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REVIEWS MARC MAllFORT and FRANCA BELLARS!, eds. Crucible ofCultures: Anglophone Drama at the Dawn of a New Millennium. Brussels: P.I.E.-Peter Lang, 2002. Pp. 343. $29.95 (Pb). Reviewed by Janelle Reinelf, University ofCalifornia Irvine Orten volumes that are generated out of conferences disappoint the reader, as the collections may seem to fall short of the promise driving these ventures, or else seem to follow too closely the style and rhetoric of a conference rather than a scholarly volume. Marc Maufort and Franca Bellarsi have avoided both pitfalls and have edited a superb book that re-conceptualizes notions of theatre and drama in English. The field of theatre studies has had a long record of publications classified according to national origin. British, American, and sometimes Irish drama have been the organizing domains. and "American" has usually meant the United States. In more recent times, Australia and Canada have received more extensive coverage and analysis. and with the development of the theoretical rubric of postcolonial drama, we have begun to see more critical attention to cross-cultural projects and multicultural societies within national borders. Still, it is arguable whether or not the full range of Anglophone performance has decisively destabilized the old hegemonies. This book reorganizes the priorities and stakes out possible lines of thinking for a serious attempt to present an international perspective on drama and performance in English. Beginning with two short essays by playwrights Timberlake Wertenbaker and Drew Hayden Taylor, the book presents itself as dialogic. Wertenbaker speaks within the context of her location in the UK to urge her colleagues to be "in dialogue with history" (22). "In other words," she exhorts writers, "let's not be ahistorical and sit on sofas in plays about adultery and sibling rivalry. Let's not write these plays, however tempting. History is complex, challenging " (22). Hayden Taylor, writing from his perspective as a Native Canadian, celebrates but also critiques the repetitions that threaten to settle into patterns in what he characterizes as Native theatre's u teen years" (26). He observes the seeming misogyny in a number of successful plays, writing, "I began to think that if J wanted to be a Native playwright, J would have to include a rape in everyone of my plays, and needless to say, I was reluctant to do that" (26). He decries a tendency to represent only victims and negative characters and urges instead that there be representations of a variety of characters to reflect the diversity within Native communities. He also cautions against the overuse of the Trickster figure and criticizes "academics who seem fixated on analyzing Trickster imagery in Aboriginal literature" (28). These two essays can be read :.lgainst each other in order to open up the field and displace the old centrali- Reviews 509 ties, but also with each other as conversations about new techniques and approaches between those actively engaged in creating new work at the start of this millennium. The first section of the book focuses on British and American theatre and drama and the second on postcolonial drama in English; however, the first section itself unsettles its own categories. Drew Milne offers a thoughtful overview of recent British theatre, drawing attention to the weakened authority of print culture, the pressure new technologies place on stage-plays to innovate, and the reliance of much new drama on "display of attitude" (38). Although he observes that "earlier relations between artistic practice and intellectual arguments or academic study appear to have broken down" (37), he is not lamenting the now-familiar dumbing down of culture. Rather, he analyzes what it means - a greater democratic plurality because a wide range of plays cannot be subsumed into a clear hierarchy; a re1iance on perfonnance techniques , induding acting styles and cinematic conventions; and a "sociality of public performance that dislocates the autonomy of the text" (40). His examples are wide-ranging: he includes Churchill and Pinter, but also new writers from the Royal Court and the Bush ranging from Jonathan Harvey and Philip Ridley to Winsome Pinnock and Jez Butterworth, and of course the new canonicals, Sarah Kane and Mark Ravenhill. Milne contrasts the English writers ' apprehension about literariness and print...

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