Anton Wagner
Canadian theatre and drama studies have made remarkable progress since the founding of the Association for Canadian Theatre History/L'Association d'Histoire du Théâtre au Canada and the Société d'histoire du théâtre du Québec in 1976.
In his review of The Oxford Companion to the Canadian Theatre ('Atoning for the Sins of Imperial Snobbery,' The Globe and Mail, 11 Nov 1989), Mavor Moore excoriated the 'contemptuous inexactitude' of British editor Phyllis Hartnoll's 1957 edition of The Oxford Companion to the Theatre, whose numerous factual errors and misrepresentations about Canadian theatre were only partly remedied in the 1967 edition.
Besides British imperial snobbery and ignorance, Moore noted Canadian academic disdain, 'not yet quite eradicated - for Canadian studies in general and theatre in particular' and the reluctance of U.S. theatre historians to admit Canada even to the continental canon. 'In their eyes, for example, the minuscule theatre in New Orleans was more important than anything happening in Montreal.'
While theatre historians in English Canada and Quebec over the past fifteen years have fairly well documented what is important theatrically and dramatically within a Canadian and Québécois context, the question of how our theatre and drama relates in importance to that of other countries is still largely uncharted territory.
Alan Andrews addressed this question in 1978 at the International Federation for Theatre Research 'Aims and Methods of Theatre Research as University Discipline' conference in Venice. In his report on Canadian theatre history research Andrews concluded that:
[T]he history of the theatre in Canada is unlikely to yield anything of major importance to the history of the theatre at large ... only recently have there been developments, as at Stratford, Ontario, which can be expected to be of interest to the world at large. In other words, Canadian theatre history is of rather more importance as an aspect of the country's social history than as a part of the history of world theatre. ('Kanada/Canada,' Maske und Kothurn, Heft 1-2, 1979)
Andrews seems to suggest that established standards of international
artistic excellence, rather than achievements of mere national historical/social
importance, are what merit world attention. One doesn't have to agree with
his point of view, but at least it's clearly stated.
This question of international historical significance and comparability - and of establishing criteria for what is important in a global theatrical context - becomes all the more pertinent in Canada in view of such current international research projects as the University of Guelph-based Encyclopaedia of Commonwealth Literature and the York University-based World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre, both being published by Routledge in England.
Editor Martin Banham's Cambridge Guide to World Theatre fails to address this question of international comparability and to develop a methodology and criteria for a truly global assessment of world theatre. An examination of the Guide raises a number of basic questions regarding its overall editorial principles and editorial control, the function of the eight-member Editorial Advisory Board, the assessment and verification of entries, the criteria for selecting contributors and establishing word counts for the main national entries, and how the shorter separate entries were selected and by whom.
A prime problem with the Guide is that it does not sufficiently explain its own methodology. Banham's one-page 'Editor's Introduction,' out of 1,104 pages of text, attempts to delineate the editorial principles which organize the Guide but instead underlines the lack of clearly established criteria for the selection of entries.
The stated aim of the Guide is to enable all those concerned with contemporary theatre to be sensitive to and aware of theatre worldwide: 'This emphasis sometimes leads us to give more space to some entries relating to comparatively neglected figures or activities, and correspondingly less to those more than adequately covered elsewhere.' 'This is not a qualitative league table,' Banham assures his readers, 'but an attempt to . . . open up previously under-represented areas of theatre, whilst still aiming at authoritative and immediate coverage of more familiar subjects.'
The cornucopia of Canadian entries in the Cambridge Guide suggests that either Canada was considered one of the previously neglected, under-represented areas of world theatre or that marketing, rather than editorial, considerations influenced the selection criteria.
A close reading of the Canadian entries reveals the editorial miscalculation of selecting one single contributor, James Aikens, to write all the entries for English Canada, and again only one contributor, Len Doucette, for all French-Canadian entries. While such a division of labour is less hubristic than the decision to have only one contributor write all the national entries for all of Latin America, it still places impossible demands on the expertise and objectivity of a single researcher for what should have been a much wider collaborative effort.
In addition to their six pages of printed text each on English and French-language theatre, Aikens and Doucette contribute two dozen shorter entries, averaging 200 words each. Who are the Canadian artists and companies that have entered the pantheon of 'important figures' in world theatre?
English Canada is represented by Nathan Cohen, Michael Cook, John Coulter, Robertson Davies, David Fennario, David French, John Gray, Hart House Theatre, John Hirsch, the Manitoba Theatre Centre, Dora Mavor Moore, John Murrell, the National Theatre School, the New Play Centre, Sharon Pollock, James Reaney, Kate Reid, Gwen Pharis Ringwood, George Ryga, the Stratford Festival, Tarragon theatre, Toronto Workshop Productions, Herman Voaden and George Walker. (There are also brief entries on Len Cariou, John Neville and Christopher Plummer by non-Canadian contributors.)
Quebec and French-Language theatre outside of Quebec are represented by Jean Barbeau, Guy Beaulne, Yvon Deschamps, Marcel Dubé, Jacques Ferron, Louis-H. Fréchette, Jean Gascon, Gratien Gélinas, Jean-Claude Germain, Robert Gurik, Gustave Lamarche, Jacques Languirand, Emile Legault, Marc Lescarbot, Françoise Loranger, Antonine Maillet, Rose Ouellette, Pierre Petitclair, Robert Prévost, Joseph Quesnel, Jean-Louis Roux, le Théâtre du Nouveau Monde and Michel Tremblay.
Comparing the main and shorter English and French-Canadian entries reveals obvious imbalances reflecting the divergent research interests and publications of the two contributors and a lack of knowledgeable editorial supervision which should have reconciled these differences.
Doucette's main entry on French Canada overemphasizes, particularly for the pre-20th-century period, dramatic writing and published texts at the expense of live theatre activity. In addition to his separate entries on Lescarbot, Quesnel, Petitclair and Fréchette, Doucette lists 26 19th-century published texts, the majority of which were unperformed and exerted negligible influence on live theatre or dramatic writing. Such minute detail, as Alan Andrews suggested, is surely of concern only to Canada's own internal social and theatre history and not to the world theatre community at large.
In contrast to Doucette's selection of shorter entries, Aikens provides no separate entries for English-Canadian artists prior to 1930 and, in his main English Canada entry, dismisses 19th-century dramatic writing in three short paragraphs listing seven titles. From 1900 to the present, Doucette lists 38 published texts, Aikens 23. Both contributors are weak on contemporary dramatic writing and important dramatists of the last ten years. While Doucette's French Canada entry often reads like a catalogue of obscure plays and playwrights, Aikens provides a catalogue of companies and their founding dates, with insufficient information on what characterizes and differentiates their work.
Aikens' entries are also replete with careless factual errors, only some of which can be attributed to faulty proofreading. He drops the letter 's' in play titles for Gwen Ringwood's The Dragons of Kent and Sharon Pollock's Blood Relations, and identifies the latter's One Tiger to a Hill as One Tiger to Kill. He gives the founding date for Montreal's Theatre Royal as 1852 instead of 1825, and refers to the 'Glove' rather than to the Globe Theatre in Regina. Aikens' entry on Herman Voaden, besides a confused definition of symphonic expressionism, gives his dates as 1903-84, which will surprise all those who have spoken to the playwright over the past seven years.
Besides these factual errors, there are a number of unclear or questionable interpretations which could have been avoided had the contributors or editors used outside readers or assessors to verify entries. Was John Gray's Billy Bishop, for example, really 'immensely successful' in the U.S.? Was Roy Mitchell's 1929 Creative Theatre really 'a seminal work' in either Canada or the U.S.? And was Hart House Theatre really 'a small Canadian professional theatre' and a 'major centre of new Canadian drama' in the 1920s and 30s as Aikens asserts? Was the total of the 120 professional and at least 450 amateur companies in existence in Quebec in 1984 really 'more than that of the other nine provinces combined,' as Doucette states?
A truly global assessment of world theatre, to which The Cambridge Guide aspires, is an immense undertaking and it is unfortunate that Cambridge University Press did not provide Martin Banham with the editorial and organizational resources to achieve such an ambitious task. This lack of editorial resources results in a lack, both of internal consistency with regard to national entries and of a true global synthesis and integration of information in broader subject areas such as theatre design, theatre buildings, training, criticism, and radio and television drama.
So we find, for example, Aikens' 'Stratford Festival' entry refer to the appointment of John Neville as artistic director at Stratford, but this information is not contained in Anthony Jackson's 'John Neville' entry. Doucette's main 'French Canada' entry reports that 'even the venerable Théâtre du Nouveau Monde is, at time of writing, clinging tenuously to life.' His separate entry on the TNM states that 'it appeared, in 1984-85, that this prestigious troupe would disappear; that threat has now receded, with the provision of additional government funding. . . .'
The bias towards English and U.S. coverage, presumably again for marketing considerations, is evident in the broader subject entries such as theatre training (where only the U.S. has its own entry) and criticism, which is divided into European and U.S.A. sections. Alan Andrews notwithstanding, The Cambridge Guide's theatre buildings entry does not even mention Canada's Stratford thrust stage.
But then, judging by the space allocation for national entries, Canadian theatre (12 pages) is deemed twice as important as Germany's, and three times as important as Czechoslovakia's. Marcel Dubé's entry is as long as Ionesco's, and longer than Grotowski's. Do Hart House Theatre, the New Play Centre, Jean Barbeau, Robert Gurik, Jacques Languirand, Françoise Loranger and Pierre Petitclair even merit separate entries in global reference works like The Cambridge Guide to World Theatre?
I don't think so. Others may disagree. The point is that defining a nation's culture through its theatre history cannot be the decision of a few individuals but must be a national collaborative process. Such a methodology may be organizationally more cumbersome but would achieve greater editorial and factual accuracy. National and regional editors must be truly familiar with the countries in their region. Organizational structures and editorial principles and criteria must be established and followed from the beginning, and their methodology clearly stated. Sufficient resources must be provided by the publisher for the scope of the undertaking.
The Cambridge Guide to World Theatre represents an immense undertaking and succeeds in bringing together much useful information. One cannot denigrate the labour involved. An index to the Guide would have been valuable as well as identification of the 115 contributors, their nationality and professional associations.
But it is primarily through its failure to clearly state its research methodology that The Cambridge Guide to World Theatre fails to achieve an editorial authority which, judging by a close scrutiny of Canadian entries, it does not fully possess.