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  • Voices from Canada: Focus on Thirty Plays
  • Glen Nichols (bio)
Albert Reiner Glaap, editor. Voices from Canada: Focus on Thirty Plays. Translated from the German by N. Quaintmere Playwrights Canada Press. x, 141. $25.00

Originally created for European dramaturges and others 'interested in new trends and developments in the world of theatre,' Glaap's handbook introduces thirty Canadian plays by thirty different playwrights, including for each a brief synopsis, an overview of critical background and commentary, a summary of themes, and a chart indicating first performance, character lists, production requirements, and performance rights. Information about the playwrights is included in the 'background' section for each play and by way of a list of selected 'Other Plays.' The book concludes with a section called 'Some Other Voices,' where another thirty plays are presented with one-paragraph summaries taken mostly from the current catalogues of the Playwrights Guild of Canada (PGC) and the Centre des auteurs dramatiques (CEAD), who are both described in separate sections, along with the Association québécoises des auteurs dramatiques (AQAD). A cumulative list of former nominees and winners of Governor Generals' Literary Awards for Drama and a two-page selected bibliography of anthologies and reference material are also included.

The goal of the handbook, to counter the situation that 'Canadian drama is little known outside Canada,' is a modest one in scholarly terms, but [End Page 344] potentially important in terms of theatre practice. Reading this work from inside Canada, it is hard to assess if Glaap's goals will be met. There is first of all, of course, in all works of this nature, the question of the selection of plays. From relatively innovative plays like Fronteras Americanas (Verdecchia) and MacDonald's Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) to fairly reactionary realistic pieces like French's Jitters, a good range of Canadian drama is suggested. However, only two of the plays, Sears's Harlem Duet and Sherman's Patience, date from the late 1990s (1997 and 1998 respectively). The majority of plays introduced here were produced in the 1980s and some go back to the mid-1970s. I fear the snapshot of Canadian drama reflected in this handbook, meant to tempt foreign producers to pick up our plays, might come with a slightly yellowed patina of age. Part of this comes from the fact that the book was originally published in German in 1997, when the selection of plays would have given a much more contemporary picture. It is too bad that in the translation/rerelease the book was not updated more thoroughly.

This problem is somewhat helped by Jerry Wasserman's introduction and Bob Wallace's afterword, both excellent. However, Wallace's piece especially, by so beautifully situating the catalogue in a broader context of more current performance trends in Canada, teases the reader into wishing more of these had been included in the handbook introductions.

Then there's the question of the information included. While the descriptions are concise and detailed, they don't necessarily depict fully a play's style for a prospective director. More (indeed any) use of production photographs would also have gone far to increasing the 'marketing' potential of the handbook. The translation of Glaap's text is very good, with a fine rendering into English.

Glaap's handbook is an intriguing response to the problem of making Canadian plays more familiar to foreign directors. In the process he has created a tool that may also help Canadian directors find out about their compatriots' works and so help Canadian playwrights not only abroad, but also at home.

Glen Nichols

Glen Nichols, Department of English, University of Moncton

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