Canadian literatureDRAMA

What makes it Canadian?

Mixture

Often used European structures

Marginalized group

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Post-contact performances

Intermixture of neoclassical formsEnglish French Irish pidgin

European forms were revitalized:

Exotic new world settingPerformative rituals Domesticate the threats

18th century

military garrisons Stage adaptations of pastoral drama Neoclassical tragediesFirst Nations peoples are represented being emptyLocal themes assumed to be civilizing New World as raw material for European cultural and economic production

Robert Rogers: The Savages of America

Post-colonial resistance

Intertextual recognition of its European familiar plots

Thomas Hill: The Provincial AssociationJohnny Burke: The Topsail Geisha

Japanese chorus become local fisherman fanning themselves with salt cod satiric

Sarah Anne Curzon and Eliza Lanesford Cushing

The Sweet Girl Graduate

Admission of women to Canadian university

In general:

Land as vastThe wilderness as vanishingLandscape uninhabited

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Massey Commission (1951)

Find Canadian ways of classical theatrea distinctive style of Canadian theatreThe Manitoba Theatre Centre regional theatres

Elsie Park Gowan: The Last Caveman

Canadian historical content including Metis and Cree in an attempt to invent a national mythology

Indigenous traditions and relationships with the land Authenticating role

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Toronto Workshop Productions 1959 George Luscombe

Created a hybrid documentaryBlended elements from circusIssues of class Revolutionary politicsRace

Tomson Highway Graham Green Gary Farmer

Western and Indigenous practices

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Michael Hollingsworth The History of the Village of Small Huts

http://www.videocab.com/video.html

Multiple histories of Canada Deconstructing the countrys founding myth

Environmental theatre breaking down the traditional fourth wall

John Krizanc Tamara

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Clowning, mime and movement based theatre

Theatre Smith Gilmour Theatre Columbus

Leah CherinakRobert MorganMartha Ross The Anger in Ernest and Ernestine (1989)

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Movement based theatre:

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Mime theatre

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Clown Theatre

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Gay Theatre

Brad Fraser Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of LoveSky GilbertDaniel MacIvor

Sex, violence, comic book captions

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Hyphenated communities (multi ethnic)

Guillermo Verdecchia Noam Chomsky Lectures

committed to a theatre that decolonizes the imagination.

He acts out against the culture of banality that subsumes individuality and perpetuates social and racial stereotypes, and he works to foreground the diversity of cultures

The greatest failure of Canadian theatre is its failure to be politically relevant.

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In 1990 he wroteThe Noam Chomsky LectureswithDaniel Brooks, which again won a Chalmers Award. Using a lecture format, Brooks and Verdecchia play themselves, attempting to make Chomskys political views on mass media and consumerism accessible to a wide audience, linking foreign affairs to particular Canadian locales.http://www.canadiantheatre.com/dict.pl?term=Verdecchia%2C%20Guillermo

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First Nations Drama

Tomson Highway

Brutal and mixed form about the rez and the rape of Native cultures by Christianity

Frist time produced

Ian Ross fareWel (Governor-Generals Award )

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Meegwetch!

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