Siting the Other - Re-visions of Marginality in Australian and English-Canadian Drama

The emergence of contemporary Australian and English-Canadian multicultural drama undoubtedly constitutes a fascinating development in the history of international literatures written in English. These postcolonial plays offer ideal vantage points from which to observe the struggle of two comparable Commonwealth countries to accommodate the pluralism of their social fabric. As the prominent theatre scholars of this collection cogently argue, the articulation of otherness forms a central concern in the drama of these two countries. The postcolonial playwrights studied in this book interpret marginality as an expression of resistance against the legacy of Empire, often through the weapon of subversive mimicry. The organising spatial metaphor of the book suggests new readings of the "other" as an evolving site of contestation. This volume articulates a new form of comparative poetics, in which dramatic texts are used as reflecting mirrors, as privileged tools to explore the similarity and otherness that Australia and Canada share.

List of contents

Contents: Marc Maufort: Siting the Other: Cross-cultural Re-visions of Marginality - Marc Maufort: Forging an «Aboriginal Realism»: First Nations Playwriting in Australia and Canada - Helen Thomson: Aboriginal Women's Staged Autobiography - Helena Grehan: «Implacement» and Belonging: Dramatising White Women's Stories in Tiger Country - Maryrose Casey: Siting Themselves: Indigenous Australian Theatre Companies - Jacqueline Lo: Playing the Yellow Lady: Performing Gender and Race - Susan Pfisterer: History and Mystery and Suffragettes on the Australian Stage: A Consideration of Women's Suffrage as Presented in Australian Theatre - Bruce Parr: Queer/Irony in Nick Enright's Drama - Peta Tait: Queer Circus Bodies in Rock'n'Roll Circus's The Dark and Club Swing's Razor Baby - Tom Burvill: Urban Theatre Projects: Re-Siting Marginal Communities in Outer Western Sydney - Paul Makeham: Fear and Desire Under the Big Sky: Brink Visual Theatre and the Post-colonial Australian Landscape - Peter Fitzpatrick: Spot the Infidel: Aspects of Multiculturalism in Mainstream Australian Theatre - Gerry Turcotte: «Collaborating with Ghosts»: Dispossession in The Book of Jessica and The Mudrooroo/Mueller Project - Anne Nothof: Canadian «Ethnic» Theatre: Fracturing the Mosaic - Albert-Reiner Glaap: Drew Hayden Taylor's Dramatic Career - Robert Appleford: Making Relations Visible in Native Canadian Performance - Ric Knowles: Translators, Traitors, Mistresses, and Whores: Monique Mojica and the Mothers of the Métis Nations - Ann Wilson: Beatrice Chancy: Slavery, Martyrdom and the Female Body - Alan Filewod: «From Twisted History»: Reading Angélique - Robert Wallace: Defying Category: Re/viewing John Herbert's Fortune and Men's Eyes - Robert Nunn: Crackwalking: Judith Thompson's Marginal Characters - Reid Gilbert: Escaping the «Savage Slot»: Interpellation and Transgression in George F. Walker's Suburban Motel - Joanne Tompkins: «Fatherlands and Mother-Tongues»: Family Histories and Futures in Recent Australian and Canadian Multicultural Theatre - Maryrose Casey: Garden of Drama: Talking to John Harding.

About the author

The Editors: Marc Maufort, the editor, teaches English, American and postcolonial literature at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium). He is the author of Songs of American Experience: The Vision of O'Neill and Melville (Peter Lang, 1990) and the editor of Staging Difference: Cultural Pluralism in American Theatre and Drama (Peter Lang, 1995).
Franca Bellarsi, the associate editor, is an assistant in English and American literature at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium). She has contributed several articles on the Beat Generation writers. Her affinity for theatre partly derives from her interest in American performance poetry.

Report

«Maufort and Bellarsi have assembled a remarkable collection in 'Siting the Other'. The book cannot be skimmed: it requires serious study, but it yields rewards. The contributions relating to Canada were stimulating, and I felt richly informed by the essays on Australian drama, theatre, and cultural politics.» (James Dugan, Modern Drama)
«Maufort and Bellarsi have provided Canadian and Australian theatre studies a great benefit in assembling this collection, whose individual essays are priceless additions to contemporary theatrical and dramatic scholarship.» (Veronica Kelly, Australasian Drama Studies)
«The book will be useful for scholars and students in drama, theatre, performance and cultural studies. And with 'local' references carefully explained, it is accessible to and aimed at an international readership.» (Jen Harvie, New Theatre Quarterly)

Product details

• Assisted by: Franca Bellarsi (Editor), Marc Maufort (Editor)
• Publisher: Peter Lang
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.04.2016
• EAN: 9789052019345
• ISBN: 978-90-5201-934-5
• No. of pages: 376
• Dimensions: 150 mm x 20 mm x 225 mm
• Weight: 540 g
• Series: Dramaturgies; Dramaturgies
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > Art > Theatre, ballet