Berto_Tony_201307_PhD .pdf - University of Guelph

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underscores this message by creating a recognisable semblance of the artist. While the first
ad connects to the outer frame of the play, which features the playwright’s creative process,
neither the theme of Playwright’s gay relationship, nor any indications of the two other gay
men in the inner play are indicated. One unfamiliar with the play, or Williams’s personal
life, might expect a play oriented around a writer’s creative process rather than the
exploration of a long-term homosexual relationship, the central feature of the script. For
even those who are familiar with Williams’s orientation, the ad offers no expectations that
that aspect of the playwright’s life will be addressed.
Discourses created by these advertisements create potential horizons of expectation
for the play's performance which exclude the play’s gay themes. Glancing at the ad without
reading the smaller text, a viewer might even expect that His Greatness is in fact a
Tennessee Williams play, as some theatres do use well-known playwrights’ images in their
promotion of those playwrights' plays. This misunderstanding could also be promoted by
the poster that suggests seeing the play in rep with The Glass Menagerie, the call out of
"Tennessee Williams in Vancouver" and the comparatively small fonts used giving
information about MacIvor. If a viewer were to see these ads as their initial introduction to
the play, the play’s gay contents would be invisible.
Theatre advertising often includes season brochures. The Arts Club’s season
brochures frequently are stuffed inside play programs, and allowing the viewer to place the
current production within the context of the theatre’s season. The 2007 season for the Arts
Club featured ten other productions in their spaces. Of these plays, three were Canadian
shows successful in other markets (and concerned topics of hockey, old age and middle
age), one was remount of a 1994 local collective work about motherhood, one was a