Ann Saddlemyer Award / Le prix Ann Saddlemyer

Named in honour of the Association’s co-founder, the Ann Saddlemyer Award goes to the best book published in English or French in a given year. The winning book should normally constitute a substantial contribution to the field of drama, theatre, and performance studies in what is now known as Canada.

Nommé en l’honneur d’une des cofondatrices de l’Association, le prix Ann Saddlemyer récompense le meilleur livre publié en anglais ou en français, au cours d’une année. Le livre gagnant doit normalement constituer une contribution importante aux études sur l’art dramatique, le théâtre et la performance, dans ce qu’on connaît actuellement comme le Canada.

2024 Winner

Philip S.S. Howard, Performing Postracialism: Reflections on Antiblackness, Nation, and Education through Contemporary Blackface in Canada, University of Toronto Press, 2023.

Performing Postracialism: Reflections on Antiblackness, Nation, and Education through Contemporary Blackface in Canada is a deeply considered, persuasively argued, and urgently needed book. In it, Philip S.S. Howard argues that recent incidents of blackface in Canada, most of which occur on university and college campuses, produce institutional responses that centre white “learning experiences” and consistently devalue and neglect Black perspectives and Black safety. While not a work of theatre and performance studies per se, Howard skillfully employs concepts central to our field (with particular reference to traditions of Black writing by Saidiya Hartman and others) in his powerful argument that contemporary blackface in Canada is a performative instantiation of the afterlife of slavery. He builds his argument with adept and detailed analysis of interview material with students, administrators, and faculty implicated in recent campus blackface incidents. The committee considers this book a vital intervention into theatre and performance scholarship and pedagogy, calling on readers to reconsider and reframe how we teach and write about historical and contemporary blackface, and more broadly about the representation of Black bodies onstage. The committee further believes that the book is imperative reading for all in Canadian academia, so that we can all work together to counter postracialism (i.e. the spurious “claim that the moment of racial transcendence is upon us” (80), in Howard’s words) and labour to support the safety and centrality of Black students and faculty in our institutions. An urgent, essential book and the product of very fine research, our committee offers its congratulations and its gratitude to Philip S.S. Howard for Performing Postracialism.

Honourable Mention: 

Naila Keleta-Mae, Performing Female Blackness, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2023.

Naila Keleta Mae's book Performing Female Blackness synthesizes theory, reflections on her own artistic practice and contemporary Black theatre in Canada, as well as compelling stories from her lived experience, to muse on a life pursuing creative freedom especially for Black, women-identifying artists and scholars. The book posits a theory of perpetual performance, a state in which "people read as female and Black in Canada are always performing" (25), from which position Keleta-Mae parses a mode of self-definition--this is who I am--from one of being defined by external projections upon Black life--this is who I perform. This personally-situated analysis is broadened in the book to think about the wider “staging” of Black life in Canada, evoking concepts from traditions of Black thought such as Franz Fanon's “literature of combat,” in the service of highlighting the contributions of Black artists and thinkers to cultural life in Canada as well as seeing the value of performance to expose and dismantle systems of race and gender-based oppression. In addition to seeing it as an important contribution to the canon of Black Canadian theatre and performance scholarship, the committee felt that Performing Female Blackness offers an inspiring vision of critical creativity for Black artist-scholars, and that it may be seen as a model exploration in our field for anyone aspiring to fuse scholarly, creative, and courageously personal modes of thinking and writing.

Past Winners

2023 - Roberta Barker, Symptoms of the Self: Tuberculosis and the Making of the Modern Stage. U Iowa P, 2022.

2022 - Karen Fricker, Robert Lepage’s Original Stage Productions: Making Theatre Global. Manchester: MUP, 2020.

Honourable Mention - Peter Dickinson, My Vancouver Dance History: Story, Movement, Community. Montréal et Kingston : McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020.

2021 - Dylan Robinson, Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Sound Studies. University of Manitoba Press, 2020.

2020 (jointly awarded)
Julie Burrelle, Encounters on Contested Lands: Indigenous Performances of Sovereignty and Nationhood in Québec. Northwestern University Press, 2019.
Helene Vosters, Unbecoming Nationalism: From Commemoration to Redress in Canada. University of Manitoba Press, 2019.

2019 - Natalie Alvarez, Immersions in Cultural Difference: Tourism, War, Performance (U of Michigan Press, 2018).

2018 - Ric Knowles, Performing the Intercultural City (U of Michigan Press, 2017).

Honourable Mention - Barry Freeman, Staging Strangers: Theatre and Global Ethics (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2017).

2017 - Rick Cousins. Spike Milligan’s Accordion: The Distortion of Time and Space in The Goon Show. Leiden, Boston: Brill Rodopi, 2016.

2016 - Nicole Nolette, Jouer la traduction : théâtre et hétérolinguisme au Canada francophone. U of Ottawa Press, 2015.

2015 - Laura Levin, Performing Ground: Space, Camouflage, and the Art of Blending In. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

2014 - R. Darren Gobert, The Mind-Body Stage: Passion and Interaction in the Cartesian Theater. Stanford UP, 2013.

Honourable Mention - Virginie Magnat, Growtowski, Women and Contemporary Performance: Meetings with Remarkable Women. New York: Routledge, 2014.

2013 (co-winners)
Heather Davis-Fisch, Loss and Cultural Remains in Performance: The Ghosts of the Franklin Expedition. New York: Palgrave 2012.
Jenn Stephenson, Performing Autobiography: Contemporary Canadian Drama. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013.

Honourable Mention - Kirsty Johnston, Stage Turns: Canadian Disability Theatre. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2012.

2012 - Alan Filewod, Committing Theatre: Theatre Radicalism and Political Intervention in Canada. Toronto: Between the Lines, 2011.

2011 - Erin Hurley, National Performance: Representing Quebec from Expo 67 to Celine Dion. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010.

2011 - Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston, Staging Strife: Lessons from Performing Ethnography with Polish Roma Women. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009.

2010 - Candida Rifkind, Comrades and Critics: Women, Literature & The Left in 1930s Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009.

2009 - Sherrill Grace, Making Theatre: A Life of Sharon Pollock. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2008.

2008 - Michael McKinnie, City Stages: Theatre and Urban Space in a Global City. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007.

2007 - Louise Ladouceur, Making The Scene: La traduction du théâtre d’une langue officielle à l’autre au Canada. (Québec: Editions Nota bene, 2005)

2005 - Kym Bird, Redressing the Past: The Politics of Early English-Canadian Women’s Drama, 1880-1920. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005.

Honourable Mention - Ric Knowles Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004.

2003 - Alan Filewod, Performing Canada: The Nation Enacted in the Imagined Theatre. Textual Studies in Canada Monograph Series: Critical Performance/s in Canada, 2002.

Honourable Mention - Diana Brydon & Irena R. Makaryk eds. Shakespeare in Canada: A World Elsewhere? Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002.

2001 - Ric Knowles, The Theatre of Form and the Production of Meaning: Canadian Dramaturgies. Toronto: ECW Press, 1999.

1999 - Leonard E. Doucette, The Drama of Our Past: Major Plays from Nineteenth-Century Quebec. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997.

1997 - Paula Sperdakos, Dora Mavor Moore: A Pioneer of Canadian Theatre. Toronto: ECW Press, 1995.

1995 - Gilbert David et Pierre Lavoie, eds. Le Monde de Michel Tremblay: Des Belles-soeurs à Marcel poursuivi par les chiens. Montréal: Lansman, 1993.

1994 - Rémi Tourangeau, Fêtes et spectacles du Québec: Région du Saguenay-Lac- Saint-Jean. Québec: Nuit Blanche, 1993;

1993 - Diane Bessai, The Canadian Dramatist volume 2: Playwrights of Collective Creation. Toronto: Simon & Pierre, 1992.

1992 - Denis Johnston, Up the Mainstream. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990.

1991 - Anni Brisset, Sociocritique de la traduction: Théâtre et altérité au Québec (1968- 1988). Longueuil: Préambule, 1990.

1990 - Chantal Hébert, Le burlesque québécois et américain. Textes inédits. Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 1989.

1989 - Bronwyn Drainie, Living the Part: John Drainie and the Dilemma of Canadian Stardom. Toronto: Macmillan, 1988

1989 - Jean-Luc Bastien & Pierre MacDuff, eds. La Nouvelle Compagnie théâtrale. En scène depuis 25 ans. Montréal: VLB, 1988.