Project Leader: Paul Hjartarson
Editing the Wilfred Watson Archive is the core project for the EMiC UA team. We are currently in the process of scanning Wilfred’s archival papers, which we will upload to the internet along with transcriptions of those papers. Interface design and development are taking place alongside our scanning work. Our work is funded by EMiC as well as a Killam Cornerstone Grant from the University of Alberta.
Our lead project in this initiative is an edition of Wilfred Watson’s first play, Cockcrow and the Gulls, produced by the University of Alberta’s Studio Theatre in March 1962. Gordon Peacock directed the play; Norman Yates served as set designer. Watson began work on Cockcrow as early as 1949 and was awarded a Canadian Government Overseas Fellowship with which he funded a year-long trip to Paris in 1955-56 to work on Cockcrow within an environment steeped in avant-garde and absurdist theatrical production and theorization.
