Modern Canadian Plays: Volume 2

In Volume II, Wasserman shows us Canadian drama from 1985 up to 1997, during which we see women playwrights rise to greater prominence, along with Native, gay and lesbian, and Quebecois playwrights. But, continuing on from Volume I, this selection of plays not only takes us farther into the annals of the lives of the marginalized; it also provides a revealing cultural and philosophical cross-section of late-20th-century life in Canada. In one way or another, we are shown ourselves as we are, and not in the critically-neutral, determinedly naive terms of the contemporary mainstream in which we are all represented as gloriously enmeshed in a world of cybernetic stringency--the uncomplicated aesthetic of a never-ending stream of zeroes and ones. If the plays presented in these two volumes are the contours of an "indigenous Canadian drama," they outline anything but a norm. The plays in this fourth edition of "Modern Canadian Plays: Volume II" date from 1985 to 1997: "Bordertown Cafe" by Kelly Rebar "Polygraph" by Robert Lepage and Marie Brassard "Moo" by Sally Clark "The Orphan Muses" by Michel Marc Bouchard "7 Stories" by Morris Panych "Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing" by Tomson Highway "Amigo's Blue Guitar" by Joan MacLeod "Lion in the Streets" by Judith Thomson "Never Swim Alone" by Daniel MacIvor "Fronteras Americanas" by Guillermo Verdecchia "Harlem Duet" by Djanet Sears "Problem Child" by George F. Walker