Drama

102 LETTERS IN CANADA 1992 Drama RICHARD PAUL KNOWLES There were no less than seventy-nine Canadian plays (and one 'rant') published in English in 1992, by a total of sixteen different publishers, including the journals Canadian Theatre Review and Theatrum. At a time when for financial and ideological reasons (nationalism, for example, is on the wane) there are fewer and fewer new Canadian plays produced in our theatres, there is something of an elegiac feel to this boom in publication. This is particulary true because over half of these scripts are published in collections with expressed or implied archaeological or historical concern, while relatively few of the publications introduce new voices or suggest new, adventuresome, or alternative directions in dramaturgy. The majority of the publishers, like the majority of the plays, are from the prairies and Toronto. The Atlantic provinces, where few publishers seem to be interested in drama, are not well represented; they seem to constitute the only region in Canada in which it is significantly more difficult to publish a script than to produce one. Among the most welcome of the year's historical collections is The Hungry Spirit (NeWest, 328, $14.95 paper), Moira Day's edition of selected plays and prose by Elsie Park Gowan. Gowan, a largely neglected contemporary of Gwen Pharis Ringwood, was a major writer for radio and the stage throughout the 19308, 1940s, and 19505 in Alberta. The editor has chosen six scripts out of a possible two hundred written by Gowan, scripts that represent a broad range of styles and genres, from the early prairie reaHsm of Homestead through the anti-war allegory of The Last Caveman to the polemical issue-drama of The High Green Gate. The scripts reveal a thoroughly competent professionalism, combined with an early liberal feminism that is perhaps at its most moving in The Hungry 'Spirit, the play that lends its title to the volume. The collection includes a spirited but scholarly introduction by the editor, together with interview material on each play, two essays by Gowan, and a useful bibliography. From the other end of the country comes Helen Peters's scholarly edition of The Plays of Codeo (Peter Lang, 446), the only plays from Atlantic Canada to appear in print in 1992, published, interestingly, in New York. Although the plays themselves vary in quality and interest, the appearance of this collection is quite possibly the most significant publishing event of the year in Canadian. theatre, because it sets a precedent and provides a model for the schola.rly editing and publication of Canadian plays, particularly collective creations. Peters has collected and edited five plays produced by the Newfoundland collective, drawing on a variety of manuscript and taped sources as well as consultations DRAMA 103 with the creators. She has outlined her principles and documented her variants in an introductory 'Note on the Text' and an appended 'Textual Apparatus/ in addition to which she provides musical 'scores for the songs and an album of production photographs. The volume is introduced by the editor with a useful article on the history, processes, and politics of the company, concluding with an intriguing comparison between the plays of cooeo and the carnivalesque as represented by Bahktin's Rabelais. The playscripts themselves are indeed a heterogeneous, carnivalesque assemblage of creative anarchy, and anyone who has seen cooeo live or on television will be familiar with their style. Scenes stand out in the mind more than do whole plays, scenes such as the clever parody of The Fann Show in Sickness, Death, and Beyond the Grave, or my personal favourite, the composite parody of Catholicism and television nature specials in the 'Sisters of the Silver Scalpel' sequence of Would You Like to Smell My ... Pocket Crumbs? The publication of these plays as a group reveals surprising consistency m the company's work from its earliest days, if not a great deal of dramahIrgical development. The collection as a whole is most surprising, perhaps, in that shows such as Das Capital and Pocket" Crumbs? stand up so well beside the better-known Cod on a Stick and Sickness} Death and Beyond the Grave. Theatre Passe Muraille is also represented by...