Nightwood Theatre: A Woman's Work Is Always Done

346 Pages·2009·3.61 MB·English

by  Shelley Scott

Nightwood Theatre
Canadian Plays
Series Editor: Anne Nothof
The Canadian Plays series features a broad range of new
Canadian plays with an emphasis on Alberta works
and theatre professionals. Publications will include
single full-length plays and thematic collections by
single or multiple playwrights, as well as theatre history
and criticism. The target audience comprises theatre
lovers, actors and playwrights, directors and producers,
teachers, students, and librarians.
Series Titles
Hot Thespian Action: Ten Premiere Plays from Walterdale Playhouse
Edited by Robin C. Whittaker
Nightwood Theatre: A Woman’s Work Is Always Done
by Shelley Scott
Nightwood Theatre
A Woman’s Work Is Always Done
Shelley Scott, Ph.D.
© 2010 Shelley Scott
Published by AU Press, Athabasca University
1200, 10011–109 Street
Edmonton, ab t5j 3s8
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Scott, Shelley
Nightwood Theatre : a woman’s work is always done / Shelley Scott.
(Canadian plays series, issn 1917-5086)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Issued also in electronic format (978-1-897425-56-5).
isbn 978-1-897425-55-8
1. Nightwood Theatre--History. 2. Feminist theater--Canada--History.
3. Women in the theater--Canada--History. 4. Feminism and theater--
Canada--History. I. Title. II. Series: Canadian plays series
ps8169.f45s36 2010 792.09713’541 c2009-907004-9
Cover design by Honey Mae Caffin, intertextual.ca
Book design by Natalie Olsen.
Printed and bound in Canada by Marquis Book Printing.
This project was funded in part by
the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.
This publication is licensed under a Creative Commons License,
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada,
see www.creativecommons.org. The text may be reproduced for
non-commercial purposes, provided that credit is given to the
original author. Please contact AU Press, Athabasca University at
[email protected] for permission beyond the usage outlined
in the Creative Commons license.
A volume in the Canadian Plays series:
issn 1917-5086 (Print)
issn 1917-5094 (Online)
Contents
7 Acknowledgements
9 Preface
Introduction
15
Context, Creativity, Collectivity
One
51
The Beginning of Nightwood Theatre, 1979–1988
Two
109
Breaking Away and Moving On, 1989–1993
Three
159
New Leadership Models, 1994–2000 and 2001–2009
Four
201
Nightwood and Feminist Theory
Appendix
225
A Nightwood Chronology
295 Notes
321 Bibliography
333 Index

Acknowledgements
This book began as my doctoral dissertation at the Graduate
Centre for Study of Drama, University of Toronto. I extend my
deepest gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Michael J. Sidnell, and
to Richard Plant, Ann Saddlemyer, and Ann Wilson for their
guidance. Twelve years after its completion, my dissertation has
become a book, thanks to everyone at Athabasca University Press,
especially Anne Nothof and Erna Dominey, who have been won-
derfully supportive.
Some of the material from the introduction has been previ-
ously published in the journal Canadian Theatre Review; other
material from the introduction has appeared in Theatre Research
in Canada/Recherches théâtrales au Canada vol. 18 no. 2 (Fall 1997)
and was reprinted in Feminist Theatre and Performance: Critical Per-
spectives on Canadian Theatre in English, Volume 4, edited by Susan
Bennett (Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2006). Some mate-
rial in chapter two has appeared in Resources for Feminist Research
vol. 31 no. 3/4 (Fall 2005) and other material from this chapter
appeared in the British Journal of Canadian Studies. My thanks to
the editors of these journals for first publishing my articles on
Nightwood.
Thanks to the cast and crew of the productions of Goodnight
Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) and This is For You, Anna that I
directed at the University of Lethbridge, and to all of my col-
leagues at the U of L who facilitated and responded to those
shows. I have published articles about these productions in CTR
and Resources for Feminist Research. I acknowledge with gratitude
the University of Lethbridge Research Fund award I received in
7
the spring of 2006. Thanks as well for their assistance and sup-
port to my copy editor, Paula Ayer, and indexer, Adrian Mather,
and to Jamie Dunsdon, Denis Salter, and my many friends and
colleagues at the Canadian Association for Theatre Research.
And finally, very special thanks to all of the people who have
worked with Nightwood Theatre over the years, and particularly
to the women I have interviewed.
This book is dedicated to my husband, Bill Tice.
Shelley Scott * Nightwood Theatre
8
Preface
The first time I heard about Nightwood Theatre was in 1989, in
Richard Plant’s Canadian Theatre course at the Graduate Centre
for Study of Drama at the University of Toronto. I was in the first
year of my two-year MA program, and had come back to academia
after three years working for the Alberta Status of Women Action
Committee — first as a volunteer, then as the paid coordinator of
the provincial office in Edmonton. I had determined that being a
professional lobbyist was not the career path for me; I missed be-
ing in school, and I missed being involved in theatre even more.
After completing the MA, I continued into a PhD program at the
same university, and when the time came to select a dissertation
topic, Nightwood jumped out at me. It represented the perfect
point of intersection between my newfound commitment to Ca-
nadian theatre and my long-term connection to feminism.
I spent some time as a volunteer in the Nightwood office,
located at that time on Adelaide Street — helping to construct a
database, stuffing envelopes, working front of house, and selling
tickets to the “Five Minute Feminist Cabaret.” The women I had
the most contact with were Leslie Lester and Soraya Peerbaye,
and the place I spent most of my time was in their office closet,
digging through the theatre’s collected archives. It was a hot,
dark closet and the archives were largely unorganized — just file
folders in boxes, which I would drag out and sort through one by
one, making an inventory and photocopying items of particular
interest. Those materials are now in the University of Guelph
Theatre Archives, but back in the early 1990s, I felt like I was the
only one who knew the wealth of history in those boxes.
9
In addition to excavating the archives, I conducted interviews
with people at Nightwood over the years. I began by interviewing
Cynthia Grant and Kim Renders, the two founding members of
Nightwood still living in Toronto (by then, Maureen White had
moved to Ireland and Mary Vingoe was busy running Ship’s Com-
pany in Nova Scotia). Cynthia had her own personal archive and
was eager to share articles from Nightwood’s earliest period. Kim
later became a colleague when we taught in the same semester
at the University of Guelph. In 1996, the Canadian Association
for Theatre Research (at that time known as the Association for
Canadian Theatre Research) bestowed honorary membership
on all four founding members of Nightwood. I was thrilled that
Nightwood was being recognized, and I remember being espe-
cially pleased that Kim was able to attend the awards banquet in
St. Catharines to accept on behalf of the founders.
I went on to interview all the other women who had been
leaders at Nightwood: Kate Lushington (who actually stored her
boxes of archival material in my basement for a time); and Leslie
Lester, Alisa Palmer, and Diane Roberts, who were extraordinarily
welcoming and warm. I completed the dissertation and graduated
in 1997. Although I moved away from Toronto afterward, I was
determined to keep my research focused on Nightwood. I inter-
viewed Kelly Thornton on 28 May 2002, just after she took over
the company as artistic director, and then interviewed her again
in 2006 along with Monica Esteves, Nightwood’s producer.
Despite these significant connections to Nightwood, my inten-
tion has never been to claim an insider’s status, to relay personal
anecdotes, or to settle debates. My research has always been fo-
cused on materials in the public domain: the productions and
play scripts, the media coverage and journal articles, the pro-
grams and posters. In addition to the plays and productions, I am
interested in the ways Nightwood has presented itself to the public
through the media and on its own website, and in how Nightwood
interacts with its supporters through vehicles such as the news-
letter. I am concerned with how Nightwood has communicated
its feminist mandate: for example, what kinds of terms are used
Shelley Scott * Nightwood Theatre
10