Stage-Bound: Feature Film Adaptations of Canadian and Québécois Drama

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 Celebrations, 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. that these movies remain too rigidly anchored to the stage; too stage-bound. Stage-Bound, an extensive study of feature film adaptations of English Canadian and Quebecois drama, challenges this reductive interpretation. Andre 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.