tions, lms, memoirs, Shakespeares own work, editorial prac-tices, Elizabethan and Jacobean historiography, and nally, manyof these topics within modern drama, I found it difcult to keepsight of what to take away from this collection.

Nevertheless, the scope and depth of the essays Martin andScheil have included within this book is impressive, elicitingdiscussion and arousing interest in forthcoming projects by thecontributing authors. Martin and Scheils collection can fruitfullybe read in conjunction with Ruby Cohns 1976 landmark studyModern Shakespeare Offshoots, Julie Sanderss and LindaHutcheons discussions of the art of adaptation and appropriation,as well as Margaret Jane Kidnies Shakespeare and the Problem ofAdaptation. Shakespeare/Adaptation/Modern Drama, an impos-ing assemblage of publications from English and Shakespearescholars, will also prove useful to anyone interested in discussionsof self-adaptation, as well as Shakespearean and modern textualand performance histories.

JENN STEPHENSON, ed.Solo Performance.Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English. Vol. 20.Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2011. xxxvi + 206pp.

HERV GUAY

The end of the collection Critical Perspectives on CanadianTheatre in English will make way for New Essays on CanadianTheatre. The titles announced already signal the prominence of apluraleven multiculturalvision of the theatrical phenome-non. Since this perspective was quite obvious in the Pressspreceding collection and without yet having had the chance todene its contribution through several published volumes (as ofthis writing only the rst, Asian-Canadian Theatre is out), it isdifcult to predict how this new series will innovate in itsapproach. Perhaps the collections composition will be modied.We know that in the past, Playwrights Canada Press tended tobring together texts published elsewhere on a given theme,accompanied by a small number of additional studies commis-sioned by the director of the publication when deemed necessary.Rather than speculate about the future, however, lets focusinstead on Solo Performance, the penultimate title published in2011 and edited by Jenn Stephenson. The choice of this Queens

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University professor to supervise the work was hardly surprisinggiven that her monograph Performing Autobiography in CanadianDrama is to be published shortly by the University of TorontoPress. Indeed, there is a very close link between the two books,with the biographical and autobiographical constituting, in bothcases, a central focus of discussion.

There is no room here to summarize all the articles in SoloPerformance. Sufce it to say, however, that they extend over a longtemporal continuum1972 to 2011 specicallyand cover a vastgeographic area, from Newfoundland to British Columbia, whileexamining stage practices for both mainstream and marginal audi-ences. To be sure, these articles demonstrate a more pronouncedinterest in the latter, since, as many authors emphasize, the one-person show and autobiographical performance are often an inex-pensive way to render art more accessible to those artists andaudiences usually excluded from the conventional theatrical eld.

Stephensons work, moreover, clearly highlights thoseexcluded from mainstream theatre: more than half of the eighteentexts are devoted to them. This emphasis therefore gives theimpression of a theatrical institution open to minorities, marginalelements, and certain highly diverse aesthetics. One sensesimplicitly that the situation isnt all roses by the number of timesthe authors insist on the position of resistance to authoritariandiscourse, a resistance defended by the solo performancesanalyzed. Although the word WASP isnt spelled out, we have nodoubt who governs this society as those marginalized by gender,race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality speak in these one-personperformances. The other striking characteristic of many of thestudies is to show precisely how the solo performance is viewed asan act of survival by those who write about and interpret it.Renate Usmiani highlights this when she afrms that this genre[m]ost often, []is used to underline the isolation in which acharacter moves, and his/her state of alienation (9).

This collection of texts is not merely theme-based, however.Some of the most thought-provoking articles focus on the theoryand aesthetics of these one-person-shows. The contributions ofAnn Wilson, Ric Knowles, and Jennifer Harvie, as well as those ofSherrill Grace and Katherine McLeod stand out. In this regard,Wilsons thoughts on technology and the actors performanceappear highly contemporary. Twenty years ago she wrote: Nostory is unmediated; all are determined and shaped by the forcesor technologies of the society because, at the very least, theperformer is an effect of technologies (43). Although there is now

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no longer much need to demonstrate the dialogical character ofthe monologue, the fact remains that in 1994 Knowles and Harviehad a rm understanding of how Bakhtins writings on the subjectcould be put to good use. Although Sherrill Grace is not the onlyone to elaborate on the issue of solo performance, self, and iden-tity, it is she who insists most on the complexity of the interactionbetween these three elements during the performance. KatherineMacLeod, on the other hand, stresses the role of improvisation inher discussion of solo performance, including that of the audienceand the voice in its reception. Through illustrative examples, shesituates the dialogism of the solo performance.

A work such as Stephensons would not be complete withoutanalyses of the best Canadian solo performances, offering aQuebec reader the opportunity to measure his ignorance ofCanadian stage practices in English. To my knowledge, few of theshows mentioned in Stephensons work have been produced inQuebec, with the exception of those by Daniel MacIvor,Guillermo Verdecchia, Nina Arsenault, the famous Billy BishopGoes to War, and no doubt a few others. Accordingly, the authorsof these studies are all the more convincing that, for example, onereally should have seen Red Mother by Muriel Miguel or WendyLills The Occupation of Heather Rose. Based on the contributorsanalyses of these works, these performances paint implacableportraits of white-aboriginal relations, plays that are all the morerelevant considering that Quebec playwrights have yet to producesome similarly compelling theatre on these same relations. Iobserve, however, that Marie Clements, a native artist who never-theless navigates the same waters, receives no mention. RobertLepage, whose career is also developing in English, merits a well-informed article. In his contribution, A. Dundjerovi shows howLepage uses alter-egos in his solo performances to insert autobio-graphical elements, mixing the mundane and the mythological todevelop the fables he stages, while simultaneously deploying tech-nology inventively. Broadly speaking, I had the impression thatthe stage aspect was not as well researched as the written forms.

This does not dissuade Jenn Stephenson from noting in theconclusion of her introduction that the preoccupations of soloperformance are with other people, with the basic connections oftheatrethe playwright and the performer, the actor and the charac-ter, the character and the audience, the individual and her commu-nity (xiii). The assertion is rmly supported in her work. Lessapparent, perhaps, is how this concert of marginal voices participatesin building the community other than by displaying the differences

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at the source of its exclusion. Alan Filewod effectively addresses thisissue in an article that might well have been included in this collec-tion; in his 1997 essay, he highlights the paradox that the role of soloperformance in the construction of a national identity is virtuallyignored.2 The word Canada moreover, does not appear in the titleof Stephensons work. Still and all, Solo Performance contributes, inthis regard, many perceptive and enlightening comments on acrucial theatrical phenomenon of our times.

GINNy RATSOy, ed.Theatre in British Columbia.Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English. Vol. 6.Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2006. xxxvi + 228 pp.

ANNE NOTHOF, ed.Theatre in Alberta. Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English. Vol. 11.Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2008. xxiii + 177 pp.

STEPHEN HEATLEY

These two collections of reprinted essays, arranged chronologi-cally according to their year of writing, present an impressivehistorical overview of the evolution of theatre and performance inthese two outlying provinces. They both successfully follow thedirective of general editor, Ric Knowles, that the compilationsshould recognize the important critical heritage of scholarlywork in the eld and attempt to ll in its most signicant gaps byhighlighting important work from and about marginalizedcommunities (Theatre in British Columbia, iv), and so we hearnot only about the work of large companies and dominantcommunities (particularly noteworthy is Dianne Bessais exhaus-tive article about Edmontonsor should I say CanadasCitadel Theatre and how it inadvertently spawned an alternativetheatre movement in Edmonton) but also about work that hasbroadened the theatrical complexion of each of these provinces,like Vancouver Sath (essay by Uma Parameswaran), whichfocuses on the theatrical representation of the Southeast Asianpopulations in British Columbia. The essays take us as far back asthe turn of the twentieth century and community theatre activityin Lethbridge, right up to the twenty-rst-century projects ofDavid Diamonds Headlines Theatre Company. The essays are

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