BARBARA DRENNAN
A proliferation of sign-posts' dot the landscape of our contemporary discourse: 'postmodernism,' 'poststructuralism,' 'postcolonialism,' 'postindustrial'.... As we wearily anticipate yet another 'post' on the horizon, it becomes clear that what theatre researchers are experiencing is a significant epistemological shift which reflects a changing reality. Any change in the philosophy of knowledge will have a bearing on Theatre Historiography in Canada as elsewhere. This essay addresses this issue and outlines an 'other' theatre historiography which weaves the theories of Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan into Michel Foucault's search for the 'rules of discourse' and Julia Kristeva's 'poetic-logic.' This exploration for historical discovery into English-Canadian theatrical discourse is mapped in relation to Alan Filewod's articulation of collective creation as a theatre-making process.
Le paysage du discours contemporain est jalonné de points de repère affichant tous le préfixe «post» (post-modernisme, post-structuralisme, postcolonialisme, post-industriel ... ). Tout en nous attendant, las, au prochain «post» qui surgira sur cet horizon, nous constatons que ce que connaissent actuellement les chercheurs/euses et théoriciens/ennes en domaine théâtral équivaut à un important déplacement du discours épistémologique, ce qui reflète à son tour une réalité toujours changeante. Tout déplacement du lieu de ce discours portera, cela est clair, sur l'Historiographie du théâtre canadien comme sur toute autre historiographie. Voilà le problème auquel s'adresse l'auteure ici, tout en délinéant une « autre » historiographie du théâtre qui cherche à tisser ensemble les théories de Harold Innis et Marshall McLuhan d'une part, pour les intégrer ensuite à la recherche entreprise par Michel Foucault en vue d'établir des « règles du discours » comme aussi à la « logique poétique » de Julia Kristeva, de l'autre. Dans cette tentative de sonder l'histoire du discours critique appliqué à la chose théâtrale au Canada anglais, l'auteure adopte comme point de référence l'identification par Alan Filewod de la « création collective » comme processus de création théâtrale.
If Western epistemological tradition is founded on the Aristotelian principle of verisimilitude, or a direct relation to reality, what happens when our notions of the nature of reality change as they have with the dissemination of the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics and non-Euclidian mathematics?1 Perhaps it is too much of a universalization to say that everyone has assimilated these theories which conceptualize reality as fluctuating and multiple. But awareness of a radical and destabilizing shift in epistemological thought and, therefore, in concerns of research, is inescapable.
There is a political dimension to this epistemological change which gives rise to the delineation within the title of this essay as 'the other Canadian tradition.' The methodology, which is to be described and demonstrated below, is posited as an 'alternate' to the discursive mainstream which narrates theatre history within both the general discipline of all Theatre History and that of English-Canadian praxis, past and present-a praxis which is particular, yet must be considered as included and related to the larger general discipline. The concern with methodology which accounts for special issues of journals such as this one is evidence enough that we are in a time and space of discursive transformation: the conventional rules for theatre history-telling are being challenged. As yet we cannot predict how theatre history-telling will change in response to this challenge, but it is encouraging to know most researchers are open to new and different possibilities.
The Project: Examining the Body of Discourse
Because this 'other' methodology was inadvertently developed as the result of personal research, some background to this project seems to be in order. The focus of this project is English-Canadian theatre discourse: how English Canadians talk about their theatre. What assumptions do we make about the nature of theatre as a medium to communicate drama?
The way we talk about what we are doing in the theatre, the reality which we construct in words about the acting, the architecture, the design, the stage images, the producing body are as much a practical element of the theatre as the theatrical components themselves. It is only through language that we can know their significance, the reality of their existence. When theatrical experiences elude our points of reference and descriptive categories, they are often dismissed with a perplexed shrug. For example, sometime in the 1980s it became obvious that many English-Canadian , 'alternative' or experimentaltheatre productions did not fit into the traditional categories for describing English-Canadian theatre practice. These works challenged our discursive categories, creating a field, a delimited spatial/temporal expanse of tension around these categories. Obviously, discursive parameters and assumptions which underlie these categories would have to give way to make room for new possibilities and different ideas, so that new theatrical experiences could be accommodated within our theatrical discourse.
The aim of the research project which lies behind this essay on historiography is therefore to discover the conventional assumptions about theatre, that is, the rules, which have organized the body of discourse around English-Canadian theatre. This seems at first blush either to be irrelevant to historical recounting or to be a task of tremendous scope. But in reality this project has no greater proportions than any other data-collecting research. In fact it parallels that which engages many feminists today who seek to articulate feminine difference in relation to the masculine-inscribed universals which have been normalized by our language systems into what we consider to be the 'common sense' underlying our discourse.
This project entails examining a large body of published work; however, with regard to English-Canadian theatre, we know this body is contained and, relatively speaking, limited. If pursued with rigour and patience, patterns begin to emerge from the discourse. These patterns lead to probable truths about likely recurrence which allow the researcher to formulate general statements with a degree of confidence as to their predictability. This research process conforms to the elementary 'hypothetico-deductive method' used in scientific investigations. 2
This historiography of theatrical discourse takes as its methodological point of departure that proposed by Michel Foucault in The Archeology of Knowledge.3 Traditionally historical researchers examine dispersed and discontinuous source materials and attempt to construct a continuous narrative by flattening out irregularities and differences. Instead, following Foucault's methodology, discontinuity and the sites of irregularity within texts are explored specifically for their historical significance. These sites of discontinuity reveal what it has been and is possible and not possible to talk about within the context of a given institutionalized practice which has a history of change and development. For example, how have English-Canadians thought 'theatre' and 'drama' in the past? How can we think 'theatre' and 'drama' today? What have we not been able to say and how is this changing?
To begin this process of historical discovery, we recognize that most of the texts which describe theatre practice in English-Canada were constructed using conventional theatre history-telling methods. They carry normalized assumptions and conventions about the nature of theatre and the theatre-making process. These conventions and assumptions appear as similarities and ideas repeatedly asserted without explanation or attached definitions. For example, how many authors define their notion of the word 'theatre' or 'drama?' We assume every reader knows what we mean by these words, that these meanings are transparent and universal. Points of repetition and similarity can be traced through the larger body of discourse and indicate that the discourse has been organized around a convention or rule. These rules of discourse which are hidden, that is, veiled by the normalizing conventions of our language processes, operate as delimiting devices: they contain thought by establishing boundaries and, hence, bring order to the expanse of all possible discourse. We see them as 'natural' parameters or regulating categories but they are invisible 'hooks' around which we conventionally hang our words in order to make meaning. As writers, we do not create these 'hooks' every time we write: we appropriate them, inherit them ancestrally, accept them as 'natural' givens; they colonize our discourse. What is significant about the rule or rules of discourse is that every writer who desires to enter the field of knowledge which inscribes English-Canadian theatre practice must assume and accept these conventions in order to have access to that field of knowledge, even if they seek to report a new discovery. As writers and readers about theatre, we assume we know those conventions about 'theatre' and 'drama' which everyone else seems/assumes to know.
Of particular interest to the theatre researcher are the pockets of ambiguities and discursive tension that invariably exist in discourse which describes experimental or different theatre practices, that is, in the sites of discontinuity. These pockets of discursive tension often appear as half-explained ideas masked by affirmative syntax or tentative hyperbole. Often we find that the author must invent a new word or borrow from another discipline in order to give a new name to the witnessed phenomenon. These texts are written as creative explorations: writers seek to discover the words which will adequately communicate a different theatre experience so that this experience can be known. For the researcher, irregularities become graph-like 'points' which can be 'plotted' in relation to those of textual repetition and similarity, that is, 'plotted' in relation to a rule of discourse.
The pockets of ambiguity where difference plays against similarity Foucault calls 'sites of discursive transformation.'4 They indicate that a rule or convention is being challenged within the discourse so that it can be transformed to accommodate different theatre practice. When the theatre researcher examines a body of discourse, that is, by reading books, articles or reviews or listening to oral presentations such as radio and TV reviews, She is strategically mapping the sites of discursive transformation where the conventional rules which organize how we talk about English-Canadian theatre are in play, where they are being challenged and tested for discursive elasticity.
Implicit in this methodology is a paradigm for text which is modelled on a game,5 a word which denotes both process: the playing of a game, and product: the residual game-structure or game-rule matrix. As in any game, the text is structured by a matrix of rules or conventions which exist anterior, that is, prior to the writing of a new text. These already existing rules organize and determine the playing out of the discursive game. As stated above, anyone who wishes to enter the larger field of discourse which articulates English-Canadian theatre practice by writing a new text must follow the game-rules which organize the body of discourse.
In the field of discursive endeavour which inscribes English-Canadian theatre praxis, Alan Filewod is an example of a writer who has attempted to articulate an 'alternate' approach to theatrical production called 'collective creation.' This process is associated with the first wave of alternative theatre in English-Canada during the 1970s. For the purposes of illuminating this 'other' Canadian historiography, this essay will now focus on Filewod's writings about collective creation and in particular, on his article, 'Collective Creation: Process, Politics and Poetics.'6
Exploration for Discovery: Playing within the Rules
One discursive rule and consequently an assumption about theatre which collective creation challenges is that which determines how we traditionally think about the process of creating drama for the theatre. Filewod writes, 'In Canada [sic] we look upon collective creation as an alternative method of play production.'7 By delineating the process as 'alternative' Filewod indicates that an established convention is being challenged by this different process. We are used to thinking that theatre begins with a single playwright-author, who writes a playscript, that is, a literary dramatic text, which is then produced or realized on stage by a theatre company. For the theatre artist, traditionally, the creative work begins with the theatrical interpretation of the literary work. Collective creation challenges this traditional assumption.
In 1961 George Luscombe and a company of actors called into question this established notion of theatrical process with the Toronto Workshop Production of Hey Rube! which was generated through 'collective creation.' Although Luscombe's productions may appear on paper, that is, mediated through discourse, to transgress only tentatively the established assumptions for theatre-writing, different ideas about theatrical process were planted by a recognizably different practice which over time would account for a subsequent discursive transformation. This 'planting' is evident when one quantifies the number of times Hey Rube! is cited as the first example of 'collective creation' in English-Canadian theatre. Alan Filewod is among those who point to Hey Rube! in this regard and note the difference in terms of creative process. 8
Although the term has lost favour, groups which specialize in 'collective creation,' a term now subsumed within the less politicized rubric of 'collaboration,' have been characterized as employing improvisation as a play-making strategy. In 'Collective Creation: Process, Politics and Poetics,' Filewod states without elaboration, 'It is by recognizing improvisation that we often recognize collective creation.'9 With some regularity we observe that more English-Canadian theatre artists are creating plays through individual and ensemble improvisation; we are also discovering through historical research into the broader field of global theatre practice that a direct on-stage writing of drama through improvised performance is not new.10 At some point in the process, even if a playwright is involved to finalize a script, in the collective process improvisation will be used to generate the drama theatrically, that is, in performed audio-visual images rather than literarily in scripted wordsigns. Obviously, the difference in theatre practice must find its way into theatre discourse if it is to be known.
To date Filewod has published the largest body of work which seeks to articulate 'collective creation' in English-Canadian theatre practice. Best known is his book-length study, Collective Encounters (1987).11 Between 1982 and 1987 he published other articles on the collective process, including the above-cited essay, 'Collective Creation: Process, Politics and Poetics.' This article is of particular interest because it is Filewod's exploration for discovery through language; it is his attempt to articulate within the established rules for English-Canadian Theatre History-telling the reality of collective creation. The text contains a discursive tension as Filewod builds his discussion around a comparative relationship between collective practice in 'Canada' where theatre artists usually hold middle-class values, and Latin America where the practice is rooted in Marxist ideology. Filewod finds that not only is collective creation more fully articulated in Latin American theatrical discourse, but that the practice also reflects / 'documents' social and political reality more accurately. In spite of this deceptively clear analytical structure, pockets of ambivalence occur around ideas and objects, such as 'alternative' theatre / 'alternative' theatrical choices; 'author of the drama' / 'the playwright;' 'improvisation' / 'final text;' 'making honest [authentic] meaning' / 'the truthfulness of the fiction;' theatrical 'montage of objectivity' / 'subjective comment;' 'dramatic literature' / theatrical 'production,'12 to isolate only a few examples. Filewod is searching for terminologies and categories that can communicate his conceptualization of what he sees as atheatrical phenomenon which is new to 'Canadian' experience. This is his attempt to articulate another process for creating theatre which he believes should be understood and valued by the English-Canadian theatre institution, a process which Filewod finds politically marginalized by that institution and its funding bodies.13 By 1987, in his Collective Encounters, it becomes clear which conventional categories and organizational points of reference could be manipulated; that is, how the rules for discourse could be stretched to accommodate his conceptualization of the practice of collective creation in English-Canada. Filewod settles on the 'hook' of 'documentary' and calls on the discursive parameters of English-Canadian documentary film and socialrealist literature to bolster the theatrical rules of discourse.14 Nowhere in his writing does Filewod acknowledge that he is playing with the discursive rules because, as all writers about English-Canadian theatre do, he accepts them as 'natural' givens rather than as conventions which he must accommodate. This is why Filewod does not acknowledge the characteristic difference between literary and theatrical poesis but rather, erases this difference by normalizing theatrical difference through the 'hooks' of the known literary (and film) writing process.
Now, ten years after Filewod's earliest attempts to articulate the collective process, we seem to be able to talk about collective creation as if we all know what we mean. Improvisation as a play-making strategy seems quite 'normal' even if it is not the chosen method of the 'mainstream' establishment theatre. The small theatre companies and experimental groups, Popular Theatre, Gay and Lesbian, Feminist practitioners and those who create theatre for young audiences, that is, those groups who typically practice collective creation/collaboration seem to have found their place in our discursive reality without any stated change in our broader assumptions about the making of drama for theatre. We are simply aware that there is this constellation of ,other' practice which is difficult to articulate.15 As we have seen, new practices lead to new concepts which play against old rules. The play between the old and the new gives rise to a rule which is a transformation of the old and the new rule, the 'discursive transformation.' The transformed rule is neither the old nor the new but, paradoxically, houses both the old and the new at the same time. This transformed rule is in a state of play: is it the old rule masquerading as a new one and therefore subversive, or is it a new rule pretending to be an old one and therefore legitimate? For example, it is evident in Filewod's Collective Encounters that the conventional rule which recognizes that a literary drama is created by an individual playwright/author has given way to the real possibility of a drama being created by the collective authorship of an ensemble of theatre collaborators.
Historically, the notion of 'authorship' has been a central issue in consideration of literary poesis. 'Authorship' in relation to poesis will become the focus of the next phase of our exploration using Filewod's article, 'Collective Creation: Process, Politics and Poetics,' because of our stated interest in identifying theatrical difference. We have discovered in this first phase that, according to Foucault, there must be discursive rules about theatre-making which determine how we talk about theatre practice in English-Canada. At the same time, the practice itself often plays against these rules and causes us to discover how we can rethink , theatre' and 'drama' without transgressing the institution's discursive parameters. An attempt has been made to demonstrate that this analysis has been objective because it is based on quantitative probability although, in the end, the reader will have to verify the truth-telling in conjunction with personal experience. The next phase of discovery, in which we attempt to identify one rule of English-Canadian theatrical discourse, relies more on the researcher's ability to exercise a combined intellectual and sensory approach. This procedure calls for a subjective yet serious play between the personal breadth of conventionally-educated wisdom and lived experience. Further to our discussion of new historiography, we now encounter relativity, instability and the potential chaos which accompany the contemplation of reality in terms of New Physics. It does not have to be such a bumpy ride if we keep in mind the notion of play, as the state of possibly being one thing and the other at the same time, a dialectical state which never fully transforms into its synthesis.16
Exploiting Intertextuality: Discovery through Poetic Logic
One principle which delineates poststructuralist theory is a consciousness that reading/interpreting history and writing/telling history go hand in hand. Both require a strategic playing out of the discursive game. Above we noted that when we write about theatrical phenomena we often have to play against the rules of discourse which already exist and limit how we think about theatre practice in English Canada. We have noted also that texts founded on the desire for exploration and discovery will exhibit pockets of ambivalence around ideas and objects. Within these pockets of ambiguity, the writer searches for appropriate terminologies and categories. Often the writer finds it necessary to borrow terms from the discursive field of another discipline. In which case, the writer must rely on the breadth of personal experience to access a language that can give material reality to ephemeral observation. If this personal experience is informed, it will be objective to some degree because in order to represent the experience through a word-sign the experience must be intellectualized and compared to other sources of knowledge. At the same time, lived experience, even that expressed in systems of knowledge, is always subjective and, therefore, relative in relation to truth-telling.
The theatre historian is often an explorer, that is, a reader and cartographer of discursive texts about theatre: the other player in the discursive game.17 In order to tell history, she must make meaning/interpret information which has been mediated through language construction. Her reading strategy will contribute to her history-telling. She can never be totally neutral. Although she aims for a degree of informed objectivity, her reading will always be different, that is, relative to her experience because of her subjectivity.
In poststructuralist theory which acknowledges that reality is constructed through language and can only be thought of in terms of relativity and difference, the element of subjectivity is conceptualized in the term ' intertextuality.'18 In reading/writing strategies, intertextuality is concerned with connotations within ideas rather than with denotations of words, or with the gamut of indirect associations which arise when personal experience meets language rather than with one singular and direct literal meaning which is assumed to be universal.
Often the process of intertextuality is dismissed as inconsequential and irrelevant to the construction of truthful historical narratives. Either we do not recognize how we suppress difference in order to make experience universal or we have become used to comparative histories which allow us to bring two texts together to interact dialectically, creating a third text through synthesis. What is different in the conceptualization of intertextuality is that juxtaposition of ideas can resist and defer synthesis. Intertextuality can involve interaction among several texts or among other systems of representation, all of which mediate experience. What occurs as the result of the intertextual interaction is not a single conclusive idea, but rather, texts remain distinct as they establish an open-ended cultural dialogue. Although theatre praxis should allow us to be quite comfortable with the idea of simultaneous and multi-voiced dialogue, we continue to be uneasy with dialogic openness because the normalizing conventions of traditional logic and discourse pull our thinking to closure, as if we were drawn by gravity to seek rest and safety in the comfort of a linear and transcendent end.
Recently Aristotelian logic of syllogism has been challenged by the carnivalesque playfulness of Julia Kristeva's notion of poetic logic, that is, a subversion of conventional logic which, like clowning and carnival, should be sanctified as another legitimate way of thinking.19 Poetic logic is the logic of multiple relations and associations which occurs in the chaotic polyvocal simultaneity of that realm called 'intertextuality' and presents itself as an alternative to the linear causal relationship of one text/one meaning which moves forward syllogistically, step by step, from premise one to premise two to final cause. Poetic logic is the difference between the clearcut black and white of conventional logic and the colourful shadings in the network of play. Conventional logic assumes that there exists a single transparent or at least a dominant 'common sense' real meaning corresponding to every word. Poetic logic, as its name suggests, assumes that words give rise to multiple meanings and related associations which provide a host of possible 'truthful' interpretations for texts.
Poetic logic also accounts for attempts such as Alan Filewod's exploratory writings on collective creation to find words which will convey a new or different theatrical practice. For example, he wrote, 'Instead of a governing mind providing an artistic vision which others work to express, the collectively created play is the vision of a supra-individualist mind.'20 This is a serious attempt to play against an existing discursive rule about authorship using words and phrases to explore uncharted territory, to describe what has yet to become knowledge within the discursive field of English-Canadian Theatre History. As a concept, it is not easy to understand; it is ambiguous. But the sentence is bristling with the creative energy of discursive transformation around the conventional rule concerning literary authorship. These areas of discursive transformation are discovered by reading 'against the grain' of the conventional game-rules, by resisting the rhetorical devices which seduce the reader into an unquestioning belief concerning the 'truthfulness of the fiction,' by reading playfully with an informed yet open mind that is alert to constructive ambiguity and creative difference.
Aristotelian logic is based on the linear laws of causality. One sentence determines the following sentence. Poetic logic takes this causal relationship a step further into the realm of dialogic possibility. Hence, we construct a syllogism in response to the notion that all literary drama must have an author/creator, 'This is a collectively-created drama; drama must have an author; drama which has been created collectively must have an author.' To take this syllogism into the realm of poetic logic we add, 'What about the possibility of a "supra-individualist mind" as author?' By resisting closure and performing a delicate balancing act within the dialogic space between the Aristotelian sequence and the new possibility, associations and ideas come into play which bring about new conceptualizations. By establishing this idea of a supra-individualist mind, Filewod is able to play with any number of related ideas which will perhaps further his description of collective creation.
The leap from statements of cause to possibility can be seen as analogous to a 'quantum leap' in physics. Kristeva's strategy for poetic logic also accommodates those issues posited by 'New Theatre Historiography' which reconsiders historical truth-telling in relation to a shift in our perception of reality.21 This different approach to historiography proposes an 'other' view of reality in terms of time and space. This time-space paradigm is a matrixof simultaneous universes/events linked to each other in dynamic relationships; however, these universes/events always remain distinctively different and separate from each other, that is, in dialogic/intertextual relationship. The implications inherent in an awareness of the possibility of simultaneous multiple universes undermine our classical notions of a single universe determined by a single authoritarian Truth. This paradigm also challenges our classical notion of what constitutes valid reasoning. Einstein maintained that 'time and space are modes by which we think and not conditions by which we live.'22 Therefore quantum theory is fundamentally a theory of conceptualization: it leads one to question the concepts inscribed in conventional logic. Theatre historians who are influenced by 'New Historiography' seek to employ a strategy which allows one to think 'quantum-logically' or using Kristeva's terminology, 'poetic-logically.'
The Canadian Connection: Our 'Other' Tradition
In Canada we have a tradition for historical discourse which is not based on Aristotelian logic. This discursive tradition is found in the historical research of Harold Innis which was transformed into the communication and cultural studies of Marshall McLuhan. Both Innis and McLuhan were interested in quantum physics, the theory of relativity and modern mathematics. 23
Innis extrapolated from Einstein's structural paradigm of mental space-time universes, the idea that these structures also operated as conceptual underpinnings for discourse. He maintained that conceptualized parameters of time and space manifest themselves in texts as characteristic biases. The temporal bias and the spatial bias are held in a dialectical relation which resists synthesis although one may dominate the other and therefore, be more visible to the historical researcher. He looked for these biases in word-metaphors which the writer used to describe observed experience.
McLuhan appropriated from Innis the concept of metaphors which mediate experience. However, McLuhan put his own unique twist onto the function of these media metaphors. McLuhan viewed a metaphor as a dynamic media matrix, a structural form which was devoid of intrinsic content. He considered a metaphor to be like an empty vessel which 'carries ideas across' within an enclosed context or ground.24 Ideas, which are given the status of unique universes because they establish their own set of relationships with other ideas, are carried by these metaphor-vessels. They are held in dialogic relationship with other ideas carried in metaphor-vessels. These ideas are related by virtue of their common context. The metaphor-vessels appear in the text as several diverse concepts, set in juxtaposition to each other. They create a field of discursive energy which reverberates with possibilities rising from relations, connotations and associations. According to McLuhan's theory, the idea-concepts within the metaphor-vessels appear either as 'cliché' or 'archetype;'25 definitions of these two terms are also McLuhan's own. When ideas become passive cliché, knowledge has become 'fossilized'26 through delimiting conventions or habitual thinking. McLuhan maintained that by destabilizing the 'cliché,' the idea becomes an active 'archetype' and the idea is energized by imaginative possibilities. Using Kristeva's terms, the idea-archetype resonates with intertextual meaning. McLuhan compared the active archetype-metaphor to a media probe which could stimulate new discovery when used in discursive analysis.27 This probe becomes a useful tool when attempting to think poetic-logically.
McLuhan also developed a strategy for perception which operates in conjunction with the 'carrying across' of ideas by means of metaphor probes. Appropriating from Gestalt psychology the theory of figure-ground relationships, McLuhan maintained that the observer/reader perceives ideas, which have been presented simultaneously but are contained within the text, not as static entities but rather as part of a dynamic multi-dimensional mental and sensory continuum of perception. That is, when we perceive/read, our mind can focus, like a camera, on one idea and then on another without totally losing awareness of the first. What occurs is a perceptual figure-ground 'flip' which, simplified in two dimensions, recalls the black and white picture of the goblet transforming into two faces in profile and then back into two goblets. This is an example of the perceptual play of possible presence/absence suspended in a fluctuating simultaneous time-space. In the dialogic relationship between diverse ideas or universes, one or more ideas become part of the contextual ground for the idea in focus. In this process of 'perceptual flip,' what was once in focus and thus present as figure now becomes part of the contextual ground and something from the ground now comes into focus as figure. What we see as there is also not there because of the 'perceptual flip.'
As theory McLuhan's ideas have remained veiled in ambiguity, which is why they can be frustrating and stimulating at the same time. We will never know whether we totally understand his concepts; however, what is important is the application of a possible interpretation of his theory. It is possible to put the above interpretation into practice by working through our example from Alan Filewod's 'Collective Creation: Process, Politics and Poetics,' focusing on the notion of authorship.
As a discursive entity, Filewod's article contains many diverse ideas enclosed by the context 'the traditional or conventional body of English-Canadian theatre practice,' which is implied through the deictical reference to 'Canadian theatre,' his positioning of collective creation as an 'alternative' method and his use of English-Canadian examples in an English-language publication. This context houses the perceptual/conceptual ground.
From the many ideas about English-Canadian theatre presented within this bound context, two have been selected to demonstrate the use of the metaphor-probe, these are 'the collective author-playwrights' and 'the individual author-playwright.' Obviously it would be comforting to collapse them into the one idea they hold in common, that is, the notion of author playwright. However, for the purposes of discovery we will strategically resist this closure and hold these ideas in dialogic suspension. The 'collective author-playwrights' is the figure in focus because we have read this particular article to learn more about collective creation. Therefore, when the second idea, 'the individual author-playwright,' is perceived as part of the ground, we read, 'The individual author-playwright writes a dramatic text in conventional English-Canadian theatre practice.' But when the idea of 'the collective author-playwrights' becomes part of the ground and we change our focus to the idea of 'the individual author-playwright,' what resonates with discursive tension and active ambiguity is the associated notion of 'writing a conventional script, a literary play' which is produced by an 'individual author-playwright.' The question then arises: Do the collective author-playwrights produce a literary play? In fact, Filewod recognizes that he has problematized the relationship between theatrical production and literary production. In the closing paragraphs he deals specifically with the issue of literary value in collectively-created texts. He does not, however, acknowledge that there is a significant difference in theatrical poesis but rather he shifts criteria and states, 'Theatre is not just literature; it is also a social event.' 28
For the reader/researcher, this change in focus from collective to individual authorship destabilizes the cliché-metaphor, 'the conventional/ traditional English-Canadian theatre practice' so that it becomes an archetype metaphor-probe. We begin to ask, 'What are the intertextual associations for "the conventional English-Canadian theatre" which are also implied assumptions in Filewod's text? How are we thinking "theatre" in this discourse? When we reread the article using this archetype-probe in the sites which had been identified as those of discursive transformation, in this case, where 'collective creation' encounters 'the conventional/traditional English-Canadian theatre,' differences between literary and theatrical process become apparent, although they still remain to be articulated. Mapped in relation to the points of repetition about 'the conventional/traditional theatre,' a rule for theatrical discourse is exposed: English-Canadian theatrical poesis is founded on the assumptions of literary poesis. Perhaps this does not come as a surprise but we rarely think of this assumption as a rule which delimits our discourse.
We have discovered a method for identifying possible rules for discourse which is based on Kristeva's poetic-logical thinking and McLuhan's metaphor-probes. Both of these strategies for historical discovery reflect a changing view of the nature of reality. According to Foucault's theory of organizing rules, we are now able to posit a general statement/hypothesis about English-Canadian theatre discourse. Subsequently, we will seek to verify this hypothesis by determining the probability of recurrence in other discourse about English-Canadian theatre practice.
In our analysis of Filewod's article, we find that in order to talk about collective creation, Filewod had to assume the conventions of a literary theatre tradition in order to enter the field of English-Canadian theatrical discourse. Another possibility would have been to employ the language which describes the more nebulous but no less 'real' popular theatre tradition. The use of this term 'popular' does not specifically signify 'political;' all theatre is politically inscribed because it is culturally inscribed. Rather, 'popular' is used here to denote both a 'folk' tradition and 'commercial success/"mass" appeal.29 Popular theatre is a theatre tradition which is people- and performance-centred. Why should we entertain the notion of a popular theatre tradition at this point in this essay, especially a notion which seems to be founded on the homogenization of lived experience? In relation to theatrical difference, historically, the fragmented discourse around the popular theatre tradition exists because of theatrical practice rather than literary practice. At the same time, the popular theatre tradition has been marginalized and understated in the body of discourse about English-speaking theatre because it is founded on theatrical experience.30 As theatre researchers, because of our rules for discourse, we lose sight of the historical traces of popular performance traditions such as role-playing and disguise, street pageants, clowning and puppetry, melodramatic spectacles and pantomime, and music hall, vaudeville and musical comedy in our English-Canadian theatrical practices. As its name implies, the popular theatre tradition has always considered the process of theatrical poesis as one of social collective creation, except when it encounters the discursive rules of the English-speaking theatre.
This essay is about a theatre-history methodology which is based on structuralist and poststructuralist theory, on a different way of thinking which, if it matters, is both Canadian and not Canadian at the same time. The logic behind this method has been positioned in opposition to 'Aristotelian' convention which grounds Western epistemological practice. While it, too, is firmly ground in syllogistic sequencing, poetic logic resists the closure of traditional systems of logic. As well, metaphor-probes are employed to open conventional 'wisdom' to new and different possibilities, to stimulate creative contemplation and critical thinking. A poetic-logical reading of Aristotle's writings is always possible and should be encouraged in philosophical studies. This unique reading would undoubtedly open what we have always taken to be a closed case: that Aristotle is the single author of 'syllogistic logic.' What is at issue are not Aristotle's writings per se (that is, their style or their themes or our interpretive readings as truth-tellings), but rather the social pragmatic use to which these writings/readings have been put. Would our Western epistemological institutions be able to acknowledge and act upon the possibilities posited by a McLuhanesque reading of Aristotle?
The point of this methodology is not to tear away at cultural institutions nor to annihilate language structures which serve communication. Rather, this methodology, in the playful spirit of McLuhan, is a personal and informed response to an expressed need, the need to open the doors and windows of conventionalized or 'fossilized' institutions, the need to expose and destabilize the foundations on which these institutions have been built. At the ground level, these foundations are based on inherited assumptions and value-systems which erase difference, occlude understanding and limit cultural practices, including theatre. As with 'Aristotle's' system of logic, the only true significance which we can give to this new methodology is that which considers how we are going to apply it to the telling of EnglishCanadian theatre history and ultimately how we are going to think 'theatre' and 'drama' in English-Canada.
Notes
THEATRE HISTORY-TELLING: NEW HISTORIOGRAPHY, LOGIC AND THE OTHER CANADIAN TRADITION
Barbara Drennan
1 This is a reworking of the implied thesis question posed by ROLAND BARTHES in Truth and
Criticism, trans and ed KATRINE PELCHER KEUNEMAN (Minneapolis: Univ of Minneapolis
Press 1987)
Return to article
2 For further clarification of the 'hypothetico-deductive method' which employs deductive reasoning
to 'prove' a stated hypothesis, see any introductory text on science or the philosophy of science.
For example JOHN ZIMAN, An Introduction to Science Studies: The Philosophical and Social
Aspects of Science and Technology (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ Press 1984)
Return to article
3 Trans A M SHERIDAN (New York: Pantheon 1971)
Return to article
4 FOUCAULT p 172-173
Return to article
5 See also ROLAND BARTHES, 'From Work to Text' (1971) in The Rustle of Language,
trans RICHARD HOWARD (Berkeley: Univ of California Press1986) pp 56-64
Return to article
6 ALAN FILEWOD, 'Collective Creation: Process, Politics and Poetics,' Canadian Theatre Review
(Spring 1982) pp 46-58
Return to article
7 Ibid p 47
Return to article
8 EUGENE BENSON and L W CONOLLY, English-Canadian Theatre (Toronto: Oxford Univ
Press 1987) p 86; ed RONALD BRYDEN with BOYD NEIL, Whittaker's Theatre: A Critic
Looks at Stages in Canada and Thereabouts, 1944-1975 (Toronto: Univ of Toronto Press
1985) p 87; ALAN FILEWOD, Collective Encounters: Documentary Theatre in English
Canada (Toronto: Oxford Univ Press 1987) p 56; DENIS W JOHNSTON, Up the
Mainstream: The Rise of Toronto's Alternative Theatres (Toronto: Oxford Univ Press 1991)
p 19; RENATE USMIANI, Second Stage: The Alternative Theatre Movement in Canada
(Vancouver: Univ of British Columbia Press 1983) p 3; ed ANTON WAGNER, Contemporary
Canadian Theatre: New World Visions (Toronto: Simon & Pierre 1985) p 50. Whether or not
this claim to being first is accurate is not at issue here; these citations imply that this is the case.
No doubt there are other citations of Hey Rube! in other analytical or historical accounts
Return to article
9 FILEWOD, 'Collective Creations' p 48
Return to article
10 An obvious historical example is the theatrical practice of Commedia dell'arte troupes which
flourished in Renaissance Europe; for an example of contemporary research into the intricacies
of on-stage theatre writing through improvisation, see the theatre-anthropological research of
EUGENIO BARBA. For example, Beyond the Floating Islands (New York: PAJ Publications
1986)
Return to article
11 See note 8 above
Return to article
12 These terms are found in various locations throughout the text, placing them in relationship is
my analytical strategy
Return to article
13 FILEWOD, 'Collective Creations' pp 54-56
Return to article
14 Collective Encounters, pp 3-23
Return to article
15 It is significant that the recent analysis of the work of VideoCabaret for Canadian Theatre
Review (Spring 1992) was written by MICHELE WHITE, 'a visual artist and teacher at the
Ontario College of Art.' Could anyone from the theatre community develop this discourse?
Return to article
16 This definition of play which agrees with theoretical principles of poststructural criticism and
postmodern aesthetics is found in ADAM BLAINER and ALLEE BLATNER, The Art of Play
(New York: Human Sciences Press 1988) pp 29-32, and in VICTOR TURNER, From Ritual
to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play (New York: PAJ Publications 1982) p 34
Return to article
17 The theoretical basis for this approach to writing/reading is found in SHIRLEY
NEUMAN/ROBERT WILSON, Labyrinths of Voice: Conversations with Robert Kroetsch
(Edmonton: NeWest Press 1982) pp 49-83
Return to article
18 Of interest to theatre theorists, the relationship between intertextuality and
drama/perforrnance/theatre texts is addressed by PATRICE DAVIS in 'From Text to
Performance,' Performing Texts, ed MICHAEL ISSACHAROFF and ROBIN F JONES
(Philadelphia: Univ of Pennsylvania Press 1988) pp 86-100
Return to article
19 JULIA KRISTEVA, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, ed
LEON S ROUDIEZ (New York: Columbia Univ Press 1980) pp 70-72
Return to article
20 'Collective Creation: Process, Politics and Poetics,' p 47 (italics mine)
Return to article
21 See ROSEMARIE BANK, 'Time, Space, Timespace, Spacetime: Theatre History in
Simultaneous Universes' and MICHEL KOBL4LKA, 'Inbetweenness: Spatial Folds in Theatre
Historiography,' Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism (Vancouver:Univ Of British
Colombia Press
Return to article
22 Quoted in BANK p 66 (italics mine)
Return to article
23 The following discussion of the methodological strategies employed by IN`NIS and McLUHAN
is based on GRAEME PATTERSON, History and Communications: Harold Innis, Marshall
McLuhan, the Interpretation of History (Toronto: Univ of Toronto Press 1990)
Return to article
24 Ibid p 50
Return to article
25 Ibid p 52
Return to article
26 Ibid p 51
Return to article
27 Ibid pp 105-131
Return to article
28 'Collective Creation: Process, Politics and Poetics,' p 58
Return to article
29 CHANDRA MUKERJI and MICHAEL SCHUDSON, 'Introduction, 'Rethinking Popular
Cultural: Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies pp 1-61
Return to article
30 Most often this is identified as an 'anti-theatrical prejudice' or a prejudice against theatre spectacle;
see GLYNNE WICKHAM, 'Introduction,' Early English Stages Vol. 1 (London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul 1966) pp xxi-xliv
Return to article