From Fire to Flood: A History of Theatre in Manitoba by Kevin Longfield (review)

humanities 415 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 investment in it, generate a kind of infectious persuasiveness that allows the reader to ignore, at least for the time being, all the other possible explanations or counter-arguments. Waterston also remarks on the social institutions and cultural values that we have inherited from Scotland, including our educational system, our embracing of (and later reaction to) Presbyterian restraints, our early development of publishing houses, our aspirations for nationhood, and even our notions of coexistence. After all, the Scots had to find a way to accommodate two radically opposed peoples (Anglicized Scots of the Lowlands and indigenous clans of the Highlands), so it is likely not a coincidence that our Scot fathers of confederation imagined some regional model that would allow for the French and the Aboriginals to live in some sort of harmony with the new settlers. There are observations like these salted into the text which, although they beg many revisionist questions, nevertheless remind us of explanations that seem to contain, on their face, a good deal of common sense if not a lot of finesse. The book is clearly written, full of interesting personal anecdotes and, most of all, an obvious love of reading and of teaching. Elizabeth Waterston looks back on her own education and on a life of learning with an admirable openness and sincerity, a commitment to what books can do for us in a culture which she implies is not >paying enough mind to it.= As she puts it: >But books, lyric, singable poetry, snappy, plot-clinching short stories, and nice, fat, readable novels, the true friends of youth, should surely never Abe forgot.@= (JOHN ORANGE) Kevin Longfield. From Fire to Flood: A History of Theatre in Manitoba Signature. 264. $19.95 Kevin Longfield raises large questions at the outset of his historical survey, questions which must resonate loudly in Winnipeg, when he says, >we have not yet produced a great theatre, one that translates the experience of Manitoba to the larger world. We do not have the equivalent of Elizabethan England=s Globe Theatre, or Louis XIV=s Comédie Française, or Dublin=s Abbey Theatre. These were places where playwrights, actors, and a public came together to create art that transcended borders and time. The pieces are there, but how to put them together? Is it even possible that a place such as Manitoba could spawn a great theatre?= No doubt this is a rhetorical question, and perhaps a parochial one. Longfield=s disappointed answer, after a lengthy catalogue of anecdotal history, seems to be >no,= however. His history >attempts to explain how we got to where we are today, why we did not go somewhere else, and how we might make the leap from a respected regional theatre centre to a revered source of greatness.= These are huge expectations, which he believes his 416 letters in canada 2001 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 native province has failed to meet. The main problem, he argues, is that not enough local playwrights get their work produced, and too few local actors are hired to perform on Manitoba stages. This emerges as a major theme of the book, particularly when it reaches the modern period, when Longfield began his playwrighting career. The disappointing progress of the twentieth century must seem cruel to Manitobans, after Winnipeg=s early promise as a theatrical metropolis. Longfield=s work is at its best when relating the glories of the past, from the building of the 1376-seat Princess Theatre in 1883 (it burned down in 1892 during a production of Uncle Tom=s Cabin) to the arrival of C.P. Walker and his wife, Harriet, enterprising theatre folk from Minnesota. After testing local audiences, they built and opened the Walker Theatre in 1907, the most elaborate opera house in the northwest. Though successful at presenting classics from elsewhere, the ingrates refused to produce locally written dramas, dooming the potential for great theatre in Manitoba. Longfield absolves them because they were Americans, who >did not come to Winnipeg until well into their adult years. One cannot blame them, therefore...