The published version of George Ryga’s hit play The Ecstasy of Rita Joe is widely available as a best-seller. Yet the work of one of Canada’s best known playwrights, canonized by critics and studied by students world-wide, remains largely absent from the Canadian stage; Ryga’s very reputation as a dramatist is an anomaly. This anthology, then, is a challenge, even a provocation, to examine Ryga in light of the other plays that constitute his substantial dramatic oeuvre. How was it that one of Canada’s pioneering playwrights became an outsider to the very theatre he had been instrumental in creating?
As a self-proclaimed figure of exile, as an “artist in resistance,” Ryga criticized issues of Canadian culture in numerous instances—particularly its colonized nature, even turning on the very theatre that had earlier nourished him. Employing disruptive elements such as flashbacks/forwards, poetic speeches, songs, sound motifs and changes of setting and weather, Ryga gives his plays a sense of restless movement, even a loss of control. His characters may be physically and spiritually trapped by their colonial uncertainties, but they have great capacity to envision a different tomorrow. It was a vision of tomorrow that, with the sole exception of The Ecstasy of Rita Joe, the theatre of Ryga’s day had no wish to share.

George Ryga
In 1967, George Ryga soared to national fame with The Ecstasy of Rita Joe, which has since evolved into a modern classic. A self-proclaimed artist in resistance, Ryga takes the role of a fierce and fearless social commentator in most of his plays, and his work is renowned for its vivid and thrilling theatricality. George Ryga died of stomach cancer in Summerland, BC, in 1987 and will always be remembered and cherished as one of Canada’s most prolific and powerful writers. His memory was publicly honoured at the BC Book Prizes ceremony in 1993.

James Hoffman
James Hoffman is a Professor of Theatre at the University College of the Cariboo, located in Kamloops, BC, and the editor of the scholarly journal Textual Studies in Canada. His research interests include Canadian theatre studies, post-colonial theory and the history and culture of theatre in BC. A recent notable production was of Nootka Sound; or, Britain Prepar’d, an eighteenth-century work which Hoffman himself labels as “British Columbia’s first play.”

George Ryga's profile page

James Hoffman is professor emeritus of theatre studies at Thompson Rivers University. His research specialty is the theatre history and culture of British Columbia. Most recently he examined the relationship between professional theatre companies in small cities (Kamloops, Prince George, Nanaimo) and their communities. His latest publications include editing of Whose Culture Is It, Anyway? Community Engagement in Small Cities (New Star Books, 2014) and an essay, “Performing Community Action in the Small City: The REDress Project in Kamloops,” in the book, Animation of Public Space through the Arts, Toward More Sustainable Communities (Almedina, 2013).In addition, he has co-edited Playing the Pacific Province: An Anthology of British Columbia Plays, 1967-2000 (Playwrights Canada Press), Alan Filewod’s Performing Canada: The Nation Enacted in the Imagined Theatre (TSC Monographs), and edited George Ryga: The Other Plays and George Ryga: The Prairie Novels (Talonbooks).

He was born in Victoria BC in 1943, educated at University of Victoria, then at New York University where he obtained his PhD in theatre history. He taught post-secondary theatre courses at the David Thompson University Centre in Nelson, East Kootenay Community College in Cranbrook, and Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, where he became chair of the Visual and Performing Arts Department and co-director of the Community-University Research Alliance, which focused on the study of the culture of small cities. He achieved the designation of full professor in 1995 and professor emeritus in 2012.He is a member of the Canadian Theatre Critics Association.

James Hoffman's profile page

“Hoffman provides an effective and multifaceted description for the student seeking a quick understanding of Ryga’s stature as a playwright.“
– Canadian Literature