Happy 400th Anniversary, Canadian Drama

Over at Vancouver Plays, Jerry Wasserman reports that today is the 400th anniversary of the first Canadian play:

This week—Tuesday, November 14, to be exact—marks the 400th birthday of the first Euro-Canadian play, Marc Lescarbot’s The Theatre of Neptune in New France,a nautical masque performed on Nov. 14, 1606 by French colonists at Port Royal (now Lower Granville, Nova Scotia) in boats in the harbour on the Bay of Fundy.

As it turns out, Jerry’s written a book about the play and the performance: Spectacle of Empire: Marc Lescarbot’s Theatre of Neptune in New France. He gave a lecure today out at UBC, which I missed, but there’s apparently going to be another at the Playwright’s Theatre Centre later in the month.

I’ve encouraged Jerry to expand Lescarbot’s Wikipedia entry, which could use some work.