The Carpathians - University of British Columbia

also a comprehensive index that is easy to use
and an informative selected bibliography.
Not surprisingly, Ontario and Quebec
contain a large number of collections, but
compared to Alberta and British Columbia,
the entries for Manitoba and Saskatchewan
seems curiously few. This scarcity may be
due to an actual lack of materials or the differing
efforts of regional research assistants
working on the project.
In addition to meeting the informational
needs of her readers, McCallum expresses
several other goals in her introduction. She
states, "The growth and appreciation of
Canadian theatre research largely depends—
in the first instance—on the development
of Canadian archival resources. This
Directory is designed to encourage the
preservation and use of materials important
to the study of Canadian theatre history."
She encourages the continued
identification and collection of materials
and their deposition in public institutions
which, one would hope, are better financed
and equipped to preserve, manage and
publicize the material, and to provide convenient
public access to them. I believe
McCallum and Pincoe's Directory of
Canadian Theatre Archives will prove to be
a valuable resource for theatre research in
this country. In addition, it does achieve its
goal of increasing public awareness and
appreciation of Canadian theatrical history
and the importance of archival preservation.
Theatrical Biographies
Joyce Doolittle
Heroines. Red Deer College Press $12.95
Daniel Maclvor
House Humans. Coach House Press $12.95
Reviewed by Kathy Chung
Heroines is a collection of three Canadian
plays edited by Joyce Doolittle. Two of the
pieces, John Murrell's Memoir and Michel
Tremblay 's Hosanna, have had previous
publications and substantial production
histories while the third, Sharon Pollock's
Getting It Straight, is a much more recent
work.
Tremblay 's critically acclaimed Hosanna
(wrongly titled in the table of contents as
Heroines) was first produced in English in
1974. It deals with the identity crisis experienced
and resolved by transvestite Claude
Lemieux/Hosanna and his relationship
with his lover Cuirette. Tremblay 's play
about Hosanna, a man who wants to be a
woman who wants to be Elizabeth Taylor in
Cleopatra, and his final acceptance of his
male identity is also a political allegory
about Quebec's cultural emulation of
France and the necessity of accepting its
identity of being Québécois in North
America.
Memoir, Murrell's sentimental, romantic
homage to nineteenth-century actress
Sarah Bernhardt, was first produced in
1977. Set in 1922, at the close of her life, the
seventy-seven year old Bernhardt, on the
pretext of writing her memoir, recollects
and re-enacts her past in an attempt, in her
words, to "accomplish something," "to
do—say—mean something," to "understand"
and "make sense" of her existence.
In this endeavour, the imperious Bernhardt
has the reluctant help of her devoted servant,
Pitou, whom she forces to act out the
other figures in her life.
The play relies on the audience's uncritical
acceptance of the Bernhardt legend
without which Murrell's Sarah becomes a
selfish, tyrannical, grandiose woman who
uses Pitou to relive her past. While the play
has it humourous and tender moments, it
is unclear exactly what sense Bernhardt
does make of her life and the conceit of
forcing a reluctant Pitou to help her reenact
the past becomes tedious in its repetition.
Getting It Straight is a monologue written
and first performed by Sharon Pollock in