Sherrill GRACE (UBC) "Performing the Autobiographical Pact"

In this paper I will examine how autobiography functions in a play, especially in a performance of a play. To date, the dominant theoretical discourse on autobiography relies on prose narratives; this is the context for French scholar Philippe Lejeune's important theory of the "autobiographical pact." Beginning with Lejeune's "pact," I want to explore the changes that occur when the autobiographical text is NOT prose narrative but drama. I will discuss a few autobiographical plays--including Lorena Gale's Je me souviens, Linda Griffiths' Alien Creature, and Guillermo Verdecchia's Fronteras Americanas--but focus my analysis on Sharon Pollock's Doc and Moving Pictures. In conclusion I will offer a new model of the autobiographical "pact" that takes Lejeune's theory out of the prose field and into wider pastures.
 

Cynthia ZIMMERMAN (York) The Artist's Crucible: Joy Coghill's SONG OF THIS PLACE

In Joy Coghill's SONG OF THIS PLACE, an aging actress, Freida, has written herself a star vehicle in which she plays the famous Canadian painter Emily Carr. Freida also provides the voices for the cast of characters, all of them puppets. But the play can only come to life, literally and figuratively, after its creator undergoes a trial by fire, a contest of wills, a heroic challenge to her authenticity, professional intregrity, and passion. In Coghill's play, Freida's challenger is the very one who is both her inspiration and her intimidating antagonist, the formidable Emily Carr herself. The process Freida must go through is the only one which can liberate her creativity and give life to her play. It is the only one which, finally, can give her the validation as an artist she so desperately seeks. The importance of that struggle, its complicated nature, its perils and, ultimately, its rewards, are the subject of this paper.
At last year's ACTR conference Joy Coghill spoke of what she went through creating SONG OF THIS PLACE and how the struggle to write it became the play itself. Now, focussing on the actor/playwright who is the central character, this paper will explore the dynamic heart of the creative process for Freida. The tension of the space between Freida and Emily Carr and between the actor/playwright Freida and the actor/playwright Joy Coghill is never far from the surface.

Louise FORSYTH (Saskatchewan) Women Writing Autobiographical Theatre
I plan to study techniques used by some women playwrights to incorporate innovative narrative-like techniques into their dramatic autobiographical texts. Some of these techniques involve special uses of didascalia; others are integrated into character creation, dialogue construction, and plot development. Thes e dramatic texts offer fresh perspectives on autobiography when it is written in forms other than prose fiction. I am interested here in autobiography as it dramatises the unheard stories of both individuals and groups with whom individuals adopt intimate association. These seldom performed texts offer challenges for staging which, if met, could bring fresh perspectives to theatre practice, criticism and theory. Plays I will mention and study in varying degrees include Anne-Marie Alonzo's Geste< /i >, Louisette Dussault's Moman, Abla Farhoud's Jeux de Patience, Jovette Marchessault's Les Vaches de nuit, Monique Mojica's Princess Pocahontas and the Blue Spots, Djanet Sears' Afrika Solo, and the collective La Nef des sorcières.

Patrick LEROUX (Sorbonne nouvelle) Michel Tremblay’s “Autofictions” and “Impromptus”
In Encore une fois, si vous permettez (For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again), Tremblay resurrects and stages a glorious motherly Nana in dialogue with a young narrator (Tremblay himself?) who prompts her reflections. Self-conscious, self-reflective, self-referential, the autobiographical elements of this ode to lost moments aren’t lost on the audience; we can only regret that the author didn’t play the narrator himself. Not quite autobiography, as the autobiographical contract hasn’t been made “explicit”; not quite fiction, as we’ve understood Nana to be Tremblay’s stage incarnation of his mother--one might then use Serge Doubrovsky’s neologism “autofiction” to describe the hybrid work. This memory-play is erected as an ephemeral memorial by the playwright to his mother (for his own guilty pleasure, as the original French title attests: “once more, if you’ll bear with me”) but also for the benefit of the voyeuristic audience. If this is indeed autofiction with heavy autobiographical overtones, and Tremblay’s play and novel characters are extensively linked, should we reconsider the autobiographical implications of Tremblay’s oeuvre? Is it necessary or even possible to attempt such a reconsideration?
Tremblay has also written three “Impromptu” plays, in the French tradition of the playwright explicitly stating his ars poetica through a seemingly benign play. As did Molière with his Impromptu de Versailles, Cocteau with his Impromptu du Palais-Royal, Giraudoux with his Impromptu de Paris and Ionesco with his Impromptu de l’Alma, Tremblay thinly veils his intentions, takes polemical aim, and defines his perception of theatrical arts. He does not, however, stage himself, as tradition would warrant it, in L’Impromptu d’Outremont, En circuit fermé or L’État des lieux (Impromptu on Nun’s Island). Are these two genres of plays, the “autofictions” and the “impromptus” of the same autobiographical strain? Does the playwright as rhapsode (in the Greek sense of the word) or editorializing troubadour betray the playwright’s self-effacing role? What are the tools to analyze this sort of genre-bending drama?