Drama

372 LEITERS IN CANADA 1983 a peine un langage Ie temps des mots Ie temps d'une blessure il me taut les distraire ces mots durcis Autarcie courageuse aussi dans La Mise en chair (Le NoroH) de Jean-Yves Theberge. Point d'adolescence ici, mais determination tenace: J'arrive pour nous liberer de taus les pecMs de Chiniquy sur ton ventre et mon dos laves par Ie printemps comme coule I'acer saccharum seve que j'appelle vagin varech Ollvert SUI l'infini de la main ala bouche II Ya un peu trop de citations dans la Mise en chair, Ie desir de s'appuyer sur les autres (Gatien Lapointe, Hubert Aquin, Andre Langevin). Mais (qu'importe la sagesse des autres?) on a envie de secouer les oripeaux claquant au vent et d'exiger de Theberge moins de collage-savoir, plus de risques et de travail individuels. Ce qui se degage de 1983 etait contenu en filigrane dans les remarques de Francceur (Lettres quebecoises, Printemps 1984). La poesie quebecoise a Ie desir et Ie besoin de s'oxygener. II est des pulsions planetaires auxquelles on ne saurait etre ni aveugle, ni sourd. Le texte love sur lui-meme a fait son temps, I'histoire est it la porte. Nul ne raura mieux per~u, ni vecu la distance entre ces deux poles que Claude Beausoleil avec Unecertainefin de siecle. On dirait que la nouvelle ecriture a fait ses comptes et que ses tenants ont boucle une longue arabesque pour finalement aboutir au Iyrisme, aux promesses du futur simple. Nous reviendrons peut-etre comme des Nelligan et comme des rocks lents mais la modernite ne sera pas comme la femme revee de Beaudelaire, 'ni tout it faitla meme, ni tout afait une autre.' Drama JOHN H. ASTINGTON If no major play appeared in print during 1983 there were some satisfying and appealing achievements among a very varied crop, including two new scripts by George Walker, new plays by James Reaney and Margaret DRAMA 373 Hollingsworth, an anthology of documentaries from the prairies, Sherman Snukal's much-produced Talking Dirty, and the Chalmers Award winner for 1982, Anne Chislett's Quiet in the Land. Eighty-five percent of about forty plays published dUling the year are the product of Playwrights Canada; if one adds to the total children's plays - an important and commendable part of the enterprise of that organization - the figure rises to ninety percent. Such an impressive accomplishment evidently rests on a fairly eclectic approach to selection, with the result that though the best of the plays published are very good the worst are quite awful. One of the criteria applied, that the play must have received a professional production, can mean anything from a staging at Toronto's Tarragon or Vancouver's New Play Centre to obscure productions by fit-up stock companies in cottage country. Though most plays published are relatively recent, some are ten or more years old, with no sign that they have received a production since their first; some plays may never have been seen on stage in Canada, having had their unique production in the United States or elsewhere. These remarks are not made in the spirit of complaint: Playwrights Canada is performing a vitally important task which deserves strong support. It is simply that much of what they produce is theatrical ephemera, of interestin only a few years to a small group of collectors and cultural historians. What will the latter make ofa year which saw plays on, predictably, Susanna Moodie, but also Colette, Richard III, and St Augustine? The last should rank as overdue theatrical revenge, but the revenge exacted, alas, is largely at the expense of the audience. These plays come in the company of melodramas of teenage life, farces, imitations in the styles of Albee, Williams, and the well-made play, all destined, I hope, for a short career in the playhouses and then to be read only by the hardy and the earnest. They may be depressing literary products but they are an encouraging indicator for the theatre, which when in health has a voracious appetite for rubbish. To pass to the positive achievements of dramatic writing during...