Who's Afraid Of Norm Foster? The Canadian Theatre Establishment, that's who.

Canada's most prolific and produced playwright, Foster began his writing career as a sideline to his dayjob at a Fredericton commercial radio station in the 1980s where he was the morning wake up DJ. Drafted in as an actor for a local community theatre group, Foster caught both the acting bug and an urge for playwrighting. By the late 1980s he was well underway, writing deceptively light comedies about everyday, contemporary people involved in quiet, often very humorous conflicts of the head and heart.

His reputation began to rival that of America's Neil Simon and Britain's Alan Ayckbourn; by the late 1990s he was accumulating up to 50 and 60 productions a year in English-speaking world from the UK to the US to Australian, New Zealand, Bermuda and Canada. In the last few years that number has climbed up to between 75 to 90. So why is the Canadian Theatres establishment so afraid of Norm Foster? With the exception of Theatre New Brunswick and Festival Antigonish, Foster's plays seem relegated to community groups, smaller summer stock companies and amateur organizations. Ask a theatre professional or any self-respecting drama snob and they're more than likely to dismiss Norm Foster as a lightweight writer responsible only for irrelevant 'fluff'. Perhaps the fact that the former Fredericton author - he retired back to Ontario a couple of years ago, actually able live off his writing royalties - writes about recognizably 'normal' people in recognizably 'normal' situations might have something to do with it. Average Joes and Josephines with average, everyday problems. Loneliness. Job loss. Aging. Divorce. Boring jobs. This list is endlessly fascinating - Foster's characters seem shockingly real: working stiffs, beer-drinking dart-league guys, waitresses, office workers, middle-aged resort staff. The fact that most of these people are unapologetically heterosexual - like 93% of the North American population, according to a recent US statistical report - might be another reason for the theatrical establishment to shudder.

Foster's plays are the closest thing Canadians can get to the great Japanese film director Ozu, who made movies about exactly the same kind of material. Restrained domesticity, marriages, deaths in the family, getting on with life. Like in Ozu's great works such as Tokyo Story or Floating Weeds, audiences see variations on themselves as they similarly do in Foster's work; life as it is rather than its idealization. Idealization and wish fulfilment seem like asking for too much in work of Ozu and Norm Foster.

The shocking thing about Norm Foster's plays is just how much the public wants to see them. For the average theatregoer, this is good theatre; unlike what the theatre establishment wants to give theatregoers, which is theatre that is good for you. The difference is usually defined by small number of Government funding agents who ultimately help define what is 'official' theatre in this country. In Halifax, Neptune Theatre - the region's flagship professional theatre and the largest east of Montreal - finally produced a Norm Foster play on its mainstage in January, 2007. Festival Antigonish, on the other hand, has been premiering Norm Foster's work for more than a decade; community groups such as the Theatre Arts Guild, The Bedford Players and the Dartmouth Players have all found Foster's work to be ideal for small-scale operations. Usually staged with only one set and 2-6 characters, the former Maritime playwright's work would seem to be ideal for Canada's troubled and terminally overextended drama scene. And yet, this Neptune production is the first time Norm Foster's work has been professionally rendered in the largest market in the very region where he emerged as Canada's most produced playwright. It certainly reveals some strange things about the Theatre scene here.

Overall, theatre has been immersed in an identity crisis since it was overwhelmed by cinema more than 100 years ago. Since the 1960s, live drama has been fatally cross-pollenated with performance art. The result has left theatre adrift in a world of endless pretentions; striving for relevance, it's practioners are often deluded into thinking that if it's not 'original' or 'unconventional' or besotted with 'social significance', theatre is not relevant. In the case of Norm Foster - who by any measure is a superb neo-classic dramatist with a surprising fascination with the form and shape of theatre, to witness the act of creation portrayed in his play The Love List currently at Neptune - his work has been unfairly dismissed by theatre professionals at their peril. Look for serious writing on Foster's work and you'll be hard-pressed to find anything substantial. Hardly taught in drama schools and ignored by the academic press, Foster is the elephant in the room of the Canadian Theatre Scene. And yet, the audiences just keep on coming. And laughing. And enjoying themselves.

I think it might just be time for the Canadian Theatrical Establishment to wake up and smell the roses. Norm Foster might just be the man who could save Canadian drama from itself. And it couldn't happen soon enough.