Trends in Contemporary Canadian
Theatre and Drama
1:00 p.m., Monday, Sept. 14, 2009
Corley Auditorium in Webster Hall
Admission: free

This visual presentation focuses on Canadian theatre and drama in the new millennium as Canada becomes an increasingly multicultural society that accepts and values diversity. Federal, provincial and civic government support for the arts has enabled companies and individual artists to become less dependent on box-office receipts and to take greater risks in programming and individual and collective self-expression. The presentation will provide an overview of how theatre is presented to Canadian audiences from super-size companies such as the Stratford and Shaw Festivals, “regional” and “alternate” theatre companies to the new smaller and experimental theatres. The work of a few international superstars such as the Québec director Robert Lepage and the opera composer R. Murray Schafer will be mentioned. But the focus is on the new voices emerging from feminist, First Nations, Afro-Canadian, gay and lesbian, Asian and other multi-cultural and intercultural theatre groups and playwrights.

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 Centre for the Study of Drama. 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. He was the director of research for the World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre published by Routledge.