Producing Marginality: Theatre and Criticism in Canada

R. Kerry White is the director of theatre arts at Laurentian University.

This book critiques the Canadian theatre scene: its structure, finances,
and politics, and its development over the past two decades. The six
essays, written between 1979 and 1989, all approach the subject from a
very particular point of view. To quote Wallace: “I am a white,
anglo-saxon, gay male—well educated, middle-aged and securely
employed.” He might have added “theatre academic from Toronto,”
because his focus is almost exclusively on the theatres of Toronto and
Montreal, and he shares the critical apparatus of a small group who
teach in southern Ontario. In other words, Wallace writes from the
perspective of a minority within a minority.

As Marshall McLuhan pointed out years ago, this is often a very useful
stance. Like Old Testament prophets crying in rage from the periphery,
“marginalized” artists and critics can offer a devastatingly
accurate critique. Wallace’s major theme, repeated in each essay, is
complex because it exposes the interconnected elements of a cultural
ideology. Essentially, Wallace sees analogous pairs of relationships
within Canadian theatre. On the one hand, the cultural establishment,
which supports and promotes the ideology of the multinational
corporation, has attempted to foster a homogeneous theatre through the
media and sponsoring agencies (such as the Canada Council) in the
interest of Canadian unity. On the other hand, marginalized theatres
representing a variety of special-interest groups promote cultural
diversity and reject traditional notions of political unity and
geographical regionalism.

From the periphery, these opposed cultural agendas seem unequal and
unfair. Money—in the form of private and public grants, power, and
control of the media, and a conservative ideology—has managed not only
to keep small theatre companies on the fringe, but also to ensure that
those few which survive do so on the business and artistic terms of the
establishment.

This is basically a neo-Marxist critique—despite such trendy academic
jargon as “feminist postmodernist performance theory.” As such it is
hardly new, but valuable nonetheless. Its weakness lies in the perhaps
unwarranted elevation of the importance of marginalized theatre. From
the perspective of the theatregoing public as a whole, for example, a
production by a very small company such as Buddies in Bad Times can
hardly be described as “phenomenally successful,” but Wallace does
so.