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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Stephen Johnson's review of <EM>Establishing Our
Boundaries: English-Canadian Theatre Criticism</EM> appeared in "Letters in
Canada: 1999," <EM>University of Toronto Quarterly</EM> 70:1, Winter 2000/2001,
pp. 405-407.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Stephen writes in part that:</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>"The role of the theatre critic may be the most
difficult to define...This book historicizes both their work and our opinion,
delineating a tradition of theatre criticism in this country: that the pressure
to sell papers affected the character of criticism no more or less in early
nineteenth-century Halifax than in late millennial Toronto; that advocacy on
behalf of a local (or national) culture has always battled with the forces of a
North American 'show' business; and, from Joseph Howe to Ray Conlogue, that
there has always been a divisive tension between critic's own need to
strike a specific and unchanging aesthetic position, and the pressure to allow
for artistic freedom and communication between diverse cultures within the
community...Anton Wagner has bought together some of this country's best theatre
scholars...This will be an important work to anyone with an interest in Canadian
theatre, and Canadian culture in general." <BR></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>