Re-Thinking My Assumptions: Archival Research and the Writing of Our Kind of Work

While researching background material for Our Kind of Work (Thistledown 2011), a book about the first decade of Saskatoon's Twenty-fifth Street Theatre, I found myself re-thinking long held assumptions about the theatre company and the theatre community in Saskatchewan. My expectation was that the theatre company had an amicable relationship with the Saskatchewan Arts Board through the company's early years. Twenty-fifth Street Theatre was, after all, the only professional theatre company in the province dedicated to producing Canadian plays, and the Arts Board was there to foster the growth of Saskatchewan's artistic scene. The relationship between the theatre company and the Arts Board was less than friendly, however, as is shown in several archival documents. I also assumed that the fledgling theatre company would find an ally in the local newspaper The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, but the relationship was again unfriendly. Animosity between the theatre company and the newspaper culminated in a tense letter to a local reviewer which called for a public debate on the merits of one of the theatre company's productions. My archival research, performed in the Twenty-fifth Street Theatre Collection at the University of Saskatchewan Archives, taught me that my knowledge of the theatre's inner workings and of its relationships with other entities was far from complete.