Sherrill Grace – författare

If you have ever wondered why the Scots love Michel Tremblay or what Sharon Pollock has to say to Japanese audiences, or just how a Canadian play—or being Canadian—is viewed in England or the United States, you should read this volume. Each author holds a mirror up to Canadian theatre, but the images in those mirrors differ in fascinating ways. The cumulative result is a multi-faceted reflection, coming from some of the world’s most astute critics, on how Canada performs its national identities.Performing National Identities is a collection of 18 original essays on contemporary Canadian theatre by scholars and drama specialists in Canada, Great Britain, Europe, Australia and Japan. The international scope of the volume, reflected in its co-editors (Sherrill Grace from Canada, Albert-Reiner Glaap from Germany), confirms the new importance of Canadian plays on the world stage. This is the first volume of its kind, and it celebrates the variety and vitality of Canadian theatre.Among the playwrights whose works are discussed here are Michel Tremblay, Sharon Pollock, George F. Walker, Joan MacLeod, Tomson Highway, Marie Clements, Michel Marc Bouchard, Morris Panych, Monique Mojica, and Djanet Sears. There are also interviews with theatre practitioners in Hungary, Germany and Canada, including one with the late Urjo Kareda. The contributors consider many of the challenging issues addressed by contemporary Canadian playwrights—issues of race and racist stereotypes, of gender and violence, of historical events and identity politics—and all agree that Canada’s playwrights mine their local or individual situations to explore universal problems. It is this large vision, as well as the quality of the plays, that enables Canadian drama to move audiences all over the world.

That both autobiography and biography have acquired a position of unprecedented importance over the past 30 years is now obvious. Less obvious are the reasons for this phenomenon. Theorists and students of AutoBiography, a research subject now viewed as respectable in academic circles, have recently mapped the contours and shifting parameters of the autobiographical and the biographical processes, thereby contributing to the profile and stature of both.This collection brings theatre practitioners together with academics from three continents in a groundbreaking exploration of the interdisciplinary realm of Theatre and AutoBiography. On the theoretical side, the contributors draw on a range of contemporary theorists: from Jacques Lacan, Gilles Deleuze and Emmanuel Levinas to Judith Butler, Mieke Bal and Homi Bhabha; from Elin Diamond and Jill Dolan to Leigh Gilmore, Paul John Eakin and Philippe Lejeune.In general terms, auto/biographical performances have become hugely popular forms in Europe and North America because we live in a culture of me or I at a time when access to cultural production is easy. AutoBiographies satisfy our desire for story at the same time as they promise to give us truths (if not Truth). With the post-postmodern return of the author and the waning of a deep-seated antihumanism associated with modernist ideology and aesthetics, a desire for agency, voice, visibility and subjectivity has resurfaced with a renewed passion.The playwrights discussed here could scarcely be more broadly representative of British and North American drama in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries: from W. B. Yeats and Samuel Beckett to Michel Tremblay, Sharon Pollock and David Mamet; from Spalding Gray and Karen Finley to Linda Griffiths; and from Orlan to Sally Clark, R. H. Thomson, Monique Mojica and George Seremba, the range of styles performances and subjectivities is extraordinary.