The Nineties in America - Salem Press (2009)

Asian Canadian Theater Playwrights of Chinese,
Japanese, Indian, and Korean background brought
issues of Asian Canadian identity and nation to the
fore. Chinese Canadian Marty Chan’sThe Chopstick
Kid(pr. 1992) premiered in Canada, as didMom,
Dad, I’m Living with a White Girl(pr. 1995) at Theatre
Passe Muraille.Mom, Dad, I’m Living with a White Girl
earned for Chan (born Marty Jack Woon Chan) the
Sterling Award for Best New Play in 1999. Japanese
Canadian poet and playwright Terry Watada won
the William P. Hubbard Award for race relations in

1991. Dilara Ally’sMango Chutneypremiered in 1996
      at Toronto’s Music Gallery. The same year, Rahul
      Varma’sCounter Offencepremiered in English at the
      Teesri Duniya Theatre in Montreal.Counter Offence
      represented a rare example of an English-language
      play being translated into French and succeeding
      again in that language. In 1999, Varma received
      the Montreal English Critics Circle Award for his
      work. Korean-born M. J. Kang won a Canadian
      Council for the Arts grant in theater in 1995-1996.
      When Kang was nineteen years old, her playNoran
      Bang: The Yellow Room(pr. 1997) premiered at Thea-
      tre Passe Muraille with Cahoots Theatre Projects
      and was nominated for the Dora Mavor Moore
      Award. At the age of twenty-one, Kang was the youn-
      gest playwright to be produced when the Tarragon
      Theatre presented her playBlessingson the main
      stage in 1996.

French Drama While Montreal’s Centaur Theatre
successfully produced English translations of French
plays, such as Michel Tremblay’sEncore une fois, si
vous le permettez(pr. 1998;For the Pleasure of Seeing Her
Again, pr. 1998), the company was openly criticized
for, among other things, not adequately participat-
ing in francophone culture. This reflected prevail-
ing theater audience sensibilities in Quebec, which
remained predominantly anglophone. The Centaur
Theatre reviewed its directive to include an empha-
sis on presenting works by Montreal and Canadian
playwrights, featuring 1998 playwright-in-residence
Kit Brennan’sHaving (pr. 1999) and local play-
wright Ann Lambert’sVer y Heaven(pr. 1999). Jean-
Marc Dalpé remained an influential figure in
Franco-Ontarian drama throughout the 1990’s, with
plays such asEddy(pr. 1994), which won the Prix

du Nouvel-Ontario and the Prix Le Droit. Carole

Fréchette continued the tradition of Franco-

Canadian drama with The Four Lives of Marie,

which won the Governor General’s Literary Award

for French Drama in 1995.

Impact The 1990’s witnessed an explosion in Cana-

dian-based theater forms that had a global impact.

Autoperformance—a distinctive phenomenon that

displaced the conventional distance between writer

and speaker, creator and performer—attracted

mainstream appreciation in 1993, when Argentine-

born Guillermo Verdecchia’sFronteras Americanas

won the Governor General’s Award for Drama and a

Chalmers Canadian Play Award. The circus troupe

Cirque du Soleil (founded in 1984) launched suc-

cessful international shows, such as the highly

scriptedQuidam(pr. 1996), a production developed

for Disney World calledLa Nouba(pr. 1998), andO

(pr. 1998), presented in a purpose-built theater in

Las Vegas. In 1992, Robert Lepage became the first

North American to direct a William Shakespeare

play at London’s Royal National Theatre (A Midsum-

mer Night’s Dream, pb. 1600). Theatresports—a form

of improvisational theater founded by Keith John-

stone in 1978—developed an international follow-

ing on May 23, 1998, when the government of Al-

berta recognized the International Theatresports

Institute as an official nonprofit organization.

Further Reading

Brockett, Oscar G., and Franklin J. Hildy.Histor y of

the Theatre. 9th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2003. A

comprehensive survey of theater history.

Lavallée-Farah, Marie. “Facing the Challenge: Per-

forming Arts in the 1990’s.”Focus on Culture14,

no. 1 (October, 2002): 1-7. Examination of trends

and expenses for Canada’s nonprofit performing

arts.

Pollock, Sharon. “Dead or Alive? Feeling the Pulse of

Canadian Theatre.” Theatrum 23 (April/May,

1991): 12-13. Article elaborating Pollock’s con-

cerns about the state of dramatic art in Canada.

Nicole Anae

See also Ballet; Cirque du Soleil; Comedians; Lit-

erature in Canada; Literature in the United States;

Los Angeles riots; Theater in the United States.

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