political theatre revision pack

one – political theatre overview.

Culture and society are inextricably linked – the arts are an outward demonstration of society’s culture.

The content of plays will always be connected to society and society’s politics.

The theatre of the 50’s, 60’s 70’ and early 80’s tried to bring these politics to life and became known as the alternative theatre movement – something that challenged the traditional middle class ‘safe’ theatre of the established West End.

In this period many theatre companies were set up to offer an alternative form of theatre –although they were often different in approach they tended to share the same intentions – to offer an alternative to the mainstream and to educate their audience.

The whole idea was to be non-commercial – the practitioners were often on the dole, supported by the Arts Council or taking outside work to make ends meet – their motivation was not profit – it was to create theatre.

They were intent on breaking the barriers between performers and audience. West End theatre encouraged the audience to sit back and let the drama wash over them – as Bertolt Brecht once said ‘The audience hang up their brains with their hats when they enter the theatre.’ The new way was to engage the audience and make them think.

They rarely performed in the traditional venues thus bringing theatre to the masses – people who wouldn’t normally go to the theatre. By performing in these venues they were removing the hierarchy of the traditional theatre goer – there were no ‘good seats’. In doing so they were creating social equality, social interaction and social change.

Political Theatre is drama or performing art which emphasizes a political issue or issues in its theme or plot. Overt forms of political theatre, with a characteristic and identifiable style of bold staging and simplified characterisation, include the works of Bertolt Brecht and the street theatre of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, just to name two examples. However, political theatre can also be defined as exploring themes more universal and central to society itself, especially when that society defines itself as politically conscious. In fact, one can say that the earliest Western dramas, arising out of the POLIS, or democratic city-state of Greek society, were political theatre to the most extreme degree. Their being performed in the main amphitheatres, central arenas used for theatrical performances, religious ceremonies and political gatherings, gave them a ritualistic and social significance that enhanced the relevance of the political issues being examined. And one must marvel at the open-minded examination of controversial and critical

topics that took place right in the political heart of Athenian society, allowing a courageous self-examination of the first democracy trying to develop and refine itself further.

Shakespeare can also be called an author of political theatre. Not only do his history plays examine the machinations of personal drives and passions determining political activity, but many of the tragedies such as King Lear and Macbeth examine the essence of political leadership or lack thereof, and the incredible complexity of the subterfuge of which human beings are capable when they become driven by the lust for power.

In later centuries, political theatre has usually been marginalized, forced into an outsider role critical of the government or policies of its own country. Associated with the cabaret and folk theatre, it has had an aura of being a theatre of , by, and for the people, and has flourished in oppressive governments as a means of actual underground communication and spreading of critical thought. And often it has been used to promote specific political theories or ideals, for example in the way AGIT-PROP was used to further Marxism and the development of communist society. But more subtle variations of political theatre have joined the modern classical repertory - such as the highly critical dramas of Arthur Miller (The Crucible, All My Sons), which ask piercing political questions that are inseparable from existential issues involving the behaviour of human beings as social and political animals. In this sense they again approach the holistic universal relevance of the early Greek political drama

two – chronology.1950’s.

Most of the country is still groaning under the after effects of the 39-45 war. Rationing still in place, bombed out terraces left un

repaired. Post war labour government replaced by Tories led by an

ageing Churchill and the brave new world promised in 45 had still to materialise.

1956.

Bertolt Brecht – godfather of modern political theatre dies.

First production of Look Back in Anger by John Osbourne – first time a playwright’s own anger and disillusionment with the world and the class system manifests itself on the British stage. The play inspired

the term ‘ANGRY YOUNG MAN’ – used to describe the new set of 50’s playwrights who vented their absolute anger on stage.

The English Stage Company was officially born to perform plays by the ANGRY YOUNG MEN. Led by George Devine, the company

fostered the new writings of promising political playwrights such as Arnold Wesker, John Arden and Edward Bond.

Late 50’s

Joan Littlewood finally began to see her Theatrical Manifesto of the 30’s come to fruition – providing theatre that was vulgar, witty, informative but never patronising – audiences left having been

entertained, informed but never reprimanded or reformed.

The 60’s

Political theatre begins to develop and carve a niche for itself. Fringe theatre began to emerge. It was no longer unheard of for the working class to go to the theatre - the main theatres still met the needs of the middle classes by providing the same old ‘safe’ and archaic stuff, but smaller fringe theatres – converted warehouses, community centres etc began to emerge and put on plays for the

common man.

1963

Joan Littlewood and Theatre Workshop write ‘Oh What a Lovely War’

1968

American students protest about the Vietnam War.

French Students protest about their unfair treatment and inherent disregard of their human rights. This protest quickly descends into extremely violent riots. The outcome was to have a massive effect on European political theatre – inspiring many playwrights to write

plays on the subject. (Dario Fo being one of them)

Martin Luther King is assassinated as too is Robert Kennedy. English students protest against the Vietnam War by holding sit ins.

Russia invades Prague.The Olympic games bring protests against globalisation and

capitalism in Mexico.THE THEATRE ACT is passed in Britain – the Lord Chamberlain is now no longer allowed to censor theatre. Writers and actors were

now allowed to express themselves freely

12th December 1969.

A bomb explodes in the Banca Nazionalle dell ‘Agricoltura in Milan killing 17 people and injuring more than 100. Giuseppe Pinelli – a

simple rail worker and suspected anarchist is arrested and charged with the bombing.

15th December 1969.

Pinelli ‘falls’ from the fourth floor window of a Milanese police station and dies instantly. Police reports about the incident are

contradictory and rushed. However, the media and more importantly, Right Wing government accept them and the case is put to rest. (It was 10years later that it was discovered that fascists had committed the bombings and blamed it on the

anarchist groups of which they were frightened.)

1970

Dario Fo organises La Commune – a Theatre Collective that closely associates itself with the Italian Communist Party. The first

production of ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST is toured and performed to tens of thousands of people in local community

centres, arenas and warehouses – not theatres....his intentions were to expose the truths about the Pinelli affair.

70’s

Political theatre becomes a force to be reckoned with – producing regular success stories in Britain, Italy, France, America and

Germany. The 70’s sees the rise of the most successful political playwrights:

Caryl ChurchillDavid Edgar

Howard BrentonHoward Barker

David HareJohn McGrath

These writers were the mainstay of British Political theatre and were at the height of their careers during the 70’s. The 70’s also gave rise

to political theatre companies such as:7:84

Joint Stock Monstrous Regiment

7:84Gay Sweatshop

Red LadderBelt and Braces

All of the above companies searched for new ways of working and produced some of the most challenging political theatre of the

decade.

1975

David Edgar writes ‘Blood Sports and Ball Boys’ and ‘The National Theatre’

Late 70’s

The Winter of Discontent in Britain. Trade Unions given far too much power by the Labour Government and thus strikes hit on a regular basis. This results in week long power cuts and complete disarray.

The people were becoming disillusioned with Labour.

1979

Belt and Braces Theatre Company produces the first ever British production of ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST (the

translation you have)1 the play is incredibly well received although Dario Fo doesn’t like the translation because it focuses too much on

comedy.

Margaret Thatcher comes to power in a landslide Conservative victory. This paves the way for some extremely prolific writing from the political playwrights – it was strong in content yet powerless to

change anything.

Early 80’s

Thatcherite Britain proves to be offensive to many political playwrights and thus Edgar, Churchill, Hare and Brenton began

writing biting works in direct opposition to the spirit of the Tories.

1 Silly bit of trivia...belt and braces was directed by Gavin Richards, or Terry from Eastenders as you probably know him. Believe it or not, he was one of the most influential political actors of the 70’s!

Edgar wrote DESTINY (an attack on the British Empire and Right Wing beliefs.)

Churchill wrote SOFT COPS (a damning attack on the British justice system, crime, punishment and corruption)

Brenton wrote ROMANS IN BRITAIN (a vicious attack on the English involvement in Northern Ireland – subsequently banned from

performance)

1988

As a direct response to an evening spent at a prison (Wormwood Scrubs) to watch their production of THE LOVE OF A GOOD MAN

Timberlake Wertenbaker joins forces with Out of Joint (formerly Joint Stock) to create OUR COUNTRY’S GOOD. The play is a response to

her experience that evening when she saw the prisoners come to life for two hours in the harsh, brutal surroundings of the notorious

high security prison. A tour of the show was resurrected in 1991 as a response to the closure of education departments in prisons due to

Tory funding cuts. The theme of the play is that theatre has a humanising effect on whoever is involved – the tour in ’91 was

intended to highlight the mistake in the closure of the education departments.

Late 80’s – 2000

Political theatre takes a back seat and slowly starts to disappear. Shows such as Les Miserables and Cats are at their peak and audiences seem to prefer the big blockbuster, award winning

musical at the major theatres rather than something independent, something subversive in a small fringe theatre. David Edgar ‘sells

out’ and re writes NICHOLAS NICKELBY for the RSC – a sprawling big budget production that seems to offer little political opinion in

favour of simple entertainment.

2000 to the present.

Writers such as Kay Adshead, Mark Ravenhill, David A. Eldridge and Peter Whelan mark the return of Political theatre to the forefront of the British Arts scene. Spaces such as the Donmar Warehouse and the Finborough theatre in London become popular haunts for new writers and companies with a political edge. Political theatre has

changed during its absence though. The theatre of the 70’s strove to sway your opinions – to make you think differently, modern political theatre serves only to inform – you can keep the same

opinions but leave the theatre having been informed and shown a ‘different way’.

three – some extra notes that may come in useful

French Student Riots: May 1968The May 1968 Paris student riots had a fundamental impact on French and Wider European society. A part of the impact was on fashion. Just as the War in Viet Nam was having a major impact on American society. The Paris Student Riots are now seen as a major watershed event in France. As Charles Dickens put it about an earlier French Revolution, "They were the best of times; they were the worst of times. Surely the virtual open warfare in the streets of Paris during those May days shattered the old order in France more surely than any popular uprising since the Great revolution of 1789. Students and police clashed around burning cars and barricades. Half the French work force struck in solidarity-freezing the gears of a society which at the time was enjoying record prosperity. As a result, the mighty Charles de Gaulle fell from what had seemed a presidency for life. Other popular movements were underway that Spring. The U.S. anti-War movement, the Prague Spring, and violence on campuses from Japan to Italy to Mexico. A new world order seemed at hand. The events are relatively unrecognised in America as we were in the grips of our own national upheaval.

EventsThe events of May 1968 in Paris happened just after the first significant student uprising in the United States, at Columbia University in New York. But what happened in Paris, and then other cities in France, shook the foundations far more. The student revolution began with a protest against visitors of the opposite sex in dormitory rooms at a suburban Paris campus. Within a few weeks it had taken hold with the student occupation of the Sorbonne, the citadel of French learning.

Far more devastating for the besieged de Gaulle government was a development that never came close to occurring in the United States during the '60s protests: The students were joined by 10 million workers, half the French labour force, who shut down the economic machinery of France for several weeks. There was no mail, no banking, no transportation, no gas and dwindling food.

The scenes of students being bludgeoned by police had turned popular sentiment against the authorities, in much the same way that the Chicago disturbances around the Democratic Convention doomed the election of Hubert Humphrey in the Unites

States. Merchants on the streets where cars burned and paving stones flew sided with the students. De Gaulle fled to Germany, leading many French people to wonder if things had gotten completely out of control. The French felt they were at an abyss.

Just as suddenly as it had emerged, the stranglehold on France loosened when the government cut a generous deal with France's largest Communist-backed union, occupying the factories. The workers went back to work, isolating the students who were, in any case, approaching the beginning of summer vacation. A special legislative election in June, seeming to contradict what had just happened, gave a resounding majority to deGaulle's party.

But the de Gaulle era was at an end. It took another year for the president and wartime hero to face the French people in a referendum that sought their confidence. By a narrow margin, they voted against him, and he resigned.

French ObsessionThe French are obsessed with the heady memories and legacy of 1968. French "68ers" are now in the generation in power, just as the election of President Clinton brought the Vietnam generation to power in America. The "68wes" dominate French society from the boardroom to the National Assembly. Their ideological stripes may differ today, but their experience was common. They run the Government, the corporations, the labour unions; they run the universities and faculties, the culture factories and the media outlets. Philippe Thouvenin, a young documentary filmmaker, can't get enough of it. "I think it's something for us to think about-this was the last time when young French people felt idealistic. It was our last Utopia," said Thouvenin, who was born in 1965.

ChangesWhat was the impact of the Paris uprising? Most of the backward-looking analysis, as well as the evidence, suggests that 1968 changed French society in some respects unalterably, and in much the same way that the 1960s changed U.S. society. In the ethical, sexual, cultural and intellectual spheres, it broke apart a rigid groupthink. It set in motion political forces that brought French Socialists to power, in 1981. It installed the street demonstration as a permanent part of modern French political theatre.

Immigration

One major change was in immigration. Immigration regulations were loosened and a steady stream of immigrants poured in from North Africa as well as Sub-Saharan Africa.

Education

One of the major complaints Was the French system of education. French schools were strictly centralized and relied heavily on memorization. Some changes have been made in French schools, but HBC does not yet have a good assessment on the extent of those changes. One French reader believes that the student riots were the beginning of a real decline in French education. The attitude changed from a teacher in charge to everyone being equal, the students and teachers alike as well as children and adults.

Gender roles

Another impact was a reassessment of gender roles. Equality of women in the work place became increasingly accepted. This has now become widely accepted in France. This includes family roles. You can today frequently see in the street or elsewhere a father or grandfather pushing a child stroller or giving a bottle to his baby.

Fashion

There was a definite impact on fashion. One clear impact was that it no longer was fashionable for boys to wear traditional short pants with formal collared shirts. Boys no longer wore short pants when they dressed up. Boys wanted to wear jeans and other casual clothes.

ContinuityAfter 30 years, France's institutions remain little-changed. This is the critical current that runs through all the retrospection underway. France's past two decades of economic stagnation and chronic unemployment have left its people questioning their commitment to social justice and bleakly looking to the future.

Political Theatre in Britain – A Brief OverviewThough all theatre is, in a broad sense 'political', the term 'political theatre' has been accepted as defining a left-wing theatre, critical of the capitalist system and expressing in its work the need for radical change.

The first organised political theatre in this country was the Workers' Theatre Movement, which spanned the period from 1928 to 1938. 1968 saw the upsurge of Alternative Theatre and the formation of several socialist theatre groups. Linking these two movements was the pre-war work of Theatre Union in Manchester and the post-war work of Theatre Workshop.

The Workers' Theatre Movement of the thirties, as important a cultural and political manifestation in its own time as the Alternative movement of the seventies, has been almost completely ignored in the main stream of writing on theatre history, and such

information as is available is limited, in the main, to specialist journals such as History Workshop.

The third edition of the Oxford Companion to the Theatre, though it claims 'an effort has been made to provide information on every aspect of the theatre up to the end of 1964' has nothing to say on the subject. The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of World Theatre, published by Thames and Hudson in 1977, deals solely, in seventy words, with agitational theatre in the U.S.S.R. and Germany before the Second World War, though Theatre Union does get a brief mention under 'Littlewood'. Methuen's Encyclopaedia of World Drama, published in 1970, and the Penguin Dictionary of Theatre have no entry under Street theatre, Agit-Prop or Political Theatre. Surprisingly, even David Edgar wrote in the Theatre Quarterly of winter 1979, 'There are two reasons why 1968 can be taken as the starting date of political theatre in Britain'.

Political theatre goes back even earlier than the start of the Workers' Theatre Movement in 1928, but that year marks the beginning of an attempt to organise left-wing theatre on a comparatively widespread scale. It was directly agitational, rejecting completely all the theatrical conventions of the time, embracing the class-struggle and identifying itself closely with the Communist Party. The revolutionary nature of its work was unable to survive the formation of the Popular Front in 1936 — the alliance between the Communist Party, the I.L.P. and the left wing of the Labour Party. Also, unemployment had declined, industrial strife was easing and progressive forces felt that the urgent need was to unite against what was then seen as the main danger— the rise of Fascism all over Europe. To alert a broader section of the people to this new threat, the direct, simple sketches of street agit-prop had to give way to indoor theatre, full-length plays and, consequently, the need to improve the artistic and technical levels of performance. Joan Littlewood and Ewan MacColl had led the way with Theatre of Action in Manchester as early as 1934, culminating in the production of Las Edition in 1940, paving the way for the even more complex requirements of plays like Uranium 235 in the post-war years.

Though little has been documented of the many groups that made up the Workers' Theatre Movement a great deal is known about the present-day Alternative Theatre. Unlike the Workers' Theatre Movement it is an accepted pan of the theatrical scene. Until recently public subsidy has been available to many of them on the basis of their merit. Now, in the political climate of the 1980s, these are being withdrawn from the more radical groups such as 7:84 and they are now fighting for their survival. Many of its writers are established 'names' and their plays are published. Some of these, like John Arden, David Mercer, John McGrath, had been writing since the fifties, but 1968 marked the beginning of the upsurge of left-wing theatre groups in this country, alongside other theatre groups with no specific political commitment.

It is significant that the formation in 1928 of the Workers' Theatre Movement and the rise of political theatre in the late sixties both had, as their springboard, a rejection of orthodox Labour politics and the need to seek out a more radical solution to the injustices of Capitalism though the differences in the economic conditions of the two periods was considerable. 1928 was a time of depression, high unemployment and poverty, and the Workers' Theatre Movement, born out of discontent and struggle, was an integral pan of the political movement of the working class. 1968 on the other

hand, was a time of comparative prosperity, unemployment was low and the recession had not yet bit the Consumer Society. Nevertheless, the Labour government that had come to power in 1964 had failed to affect any of the expected radical changes. From the resulting disillusionment and the political awareness of students, intellectuals and young theatre workers, some of whom were from the working class, sprang the theatre of protest. Some groups adopted agit-prop techniques, taking their theatre to non-theatrical venues: halls, clubs, pubs, community centres, places of work and out on to the streets, in much the same way as the Workers' Theatre Movement had done.

It may be that Harold Hobson was overstating the case when he said 'I doubt if there would have been any Fringe without Theatre Workshop and Joan Littlewood', but the influence on the work of some of the pioneers of the political theatre in the late sixties has been acknowledged, not least in their appreciation of the need to develop the physical skills of the actors, the value of the use of common speech in the theatre and the advantages resulting from group work. Albert Hunt has said that these were just some of the elements in Theatre Workshop productions he saw over the years that inspired his subsequent work with the Bradford College of Art group. His memorable large-scale piece of street theatre The Russian Revolution and drama documentaries like John Ford's Cuban Missile Crisis in turn influenced much of the political theatre of the seventies, including the work of groups like General Will and Welfare State.

John McGrath has also acknowledged the influence of Theatre Workshop on his work with 7:84 Company and their commitment to create a popular working class theatre. How this can best be achieved has exercised the minds of everyone engaged in political theatre since the twenties. The agit-prop theatre of those years took their sketches to those directly concerned with specific issues — at their places of work, into clubs or out into the streets; and since the late sixties this form of theatre has been developed by groups like North-West Spanner, Belt and Braces and Red Ladder.

Agit-prop certainly ensures that your message gets to the intended audience, and its impact is immediate, but it has obvious limitations. It is unable to cope with the complex historical progression of events, or with rapid transitions of time and place, essential to a play like Uranium 235. To effect this and to create the right atmosphere for each scene the help of music and lighting is needed and a flexible form of staging to break up the stage area for the movements of the actors. So a certain amount of technical equipment is necessary, but provided a group is prepared to load and unload this on to a vehicle and rig and de-rig stages, plays of this kind are mobile and can reach working-class audiences in own clubs and halls.

All this was done in the one-night-stand tours of Theatre Workshop from 1945 to 1952, which included the South Wales mining villages, the miners' halls of the North-East and the Scottish coalfields. We didn't always play to good houses, but we knew that whoever turned up was almost bound to be working class — there were very few others around. A notable success in our search for working-class audiences was the five performances of Uranium 235 which we played at Butlin's Holiday Camp at Filey in May 1946. Each episode was applauded as though it was an item on a variety hill, and the enthusiasm shown for what must have been, for most of the audience, a novel theatrical experience, confirmed our belief that there was no need to compromise or 'play down' to working people.

There were no recognised venues or touring circuits in the forties and fifties as there are now, and every hall had to be sought out and booked. We were the only political theatre touring at this time. We had no subsidy, and playing six one-night stands a week for months at a time was very hard work. Notable amongst the many groups now touring the country is John McGrath's 7:84 Company, whose work with popular theatre forms, song, dance and documentary drama has attracted new audiences to the theatre in Scotland and England. David Scase, a founder-member of Theatre Workshop, directed Johnny Noble for the 7:84 Company in 1983. At the time of writing this company, as might be expected, has lost its subsidy. Perhaps they should follow Lord Gowrie's advice and seek commercial sponsorship!

An important stimulus to this creation of new audiences has been the setting-up of local community theatres all over the country, usually in non-theatre locations — though occasionally conventional theatres have been put to good use. A feature of the work of Peter Cheeseman (who was also influenced by Theatre Workshop), at the Victoria Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent, has been to extend the Living Newspaper form into historical documentaries of local interest, using idiomatic speech and researched by his own group of actors. The Everyman Theatre, Liverpool, also attracted a largely working-class audience, particularly when John McGrath worked there in 1971 and 1972.

The great theatres of all times have been popular theatres which reflected the dreams and struggles of the people. The theatre of Aeschylus and Sophocles, of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, of the Commedia dell'-Arte and Moliére derived their inspiration, their language, their art from the people. We want a theatre with a living language, a theatre which is not afraid of its own voice and which will comment as fearlessly on Society as did Ben Jonson and Aristophanes. Theatre Workshop is an organisation of artists, technicians and actors who are experimenting in stage-craft. Its purpose was to create a flexible theatre-art, as swift moving and plastic as the cinema, by applying the recent technical advances in light and sound, and introducing music and the 'dance theatre' style of production.

A popular theatre cannot be built solely on the basis of contemporary plays

concerned with the political or social ills of our society. The plays inherited from the great theatres of the past, the Greeks, the Elizabethans, the Commedia dell'arte and the Spanish theatre of Lope de Vega, are the heritage of all people and must not remain, as at present, the privilege of the few. These playwrights wrote for a popular theatre of their own time and many of their themes are still relevant today. Who has matched

Ben Jonson's exposure of greed and corruption in Volpone and The Alchemist or the tyranny of power in Lope de Vega's The Sheepwell? The Théátre National Populaire of Roger Planchan and the political theatre of Erwin Piscator in Weimar Germany, both succeeded in creating a popular theatre on the basis of a wide repertoire of plays including the classics. To their names could be added that of Joan Littlewood.

It was no doubt easier in those optimistic days of 1945 to take a long-term view of the function of the theatre and how it could play its full part in the better times we were certain lay ahead. After all, we had a Labour government with a massive majority ready to lead us to the millennium. Our friendship with the Soviet Union had been cemented in war, never to be broken. Fascism had been defeated, a secure future lay ahead for all mankind, and we were determined to build a theatre worthy of that future. It could be said that the political reality turned out to be a lot less worthy than our theatre; and in the 1980's we see MacMillan's phrase 'the unacceptable face of Capitalism' translated into grim reality. The forces of reaction have never been stronger, and the political and industrial strength of the working class is divided and ineffective in the fight against the evils of our society and the ultimate horror — the threat of nuclear extinction. The miners were defeated by the disunity within their own ranks and the lack of organised workers' support rather than by the government and the N.C.B.

The cutting of Arts subsidies following on the abolition of the G.L.C. and the Metropolitan Boroughs threatens the existence of many groups in the Alternative Theatre movement. No effective proposals have been made by Central government to replace the funding previously provided by local government. The disbanding of theatre groups with a social commitment can only be welcomed by a government antagonistic to all progressive institutions. It is part and parcel of the attack on the quality of life and those who strive to enhance it. If we accept that the legacy of man's achievements in our art galleries and museums must be accessible to all, then, equally, the great plays of the past must be made available, not only on paper in libraries but in performance. They are our allies in the struggle for a more civilised society.

The capacity for theatre to stimulate man's critical awareness and question the accepted tenets of our society makes it a danger to conformism. Rather a 'mass' culture based on Bingo, the Generation Game and soap opera, which serves as an opiate, and whose very triviality ensures that it does not impinge on the workings of society or those who live in it. The concept that Art generally, including theatre, exists to enrich our spirit, to inform and extend our horizons is quite alien to those who are content to see it as a form of relaxation for a largely middle-class minority. The Alternative Theatre movement is not only fighting for its own survival but also, hopefully, for this concept of theatre. In the words of Bertold Brecht:

How can the theatre be entertaining and instructive at the same time? How can it be taken out of the hands of intellectual drug traffic and become a place offering real experiences rather than illusions? How can the unliberated and unknowing man of our century with his thirst for knowledge and freedom, the tortured and heroic, misused and inventive man of our terrible and great century, himself changeable and yet able to change the world, how can he be given a theatre which will help him to be master of his world?

Theatre of war - The New EmergenceBritish drama has finally woken up and discovered there's a wide world out there. Michael Billington hails the return of anger to the stage

Saturday February 17, 2001The Guardian

It's almost like the old days. Political theatre has started popping up everywhere. Topical satire in Alistair Beaton's Feelgood. Dialectical debate in Camus's Les Justes. Impassioned protest and philosophical enquiry in two plays about asylum-seekers, Kay Adshead's The Bogus Woman and Timberlake Wertenbaker's Credible Witness. Suddenly theatre seems an important activity again rather than a marginal delight.

Obviously political theatre ebbs and flows. It was strongest in Britain in the immediate post-1968 period. Les événements in Paris, student revolt, the growth of women's lib, the dispatch of British troops to Northern Ireland - all these, plus the emergence of fringe theatre and the end of theatrical censorship, conspired to produce a frenzied volatility. Even the failures of the left in Britain, and the ability of capitalism to absorb revolutionary impulses, yielded a political masterwork in Trevor Griffiths's The Party, premiered at the National Theatre in 1973.

The Thatcherite 1980s also yielded much oppositional theatre. Writers such as David Hare, David Edgar, Caryl Churchill and Alan Ayckbourn attacked the grasping spirit of the times. But political theatre has fallen out of fashion. Mark Ravenhill and Sarah Kane have registered a moral disgust with the Thatcherite legacy, but theatrical economics militate against state-of-the-nation plays. More crucially, the Blairite big-tent approach has tended to stifle ideological debate. As Max Stafford-Clark said at a discussion at the Bush this week: "In the 80s we all knew who the enemy was. Now we are not so sure."

Does the decline of political theatre matter? Desperately, I would say. I am not claiming it is the sole function of theatre to analyse government and society. But if drama withdraws from engagement with the public world, it is inevitably diluted. It is no accident that attacks on theatre have increased as drama has privatised experience. You may dislike a theatre that deals with societal violence or ingrained colonialism - as in Edward Bond's Saved or Howard Brenton's The Romans in Britain - but you can't ignore it.

I'd go further and say that drama is less vital when it ceases to relate private experience to the public world. It's a bit unfair to pick on Simon Gray, a good dramatist whose oeuvre commands respect. But his latest play, Japes, proves my point. It offers an insightful study of a sibling relationship over 27 years. But, except for a bilious attack on conscienceless youth, private lives are not influenced by public events. The brothers change but Britain seemingly doesn't, even though the action covers the years from Heath's accession to Major's decline. For all its virtues, the play offers a goldfish-bowl view of life.

If political theatre is to make a comeback it cannot resurrect old forms. The epic, state-of-the-nation play looks to be a dead duck, and not just for financial reasons. How does a dramatist attempt to speak for Britain at a time of governmental devolution, growing nationalism and a massive north-south divide? In recent years, only Peter Whelan has written a big work on an epic subject - Divine Right (1996), about monarchy; but that, while admirably adventurous, subverted its own republican premise.

If political theatre is to survive, it has to constantly reinvent itself. One way, in an age top-heavy with opinion, is by establishing the importance of fact. For me The Colour of Justice, the Tricycle Theatre's edited version of the McPherson enquiry into the Stephen Lawrence killing, was the most exciting political play of recent years. It took us behind closed doors to reveal not just the police's criminal negligence but the warped racism of the prime suspects. The enquiry's stripping away of institutional evasion also had the contours of Sophoclean tragedy. In short, The Colour of Justice showed that documentary drama can be aesthetically exciting as well as crucially informative.

The key to the political drama of the future is information. We want stories, but we also want to feel that the writer is communicating his or her researches. That can come in a variety of ways.

The great strength of Kay Adshead's The Bogus Woman, brilliantly performed by Noma Dumezweni at the Bush, is that it transmits the writer's incredulous shock at the operation of the asylum system in this country. Adshead shows the racism of the privatised security guards at Campsfield Detention Centre, the bureaucracy confronting an appellant against deportation and the nightmare of trying to survive on weekly £30 food vouchers. The play is written in anger but rooted in reality.

But information can take many forms. David Hare's Via Dolorosa was, on one level, a superb piece of reportage about modern Israel; it was also a philosophical enquiry into the limits of fiction in dealing with political fact. And even when fiction seems the appropriate form - as in Feelgood, Alistair Beaton's merciless satire on political spin - a play's strength derives from its intimate knowledge of the system. Only this week it emerged that Labour's new mantra is "the challenge of change", lines that actually come from the PM's proposed conference speech in Beaton's peerlessly prophetic play.

When I talk about the need for more political theatre to directors and dramaturgs, however, I often get the same response: you can't force writers to write the plays you want. Of course not. But the lesson of recent times is that theatres and companies can be more proactive in marrying writers to subjects. It's happened with the Tricycle, who initiated the documentary agenda, and with The Red Room, who commissioned The Bogus Woman. When challenged - as I was recently - to name topics the British theatre should be dealing with, I would say they are self-evident: Europe, comprehensive education, the rural revolt, the resurgence of direct action as in the petrol-price protest. The result may not automatically be good plays. But I stick with my original contention: theatre is a place of information as well as

entertainment and the more it cuts itself off from society - and relies on a mixture of anodyne musicals and Hollywood-star casting - the more it is doomed to glamorous irrelevance.

The Difference Between Political Theatre and Propaganda…

There's a great big fuss going on in Welsh theatre circles at the moment about Dic Edwards' new play Franco's Bastard. The play has offended many Welsh nationalists because of its portrayal of the central character. Edwards, says reviewer Rebecca Nesvet, "does not seem to care if he makes his listeners uneasy, and that no ideology escapes his criticism, which is about as subtle as an electric shock. In fact, ideology in general and nationalist/nativist/cultural separatist ideologies in particular are under attack in this play."

So intense has been the reaction of the nationalists that at one performance stink bombs were thrown in protest.

I have to confess that I haven't seen the play - Cardiff is a bit too far to travel for an evening out! - but it appears to me from all the discussion that has gone on and the reviews I've read that the reaction to his play is typical of the reaction to any true political theatre, as distinct from propagandist theatre: the way in which sections of the audience assume that the opinions of a character are the opinions of the writer. Not only that, but that somehow the ending of a play represents the desires and aspirations of the author.

But that is altogether too simplistic. Characters in a play are not just mouthpieces for the author, they are individuals in their own right. Or, at least, they should be, otherwise the play becomes a simple one-dimensional parable.

Take Anouilh's Antigone. Today our sympathies lie with Antigone, but when the play was first produced in Paris during the Second World War, the Nazi occupation forces allowed the performance because the state won in the end. Antigone's rebellion is crushed and Creon's rule continues.

But it's not as simple as that: both are right, Antigone for fighting against the ban on burying Polyneices and Creon for ordering it. Antigone, driven by family duty and love, cannot but fight against Creon's decision. And Creon is not a distant tyrant but an uncle, the father of Antigone's fiancé. Even Ismene, too timid initially to go against Creon's will, gathers her courage at the end and vows to fight on.

On the other hand, Creon is faced with establishing order after a dreadful war which pitted brother against brother, citizen against citizen. Something has to be done to restore order and security, to settle the differences and re-unite the city. His duty is not to his family - for Antigone, Ismene, Polyneices, Eteocles - but to the city and its people. And the terrible thing is, he doesn't want this power. He would rather Oedipus had not given in to his despair and guilt: for

him Antigone is "little Oedipus", putting personal emotion before duty to the wider community.

Who is right? Anouilh doesn't really tell us: he presents the situation, the dilemmas faced by the protagonists.

When a man walked out of Pip Utton's Adolf last Wednesday evening "You're not a fair man!", when Pip Utton was punched in the face by an audience member at another performance, when the three protesters hurled their stink bombs in Cardiff's Chapter Arts Centre, they were misunderstanding the whole nature of political theatre. Real political theatre confronts us with a situation and looks closely at the imperfect human beings who are involved: propaganda puts a black hat on one side and a white hat on the other and has the white hat win (celebration!) or the black hat emerge victorious (disaster!).

Real political theatre assumes a maturity and an ability to think in its audience: propaganda seeks to beatify the side it supports and demonise the other. Real political theatre promotes understanding: propaganda stirs up hatred. Real Political theatre makes us examine our feelings: propaganda intensifies them. Real political theatre is difficult, hard and uncomfortable: propaganda is easy and self-indulgent. The place for propaganda is the hustings, not the theatre.

The Death of Joan Littlewood and John McGrath in 2002 – What now?

The death of Joan Littlewood, coming, as it does, so soon after that of John McGrath, would seem to signal the end of an era, the era of political theatre. For around forty years, from 1934 to the mid-seventies, Littlewood was, as it were, the torch-bearer for British political theatre, a torch which was quickly picked up by McGrath when she moved to France after the death of Gerry Raffles.

Who will carry the torch now? There is no obvious successor, for political theatre is all but dead. There's still a bit of it around, of course: companies with a political agenda are still working around the fringes of British theatre, but there's no Theatre Workshop, no 7:84 providing a high-profile, high-impact, intellectually and artistically challenging alternative to the mainstream.

Why not?

There are those who would say that there is no need for them, that the battles which Littlewood and McGrath fought have been won, that the people of this country are better off than they have ever been. Others would argue that all theatre is, by its nature, political, and that people are making a political choice by choosing what they will pay to see, and that the real political theatre today is essentially an affirmation of the status quo, not in opposition to it.

But they aren't right. There are still battles to be fought - globalisation, the North-South divide, the poverty gap, centralisation, the erosion of local

democracy - but what is lacking is passion, the passion and the idealism which informed the best work of Littlewood and McGrath. In their place there is apathy and distrust of politicians and the political process.

We see the same thing in television: Cathy Come Home has turned into EastEnders, Boys from the Blackstuff has become Auf Wiedersehen, Pet (Mark II) and instead of Edna the Inebriate Woman, we have yet another costume drama.

Our response to problems is no longer a commitment to radicalism but a flight into escapism: we don't confront our problems - we watch Coronation Street.

POLITICAL CONTEXTS – why were they written?

Oh What a Lovely War…1963.

An out and out ANTI WAR piece that attacked the British military. Some parts of England STILL groaning under the effects of world war two – still some derelict buildings. 1963 England was governed by the Conservatives and left wing playwrights were beginning to actively write in opposition. Although set during the first world war, Oh What a Lovely War aimed explicitly at the contemporary government and military policy.

Accidental Death of an Anarchist…1970

A direct response by Dario Fo to The Pinelli Affair, in which an innocent rail worker was branded an anarchist (although he could be linked with Anarchist parties, he was not an active terrorist) and ‘fell’ from a fourth floor window of a Milanese police station.

Blood Sports and Ball Boys & The National Theatre…1975/6

Our Country’s Good…1988 and re-tour in the 90’s

A direct response to Wertenbaker witnessing prisoners at Wormwood Scrubs prison performing in a play. She recognised that they were human and the power to play characters with passion and skill. It was a revelation for her to see people she had previously thought incapable of such things produce artistic beauty. She was inspired by the equality that the stage provided and the humanising effect of theatre. The piece was revisited in the 90’s as a response to Conservative prison education funding cuts.