Announcement from ECW Press

[Ric Knowles]

ECW PRESS is proud to announce the release of a new book by
Ric Knowles (former Chair of Drama and a founding member of the
Centre for Cultural Studies at the University of Guelph):
"The Theatre of Form and the Production of Meaning:
Contemporary Canadian Dramaturgies."

How do dramatic forms shape social formations? This first book-
length study of Canadian dramatic structures asks this question of
an extraordinarily wide range of contemporary plays and
playwrights, from Michael Cook and David French, through George
F. Walker, Judith Thompson, and Sally Clark, to Monique Mojica,
John Mighton, and feminist performance art. Knowles begins with a
look at inherited naturalistic and modernist forms based,
respectively, on time and space. He then uses this division to
extend his inquiry first into post-naturalist forms of collective and
collaborative creations, community plays, and historical meta-
dramas; and then into post-modernist structures of environmental
theatre and dialogic monologue. The book concludes with a brief
epilogue on the structures of spacetime, as Canadian theatre
moves "toward a quantum dramaturgy."

Skip Shand, Professor of English and Drama Studies at York
University, describes "The Theatre of Form" as "a welcome study of
the cultural work inherent in contemporary Canadian dramaturgies,
carried out by a prolific and energetic materialist scholar whose
practical knowledge and theorized judgement about theatre in
Canada are arguably without equal. This is theatre scholarship
which is socially engaged in the best possible way."


Look for "The Theatre of Form" at your local bookstore, or ask the
store to order it for you if you don't see it on the shelves (you can tell them that the
 ISBN is 1-55022-399-2 and that ECW books are distributed by General with sales
 representation by the LPG Group). List price: $19.95.
Desk and review copies are available directly from ECW PRESS. Telephone
Holly Potter or Francesca LoDico at: (514) 398-8326, or email:
france at zoo.net.


Holly Potter
Project Manager
ECW PRESS
3483 rue Peel, Suite 23
Montreal, QC
H3A 1W8
Tel. (514) 398-8326; FAX (514) 398-8220
website: www.ecw.ca/press