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
