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Abstract: This issue represents a moment of transition for Canadian Theatre Review. After seven years as Editor-in-Chief, it is time for me to step aside and to bring in a new leader with new energy and a new vision. I am delighted to announce Heather Davis-Fisch as our new Editor-in-Chief.Heather’s association with CTR is long-standing. She first joined the editorial team as Views & Reviews editor in 2015, moving to Associate Editor in 2020. Her contributions to the planning and execution of issues have been invaluable. Heather is a creative thinker, often pressing the group to think differently. One notable example is her crafting of what we had initially conceptualized as an issue devoted to “Canada 150” and the ... Read More PubDate: 2023-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: Consider the following casting calls: What do they reveal about contemporary casting practices' What stereotypes are upheld or dispelled' Which calls invite artists to present their full selves' Which do not'#1 Character Descriptions:We are committed to authentically casting equity-seeking characters, including BIPOC, 2SLGBTQ+, d/Deaf, and/or disabled characters. The character descriptions ... represent our understanding of each character’s identity. We ask that artists only submit for characters within their own lived experience. We welcome submissions for these roles from INSERT artists and artists from the wider INSERT diaspora who are comfortable playing INSERT. All of the characters (apart from INSERT and ... Read More PubDate: 2023-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: The following is a compilation of quotes and discussion points transcribed from (Re)Setting the Stage: The Past, Present, and Future of Casting Practices, a series of three panels presented by the Department of Theatre at York University via Zoom on 31 May and 1 June 2021. On panel 1 were Carmen Aguirre, Walter Borden, Jani Lauzon, Beatriz Pizano, and Kimberley Rampersad—their focus was on the legacy of Canadian casting. On panel 2 were Nina Lee Aquino, Kevin Hanchard, Mariló Núñez, and David Yee—they focused on present-day issues in Canadian casting. On panel 3 were Tara Beagan, Augusto Bitter, Marjorie Chan, Emma Ferreira, and Mike Payette—their point of focus was the potential future of casting. All panellists ... Read More PubDate: 2023-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: When I began studying blackface a decade ago, theatre and performance scholar Stephen Johnson was essentially the only Canadian academic in the field. Between 2016 and 2018, when I worked as a postdoctoral fellow alongside Stephen, his work on early minstrelsy in Britain, travelling American ‘Tom Shows’ and Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Canada West (present-day Ontario), and the various theatre houses where productions were staged (see Johnson, “Uncle Tom,” JUBA Project, and Canada West) introduced me to the topic. I also read Early Stages: Theatre in Ontario, 1800–1914 (1990), an edited collection by renowned theatre scholar Ann Saddlemyer, which included some mention of blackface in chapters from notable Canadian theatre ... Read More PubDate: 2023-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: I have forgotten how to act. I have forgotten how to teach acting. There was a time when I could get up onstage and simply do it, or assign any play to any acting class and have them just work with it. Nowadays, I am so conscious of every step, sound, and suggestion I make that my craft, and the training of others in it, has become somewhat paralyzed—and I cannot decide if that is a good thing, a bad thing, or a complementary blend of both. My personal casting conundrum: I identify as a Canadian-born, cisgender male, with tangled African-European ancestorial roots, more in the sandy beige hue in winter, and full sun-kissed mocha tones by August. My twenty-five-year acting career partly thrived on being that ... Read More PubDate: 2023-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: The first day of rehearsal is a jambalaya of excitement and nerves, with a dash of anxiety tossed in to spice it all up. How prepared do I need to be' Where do I sit' What do I wear' Do I tell that person I’ve been idolizing for my entire career what I think of them, or should I play it cool and let our introduction happen organically' These thoughts passed through my mind seven years ago as I biked along Queen St. East toward the Distillery District for the first day of rehearsal for the Arthur Miller play Incident at Vichy. It was late March, and I was wearing black joggers, a slim-fitting long-sleeved black shirt, all-white Club C 85 Reeboks, and a beige peacoat I got from a vintage clothing store on Dundas ... Read More PubDate: 2023-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: I’ve been a professional performer since 1996; my first role was playing Robin Starvling in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Canadian Stage’s Dream in High Park. Since then, I’ve worked mostly as an actor, theatre creator, and teacher, and on a few occasions as a director.Now, twenty-six years later, I am fortunate to have been offered a chance to direct As You Like It on that same stage. This is what it’s like on the other side of the audition table.I started this process by interpreting the title. What does As You Like It (or What You Will) mean' I think it’s Utopia, the world as you’d like it to be, the one you will into being by thoughts and actions. Some say of this play that the plot falls apart halfway through ... Read More PubDate: 2023-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: Editors’ Note: The editorial team invited artistic directors from culturally specific theatre companies from across the country to offer their perspective on what culturally specific casting means to them. Their responses address a variety of topics, from culturally specific and colour-blind casting to audition rooms and community conversations.I believe I was trained to be a white actor. I attended a BFA program in Newfoundland and Labrador where at the time I was the only performer of colour, and all my instructors were white. I did learn about acting, of course, but I was constantly asked to fit within the limits of the white characters I was usually cast in. Rare were the times when I could be all of me.That ... Read More PubDate: 2023-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: In the realm of ‘greener grass’ and speculative reveries that rarely fail to result in unwarranted idealism, it’s easy for theatre artists to envy the world of classical music, which, by its very nature, can ignore non-auditory senses, hence the ‘blind’ audition.1 Since its inception in the seventies, the ‘blind,’ or what I prefer to call the ‘unseeing,’ casting audition has seen an increase in the number of women in orchestras across the Western world (Goldin and Rouse). If the gains for women have been colossal, the blind audition (hereafter the ‘unseeing’ audition) has failed to benefit marginalized groups, and its critics are arguing for a more nuanced approach (Tommasini). This said, theatre can only dream of ... Read More PubDate: 2023-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: For most people, the term ‘casting’ brings to mind the process whereby performers are cast to play particular roles. Conversely, I have spent a lot of time thinking about how performers and productions cast their audiences. One area of my research focuses on direct audience address in contemporary theatre and examines how theatremakers employ direct address to ‘hail’ or ‘cast’ their audiences in particular roles and how this experience shapes the performance’s overall dramatic effect. Think, for example, of Peter Pan’s famous invocation to audiences to “clap if you believe in fairies,” an act that casts spectators in the role of Tinker Bell’s saviours and implicates them in the action of the play.Zooming out a ... Read More PubDate: 2023-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: Studio 58, the professional theatre training program at Langara College, resides on the unceded traditional territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ(Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.It has been seven years since our school developed the Studio 58 Diversity Committee—a student-led committee with regular meetings programmed within their timetables to discuss contemporary issues and host a public panel discussion that they organize once a term. The panel invites under-represented members of our communities as guests to share their experiences and provide guidance for students and faculty under themes that have included actors of colour, Indigenous artists, South and East Asian ... Read More PubDate: 2023-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: I am interested in the question of how a playwright’s impulses and creativity are affected by race and casting in theatre. How and why does a writer write race into her plays' Why do playwrights of colour, like me, feel compelled to be specific with race and ethnicity in our work for it to make sense to a wider audience when white playwrights don’t have that pressure' I talk with playwright Marie Barlizo (later on in the piece) to dissect this question of race and the writing process. But first, some context.There is a racism problem in our theatre industry (see also Barrie). As much as we would all like to say there isn’t, I say that there is. I’ll repeat that: we have a racism problem in Canadian theatre. We will ... Read More PubDate: 2023-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: A workshop production of Lucky was presented at the 2018 St-Ambroise Montreal Fringe Festival and then at the 2019 Next Stage Festival. The play was later produced at the 2022 rEvolver Festival.We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Banff Playwrights Lab, and Playwrights’ Workshop Montreal. Special thanks to Theatre Passe Muraille, Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre, Upintheair Theatre, Factory Theatre, Segal Centre, Native Earth Performing Arts, Nightwood Theatre, and Workman Arts.Marie Leofeli Romero Barlizo (she/her) is a Montreal-based Filipino-Chinese playwright and producer. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British ... Read More PubDate: 2023-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: Copyright Notice: Copyright Tabia Lau. This script is protected under the copyright laws of Canada and all other countries of the Copyright Union. Changes to the script are forbidden without the written consent of the author. Rights to produce, film or record in any medium, in any language, by any group, are retained by the author. The moral right of the author has been asserted. For performance rights, contact the author at tabialau@gmail.com.The Antigone Play premiered on 24 November 2020 via Zoom, as part of Theatre@York’s 2020–2021 season.Tabia Lau is a Chinese-Canadian playwright, screenwriter, and scholar. She holds an MFA in playwriting from Columbia University and is currently a PhD candidate at York ... Read More PubDate: 2023-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: After the deeply entangled crises that hit us in 2020, we’ve witnessed widespread calls to revise equity, diversity, and inclusion mandates, or, more explicitly, to diagnose and redress racism as well as to ‘decolonize’ our institutional structures, pedagogies, and artistic practices. But what do we really mean when we call for decolonizing or declare our intention to decolonize our way of doing things' And in what ways might performance enable our ongoing wrestling with the task of imagining, rehearsing, and staging decolonial futures'These are tough and necessary questions, which, at times, appear to derive from seemingly utopian desires. Most often, we don’t have a clue about where to start. What we do know is ... Read More PubDate: 2023-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: Theatre is an artform of action: it is, as a result, an ideal medium for political activism.Kailin Wright treads into the arena of political activism in her thoroughly researched and engaging book, Political Adaptation in Canadian Theatre, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2020. Drawing from the works of Thomas King, Linda Hutcheon, Gerard Genette, Robert Stam, Julie Sanders, Marie Clements, Judith Butler, J. L. Austen, Jill Carter, José Esteban Muñoz, and Michel Pêcheux, among others, Wright applies theories of adaptation, identification, performance, Indigenous dramaturgy, and speech acts to define political adaptation as distinct from adaptation “proper” (16).1 Wright contends that political ... Read More PubDate: 2023-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: It’s not about saying, “I create art despite my disability.” It’s about saying, “this disability provides me some aesthetic possibilities that have gone unexplored.”Promotional poster on Toronto’s Queen’s Quay for the CoMotion Festival, with images of JJJJJerome Ellis’s The Clearing (left), REAson d’etre’s Dancing with the Universe (centre top), Chris Dodd’s Deafy (centre bottom), and Joe Jack et John’s VIOLETTE (right).Photo by Ric KnowlesI attended my first disability arts festival in Berlin in 2013, and I was astonished by the beauty and skill, variety, value, and generative aesthetic and political differences presented by the artists. It was the wheelchair dancers that first got me, exhibiting a movement ... Read More PubDate: 2023-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: Interdependent Magic brings together four scripts and an interview from disabled playwrights across Canada. Curated by Jessica Watkin, this is a landmark anthology, the first anthology of plays written by disabled playwrights from Playwrights Canada Press.Book cover for Interdependent Magic: Disability Performance in Canada.Cover art by Wy Joung Kou (wyjoungkou.com), courtesy of Playwrights Canada PressThere is a weight to ‘firsts.’ As a neurodivergent theatre worker and artist, I’ve become wary of being ‘first.’ I believe that disabled people have always danced, sung, and told stories. Even if ableism has erased the historical record, ensuring that I will never know the names of the artists who came before me, I ... Read More PubDate: 2023-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: Makambe K. Simamba’s profoundly moving performance, Our Fathers, Sons, Lovers and Little Brothers—directed by Donna-Michelle St. Bernard—played in a series of live and digital performances at the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto during March and April 2022. The one-person show originally premiered in 2019 as a b current production, winning Dora Awards for best performance by an individual and best new play in the Theatre for Young Audiences Division, and returned in 2022 as a co-production by Tarragon Theatre and Black Theatre Workshop. In this dense one-person show, the audience is invited to consider the fragility and unpredictability of Black life, the repeating and calculated nature of Black death, and the way it ... Read More PubDate: 2023-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
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