Delving into previously untapped archival resources, Alumnae Theatre Company traces the history and ongoing impact of North America’s longest-running women-led theatre group, Toronto’s Alumnae Theatre Company. The book illuminates the essential yet downplayed relationships between professional and “nonprofessionalizing” theatre practices, drawing on primary and secondary sources that have contributed to the practice and scholarship of theatre since the early twentieth century. It uses Alumnae as a case study for recognizing female leadership roles that support the development of theatre artists in Canada.

The book considers Alumnae’s historical influences on university philanthropy, intellectual modernism, and Toronto’s expanding theatre ecology. It revisits past eras to focus on four dominant perspectives: theatre spaces, festival competition, new play production, and nonprofessionalizing theatre’s relationship to an emerging profession. The book tethers Alumnae’s alterity to contemporary critical notions of the nonprofessionalizing theatre practitioner as counter-culture revolutionary. It urges scholars and practitioners alike to not take for granted the values and possibilities of contemporary nonprofessionalizing theatre practices. Alumnae Theatre Company also serves as a fascinating history of Toronto through the eyes of its oldest active theatre company.

Robin C. Whittaker teaches, directs, writes, and creates theatre with students at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick where he is Associate Professor and Drama Advisor in the Department of English and Artistic Producer and Faculty Advisor for Theatre St. Thomas. He holds a doctorate in drama from the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies; a masters in drama from the University of Alberta; and an honours bachelor of arts in English and Theatre from Wilfrid Laurier University. At St. Thomas University he teaches courses in directing, acting, theatre theory and criticism, and dramatic literature and has supervised students in the fields of Canadian theatre and marginalization, scriptwriting, and stage management. He has written plays produced at universities and Fringe festivals in Edmonton, Winnipeg, Waterloo, and Fredericton and directed several maritime premieres for Theatre St. Thomas, including Michel Marc Bouchard’s The Coronation Voyage, Michael Hollingworth’s Trudeau and the FLQ, and the world premiere of No White Picket Fence. He currently serves as Vice President of the Canadian Association for Theatre Research (CATR). He is editor of the new play anthology Hot Thespian Action: Ten Premiere Plays from Walterdale Playhouse (2009 AUP), and contributed the Forward to Sally Clark’s WANTED (Talonbooks 2004). He is the founding editor of STU Reviews, Fredericton’s only ongoing theatre reviewing website. Robin has written articles on a range of Canadian theatre topics, many of which are related to nonprofessionalizing (community or amateur) theatre in the “professional era”; these are found in journals such as Theatre Research in Canada and Canadian Theatre Review.

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