A brief history of the Canadian Players, a theatre company which toured
across Canada and the United States from 1954 -1966. The company played in
cities and university centres and in small towns and communities from
Moosonee and Flin Ron in the North to the southern United States and from
Newfoundland and the New England States to Vancouver Island and southern
California.
The nucleus of the Canadian Players came from the Stratford
Shakespearean Festival. Robin Patterson and Laurel Crosby crossed the
continent as agents of the company, interesting influential citizens in sponsoring
a theatrical company performing the plays of Shaw and Shakespeare. From a
small company of eight actors performing Saint Joan on a bare stage the
company grew to two casts and crews of up to twenty members, who spent eight
months annually travelling by bus to perform across the length and breadth of
the continent.
The information about the Canadian Players was obtained from letters, chiefly
those from Robin Patterson to Tom Pattterson, from newspaper reviews and
reports in the press,which are gathered together in several scrap books, vertical
files and micro-fiche in the Theatre Department of the Toronto reference Libr ary
and from conversations with some of the surviving members of the company.
Most of these conversations have been recorded on tape. Other information
was gathered from transcripts from taped interviews which were supplied by
Robin Patterson. I was also privileged to be permitted the use of manuscript material of Florence Pelton Patterson, the first secretary, and that of Tony Van
Bridge, an actor and director for several years.
The contribution made to Canadian theatre by the Canadian Players in their
taking drama to every part of the country and their involvement of local
communities in developing an audience for the regional and other theatres which
followed them is discussed. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/5091 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Penistan, Violet Mary |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Format | 6436591 bytes, application/pdf |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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