Where Is Kabuki?

Susan Patrick is a librarian at the Ryerson Polytechnical Institute.

This play—by a former playwright-in-residence at Montreal’s Centaur
Theatre—was first performed by Toronto’s Buddies in Bad Times
Theatre Company in 1989, and later the same year in Vancouver by the
Touchstone Theatre. The play is set in Japan, 100 years ago; action
takes place backstage at a kabuki theatre. Readers unfamiliar with
kabuki may find that aspect of the play somewhat difficult to appreciate
in written form, although the poetry of the language is evident.
Druick’s themes and characters, however, are universal and
contemporary, and the play deals entertainingly with conflicts that will
always exist in the theatre—the struggle between the artistic and the
commercial, the tension between the traditional and the novel, and the
clash of theatrical egos.