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Canada's First Professional Company
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 July 2009
Extract
To write about theatrical entertainment in Canada before the Confederation is to enter a relatively unfilled field. In the absence of a fully documented account of stage presentations, historians like Jean Beraud and Murray D. Edwards have tended to underrate the frequency and quality of performances in assembly rooms and makeshift theaters in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and slighted the crucial role of strolling players in the growth of the theater in British North American provinces. One of the topics still to be investigated is the pioneering work of a trio of actor-managers—Edward Allen, John Bentley and William Moore—who arrived in Montreal from the United States early in 1786 and deserve recognition for founding Canada's first professional company, which gave evenings of entertainment along the lines of London companies. In his history of Montreal theater, Franklin Graham recorded a performance by Allen and Company in 1786, and E. Z. Massicotte uncovered a lease signed by Edward Allen in 1787, but neither explored further. Pierre Georges Roy who compiled data about theatrical performances in Quebec City from the Quebec Gazette and Quebec Mercury began his investigations in 1790 and missed the earlier events.
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- Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1977
References
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