Читать книгу Re: Producing Women's Dramatic History - D.A. Hadfield - Страница 5

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 in the subsequent chapters.

Chapter two presents a consideration of the process of new play development as it is practiced in Toronto, outlining some of the ideological, financial, and practical difficulties faced by women playwrights in getting their unique visions onto the theatrical stage. This chapter rehearses some of the strengths and weaknesses of script-based and collective theatre for feminist productions, as well as considers the possibilities afforded by the “in-process” alternative of workshopping plays.

Chapter three begins a series of chapters that examine specific productions in the context of the traditions and methodologies outlined in the first two chapters. Specifically, this chapter analyzes Judith Thompson’s experience directing a production of Hedda Gabler for the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake (1991), and the historically unspeakable conditions that resulted in the disappearance of the script of her critically acclaimed adaptation of this Ibsen play from history. Since Thompson’s adaptation, despite the absence of a published text, has had a certain reproductive history, the chapter ends with a consideration of how the politics of historiography can be made to serve feminist theatre to some extent, although this possibility requires an extraordinary personal commitment on the part of the playwright.

Chapter four deals with three plays by Sally Clark, The Trial of Judith K. (Canadian Stage Company, 1989), Jehanne of the Witches (Tarragon Theatre, 1989), and Life Without Instruction (Theatre Plus Toronto, 1991). The disparity between Clark’s status in the record of feminist history and the controversies that surrounded the production and reception of these plays provides a fertile field for investigating how the politics of production and the politics of historiography affect historical narrative. Forging a connection between the relatively mainstream and commercial venues where these productions occurred and the very problematic nature of Clark’s presumed “feminism” at the height of the culture wars and political correctness debates also makes visible the dangers inherent in exploring the politics of gender construction too closely with audiences not in the mood for such experimentation.

Chapter five looks at two plays that were developed in the collective tradition, Jessica by Linda Griffiths and Maria Campbell, and This Is for You, Anna by The Anna Project. These plays offer the greatest challenge to traditional, literary-based modes of historiography, and the fact that they are represented to history through texts that reflect the same emphasis on intersubjective process as did their theatrical productions is a function of the reputation for “success” that resulted, in part, from a carefully constructed ideological compatibility throughout the production process.

The concluding chapter places the preceding six productions in the context of Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) (Canadian Stage, 1990). One of the most successful works in the history of feminist and Canadian theatre, MacDonald’s play shares common features with each of the other plays, and shows how astute actors and theatre companies can maximize the possibility of “success” by self-consciously creating a theatrical context that aligns the politics of production and audience. Finally, the concluding summary points out that any apparent feminist gains in mainstream theatre actually hide the extent to which Canadian theatre is still tenaciously resistant, both in working methods and at the box office, to any real challenges to a traditional, masculinist status quo.