Burnett, Linda, Ed.: Theatre in Atlantic Canada

BURNETT, LINDA, ed. Theatre in Atlantic Canada Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English. Vol. 16. Toronto: Playwrights Canada, 2010. 206pp. LEVIN, LAURA, ed. Theatre and Performance in Toronto Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English.Vol. 21. Toronto: Playwrights Canada, 2011. 210pp. Ric Knowles, as general editor of Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English, writes, Each volume is edited and introduced by an expert in the field who has selected a representative sampling of the most important critical work on her or his subject since the 1970s, ordered chronologically according to the original dates of publication. assembling the essays, each editor generates a narrative of the shifting concerns raised by the commentators about a particular aspect of Canadian theatre. Linda Burnett introduces her selection of essays for Theatre in Atlantic Canada by providing an overview of the chronology of theatre in the region, allowing each essay to stand as if discrete. Laura Levin's editorial approach is different from that of Burnett. Levin, in her introduction to Theatre and Performance in suggests that she has selected essays which situate theatre within the Toronto context (viii), in ways that complement and challenge accepted suppositions around the development of theatre in Toronto and, particularly, narratives about the alternative theatre movement of the 1970s. Burnett is candid in her introduction that creating the collection left her with a number of questions, including why are media outlets, including ones local to Atlantic Canada, reluctant to review theatre produced in the region? Why must so many of the region's theatre artists spend time in Montreal and Toronto to gain recognition? Why are aboriginal theatre practitioners largely invisible? (xi). Burnett indicates that she shares the view that money, or the lack thereof, offers one answer (xi). She suggests that the model of colonialism is still in place, with the historic colonial power of New York and London as the centres of the cultural empire in Canada now replaced by the new centres of colonizing cultural might: Montreal and Toronto. It would be difficult to dispute that the lack of money shapes the terms of theatrical production in Atlantic Canada--and elsewhere in the country. Theatre is a material form of art which carries cost, even when practitioners strive to marshal scant resources, producing work with creative vitality at minimal fiscal outlay. Theatre has its costs, beyond the budget of a production. Burnett notes, borrowing from Mary Vingoe, that costs include infrastructure to support and sustain cultural production, such as training programs for artists. The under-funding of the cultural sector, particularly in Atlantic Canada, means that this sort of infrastructure is nearly non-existent. Further, under-funding carries associated, non-monetary costs. Virtually all of the essays included in the volume suggest that practitioners of theatre in Atlantic Canada struggle to be recognized, a struggle which can sometimes lead to a perception of failure, as suggested by Brian Parker's analysis of the work of Michael Cook and Alan Filewod's account of the Mummers Troupe 1987. Reading the collection as whole, despair seems to be the emotional filter through which theatre in Atlantic Canada is read. Only occasionally is it countered by the celebration of innovative theatricality such as Donna Smyth's account of the puppetry of Mermaid Theatre and Denyse Lynde's account of Artistic Fraud's development of kaleidography which forces an entire cast to move and flow into images, one after another (99). Oddly, the third essay in Theatre and Performance in In the Beginning Was Toronto, taken from Renate Usmiani's Second Stage: The Alternative Theatre Movement in Canada, affirms the sense practitioners of theatre in Atlantic Canada have that they are colonized, and that if they are to be taken seriously, they need to go to or perhaps Montreal. …

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