Introduction: Festivals

In Canada, as elsewhere, “the festivalization of culture” proceeds apace (Bennett et al). Even setting aside the ubiquitous music, film, and cultural festivals that have sprung up like mushrooms—not to mention mushroom festivals themselves (such as the “Fungus Among Us” Festival in Whistler, B.C.)—from the Sound Symposium in St. John’s to the Victoria Fringe Festival, and from the Island Unplugged festival on Pelee Island (Canada’s southernmost point) to the Alianait Arts Festival in Iqaluit, Nunavut, festivals dot the theatre and performance landscape in the land now called Canada. Across the country they turn small towns into tourist destinations and urban centres into “festival cities” (see Johannson, Thomasson). In editing the Cambridge Companion to International Theatre Festivals I compiled a list of over forty international theatre, performance, and multi-arts festivals in Canada, a list that does not include music or sound, circus or visual arts festivals, nor does it include the various Shakespeare festivals (from the “Shakespeare by the Sea” festivals on the east coast to Bard on the Beach in BC), the big repertory seasons at Stratford and Niagara-on-the-Lake, or the many festivals such as the peripatetic Magnetic North that have no international component. In addition to all of these, there are twenty-one Canadian members of the Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals (along with nine U.S.-based members), not including other “rogue” fringes.