This thesis undertakes a critique of Canada's Stratford Festival as an institutional site of theatre production in the years 1953 through 1967. I propose to identify the major recurring "statements" of the institutional discourse; those statements which were circulated through various printed documents, including commentaries on the Festival and its work and the Festival's public relations material. The exercise of critique reveals that the Festival discourse became a hegemonic discourse, circulating a set of normative and prescriptive understandings as to what should constitute theatre and culture for Canada. The ideology dominating the discourse was that identified by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno by the term the "culture industry." This ideology allowed for the autonomy of the Festival's productions to be eliminated, such that they functioned as commodities in which all capacity for critique has been abrogated. / It will be shown that the Festival discourse privileged an aesthetic of spectacle and effect throughout these years, an aesthetic which implied a concept of cultural experiences as passive spectatorship and the easy consumption of effects; in short as commodity. In conjunction with this aesthetic, the discourse registered a concept of culture as affirmative--as an experience which affirms existing social relations in offering an apparent, if false, resolution or catharsis of conflict and of social inequality. When the Festival was identified as proof of Canada's cultural maturity and the focus of the nation's "life of the mind" these values were established as the nation's dominant cultural values. Moreover, this discursive portrayal of the Festival established it as Canada's foremost cultural commodity. And so the discourse simultaneously conveyed a concept of culture and of the Festival as commodities. / By the 1960's the Festival was being identified as not simply a leading voice in Canadian culture, but as the institution on which the development of Canadian culture depended, thereby positioning the Festival as hegemonic. The Festival discourse thus articulated the Festival's central duality, its capacity to function as both cultural commodity and authority. The position of the Festival and its discourse as cultural authority ensured that it was the Festival concept of affirmative culture, marked by the displacement of the political, philosophical and existential role of culture, which dominated the discourse on theatre and the wider discourse of Canadian culture. In this respect the Festival failed to offer an active-critical experience which would counter the tendency towards the ethos of spectatorship and passivity which followed from the developing mass media.

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The Canadian popular theatre movement's refusal to accept one of the key binary oppositions that organizes Euroamerican theatre practice, the split between community-based and professional theatre, makes it a particularly interesting subject of inquiry for theatre scholars. This dissertation develops a methodology for analyzing this movement by approaching theatre, not as a unified institution or a series of texts, but as a mode of cognition that can overcome another of the basic binary oppositions of modern Euroamerican thought, the opposition between mind and body. Following an introductory chapter that situates the Canadian popular theatre movement in the context of recent Canadian theatre history and of other popular theatre movements around the world, a theoretical chapter lays the foundation for this methodology by exploring such key terms as "community," "professional," and "theatrical." It suggests that theatre is a particularly appropriate cognitive tool for building participatory community in heterogeneous social milieus. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 analyze three stages in the popular theatre process in these terms. Chapter 3 looks at how methods of organizing community workshops put in place particular forms of community. Chapter 4 explores the ways in which the dramaturgic structures of plays created by Headlines Theatre, the Theatre Parminou, and Red Roots Community Theatre are formed both by their creation processes and by their analyses of the problems in the dominant public spheres of the larger society. Chapter 5 looks at the specific contribution professional theatre workers make in focusing audience attention on key elements in community participants' stories. The dissertation concludes by suggesting that popular theatre events can be most fairly evaluated by looking at their contribution to the creation of new categories of thought through which we might publicly discuss and enact truly participatory communities.

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L'etude suivante porte sur la traduction du theatre dans le contexte Canada/Quebec, de 1951 a 1994, et suit une methodologie empruntee a l'Ecole de Tel-Aviv et a l a «critique productive» d'Antoine Berman. Apres un survol des discours portant sur les litteratures et les dramaturgies canadienne et quebecoise en traduction, une analyse des douze pieces inscrites au corpus permet d ' identifier la fonction attribuee au traduit dans le contexte recepteur. De la fin des annees 60 jusqu'au milieu des annees 80, les dramaturgies franco-quebecoise et canadienne-anglaise sont marquees par la question identitaire . La traduction repond alors a un desir de creer un repertoire national, specifiquement quebecois d'une part et specifiquement canadien de l'autre. Cette specificite repose sur la mise en valeur de la difference, ressentie comme essentielle a L'elaboration d'une identite nationale distincte. Commune a chaque groupe linguistique, cette mise en valeur de la difference fait toutefois appel a des procedes fort divergents. D'un cote, la traduction franco-quebecoise met l'accent sur sa propre difference, au moyen d'adaptations qui prennent l'apparence d'un produit local et masquent l'origine du texte canadien-anglais. De l'autre, la traduction canadienne-anglaise souligne l ' alterite du texte quebecois en insistant sur son caractere non menacant et evite la cruciale question de la representation anglaise du joual, langue emblematique du nouveau theatre quebecois. A la fin des annees 80, les deux groupes linguistiques rorapent avec ce modele et affichent de nouvelles tendances. Au Quebec, ou le theatre canadien-anglais connait une popularity grandissante depuis 1990, l'obligation speculaire cede le pas au spectaculaire oblige et a la theatralite provocante qui servent a legitimer l'emprunt anglo-canadien. De son cote, la traduction anglaise du texte quebecois n'est plus confronted au joual mais au probleme que pose l'esthetique verbale hautement stylisee des pieces franco-quebecoises plus recentes. La traduction doit alors attenuer une exuberance langagiere qui heurte les normes en vigueur dans la dramaturgie canadienne-anglaise. La forte polarisation observee dans les strategies de traduction deployees de part et d'autre reflete l'asymetrie des positions occupees par les dramaturgies produites dans les langues officielles du Canada, ou l'anglais constitue la langue de la majorite et ou le francais demeure minoritaire.

L'etude suivante porte sur la traduction du theatre dans le contexte Canada/Quebec, de 1951 a 1994, et suit une methodologie empruntee a l'Ecole de Tel-Aviv et a l a «critique productive» d'Antoine Berman. Apres un survol des discours portant sur les litteratures et les dramaturgies canadienne et quebecoise en traduction, une analyse des douze pieces inscrites au corpus permet d ' identifier la fonction attribuee au traduit dans le contexte recepteur. De la fin des annees 60 jusqu'au milieu des annees 80, les dramaturgies franco-quebecoise et canadienne-anglaise sont marquees par la question identitaire . La traduction repond alors a un desir de creer un repertoire national, specifiquement quebecois d'une part et specifiquement canadien de l'autre. Cette specificite repose sur la mise en valeur de la difference, ressentie comme essentielle a L'elaboration d'une identite nationale distincte. Commune a chaque groupe linguistique, cette mise en valeur de la difference fait toutefois appel a des procedes fort divergents. D'un cote, la traduction franco-quebecoise met l'accent sur sa propre difference, au moyen d'adaptations qui prennent l'apparence d'un produit local et masquent l'origine du texte canadien-anglais. De l'autre, la traduction canadienne-anglaise souligne l ' alterite du texte quebecois en insistant sur son caractere non menacant et evite la cruciale question de la representation anglaise du joual, langue emblematique du nouveau theatre quebecois. A la fin des annees 80, les deux groupes linguistiques rorapent avec ce modele et affichent de nouvelles tendances. Au Quebec, ou le theatre canadien-anglais connait une popularity grandissante depuis 1990, l'obligation speculaire cede le pas au spectaculaire oblige et a la theatralite provocante qui servent a legitimer l'emprunt anglo-canadien. De son cote, la traduction anglaise du texte quebecois n'est plus confronted au joual mais au probleme que pose l'esthetique verbale hautement stylisee des pieces franco-quebecoises plus recentes. La traduction doit alors attenuer une exuberance langagiere qui heurte les normes en vigueur dans la dramaturgie canadienne-anglaise. La forte polarisation observee dans les strategies de traduction deployees de part et d'autre reflete l'asymetrie des positions occupees par les dramaturgies produites dans les langues officielles du Canada, ou l'anglais constitue la langue de la majorite et ou le francais demeure minoritaire. / Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies / Graduate