Review of 'Men at Play' by Jonathan Bollen, Adrian Kiernander and Bruce Parr.

Review of Jonathan Bollen, Adrian Kiernander and Bruce Parr, 'Men at Play: Masculinities in Australian Theatre since the 1950s

Regiments of the Theatre: Reenactment in Theatre and Military Culture

La reconstitution militaire, discipline en émergence, révèle un champ d'exercice dans lequel le monde du théâtre et la culture militaire convergent. C'est à la fois la militarisation du théâtre et la théâtralisation de l'armée, un théâtre sans salle et une armée sans pouvoir. La reconstitution militaire souligne une grande affinité entre les mécanismes de démarcation des frontières à l'œuvre dans le monde de l'armée et du théâtre. Ceci suggère que la reconstitution n'est pas qu'une convergence moderne de l'armée et du théâtre, et que ces deux mondes ont des affinités historiques plus profondes, puisant leur origine dans l'organisation sociale et l'affichage masculiniste (et souvent exclusivement masculine). En examinant la pratique contemporaine de la reconstitution, nous constatons que le théâtre et l'armée relèvent d'un seul et même monde et qu'il sont tous deux chargés de constituer la nation et de l'ériger en monument. Le théâtre est une armée qui ne tue pas, et l'armée est un théâtre où l'on tue

Family Business: Affect and Reconciliation in A Brimful of Asha

This analysis of Ravi Jain’s and Asha Jain’s A Brimful of Asha (2012) examines the text of the play as an instance of performance that functions as a staged autopsy of family crisis and reconciliation. In A Brimful of Asha, mother and son perform a shared, if conflicted, memoir about an immigrant family’s negotiation with cultural tradition (in this case, over the parental responsibility to arrange a marriage for a son who refuses to comply). Considered in terms of theatrical life writing, mother and son share the stage to demonstrate, through comic monologues and fond bickering, that the life of the individual is the life of the family. That the two cannot be separated is the lesson that emerges from the incident that the play relates and the production reconciles. The negotiation of subject and performativity produces the imbalanced affect of the show, in which Asha’s low-affect performativity counters (and indeed controls) Ravi’s high-affect performance.            A Brimful of Asha is on the narrative level a story about a family crisis over arranged marriage, but the conflict that Asha’s presence on stage reconciles is a deeper family crisis about theatre. This deep narrative is a restaging of the play’s origins, because the performance is both the result of and the solution to the family crisis. Their reconciliation enacts the entrepreneurial skill that has made the family successful in business by transforming a family crisis into a theatrical hit, and demonstrates the initiative, adaptivity, and resourcefulness of an immigrant family willing to try something radical and new to make a better life

“Supercharged Reality”: Documentary and Theatrical Disciplinarity

A review of documentary performance in Canadian theatre over a forty-year span explores how it has continued as a gateway practice that simultaneously enables and refuses theatre disciplinarity, the system of value that differentiates the professional from the amateur, and which produces concepts of excellence and mastery. In the decades since a generation of actor-creators reinvented the theatre profession in Canada by creating texts out of research (following the template of Theatre Passe Muraille’s The Farm Show in 1972), documentary has become institutionalized as a theatrical strategy in which high-affect performance serves as an authenticating convention, giving shows the gloss of disciplinarity that invites credibility in the authority of the text. The sophisticated documentaries of Annabel Soutar suggest that this high-disciplinary mode authorizes work as professionalized culture and exerts influence on the wider theatre community. That documentary continues to function as a means of professional entry and cultural inclusion can be seen in Judith Thompson’s recent work with socially excluded communities, who in their work with the playwright claim theatrical presence by documenting their own experience. Against the highly disciplined work of Soutar and Thompson, the persistence of a low-disciplinary mode that refuses the aesthetic values of professionalized culture shows that reduced theatricality -- the representation of a lack of representation -- retains tactical power because it can create an image of a rigorous and de-aestheticized fidelity to evidence. Gary Kirkham and Dwight Storring’s verbatim documentary, Rage Against Violence, shows how this low-disciplinary mode is an effective and accessible cultural resource for community activists

Undermining the Centre: The Canon According to CTR

Since its founding in 1974, Canadian Theatre Review has made a major contribution to the canon of Canadian drama, in its critical discourse and publication of new plays. Under three successive editorial regimes its notion of what constitutes the canon has changed radically. In its first phase, CTR was committed to legitimizing the canon; in its second phase, the notion of the canon was broadened to include marginalized voices; today CTR is effectively committed to interrogating the very idea of a canon. Depuis sa fondation en 1974, la Canadian Theatre Review contribue de façon significative à la formation d'un canon théâtral canadien-anglais, tant par son discours critique comme par la publication de textes dramatiques. Sous trois équipes de rédaction successives, le concept de ce qui constituerait un «canon» s'est transformé radicalement. La revue cherchait, dans un premier temps, à légitimer le canon existant; ensuite, ce concept fut élargi pour inclure des voix jusqu'alors marginalisées; actuellement, la CTR s'engage à interroger l'idée même de l'existence d'un tel canon

The Interactive Documentary in Canada: Catalyst Theatre's Its About Time

It's About Time, pièce interactive du 'Catalyst Theatre', créée pour des prisonniers, représente un developpement très important dans le théâtre politique du Canada anglophone. Dans ses principes théâtraux, la pièce ressemble au 'théâtre forum' du régisseur brésilien Augusto Boal, mais le théâtre interventionniste du 'Catalyst Theatre' s'est développé indépendemment des formes parallèles étrangères. Cette analyse de It's About Time compare les techniques du 'Catalyst' au plus célèbre modele du théâtre interactif de Boal. Catalyst Theatre's 1982 production of It's About Time, an interactive performance for prison inmates, was a major development in political theatre in English Canada. In its theatrical techniques, the play resembled the 'theatre forum' of the Brazilian director Augusto Boal, but Catalyst's form of interventionist theatre developed independently of parallel forms elsewhere. An analysis of It's About Time compares Catalyst's techniques with Boal's more well-known model of interactive political theatre

The Mummers Troupe, The Canada Council, and the Production of Theatre History

A close examination of the history of the Mummers Troupe raises questions about the nature of the theatre "company" as a central but problematic signifier in the narration of Canadian theatre history. An analysis of the conflicts between the Mummers' institutional history, as recorded through its dealings with the Canada Council, and its internal history of ideological conflict and personal rivalry, suggests that the Canada Council was unable to develop a policy that could support an activist and locally engaged model of theatrical structures. Insofar as its struggle to survive within the Canada Council's terms of containment exposes deeper crises in Canadian culture, the Mummers Troupe may be the typifying expression of Canadian theatre in the 1970s. Un examen de l'histoire de la Mummers Troupe pose des questions à propos du rôle de cette «compagnie» de théâtre comme signifiant central--mais non pas problématique--dans l'histoire du théâtre canadien. L'analyse de l'opposition de l'histoire institutionnelle de la Mummers Troupe (leurs relations avec le Conseil des Arts du Canada) et des disputes idéologiques et personnelles internes, suggère l'incapacité de concilier la politique du Conseil avec l'activisme des institutions théâtrales. Comme exemple de lutte contre la rigidité des règles du Conseil, le cas de la Mummers Troupe est caractéristique d'une crise dans la culture canadienne, et l'expression typique de la scène pendant les années 70