an old Canadian play: Marsh Hay

[GLEN NICHOLS]

> Date:          Tue, 20 Aug 1996 00:19:35 EDT
> Reply-to:      Guillermo Verdecchia <72102.447 at COMPUSERVE.COM>
>
> Just last night, I was talking to Peter Hinton (new artistic director at the
> Playwrights Theatre Centre in Vancouver) and bemoaning the fate of most Canadian
> plays: two or three productions and then relegated to the dustbin or archive
> boxes. Our plays have little "weight" because a body of production and criticism
> doesn't build up around them. Nothing accretes to our work. The plays float
> ghostly through our culture. I hope  theatres of all sizes around the country
> will take their cue from Neil Munro and the Shaw Festival and begin to
> re-examine the body of Canadian work that already exists.

How true. Perhaps one tiny area that can give "weight" is the
discussion potential of our association. Many of our members are
professionals and by creating an arena of discussion of new (and
perhaps the not-so-new) plays, we may attract more --by shedding the
(I hope it's not true) aura that our "talk" is just "academic".  It
needs to be that AND more!   This listserv is one very immediate
means of such discussion for an association spread over our vast
territory.  Let's make use of it!

Glen