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"Duarte, Birgit Schreyer"
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Made in Kanada? The perception and construction of Canadian-ness in English Canadian drama on German stages
2009
Since the 1990s, interest among German audiences in Canadian culture has grown rapidly. Canadian Studies programs, Canadian fiction, and other cultural products have become a significant presence in German reception of foreign culture. Most recently, Canadian plays have received remarkable attention as productions in translation in German theatres. In the German imaginary, \"Canadian-ness\" has long been at once a construct of numerous stereotypes and simplified images, and a largely unfamiliar, vague idea of \"absence\" rather than of a clearly defined identity. What, then, can these Canadian plays contribute to the existing notions of Canada with a German spectatorship? What do these (German) interpretations of Canada convey about Germany? And how do such newly added, modified, or deconstructed notions of Canadian-ness in the foreign perception affect Canada's own self-image in a reciprocal process of cultural cross-pollination? I interrogate the pre-existing perceptions of Canada in the German consciousness and contrast them with constructions of Canadian identity that reach German audiences by way of Canadian drama on German stages. Hereby I identify four of the most commonly proliferated conceptions of Canadian-ness in Germany: Canada as a rural space, as unidentifiable or as a non-distinct space, as a northern nation, and finally, as a pluralistic, multicultural society. As an entry point into the discussion of Canadian national representation abroad, I first explore the concepts realized in the new Canadian Embassy building in Berlin and its functions and limitations as an official representative of Canadian culture. How does the project unmask the constructed-ness of national identity representation and, thus, of performing identity in general? Current considerations of the nation-state for Canadian national self-definitions and a historical contextualization of Canadian cultural nationalisms are the theoretical basis on which to evaluate discourses about Canadian identity formation and its diverging, even conflicting, expressions in cultural products. By comparing dramaturgical considerations, directorial approaches, and the German reception of four case studies (Michael Healey's The Drawer Boy, George F. Walker's Suburban Motel, Greg MacArthur's Snowman, and Walker's Heaven), I assess their performances' contribution to an ever-changing, fluid sense of Canadian identity through its refracted image in the \"Other\" (German) culture's perception.
Dissertation