New Stages: Questions for Canadian Dramatic Criticism

Body-less/unvoiced drama, drama perceived only as the written page, and literary criticism about this drama, cannot capture the immediacy of performance. Drama's connection to Canadian literature and the contesting and reshaping of the dramatic canon are crucial questions for critics: what kinds of dramatic production get recognition and at what cost (literal and metaphorical)? Bennett discusses the five other essays on Canadian drama in this issue and links them through their attentiveness to the production-reception relation and their examination of how theatre creates meaning within Canadian culture