Ten Best

[Reid Gilbert]

I want to underline Ric's comments regarding the "Ten Best" poll.  I haven't
replied for precisely Ric's reasons: that is, I do not find such categories
possible in any reasonable sense, nor a very good idea were they possible.
At the ACTR conference in Victoria a number of years ago, we first debated
the issue of canon, of what could be called "representative," or "best," or
"worth putting in an anthology."   It was a lively debate because the issues
are political as well as intellectual.  In Canada, the issue of canon must be
fraught: how do we determine that a play performed in a major regional
playhouse is one of "the best" when so few of us have seen another play shown
in a small venue for a particular audience? Perhaps the play unknown to so
many is, in fact, "better" than the play known to so many. And, in order to
answer that question, we would first have to determine what we mean by
"better" and "best."  "Better" in whose terms, or for what agenda?

The problem in answering these questions is not (as some would argue) only a
result of a Postmodern stasis.  It is, in fact, an active resistance based in
a refusal to assume homogeneity.  The result may appear as a lack of
interest, or an artificial intellectual complication of a simple contest, but
it is actually the result of one's simply not being able to determine what
would, in the very act of its determination, legitimize the particular
definition used to begin the circular process.   As George says in __Who's
Afraid of Virginia Woolf?__: "Better, best, bested."


Reid Gilbert