Siting the Other: Re-visions of Marginality in Australian and English-Canadian Drama ed. by Marc Maufort and Franca Bellarsi (review)

REVIEWS WORKS CITED Baldwin, James E. "The Space between Voices: Dialogics in the Late Plays of George F. Walker." M.A. Thesis. U of Guelph, 1994. Hadfield, Dorothy. "The Role Power Plays in George F. Walker's Detective Trilogy." Essays in Theatre I Etudes thMitrales 16 (1997): 67-83. Johnson, Chris. "George F. Walker: B-Movies beyond the Absurd." Canadian Literature 85 (Summer 1980): 87-103. Johnston, Denis W. "George F. Walker: Liberal Idealism and the 'Power Plays.'" Canadian Drama / L'Art dramatique canadien 10 (1984): 195-206. Knowles, Richard Paul. "The Dramaturgy of the Perverse." Theatre, Research International 17 (1992): 226-35· Mombourqueue, Mary Pat. "Walker's Women in the East End Plays." M.A. Thesis. U of Guelph, 1990. Nyman, Ed. "Out with the Queers: Moral Triage in George F. Walker's Theatre ofthe Film Noir." Australasian Drama Studies 29 (OCl. f996): 57--65. MARC MAUFORT AND FRANCA BELLARSJ, eds. Siting the Other: Re-visions of Marginality in Australian and English-Canadian Drama. Brussels: P.l.E.Peter Lang, 2001. Pp. 374. $45.95 (Pb). Reviewed by James Dugan, University ofCalgary This collection of essays analyzes dramatic texts, theatrical performances, and issues of critical and audience perception in a challenging area of Australian and Canadian cultures: the margins. In an introduction, twenty-two chapters, and an appendix, editors Marc Maufort and Franca Bellarsi have assembled a highly informative book. After Maufort's opening chapter, which references First Nations playwriting in both countries, ten chapters deal with Australia exclusively. A pivotal chapter by Gerry Turcotte is concerned with two theatre projects, one from each country, and the next nine chapters deal with Canada exclusively. The final chapter is Joanne Tompkins' study of plays from both countries, and the appendix is a transcript of Maryrose Casey's interview with Australian playwright John Harding. As Maufort explains in his introduction , the marginalities addressed in the collection include "gender, class, ethnicity, and aboriginality" (3). Some of these essays reside comfortably within certain categories and others cut across them. Most of the contributors are of Anglo or northern European heritage and tread carefully in their interrogations of the interfaces between dominant and marginal cultures. My initial reaction was that this was a weakness in the choice of contributors, but I came to regard it as a strength. It is essential that Reviews 309 the residents in the dominant culture acknowledge and negotiate the margins; this book sets a good example. The title might raise expectations of cross-cultural comparisons between Canada and Australia and between the marginal cultures within the national constructs, but, not surprisingly, the contributors avoid universalizing and "reject the tendency to homogenise post-colonial literatures" (Maufort 3). Indeed, only three of the chapters make reference to works in both countries: Maufort's on First Nations playwriting, Gerry Turcotte's comparative study of The Book ofJessica and The MudrooroolMueller Project, and Joanne Tompkins ' study of four plays about immigrant families. Their comparative observations are scant, and they leave the reader to make what he/she will of the implied similarities between the two cultures. As one whose expertise is in Canadian drama, I found the encounter with the different vocabulary that has developed in Australian discourse of particular interest. Europeans are "settlers," and the strategy of the white power structure to mask difference is "forgetfulness." Assimilation is a concept familiar to Canadians, but in Australia, Assimilation was a named, fonnally enacted policy, and the Aboriginal children removed from their families are the "Stolen Generations." Helen Thomson~s chapter on the staged autobiographies of four Aboriginal performers, well placed near the beginning of the book, provides a rich, dense introduction to this vocabulary and to the issues. I read this chapter with more absorbed interest than any other, even though I knew nothing of the performers or their material. This review cannot cover even cursorily every chapter in the co11ection, but certain ones left strong impressions, for a variety of reasons. Closely fo11owing Thomson's chapter, for example, is Maryrose Casey's on indigenous theatre companies. She presents a fascinating case study of a park development in St. Kilda, a suburb of Melbourne. Casey's analysis reveals the consequences of institutionalizing cultural...