Re: Producing Women’s Dramatic History
The Politics of Playing in Toronto
D. A. Hadfield
Talonbooks
Vancouver
For Blair, who gave; for Tori and Brandon, who shared; and for Cameron, who waited.
Contents
1. Women’s History: Pages and Stages
Performing Histories: Stage One
Performing Histories: Stage Two
2. Producing Possibilities for Feminist Theatre
Developing Policy and Production in Canada
3. Dead Centre: Judith Thompson Takes on Shaw and Ibsen
Epilogue: Reviving Hedda Gabler
4. Sally into the Centre: Is Seeing Believing?
Trials and Verdicts at the Canadian Stage
5. Crossing Over, or, Reading Anger in the Margin
Writing the History of Mixed Blood: The Book of Jessica
Transforming Theatrical History
This Is (No Place) for You, Anna
Producing No Place on the Page
Reproducing No Place on Stage and Page
6. Re: Visions of History
A Good Night for Feminist Theatre
Preface
Within the last generation, Canadian drama, like other literary forms, has seen the emergence of works by women that re-vision the role of women in history. However, the politics of theatre necessitates a very different experience for women who choose the dramatic over other literary forms. In order to write themselves into theatre history, women must negotiate a complex journey through pages and stages, a network of public production that is highly politically charged at every turn. This book examines the strategies employed on behalf of seven feminist productions that have managed to achieve a place in the recorded history of Canadian theatre.
All of the plays under consideration here exist (or have existed) in at least one published script form. However, I am not trying to analyze these scripts for the definitive meaning in these plays, nor am I trying to dictate how a reader or audience should inevitably read them. Instead, I am trying to account for how and why these scripts came to exist in a particular form, given the strong implicit connection between publication and the assumption of “good” or “successful” theatre. In a system where textual visibility leads to opportunities for study, reproduction, and validation for both play and playwright, the perseverance of script publication can have real economic and ideological advantages. By analyzing publicity materials, photos, programmes, reviews, and box office and theatre records, it is possible to trace the process of creating a theatrical “success,” as well as to assess what effect that critical verdict has on the shape of the script publications of these works. In effect, by placing the textual residues left behind by these productions in the context of production and reception, it is possible to investigate how the politics of the theatrical process influences the quality and the type of historiographical remainders.
Chapter one provides an overview of women’s place in history, and more specifically, Canadian dramatic history. By exposing the possibilities and ideologies inherent in the writing of historical narratives, it sketches out a methodology for selecting and reading the productions and their residual texts that appear