's conceptual framework for the anthology is that it constitutes several narratives of Canadian theatre; however, the prevailing narrative point of view is still that of urban male Ontario. Only three of the fifteen plays are written from the eastern and western "regions," and only four of the fifteen are by women, of which two are by Toronto playwright Bauta Rubess. Filewod explains that the disproportionate ratio of male to female playwrights anthologized is a reflection of the ratio published in CTR until recently. Moreover, he defines plays by women as "regional" in that they express their own "region of experience" (xv), while those by immigrant minorities are read as global "post-colonial drama," although still part of a pluralistic narrative of the "intersection of cultures" (xvi).
In a review of The CTR Anthology in Australian-Canadian Studies 11 (1993), Katherine Newey speculates on the similarities between Australian and Canadian "post-colonialisms" and on the CTR collection as indicative of the drama which is on "the cutting edge" of Canadian culture as a rich and diverse mix of diverse "settler cultures," and one which is determined more by "fringe" plays than by the mainstream. But the question of a "mainstream" public response to these plays is not raised in the anthology. If the publishers, the critics, and the playwrights finally reach only a limited audience because they do not address "mainstream" issues, to what extent can these plays constitute a Canadian cultural and social narrative?