This book arises from a conference held at the University of Kent at Canterbury in September 1977. Subtitled ‘a festival and an inquiry’, the conference placed a central emphasis on performance: the Joint Stock Theatre Company and the Strathclyde Theatre Group both gave performances, and there were showings of three films: 1789, The Poseidon Adventure, and Soulcaking at Antrobus. In discussion, it was possible to confront the issues raised by popular and political theatre and film from the point of view of both creators and critics. In this way the conference organisers hoped to prevent the separation of the issues into tidy specialisations, whether academic or practical, and to provoke a new awareness of the continuities and disjunctions in forms of popular drama since the beginning of the nineteenth century.

The papers selected for publication have been rewritten in the light of what was said and experienced at the conference and the editorial introductions to the three parts emphasise the links and connections that can be made between one form or century and another. But the papers have also been selected with a view to their range and heterogeneity, so that the book as a whole deliberately juxtaposes diverse areas of interest, leaving the reader to make his or her own connections.