Drama

POESIE 61 Ainsi, Labine procede a un renversement semantique et milite en faveur d'une epidemie sinon heureuse a tout Ie moins porteuse d'espoir. Hugues Corriveau prend Ie pari d'une certaine evidence poetique dans son desir d'Apprendre a vivre (les Herbes Rouges, 93). Pour ce poete, apprendre a vivre, c'est apprendre a aimer. De fait, Ie corps, Ie desir et I'amour representent les figures majeures, obsedantes du livre. Celles-ci appellent des motifs subsidiaires, notamment les origines (Ie pere, la mere), et la dialectique du dedans/dehors. De plus, Corriveau n'a de cesse qu'll veuille etablir, comme dans ses recueils precedents d'ailleurs, des rapports entre 'Ie fait d'aimer' et Ie monde. Le premier poeme du recueil marque ce rapport ('juste a te voir et Ie monde') alors que Ie dernier fait mention de 'l'offre du monde.' Dans Apprendre avivre, les relations amoureuses evoluent sur la scene d'un monde OU 'l'evidence ... d'aimer' tend a 'donner aux choses du monde I l'exactitude de leur forme.' Quatre-vingts poemes decoupes en vers, tous titres, participent a cette entreprise qu'inaugure un vers d'Aragon: 'Le temps d'apprendre a vivre il est deja trop tard.' Corriveau ne cherche-t-il pas a prendre Ie contre-pied de cet apophtegme, en disant plutot: Ie temps d'apprendre a aimer, il ne saurait etre trop tard? Drama JERRY WASSERMAN Canadian drama got a big boost in 1988 from the arrival of Blizzard Publishing, an ambitious new Winnipeg press devoted to the publication of Canadian plays. It ended the year with an impressive list of five new plays and hoped at least to match that number in 1989. If novice Blizzard was the publisher of the year, veteran George F. Walker was the playwright. Four of his plays saw print, three of them for the first time. Walker's Nothing Sacred dominated theatre and drama awards in English Canada and made major breakthroughs into the American regional market with productions from Los Angeles to Washington. Other familiar names returning in 1988 included Allan Stratton, Margaret Hollingsworth, and Dennis Foon, all with multiple plays. Newcomers Tomson Highway, Maureen Hunter, and Robert Fothergill gave cause for excitement. Frank Moher's latest play augmented his growing reputation as a major writer. Technically and stylistically not a lot of new ground was broken. The most experimental work was confined to unproduced one-acts (in Hollingsworth's collection and a special drama edition of Quarry). The fourth wall became less and less evident as characters in a number of 62 LEITERS IN CANADA 1988 plays addressed the audience directly. Highway and Moher found theatrically inventive ways to dramatize the interpenetration of the spiritual and secular; Foon vivified the harsh social realities of his plays for young people by using mask and puppetry. But anglophone Canadian playwrights mostly seemed content to ring minor changes on familiar representational styles and linear structures. Familiar too was the primary dramatic territory of this year's plays, the family, especially the parent-child axis. All but one of the five Blizzard plays (nicely designed but sloppily printed) had their origins in Winnipeg. The fifth had its second production there. This narrowly regional bias would appear to guarantee a rather uneven roster, which indeed was the case. Two or three of the plays should have some further life outside Manitoba. But if for nothing else, Blizzard can be thanked for having given national exposure to Maureen Hunter. Hunter's Footprints on the Moon (94, $6.95) is the kind of play Margaret Laurence might have written if she had been a playwright in the 19805. It's a slice of small-town prairie realism, dramatically straightforward but emotionally complex. Joanie, the thirty-five-year-old main character, has been abandoned by her more sophisticated husband for the lure of Toronto. She has an unhappy on-again, off-again sexual relationship with Dunc, the local lady-killer. She has a best friend, Beryl, the blowsy hostess at the hotel cocktail lounge, who prizes 'Chocolate cake. Chocolate brownies. Chocolate chip cookies. And men. In that order.' Joanie's obsession is her teenage daughter, Carol-Ann...