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<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2>The following review of <EM>Establishing Our
Boundaries: English-Canadian Theatre Criticism </EM>was published in the Winter
2000 issue of <EM>Critics Quarterly</EM>, the Newsletter of the American Theatre
Critics Association. It was written by Carol Douglass, the editor of <EM>Critics
Quarterly</EM>.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2>When we, as critics, search out and read books
on theater criticism--books by G.B. Shaw, Irving Wardle, Frank Rich, John Lahr
for example--it's often part of a studious effort to perfect our own craft by
analyzing and absorbing exceptionally good writing and sound thinking. Likewise
books on the theater itself, such as those by Robert Brustein and Peter Brook,
are part of our ongoing education.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2>What makes <EM>Establishing Our Boundaries:
English-Canadian Theatre Criticism</EM>, edited by Anton Wagner, singular is
that it is not principally about either writing style or theater strictly as
artistic expression. Rather, it is a history of the role theater criticism has
played over the past 150 years in the development of Canada's indigenous
theater.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2>Wagner--dramaturge, television producer and
director, academic and editor--has collected 16 brilliant, analytical essays,
adding two of his own, as well as an introductory essay. From the writing of
such as theater historian Patrick O'Neill, theater scholar Ira A. Levine and
McGill University theater studies professor Denis Salter come a detailed,
illuminating chronicle of both theater criticism and Canadian theater
itself.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2>Beginning with O'Neill's study of theater
criticism in Halifax and Toronto, 1826-1857, during which time journalism about
the theater evolved from crass puffery to considered commentary--rudimentary as
it sometimes was--<EM>Establishing Our Boundaries </EM>leads the reader through
1998. Central to this evaluative history are the writings of individual critics.
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2>Levine devotes his essay, "The Critic as
Cultural Nationalist," to the study of critic Don Rubin, a New Yorker who
moved to Canada and who developed, in Levine's words, "a vision of the
critic as an active participant in the nurturing of talented artists that would
eventually determine and characterize his distinctive contribution to the
contemporary Canadian theatre."</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2>Essayists Jennifer Harvie and Richard Paul
Knowles analyze critic Herbert Whittaker's espousal of national culture and
national spirit; Salter sheds light on the role critic H.W. Charlesworth played
in Canadian cultural nationalism. <EM>Boundaries</EM> is a uniquely informing,
always interesting, book on a universal subject: cultural identity and the
forces that form and are influenced by it.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2><EM>Establishing Our Boundaries:
English-Canadian Theatre Criticism</EM>, Ed. by Anton Wagner, c. 1999,
University of Toronto Press <BR></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>