Herman Voaden, Canadian Playwright
10:00 a.m., Monday, Sept. 14, 2009
Corley Auditorium in Webster Hall
Admission: free

This presentation examines the career of the pioneering Canadian playwright and director Herman Voaden, whose drama Emily Carr receives its American premiere at Missouri Southern State University. Inspired by painters such as Emily Carr and the Group of Seven, Voaden sought to dramatize the Canadian landscape on stage and to create a Canadian culture that would reflect the vision and beauty of a new people in a new land. He was also instrumental in the Canada-wide organizing and lobbying by artists to secure government support for arts and culture so that Canada would not be overwhelmed by American free-market cultural industries.

Dr. Anton Wagner is a Canadian cultural historian and former adjunct professor in the York University Faculty of Fine Arts in Toronto. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto with the thesis Herman Voaden’s Symphonic Expressionism. Dr. Wagner has edited play anthologies, bibliographies and collections of essays such as Contemporary Canadian Theatre: New World Visions and Establishing Our Boundaries: English-Canadian Theatre Criticism. For this presentation he draws on his play anthology, A Vision of Canada: Herman Voaden’s Dramatic Works.