Theatre

This collective history of the groundbreaking Toronto theatre is a scrapbook of memories, mistakes, and milestones.

How dull plays are killing theatre and what we can do about it. Had I become disenchanted with the form I had once fallen so madly in love with as a pubescent, pimple-faced suburban homo with braces? Maybe theatre was like an all-consuming high school infatuation that now, ten years later, I saw as the closeted balding guy with a beer gut he’d become. There were of course those rare moments of transcendencethat kept me coming back. But why did they come so few and far between? A lot of plays are dull. And one dull play, it seems, can turn us off theatre for good. Playwright and theatre director Jordan Tannahill takes in the spectrum of English-language drama – from the flashiest of Broadway spectacles to productions mounted in scrappy storefront theatres – to consider where lifeless plays come from and why they persist. Having travelled the globe talking to theatre artists, critics, passionate patrons and the theatrically disillusioned, Tannahill addresses what he considers the culture of ‘risk aversion’ paralyzing the form. Theatre of the Unimpressed is Tannahill’s wry and revelatory personal reckoning with the discipline he’s dedicated his life to, and a roadmap for a vital twenty-first-century theatre – one that apprehends the value of ‘liveness’ in our mediated age and the necessity for artistic risk and its attendant failures. In considering dramaturgy, programming and alternative models for producing, Tannahill aims to turn theatre from an obligation to a destination. ‘[Tannahill is] the poster child of a new generation of (theatre? film? dance?) artists for whom "interdisciplinary" is not a buzzword, but a way of life.’ —J. Kelly Nestruck, Globe and Mail ‘Jordan is one of the most talented and exciting playwrights in the country, and he will be a force to be reckoned with for years to come.’ —Nicolas Billon, Governor General's Award–winning playwright (Fault Lines)

Despite a recent increase in the productivity and popularity of Indigenous playwrights in Canada, most critical and academic attention has been devoted to the work of male dramatists, leaving female writers on the margins. In Indigenous Women’s Theatre in Canada, Sarah MacKenzie addresses this critical gap by focusing on plays by Indigenous women written and produced in the socio-cultural milieux of twentieth and twenty-first century Canada. Closely analyzing dramatic texts by Monique Mojica, Marie Clements, and Yvette Nolan, MacKenzie explores representations of gendered colonialist violence in order to determine the varying ways in which these representations are employed subversively and informatively by Indigenous women. These plays provide an avenue for individual and potential cultural healing by deconstructing some of the harmful ideological work performed by colonial misrepresentations of Indigeneity and demonstrate the strength and persistence of Indigenous women, offering a space in which decolonial futurisms can be envisioned. In this unique work, MacKenzie suggests that colonialist misrepresentations of Indigenous women have served to perpetuate demeaning stereotypes, justifying devaluation of and violence against Indigenous women. Most significantly, however, she argues that resistant representations in Indigenous women’s dramatic writing and production work in direct opposition to such representational and manifest violence.

In this newly revised second edition, veteran stage designers and technical directors Dennis Dorn and Mark Shanda introduce industry-standard drafting and designing practices with step-by-step discussions, illustrations, worksheets, and problems to help students develop and refine drafting and other related skills needed for entertainment set production work. By incorporating the foundational principles of both hand- and computer-drafting approaches throughout the entire book, the authors illustrate how to create clear and detailed drawings that advance the production process. Early chapters focus on the basics of geometric constructions, orthographic techniques, soft-line sketching applications, lettering, and dimensioning. Later chapters discuss real-life applications of production drawing and ancillary skills such as time and material estimation and shop-drawing nomenclature. Two chapters detail a series of design and shop drawings required to mount a specific design project, providing a guided path through both phases of the design/construction process. Most chapters conclude with one or more worksheets or problems that provide readers with an opportunity to test their understanding of the material presented. The authors' discussion of universal CAD principles throughout the manuscript provides a valuable foundation that can be used in any computer-based design, regardless of the software. Dorn and Shanda treat the computer as another drawing tool, like the pencil or T-square, but one that can help a knowledgeable drafter potentially increase personal productivity and accuracy when compared to traditional hand-drafting techniques. Drafting for the Theatre, second edition assembles in one book all the principal types of drawings, techniques, and conventional wisdom necessary for the production of scenic drafting, design, and shop drawings. It is richly illustrated with numerous production examples and is fully indexed to assist students and technicians in finding important information. It is structured to support a college-level course in drafting, but will also serve as a handy reference for the working theatre professional.

Redefining Theatre Communities explores the interplay between contemporary theatre and communities. It considers the aesthetic, social and cultural aspects of community-conscious theatre-making. It also reflects on transformations in structural, textual and theatrical conventions, and explores changing modes of production and spectatorship.

If the brain is the theatre, consciousness is the play. But who or what controls what we watch and how we watch it? In Theatre of the Mind Jay Ingram, whose past scientific investigations include the properties of honey on toast and the complexities of the barmaid's brain, tackles one of the most controversial of subjects: consciousness. Scientists have long tried to map our brains and understand how it is that we think and are self-aware, but what do we really know? Any discussion of the brain raises more questions than answers, and Ingram illuminates some of the most perplexing ones: What happens in our minds when we're driving and we suddenly realize that we don't remember the last few miles of highway? How do we remember images, sounds, and aromas from our past so vividly, and why do we often recreate them so differently in our dreams? Ingram's latest book is a mind-bending experience, a cerebral, stylish ride through the history, philosophy, and science of the brain and the search for the discovery of the self.

Newly adapted for the Anglophone reader, this is an excellent translation of Hans-Thies Lehmann’s groundbreaking study of the new theatre forms that have developed since the late 1960s, which has become a key reference point in international discussions of contemporary theatre. In looking at the developments since the late 1960s, Lehmann considers them in relation to dramatic theory and theatre history, as an inventive response to the emergence of new technologies, and as an historical shift from a text-based culture to a new media age of image and sound. Engaging with theoreticians of 'drama' from Aristotle and Brecht, to Barthes and Schechner, the book analyzes the work of recent experimental theatre practitioners such as Robert Wilson, Tadeusz Kantor, Heiner Müller, the Wooster Group, Needcompany and Societas Raffaello Sanzio. Illustrated by a wealth of practical examples, and with an introduction by Karen Jürs-Munby providing useful theoretical and artistic contexts for the book, Postdramatic Theatre is an historical survey expertly combined with a unique theoretical approach which guides the reader through this new theatre landscape.

"Brings together a diverse range of voices and perspectives, appropriately conveying the sense of scholars and artists engaged in ongoing debate about a developing form. ... It is a style of performance I ahve had little direct experience with but the book made me want to hear and see more."--Jackie Smart for Theatre Research International.