CANDRAMA and a Question

[Alastair M. Wallis Jarvis]

        Re: The very possibility of interaction across the Quebec border

        I'd like to mention an anomaly which took place here in Halifax a
few years ago.

        Following on the success of the very successful translation of _Les
Belles Soeurs_ and other Quebecois scripts into Glaswegian dialect, I led
a project which undertook a translation of Tremblay's _A toi pour
toujours, ta Marie-Lou_ into a Cape Breton dialect. A workshop production
was presented at the Eastern Front Theatre's On the Waterfront Festival
two years ago, and a full production of it is hopefully somewhere in the
near future. The dialects here on the east coast are some of the most
distinct in Canada and I have found that the translation manages to
maintain some of the energy and colour of the original joual, lost in the
more "standard" Canadian translations. Locating the play in this region
revealed strong resonances in the play to this community, or so I thought
at any rate. It also enabled me as a director to move beyond the
conventions of realism and magic realism which as has been pointed out
dominate English Canadian theatre.

        Although Guillermo writes that he doesn't think there are *many*
English-Canadian theatre-makers who are "working in the manner of or
inspired directly by, or even imitating the work of for ex. Robert
Lepage," it may be of interest to note that

*And herein lies an example of Candrama's new mandate (?)*

there are a few Canadian practitioners entering the profession
(undoubtably some already established in the profession) who are
interested in exploring theatre in a less realistic vein than is perhaps
currently followed in English Canada and who take the theatre in Quebec as
their inspiration/model. There are practitioners in Canada who *are*
interested in pursuing the same questions as Lepage (Foreman and Wilson
too for that matter).

Also:   Following the recent announcement of the Herman Voaden
competition, it might be interesting to find out if a direct line can be
drawn from Voaden to Lepage. Anybody have any thoughts on this?


Best,

Alastair Jarvis
Theatre and Contemporary Studies
University of King's College
Halifax, Nova Scotia

> While I think there is generally much respect in English-Canada
> professional theatre circles for the work that comes from Quebecois
> I don't think
> there are many theatre-makers (In English Canada) working in the manner
> of or inspired directly by, or even imitating the work of for ex. Robert
> Lepage. There are many reasons for this including logistical, structural
>
> again, Lepage, his work does not influence us directly because we are
> pursuing different questions, interested in different ideas. An analogous
> question might be what influence does Richard Foreman or Robert Wilson (or