Stage-Bound

Feature Film Adaptations of Canadian and Québécois Drama

Add to my list

by André Loiselle

Type

Studies

Subject

Countries > Canada

Keywords

Canada, adaptation, theater

Publishing date

2003

Publisher

McGill-Queen's University Press

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 240 pages
6 x 9 inches (15 x 23 cm)

ISBN-10
ISBN-13

0-7735-2610-2
978-0-7735-2610-5

User Ratings

(0 vote)

X

Average rating:

0	rating	= We can do without
0	rating	= Good book
0	rating	= Excellent book
0	rating	= Unique / a reference

Your rating: -

Book Presentation:
A comprehensive look at feature film adaptations of Canadian and Québécois plays produced over the last sixty years.

Since the 1990s many of Canada's best-known filmmakers, such as Denys Arcand, John Greyson and Robert Lepage, have looked to the stage for inspiration. While feature-film adaptations of Canadian plays have become increasingly common, the practice of turning drama into film began in Canada in 1942 when Hilda Hooke Smith's Here Will I Nest was brought to the screen. Some adaptations, such as Wedding in White and Being at Home with Claude, enjoyed a fair measure of success; others, such as Me and Les Célébrations, have fallen into oblivion. Some stayed close to the dramatic structure of the original; others sought to explode the limits of the stage to create a greater cinematic effect. But virtually all adaptations have engaged with, rather than denied, their theatrical origins.

This acknowledgement of their dramatic origins has often led to criticism that these movies remain too rigidly anchored to the stage; too "stage-bound." Stage-Bound, the first extensive study of feature film adaptations of English Canadian and Québécois drama, challenges this reductive interpretation. André Loiselle demonstrates that theatricality is central to the meaning of these works. In the process, he reclaims these stage-bound films, which have generally been ignored by scholars.

About the Author:
André Loiselle is associate professor of Film Studies, Carleton University. He is the author of Scream from Silence and co-editor of Auteur/Provocateur: The Films of Denys Arcand.

See the publisher website: McGill-Queen's University Press