Women on the Canadian Stage: The Legacy of Hrotsvit ed. by Rita Much (review)

194 LEITERS IN CANADA 1992 prove crucial to any effective intervention in and transformation of the institution of motherhood. (CHRISTY CARLSON) Rita Much, editor. Womell 011 the Canadian Stage: The Legacy of Hrotsvit Blizzard Publishing 1992. 133. $16.95 paper Rita Much's introduction to this important collection of articles by female academics and playwrights promotes it as an attempt 'to offer an alternative [non-masculine] critical paradigm for assessing theatre created by women ... to contribute to the way the drama of Canada's women playwrights is Ndiscussed, perceived and understood.'" While it does succeed in offering a general framework, major tensions become apparent in the problematic relationship between representing women and women practising the playwright's crait. H the purpose is to create a woman's view of Canadian women's drama, then the collection suffers from not setting up a critical framework which permits some agreed-upon definitions needed to facilitate this discussion. For example, 'feminist theatre' becomes relatively meaningless, since the many different brands of feminisms which Much lists, 'materialist,liberal, cultural or radical,' do not all interrogate patriarchal institutions. In this regard it is helpful to read Heather Jones' 'Connecting Issues: Theorizing English-Canadian Women's Drama,' which contains a clearly articulated poststructuralist position, and informs other 'feminist critics of the need to position ourselves explicitly ... with regard to our gender politics and in relation to women's discourses generally,' Ironically, her particular quarrel is with critics who make an unspoken distinction 'between feminist drama and women's playwriting in general,' since she wishes to include earlier playwrights such as Elizabeth Lanesford Cushing, whose Esther (1838) has a 'feminist effect' despite its unavoidably patriarchal Christjan framework. Jones's careful explanation of discourse theory with the variety of places it offers for feminist resistance defines 'feminism .,. [as] denot[ing] the various power/resistance strategies voiced by women only and rooted in women's experience.' My review groups the articles according to their discernible gender politics. Articles which foreground such strategies include 'Critical Revisions: Ann-Marie MacDonald's Goodnight, Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet),' where Ann Wilson personalizes her identification with the oppressed female academic and concludes that MacDonald's very clever intertextual work is a 'drama of empowerment' in its playful but clearly enunciated lesbian, postcolonial critique. Also, Susan Bennett's 'The Occupation of Wendy Lin: Canadian Women's Voices' names the implied white female middle-class audience. In three Lill plays, we participate in the processes whereby women face the limitations curtailing their full entry into public HUMANITIES 195 or creative endeavours, and in The Occupation ofHeather Rose, we are also confronted with 'our own implication in the oppressive institutions of our dominant cultural practice.' Another very powerful article, by Djanet Sears, 'Naming Names: Black Women Playwrights in Canada,' explicitly confronts white women's irrational fears of reverse racism. Written from the 'unique vantage point of race and gender' which 'Black and female [has] in a White maledominated society,' Sears disrupts the male narrative by breaking up her incisive political analysis with insertions of all the names and titles of plays by Canadian women of colour. In this way, as in Black women's theatre, she 'heighten[s1 language ... with [her] own ... rhythm,' and sets up 'more complex' female resonances between the text and the play titles in ways which demand new responses. Lucie Robert's 'Changing the Subject: A Reading of Contemporary Quebec Feminist Drama' offers a similarly acute gender analysis as she documents the emergent radical feminist theatre of the 19708, when demarcation between audience and performer was unclear and women spoke out without worrying about the aesthetics of performance. These experimental collective 'shows' have given way to the more polished depoliticized 'plays' of today. Citing the numerous 'New Age' plays about women artists (51), Robert remarks on the loss of historical deconstruction accompanying this cooption to a non-referential imaginary stage. Her conclusion that this J new institutionalized feminist playwriting' puts theatrical space ahead of its audience relationship is borne out by Natalie Rewa's Women's Art: Jovette Marchessault and Emily Carr,' which effectively recreates one of these New Age productions, Le voyage magnifique d'Emily Carr, where the complexly layered representation of...