English Canadian Drama: Essays in Criticism

If Canadian Drama of the 60s and the 70s struggled for revealing, legitimizing and universalizing its own specific identity, in the 80s "the alternate theatres and their leaders entered the new main stream". But the 90s saw the economic issues with the greater political and artistic impact, making the Canadian theatre "survive" more than "thrive". However, the partial success of Canadian theatrical nationalism and the boom of the megamusical contributed to "renewed vigour, confidence and inner variety" and more importantly "pluralism" of Canadian theatre. The contemporary Canadian theatre has the "vitality of South Asian, feminist, native, gay, lesbian theatres, theatre for the young audience", "fringes and festivals and crossborder movement of Canadian plays." Surprisingly Quebec’s franco-phone culture has been reconciled and harmonized with the theatre of English Canada in the 80s and the 90s. This volume on Canadian drama caters to the long-felt need of Indian scholars of Canadian drama for the primary and secondary source materials to same extent. It briefly surveys Canadian drama and offers appreciative criticism of a few plays by some major Canadian play-wrights upto 1980s.