Alan Filewod B.A. (York), M.A. (Alberta), Ph.D. (Toronto) (1952- ), Professor (1995) University of Guelph; research interests include Political and postcolonial theatre, Canadian theatre and drama, theatre historiograph.

New Canadian Drama - Volume 7, West Coast Comedies, edited by Alan Filewod. Volume 7 contains three comedies from British Columbia. In Village of Idiots John Lazarus offers an anthology of comic folktales about the famous wise fools of Chelm; Ian Weir´s St. George is a gently ironic study of a naive academic whose life is framed by his devotion to English literature; and in Down for the Count Peter Eliot Weiss resituates Dracula to the eve of the First World War and exposes the sexual repression and desire that feed Bram Stoker´s famous novel. Each of these three plays taps into contemporary angst, synthesizing the strange and the familiar into something that might be seen as a new Canadian sensibility.

New Canadian Drama - Volume 5, Political Drama, edited by Alan Filewod. "The plays in this anthology represent some of the main formal and thematic tendencies of political theatre in English-speaking Canada in the 1980s." Taken together, the plays in this anthology express the contemporary dialectic of political and popular theatre. Two them, Arthur Milner´s Learning to Live with Personal Growth and Michael Riordan´s A Jungle Out There, follow in the tradition of socially aware political dramaturgy developed by the Great Canadian Theatre Company, an Ottawa theatre that has from its inception in the mid-1970s successfully combined the exigencies of surviving as a professional company with a committed left-wing political mandate. "In Learning to Live with Personal Growth ... biting analysis of the disintegration of moral values in avowedly socially committed yuppies, Milner shows that satire and cool minimalism can be appropriate ideological tools." Michael Riordon´s A Jungle Out There" ... is a catalogue of topical issues that objectifies the author´s struggle to clear his way through a jungle of issues: post-AIDS gay affirmation; women´s emancipation; American colonization of Canada; Nicaragua and fascism." "Straight Stitching is an excellent example of the most common model of popular theatre in Canada. The dramaturgy relies on simple narrative and realistic scenes, designed to be accessible to audiences for whom English may be a second language. The play´s success with working class audiences, and its enthusiastic reception by the professional theatre community in Toronto, suggest that Canadian theatre is finally beginning to come to terms with the rapidly changing multicultural nature of our society." Headlines Theatre´s No´ Xya´, by David Diamond, ... "rests on the premise that the white colonizer can participate in and learn from Native traditional culture. The narration in the play is supported by non-verbal action derived from traditional dance, using authentic regalia, and songs passed on from community elders."