Don Rubin

Don Rubin is profesor, editor and critic. He is the General Editor of Routledge’s six volume World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre and founding Editor of Canada’s national theatre journal, Canadian Theatre Review. He works as a President of the Canadian Theatre Critics Association and is a former President of the Canadian Centre of the International Theatre Institute. He is also a founder of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Toronto’s York University, a former Chair of its Department of Theatre and founding Director of its Graduate Program in Theatre Studies. Prof. Rubin is the editor of more than 60 volumes of critical writings on Canadian and world theatre subjects including the standard study of the field which is used in universities across Canada (Canadian Theatre History: Selected Readings). He  has been guest professor at universities in more than a dozen countries including South Africa, Nigeria, France, China and Hungary.

Don Rubin’s "The Myth of Critical Distance" proposes the thesis that the notion of critical distance as a theoretical construct is mistaken and, moreover, impossible in practice. He justifies this thesis by giving the example of his early journalistic and critical attempts (in the US and Canada), when he endeavoured to meet the criteria of objectivity but soon abandoned such attempts. He reveals how and why he publicly challenged one of the most renowned theatre directors within the English speaking world in order to save the honour of the Canadian theatre community. And how through this stance he crossed the border separating the objective from the subjective, by exchanging the usual qualitative distinction between the good and the bad for the Brechtian concept of the useful and useless.