Solo Performance ed. by Jenn Stephenson (review)

Solo performance has occupied a remarkable place in Canadian theatre, and it is therefore timely that the series Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English is winding up its successful run with a collection of critical essays on monodrama. Jenn Stephenson (Queen’s, Kingston) is well placed to be the editor of the twentieth volume in the series, entitled Solo Performance. She is the author of the recently published monograph Performing Autobiography (2012) and also contributes one of the reprints in this volume, focusing in her short article on the self-performances of Vancouver-based T.J. Dawe at fringe festivals, a particularly fecund site for solo shows.

The book collates reprints of sixteen essays (one of them newly translated into English) with two commissioned articles, and brings together established scholars of Canadian theatre (including Diane Bessai, Sherrill Grace, Ric Knowles, Craig Walker) with relatively new voices (Hourig Attarian, Jill Carter, Katherine McLeod), as well as a handful of scholars who reside outside of Canada (Helen Gilbert, Jenn Harvie, Jacqueline Lo). A few contributors are solo dramatists themselves (David Bateman, Kedrick James, David Watmough).

Stephenson’s compilation of critical essays does not offer a history or generic explanation of Canadian solo performance, which is a lacuna, since the format is arguably one of the most important historical impulses in the development of theatre in Canada’s vast geographical and cultural space. Already in the early twentieth century, Sarah Bernhardt’s tours throughout Canada, to give just one example, offered local communities very successful opportunities to experience the genre live, while at the same time drawing people to the theatre who otherwise would never be exposed to live theatre. One can easily argue that three quarters of Canada’s playwrights launched their career somehow with a successful monologue. The list includes celebrities like Mazumdar, Griffiths, Tremblay, and Lepage and continues in more recent times with artists like Djanet Sears, Elyne Quan, Michael Healy, and Vern Thiessen. A good number of these are referred to on the pages of the volume, though the criticism collected here focuses on a relatively small sample of playwrights/performers. Names such as Robert Lepage, Guillermo Verdecchia, Monique Mojica, Daniel MacIvor, Linda Griffiths, Michael Cook, and Wendy Lill attract multiple approaches. In spite of this narrow sampling, the diversity in scholarly approaches is one of the volume’s merits, and I can well imagine its profitable use in research and teaching. The bringing together of these articles certainly breaks the monologic format of academic writing. Stephenson’s compilation presents a rich dialogue on the mono performance in Canada (though an index at the end of the volume would surely help in furthering this dialogue).

While Quebec theatre is not within the scope of the collection, it still makes it haphazardly into the volume. Renate Usmiani’s contribution places the Quebecois monologue firmly within the Canadian tradition of solo performance, with her focus on Antonine Maillet, Gratien Gélinas, and Michel Tremblay. Aleksander Dundjerovic’s analysis of Lepage’s solo work continues this enlarged scope. The translation of Johanne Bénard’s review, originally published in Jeu, of MacIvor’s 1991 Toronto production of House, makes francophone response to English Canadian theatre accessible to an English audience, a practice which merits follow-up. However, the quasi-exclusive English consideration does omit important theatre monologues in recent years. There is little doubt that Michel M. Bouchard’s Tale of Teeka (1992) and Evelyne de la Chenelière’s Bashir Lazhar (2002) – plays that are performed in multiple productions throughout English Canada – are as significant as Lepage’s monodramas in terms of national and international recognition. Another striking absence is puppeteer Ronnie Burkett, a giant in Canada’s solo landscape.

Reading through the volume, I wondered what a similar collection would look like for German, Dutch, or French theatre. Solo theatre – with its huge dependence on words – is decidedly more popular in the North American tradition. In one of the articles that dives into the more theoretical aspects of the genre, particularly its...