After reading a book in which his name was repeatedly misspelled, frustrated by that same book's omission of reference to a renowned Canadian actor, and realizing that the only authoritative survey of Canadian theatre was more than ten years old, outspoken playwright/theatre critic Gaëtan L. Charlebois set out to create a more up-to-date authority. After exhaustive research, the results have been made available on the web with The Encyclopedia of Canadian Theatre on the WWW. For M. Charlebois the choice of using the web for such an endeavor was ultimately a matter of scalability and timeliness -- the flexibility of the web means that the size of the site is essentially unbounded, and new entries, additions, and corrections are simple and immediate (he asserts a turnaround time of two weeks).
The site is a veritable clickfest, exhaustively cross-referenced and linked within and without the site. Thousands upon thousands of entries for actors, writers, producers, theatres, and plays, each linked to other entries. The listings are relatively brief (a requirement of the site's editor), but certainly hit the highlights (although M. Charlebois' bias against non-theatrical work leads to lack of details about film and television work, with general comments like "He began acting in movies soon afterwards..." and "also had a solid career on television and in film").
To ensure the site's growth and timeliness, visitors are asked to propose and submit entries. M. Charlebois does not want the site to suffer from the sins of omission of the book that originally prompted him to create the ECT.
In addition to the main encyclopedic section, the site maintains other areas of interest, including links to productions in Canada, news (and gossip) and reviews. There's also a mailing list to keep visitors informed of changes and updates. And throughout the site you'll find Gaëtan L. Charlebois' insightful essays, criticism, and commentary.
This is an invaluable resource.
Also the result of a perceived void, The Canadian Musicals Page is a labor of love created by musical theatre writer Mel Atkey. The site is as of yet a short list of links to pages devoted to Canadian writers, performers, producers, and musical theatre. Although the site duplicates links that can be found at the much larger ECT, the exclusive nature of its entries separates Mr. Atkey's list.
As I say, the list is currently a short one (with a noted preponderance of links to Mr. Atkey's works), but there are plans to keep it growing.
Originally published at Suite101.com Theatre, 3/9/99
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