Committing Theatre offers the first full-length historical study of political intervention theatre and theatrical spectatorship in English Canada. Building on twenty years of research and engagement in the field, this book’s historical narrative frames close-up examples of how theatre artists have intervened in and engaged with political struggle from the mid-19th century to the present. Lumber-camp mock trials, Mayday parades and street protests, the Workers Theatre Movement, agitprop theatre, the counter-culture theatre of the 1960s and 1970s, and more recent anarchist theatre collectives all played a role in a vibrant and unique radical theatre culture that went largely unnoticed, unrecorded, and undocumented by the professional theatre establishment.

Alan Filewod is professor of Theatre Studies and director of the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph, Ontario. His research fields include Canadian theatre history, radical political theatre and masculinist performance in war play and re-enactment. His books include Committing Theatre: Theatre Radicalism and Political Intervention (2011), Performing Canada: The Nation Enacted in the Imagined Theatre (2002), Collective Encounters: Documentary Theatre in English Canada (1987), and, with David Watt, Workers' Playtime: Theatre and the Labour Movement since 1970 (2001). He is a past president of the Association for Canadian Theatre Research and of the Association for Canadian and Quebec Literatures/Association des littératures canadienne et québécoise, and is a former editor of Canadian Theatre Review. As a theatre activist he was a member of the Mummers Troupe in Newfoundland in the 1970s, and in the 1980s was a founder of the Canadian Popular Theatre Alliance. Honours include the Ann Saddlemyer Book Prize (twice), the Richard Plant Essay Prize (both from the Canadian Association for Theatre Research), the President’s Distinguished Scholar Award at the University of Guelph, the University of Guelph Distinguished Professor Teaching Award, and the Ontario Confederation of Faculty Associations Teaching Award.

Alan Filewod's profile page

• Winner, Ann Saddlemyer Award, Canadian Association for Theatre Research
• Short-listed, Gabrielle Roy Prize, Association for Canadian and Quebec Literatures

“Committing Theatre challenges traditional paradigms and should be required reading in any study of Canadian theatre.”

Jerry Wasserman, professor of English and Theatre, University of British Columbia

“Reading this is like watching a clockmaker dismantle the mechanism of Canadian theatre to show what makes it tick…Committing Theatre is a refreshingly clear-eyed work that moves the fence posts in the field of Canadian theatre analysis, and widens our field of vision.”

Chris Brookes, documentary-maker, former artistic director of the Mummers Troupe Theatre of Newfoundland, and Order of Canada recipient

“In Filewod’s hands, Canadian theatre history becomes a metaphor for the development of the modern Canadian nation-state and a transnational culture pressing ever more insistently against our borders.”

Quill & Quire

“This sophisticated yet accessible treatment combines personal reflection with scholarly rigour, and covers an impressive array of performance events, styles and venues.”

Stephen Johnson, director, Graduate Centre for Study of Drama, University of Toronto

“[Committing Theatre] is an absolutely essential book in its field–fuelled by a passion for theatre that makes a difference–and will permanently change the way in which theatre in Canada is understood.”

Literary Review of Canada

“Filewod’s lucid, brisk writing style makes this book a compelling read, validating and instigating much needed theatrical political intervention.”

Aida Jordão, popular theatre artist and scholar

“Committing Theatre is a masterwork, an adroit synthesis of three decades of research, teaching, editing, organizational leadership and artistic practice. It is the most comprehensive survey of political theatre in the Canadian multiculture to date, but also a rigorous critique of the very terms ‘political’ and ‘theatre’ and their role in scholarship, the Canadian arts economy, and Canadian culture more generally.”

Theatre Research in Canada