Читать книгу Re: Producing Women's Dramatic History - D.A. Hadfield - Страница 6

In a thesis that seeks to problematize the relationship between “public” and “private” history and consider the “political significance of everything,” it is difficult to decide just how far my acknowledgements should extend. The research and writing of this book was undertaken while I was at the University of Western Ontario, and my first and most “public” debt of gratitude belongs there, where I received both financial and collegial support. Especially, I benefited greatly from the advice, expertise, and encouragement of Frank Davey, the first Carl F. Klinck Professor of Canadian Literature. While the arguments, for better or worse, are mine, their public visibility owes a great deal to his commitment and his willingness to help this book negotiate its way through the networks of production that surround publication. Manina Jones was likewise helpful in providing astute critical commentary, especially on The Book of Jessica, an amazing work that many students encounter for the first time in her classes. Alison Lee was a wonderful source of feminist focus, as well as the perspective and humour that saw me through many days.

Further afield, Ann Wilson at the University of Guelph was extremely generous in suggestions and advice right from the earliest stages of the ideas and proposals that eventually became this book; for that, and for her ongoing encouragement and friendship, I am most grateful. Also, I owe a great deal to the staff of Archival and Special Collections in the McLaughlin Library at the University of Guelph, without whose helpfulness this research would have been impossible. Their in-depth knowledge of the holdings in what is now called the L.W. Conolly Theatre Archives alerted me to materials I might otherwise not have found, and their patience as they brought out file after file for my perusal was remarkable. Then there is L.W. Conolly himself, who first introduced me to the possibilities of theatre archives when I was a graduate student at Guelph; like a Gustav manuscript, his influence ghosts every page.

Judith Thompson, Sally Clark, and Stephen Johnson were very accommodating in responding to my questions about their productions, and Ric Knowles generously shared both his thoughts and a manuscript version of what eventually became The Theatre of Form and the Production of Meaning, a book that will profoundly influence materialist readings of theatre for years to come. For these conversations, and for their permission to quote from the unpublished records of them, I extend my sincere thanks.

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I am very grateful for this financial support. In addition, I am grateful to the ASPP readers who offered valuable insights and made numerous helpful suggestions for revision.

On what must be called a most “private” note, I owe perhaps my greatest debt of gratitude to my family, without whose accommodation, encouragement, and support this book could not exist. My children, Victoria, Brandon, and Cameron, from birth have shared their mother with feminists, theorists, and playwrights they have never met, and I truly hope their world will be bigger because of it. My husband, Blair, absorbed many personal and practical costs throughout the process, and provided invaluable critical challenges to my readings of how power circulates in society, and between women and men. Together, we continue to negotiate balance in theory and practice.