Thirty-five critics provide a unique overview of the contemporary performing arts and their cultural and economic impact in French and English Canada, in a province-by-province assessment of playwrighting, theatre production, opera and dance, radio and TV drama. Over 70 production photographs and an extensive bibliography and index make this one of the most important books on Canadian theatre in the last decade.

A collection of 18 original essays on contemporary Canadian theatre by drama specialists in Belgium, Finland, Germany, Hungary and elsewhere.

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 IIdate from 1985 to 1997: Bordertown Cafeby Kelly Rebar Polygraphby Robert Lepage and Marie Brassard Mooby Sally Clark The Orphan Musesby Michel Marc Bouchard 7 Storiesby Morris Panych Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasingby Tomson Highway Amigo's Blue Guitarby Joan MacLeod Lion in the Streetsby Judith Thomson Never Swim Aloneby Daniel MacIvor Fronteras Americanasby Guillermo Verdecchia Harlem Duetby Djanet Sears Problem Childby George F. Walker

The Macdonald Stewart Art Centre's exhibition explores contemporary Canadian adaptations in theatre, pop media, and visual arts in a demonstration of the Shakespeare effect in Canadian culture. It brings together for the first time hundreds of rare artifacts, including the Canadian-owned Sanders portrait, contemporary Canadian theatre designs, Shakespeare in French Canada, contemporary Aboriginal adaptations of Shakespeare, new portraiture, an innovative learning commons for youth, as well as new and archival material from the Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project, the L. W. Conolly Theatre Archives (University of Guelph), and the Stratford Festival of Canada.

A collection of original documents and publications by Canadian theatre professions and cultural commentators.

These critical deliberations on contemporary Canadian drama is an ideal companion text to Modern Canadian Plays Volumes I and II.