Theatrical Touring and Founding in North America

Abstract

This is a stimulating collection of essays about the highminded and lowminded princ iples and working methods which have characterised some of the salient developments in North American theatre history from the 1880s to the present. Seven of the papers come from the International Federation for Theatre Research conference held in Toronto in 1979. A further six supplementary papers were either delivered at other conferences or written specially for this volume. To the best of my knowledge this is the first scholarly book to engage in even a miscellaneous analytica l history of theatre in both Canada and the United States. Indeed I wish that the comparative approach had been pursued more fully; for apart from Len Conolly’s cogent but alas all too brief editor ial introduction in combination with his useful concluding bibl iographical survey, there is no paper concerned chiefly with how and to what ends the two cultures have interacted theatrically. This invigorating respons ib ility is left to the readers’ powers of discernment. For Canad ian readers in particular the conclusions are not always happy ones; though they are indeed the ones which we have long schooled ourselves to tolerate. Generation after generation, all across the country, in the theatre as in the other arts, we have been forced to raise up the roof beams with a clarion cry so as to be heard above the infernal din created not only by the Americans but also, of course, by the British and the French.