Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia
Maenad Theatre
Maenad Theatre was created in Calgary in 1987, the first woman-centred theatre company west of Toronto, and operated until 2000.
The Maenad Theatre collective’s years were marked by intensity, high spirits, and the serendipitous way in which gifted people always seemed to pop up when needed to bring a wide range of scripts to life. It was chiefly owing to the generous and inspired contributions of all those actors, choreographers, designers, directors, visual artists, composers, musicians, stage managers and crew who worked financially on a share system for however much or little the productions brought in, that wonderful stage moments were created, shimmered for a while, and still endure in memory.
Alexandria Patience and Rose Scollard met in 1984 at “Off the Page”, a Calgary actor/playwright group they helped form for the purpose of reading and discussing new plays. The following year Patience and Scollard attended a conference for theatre directors at the University of Calgary. At the time, Rose was working on her Maenad play 13th God. Maenads were an ancient order of women who held ceremonies in honour of Dionysus, the Greek god specifically of wine and, implicitly, of chaos and disorder. Traditionally they had a reputation for running wild and tearing things apart, but their sacred mountain dancing and their song of worship, the dithyramb, were the foundations of Greek theatre.
In 1987, calling themselves Maenad Theatre, Alex and Rose took Scollard’s Metamorphosis I & II to the Edmonton Fringe. By the following year they’d met Nancy Jo Cullen and, because Nancy needed a director for her Fringe play The Waitresses and Maenad needed a stage manager for their Fringe production Tango Noir, the three women joined forces. In 1989, having proven that self-empowerment comes through self-production, Maenad incorporated as a non-profit organization with the mandate to promote new and dynamic woman-created works for theatre. Sandra McNeill and Brenda Anderson, both of whom directed Maenad shows, were closely involved in those formative years, as was actor Barbara Campbell Brown. Maenad produced 13th God in June 1989. It was an enormous interdisciplinary undertaking for a group that had no resources, requiring large-scale sets, artist designed and built costumes/props/masks, an original musical score and choreography, and a cast of six, but as Alex put it, “Why do we think others should produce it – if we believe in it, we should!”
Maenad had a decade and a half of annual three-play seasons. Among the plays produced were Forever There by Nancy Jo Cullen, 1989; Aphra by Cullen, Patience and Scollard, 1991; Mother Tongue by Cheryl L’ Hirondelle and Alexandria Patience, 1992; Gertrude and Ophelia by Margaret Clarke, 1992; Dance Me Born by Alice Lee, with Crazy Horse Theatre, 1993; and Urban Tattoo, written and performed by Marie Clements, 1996. To maintain an outward eye in producing women’s performance work, Maenad moved to an open-call system, with a community-based jury system for selecting their three play seasons. The playwright was always a part of the rehearsal process – an unbreakable tenet. Maenad was also noted for its yearly Femfest and its cabarets, which showcased the work of many Canadian women, including Winnipeg-based artists Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Milan, and Marie Clements from British Columbia.
In 1991, two longstanding supporters and members of the Maenad Board, academics Susan Bennett and Susan Stone-Blackburn, brought Maenad and the University of Calgary together to host “Breaking the Surface: Women Theatre and Social Action,” which was a four-day conference and festival featuring works of Canadian and international female theatre creators; this festival included the second run of Aphra with Tanya Lukenoff of Calgary’s Theatre a Go-Go replacing Nancy Jo Cullen in the title role.
Over the years, Maenad, working out of the Pumphouse Theatres in Calgary, featured the work of countless Canadian women, supporting not only their creativity in all areas of theatre – writing, directing, performance, set design, and choreography – but also their technical and executive abilities. Canadian indie-pop singer songwriter Feist performed with Maenad in a Fem Fest and then in Colleen Craig’s The Dolly Rockers. A Calgary-based independent award-winning filmmaker, Sandi Somers, created many of Maenad’s set designs.
Bibliography
The Glenbow Museum, Calgary and the University of Calgary Archives hold the Maenad Theatre archive, with photos of Maenad’s productions, often by photographer, David Scollard.
Books
Cullen, Nancy Jo, Alexandria Patience, Rose Scollard. Aphra, Frontenac House, 2016. Script for Aphra and several articles related to the play and to Maenad Theatre, including a complete list of Maenad Productions: pp. 80 - 88.
Hengen, Shannon. Comedy’s Edge: Volume II, Toronto: Playwrights Guild of Canada, 1999. Interviews with Nancy Jo Cullen, Alexandria Patience, Rose Scollard and several other women connected with Maenad Theatre: Myra Davies, Carmen Stockton, Laurie Montemurro, Michele Wong, Mariette Sluyter.
Stone-Blackburn, Susan. “Aphra Behn and Contemporary Canadian Women Playwrights.” A comparative study of Behn’s situation as a woman playwright then and Canadian women playwrights 300 years later, attempting to gauge what progress, if any, had been made for women playwrights. Maenad and Aphra are central in the article. In Woman as Artist: papers in honour of Marsha Hanen. Edited by Christine Mason Sutherland and Beverly Jean Rasporich. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1993.
Periodicals
Bennett, Susan, and Patience, Alexandria. “Bad Girls Looking for Money?—?Maenad Making Feminist Theatre in Alberta.” Canadian Theatre Review 8, 2 Spring 1995: pp. 10-13.
Copeland, Nancy. “Imagining Aphra, Reinventing a Female Subject.” Theatre Topics V4. I2, 1994. pp. 135-144. John Hopkins University Press.
Stone-Blackburn, Susan. “Maenadic Rites on Stage in Calgary.” Interview with Nancy Jo Cullen, Alexandria Patience, Rose Scollard. Canadian Theatre Review 69, Winter 1991: pp. 28-33. Reprinted in Aphra, Frontenac House, 2016: pp.68–79.
Profile by Rose Scollard
Last updated 2022-09-30
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