Lia Marie Talia, U d’Ottawa
Constructing a New Nation during English-Canadian Drama's Decisive Decade, 1967-1977: Beverley Simon`s Crabdance and Aviva Ravel’s Dispossessed

The work of Beverley Simons and Aviva Ravel has been largely overlooked in accounts of the Canadian dramatic tradition. These playwrights employ highly symbolic effects yet distinctly different theatrical styles in order to examine women’s experience of domesticity. Crabdance’s absurdist style underlines the frustrations of its middle-aged heroine, who challenges stereotypical notions about women. Like Simons’ play, Dispossessed employs a highly poetic style that underlines the difficulties that arise in relation to women’s traditional roles, particularly with respect to Jewish life and Yiddish culture. In contrast to the production history of Crabdance, however, Dispossessed won the “Women Writer for Theatre” Competition in 1975-6 and premièred in Montreal soon after, in 1977. Both plays blend expressionistic, symbolist, magic-realist, and absurdist influences with naturalistic dialogue and characterization to create a hybridized theatre that depicts a Canadian identity at odds with what was being officially promoted in the 1960s and 70s as a harmonious Canadian mosaic. In this way, the plays address the way that gendered roles perpetuate what Sherill Grace and Gabriele Helms discuss in Painting the Maple: Essays on Race, Gender, and the Construction of Canada as “the racist, sexist construction of Canada as a country of and for dominant white men, who hold all the cards and make all the rules” (88). These two plays provide an interesting perspective on the development of a feminist critique of women’s roles, especially in relation to the experience of female playwrights writing during a period when the Canadian alternative theatre engaged with socially provocative content, yet still reinforced conventionally masculinist values.