Ecocritical Echoes in William Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey

As one of the great Nature poems of Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey (1798) sheds light on the way Nature affects Wordsworth’s memory and enables him to reach mental growth through his philosophical interconnection with it. Through an ecocritical study of Tintern Abbey, the present paper aims to take the clash between the Yale School critics, the New Historicists, and the ecocritics into consideration to show how the contradictory views of the afore-mentioned critics led to a Green reading of the poem in the light of Ecocriticism. Key Words: Biospheric Egalitarianism, Wordsworthian Displacement, Regional Specificity, Metamorphosis, and Ecocriticism.

Dialectics of the Swing (Voter)

This paper aspires to offer a brief genealogy of a new figure of political discourse and imagination I call the "radical centre". In opposition to earlier centrisms, discourses which emphasized moderation, harmony, and balance, this new configuration imbues the centre with a kind of revolutionary or radical potential linked to its capacity to avoid being "trapped" by the traditional political poles. Though this thought envisions itself as beyond ideology and in some sense beyond repetition of any kind the tropology of the centre is filled with repeating motifs and figures susceptible to analysis and critique. The claim of this paper is that the radical centre has become the dominant political rhetoric of our time and that its hegemony works to preempt the possibility of genuinely new (and inventive) forms of political imagination.

Between Friends

already sent by e-mail. Received and acknowledged.

Title: Perverse visibilities? Foregrounding non-human animals in ‘ethical’ and ‘sustainable’ meat consumption.

The invisibility of meat production operations and their associated non-human animals is commonly understood as a causal factor in the use of non-human animals as food. This paper critically explores this assumption using empirical evidence from a study of producers and consumers of ‘ethical’ and ‘sustainable’ meat in Melbourne, Australia. Rather than challenging meat consumption, I find that increased visibility of non-human animals and their ‘processing’ resettles consumers in ‘improved’ practices of meat consumption. Identifying a failure to address the underlying and persistent normalisation of non-human animals as food, I argue that advocacy and dietary campaigns need to mount a more profound challenge to the status quo regarding both meat and non-human animals.

"The Gad; or, Prolegomena to a double bill"

In this work of creative non-fiction, a search for copies of The Conformist (1970) and I Went Down (1997) in the video stores of downtown Toronto becomes the occasion for a philosophical discussion of the relevance of Plato’s Republic for understanding the relation of erotics and politics in the modern world when the author has a chance encounter with an old acquaintance who teaches political theory at the University of Toronto. The evening’s events are recounted in a semi-autobiographical email to his distant wife the next day. - The Editor

Integrated Training For The Singing Actor: Theory And Practice

In the current world of voice training, the physical, emotional and dramatic aspects of the singer’s art are undergoing a thorough re-examination. Musicals, opera, performance art, “popera” – all are placing increasing, and increasingly varied, demands on the voice, body, mind, and spirit of the singing actor. In this context, how do teachers in both the classroom and the studio prepare young performers? Playfair and Portman address this question with commentary on both the theory and practice associated with their development of an innovative training program at the Brandon School of Music that systematically integrating movement, text study, and acting technique with vocal instruction.

Voices, Monstrous and Hopeful: Catalyst Theatre's Frankenstein

This article examines Catalyst Theatre’s highly successful musical adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, mounted last spring at Toronto’s Bluma Appel Theatre. Drawing upon some recent work by Slavoj Žižek and Mladen Dolar, and focussing on the topic of voice, I seek both to explore the production’s unusual aesthetic dynamics and to illuminate its social consciousness. I also extend upon Craig Walker’s analysis of “hopeful monsters” in Canadian drama in order to suggest how Catalyst’s peculiar “lyricization” of Frankenstein’s story invites a new—and potentially catalyzing—mode of engagement with Shelley’s central themes and conflicts.

Size Matters: A Consideration of the Canadian “Shoebox Musical"

Is the Canadian "shoebox musical" best seen as Broadway's poor country cousin or as Canadian drama's illegitimate sibling? This paper will consider the place of the "shoebox musical" with its small cast, few musicians and modest production requirements as a Canadian sub-genre in the larger tradition of the musical theatre. Beginning with an overview of the historical economic, artistic and social conditions that have encouraged, or perhaps forced, Canadian musical theatre artists to produce musicals on a scale almost unimaginable to the Broadway sensibility, the paper goes on to examine the ways in which working within that box has shaped the plays created. From Billy Bishop Goes to War to My Mother’s Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding, a great many Canadian musicals have been made with a simplicity of style and absence of conspicuous consumption that may be merely a result of the material constraints under which they were created, a diminution of the creators' grand artistic visions, or may in fact be a theatrical reflection of a Canadian ethos or perhaps an uncomfortable balance of the tension between the two forces. Drawing on personal experience as a playwright and artistic director and interviews with other playwrights and producers, along with popular and critical writing, the author makes a case for the “shoebox musical” as a distinctly Canadian contribution to the world of musical theatre as well as a legitimate contribution to Canadian drama.

Why Canadians Can't Write Musicals

The Canadian Musical Theatre community may include talented writers, directors and producers, but it does not exist in a properly functioning professional environment. In some respects, the Canadian Musical Theatre is closer to an "oral tradition" than a 21st Century art form. The community lacks leadership, focus, and resources. There is a significant need for effective training programs and realistic, well-supported development opportunities. The history of the Canadian Musical Theatre has some similarities to the history of the American Musical Theatre, but its development may lag about 50 years behind.