athe (actr)

[Denis Salter]

Colleagues:
 
The thought of ACTR transforming itself into a ghettoised special
forum dependent on/part of/assimilable within, ATHE strikes me as
repugnant; I don't want Jesse Helms telling me that I can't have
any scholarly exchanges with, say, Cuban intellectuals.  NAFTA
indeed--and the pomo/poco horrors of getting our identity 'blended'
as Bafflegab Ameruhcan Wannabee Brian used to say (and he's back!).
Theatre studies are marginal, *Canadian* theatre studies--within and
without the discourse of nation--are marginal again, all of which
means that ACTR is vulnerable to appropriation, both from larger
scholarly organisations within Canada, as part of the current
exercise in academic downsizing, and, now, from without, from the
US of A.  However, what I thought Ric was in fact proposing was that
ACTR remain intact, inviolable as ACTR *and* that it consider
setting up a special forum in ATHE as a colonising outpost.  Now this
sounds potentially feasible and interesting.  But, from my experience
in other umbrella organisations, that, too, is a strategy full of
risks--not just ghettoisation but the real possibility that we find
ourselves, as a hardy group of Canuck theatre specialists, talking
among ourselves, but in Dallas, or Pittsburgh, or L.A. or other
places; why not just stay at home as we do now?  The chance of other
scholars turning up and getting involved is about as iffy as
Jacques Parizeau hoisting a pint or three with Preston Manning.
Good w/e, all . . . Denis