Feminist Theaters in the U.S.A.: Staging Women's Experience by Charlotte Canning (review)

Book Reviews 715 I was closely involved, as director. with Erika Ritter's early plays. In Playwriting Women, Zimmerman quotes Riner on her Toronto professional debUl at the Toronto Free Theatre, "My own entry ... was comparatively easy and attended by much encouragement " (18). Well, I was there, and that's certainly not how I remember it. The "lruth" is far more complicated, and what is missing from Zimmerman's investigation is the impetus to probe more deeply into the admittedly complex conditions of theatrcmaking in Canada. Zimmerman is particularly inconsistent on the subject of directors and directing. Sometimes she mentions the name of the director of a particular premiere production, and sometimes, for no apparent reason, she doesn't. Sometimes she seems to be suggesting that certain productions directed themselves, which is, unfortunately, a rather common misconception among scholars of dramatic literature. She gives very little attention at all to the issue of who else besides the playwright is occasionally involved in or responsible for making a playa success in production. At one pOint, she states that Judith Thompson feels she has virtually directed all of the premiere productions of her plays, but Zimmerman shies away from examining the implications of such a statement . She tells the story of Anne Chislett's play Yankee Notions, workshopped at Stratford in 1985, under John Hirsch's artistic directorship, and then vetoed for full production by his successor, John Neville, even though his refusal to stage it meant the Festival had to return the $80,000 OAC grant. She mentions that Margaret Hollingsworth "also had to shelve a play which was intended for Stratford" (175). She doesn't explain, or even speculate, any further, however, missing an opportunity to taik about John Neville's deplorable record for fostering Ca.nadian playwriting at Stratford. Again, [ am well aware that in expressing such objections I am calling for the book I would like to see, rather than the book Zimmerman has written, and that it is not quite fair to criticize her for privileging the playwright, and the playwriting process, which is, after all, what she set out to do. But, all of us who are working in the field of Canadian theatre research know that there are still great gaps - some amounting to chasmsin our knowledge and understanding of our production history. Every book that involves the practice of theatre in Canada - in whatever form - is a crucial opportunity for bridge building. PAULA SPERDAKOS, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO AT SCARBOROUGH CHARLOTTE CANNING. Feminist Theaters in the U.S.A.: Staging Women's Experience. London and New York: Routledge 1996. Pp. x, 271, illustrated. $16.95 (PB). In October of 1990, a multiracial show entitled Please Listen To Me was staged at a conference held to focus national attention on domestic violence. Many of the artists involved were battered women. One of the panicipants laler reported that the impact of this piece was profound, not only for the spectators, but also, crucially, for the perfonners : "I feel if you are all letting me tell everyone, then what happened to me must have 716 Book Reviews been wrong" (172). The remarkable thing about this slory, and about Canning's history of American feminist theatre as a whole, is that it forces us to consider a theatrical mcivement in the context of activism for social change, and it rapidly becomes difficult to identify where one begins and the other leaves off. If we read this book from the perspective of theatre history, then that interconnectedness was at once feminist theatre's great strength, but also its liability. As debates and dissension began to surface in the feminist movement, most particularly around American feminism's troubled racial politics, some 160 grassroots feminisI theatres founded in the United States after 1968 dwindled down to the handful that now remains in 1996. But, that's the theatre historian talking. From the perspective of social activism, theatre for over two decades constituted an extraordinary forum in which debates launched around gender, sexuality, reproduction, race, domestic violence , and matriarchy permanently transformed the American landscape. Deeply trou" bling issues which had been relegated to the anguished isolation of private life were jettisoned into public...