This past May saw over 70 people, some from Europe and across Canada, attend the first academic conference to study the theatre of the British Columbia, held in Kamloops at the University College of the Cariboo.
Organizers of the event, "Staging the Pacific Province: A Conference on British Columbia Theatre," were Jerry Wasserman (UBC), Malcolm Page (SFU), Reid Gilbert Capilano), Celeste Derksen (UVic), and myself (UCC) as Chair. I think we were all tremendously happy with the response--both to the mix of events as well as to the call for papers.
We agreed early on that we wanted both to study and to celebrate the theatre of our province. In addition, we wanted to attract not just academics but also students, practitioners, and the public. So we assembled a healthy mix of papers, panels, guest speakers, special presentations, playwrights' readings, and, each evening, live performances. Samples of these: Martin Segger, B.C. architectural historian, showing/discussing slides of historic theatres; Alison Green, design instructor at UBC, curating a show of theatre design in a gallery; a panel of Natives and anthropologists discussing First Nations performance; BC playwrights reading-- Joan MacLeod, Sally Clark, Morris Panych, and Leonard Angel; Murray Edwards giving a personal memoir of early west coast CBC radio producer Andrew Allan; and Joy Coghill movingly telling us about her Vancouver company of senior professional actors, Western Gold.
In the evenings we saw noteworthy performances by groups such as the Kwagiulth Atlakim Dancers, who powerfully demonstrated certain privileged dances using the renowned ceremonial masks of the Northwest Coast. Anthropologist Peter Macnair both performed with the group and narrated/explained the various enactments. On the last evening of the conference, the Western Canada Theatre of Kamloops presented a staged reading of George Ryga's "Captives of the Faceless Drummer."
As for the papers, we accepted sixteen of the several dozen or so proposals that were offered. Again, we were pleased with the quality, plus the fact that some were by persons far away (two from Europe) and a number were from grad students. A few that seemed to particularly catch our interest were Karrie Sebryk's paper on Chinese Theatres in Victoria, Ginny Ratsoy's on Talonbooks (helped by the fact that Talonbooks publisher Karl Siegler was in the audience and offered comments), and Richard Sutherland on Vancouver 's perennial Theatre Under the Stars.
Most gratifying for me was that at the plenary session there was strong
interest in holding a second conference. Sherrill Grace, chair of English
at UBC, offered her campus, and, indeed, an organizing committee, which
includes UBC Theatre Chair, Ron Fedoruk, met in August. The second Conference
on BC Theatre will take place October 12-14, 2001, at UBC. Watch for the
call for papers.
Programs for the first Conference , which list the events and
contain abstracts of all the papers, are available. If you would like a
copy or two, for yourself and/or for archival purposes, just send me an
email and I'll be happy to mail them to you. Contact me at: jhoffman@cariboo.bc.ca