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A founding figure of 20th century Canadian theatre and drama, Herman Voaden (1903-1991) was the most significant and original playwright in English-Canada until Robertson Davies' more literary dramatic writing beginning in the late 1940s. Voaden's work in the theatre as playwright, experimental director, producer, educator, editor and cultural nationalist from 1928 to 1980 constitutes a unique phenomenon in the history of Canadian theatre and drama. For a decade, from "Rocks" in 1932 to "Ascend As the Sun" in 1942, his multi-media "symphonic expressionist" dramas proclaimed his belief in the "spiritual clarity" of the Canadian North and in the transcendence of human mortality found in love and oneness with nature. His dramas expressed his idealistic, utopian and nationalistic faith in man's ability to perfect himself and to create in Canada "the perfect city," heaven on earth. His two dozen non-realist and "symphonic expressionist" productions from 1929 to 1943, along with his critical advocacy of an aesthetically distinct, modernist "Canadian art of the theatre," provided one of the few stylistic alternatives to the prevailing realism in Canadian theatre production.
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