B.C. Conference Report:
“Staging the Pacific Province 2: A Conference on British Columbia Theatre”
was held with great success in October 2001. A follow-up to the exciting
first-ever BC theatre conference hosted by University College of the Cariboo
in Kamloops three years ago, this second conference was held in Vancouver
at UBC, co-organized by the Heads of English and Theatre, Sherrill Grace
and Ron Fedoruk. The meeting featured academic papers from Lisa Coulthard,
Patrick O’Neill, Monica Prendergast, Marlis Schweitzer, Malcolm Page, George
Belliveau, Ginny Ratsoy, Don Rubin, Marshall Soules, Peter Dickinson, Albert-Reiner
Glaap, Reid Gilbert, Ros Kerr and Jerry Wasserman. Practitioners
appearing included Antony Holland and John Juliani, Jane Heyman, Patrick
McDonald and Norman Young, John Gray, Donna Spencer, Jennifer Brewin and
Estelle Shook, Colin Thomas, Dennis Foon, Joan MacLeod, and Lisa Lowe.
A playwrights’ cabaret gathered Aaron Bushkowsky, Marie Clements, David
Diamond, Lorena Gale, Margaret Hollingsworth, Kevin Kerr, Morris Panych
and Betty Quan in the lobby of the Freddy Wood Theatre to launch new publications
by Talonbooks, and Ginny Ratsoy and Jim Hoffman’s wonderful new collection
from Playwrights Canada, Playing the Pacific Province: An Anthology of
British Columbia Plays, 1967-2000. The conference concluded with
a terrific performance by Margot Kane at the banquet in the First Nations
Longhouse. Plans are afoot for selected papers to appear in a special
issue of B.C Studies, and for “Staging the Pacific Province 3” to take
place in Victoria in a couple of years.
Jerry Wasserman
Newsletter / Bulletin 26.1