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Building an Unstable Pyramid: the Fragmentation of Alternative Theatre

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Baz Kershaw
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Abstract

In his earlier article, ‘Poaching in Thatcherland: a Case of Radical Community Theatre’, (NTQ34, May 1993), Baz Kershaw explored the work of the regional touring group EMMA during the 1970s, looking in particular at the quality of ‘performative contradiction’ which enabled it, for example, to make a subversive political statement within the ostensibly safe ambience of a play steeped in rural nostalgia. Here, he explores other paradoxes of that era of burgeoning alternative and community theatre activity in the years before Thatcher, assessing the role and the ‘hidden agenda’ of the funding bodies, and analyzing and contrasting the working methods, aims, and resources of two of their very different clients – the ‘national’ fringe company Joint Stock, and the small-scale ‘reminiscence theatre’ group, Fair Old Times. Although both groups were engaged in the ostensibly radical and oppositional theatre practice which eventually led to their closures, there was, notes Kershaw, an increasing tendency by the funding bodies to judge the work of the latter by the more amply endowed standards of the former. Baz Kershaw, who lectures in Theatre Studies at Lancaster University, wrote for the original Theatre Quarterly on the work of Fair Old Times's ‘parent’ company, Medium Fair (TQ30, 1978), and has put the present studies into a broader context in his most recent book, The Politics of Performance: Radical Theatre as Cultural Intervention (Routledge, 1992). He is co-author, with Tony Coult, of Engineers of the Imagination (Methuen, 1983), a study of Welfare State, and has also contributed to Performance and Theatre Papers.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 9 , Issue 36 , November 1993 , pp. 341 - 356
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

Notes and References

1. Arts With the People, Department of Education and Science, 1975.

2. Ibid.

3. For a useful account see: Hewison, Robert, Too Much: Art and Society in the Sixties, 1960–1975 (Methuen, 1986).Google Scholar

4. Huchison, Robert, The Politics of the Arts Council (Sinclaire Browne, 1982)Google Scholar. Huchison had the advantage of having worked for the Arts Council for five years as Senior Research and Information Officer.

5. Redcliffe-Maud, Lord, Support for the Arts in England and Wales (Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 1976), p. 117–18Google Scholar. Devolution was central to the policies preferred by the Labour Minister for the Arts, Jenkins, Hugh. See his The Culture Gap: an Experience of Government and the Arts (Marion Boyars, 1979), p. 204–11.Google Scholar

6. See, for example, Arts Council of Great Britain, A Year of Achievement: Thirty Third Annual Report and Accounts, 1977–78 (ACGB, 1978), p. 11, where it is claimed that ‘Regional development … is a prime concern of all departments.’

7. Lancaster, Roger, Moving On, a report for the Arts Council of Great Britain on small and middle-scale drama touring in England (ACGB, 1977).Google Scholar

8. Report of the Survey of Small-Scale Drama Groups' Audiences (Mass Observation, 1978), of which a copy is held in the ACGB library.

9. For example, see Elsom, John, Post-War British Theatre (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979)Google Scholar: 'Too many fringe productions gave the impression of being instant art, soluble in cold water as well as hot; and for a summary of general attitudes, Kershaw, Baz, The Politics of Performance: Radical Theatre as Cultural Intervention (Routledge, 1992), p. 42–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. For background, see Kershaw, Baz, ‘Theatre Arts and Community Action: the Achievement of Medium Fair’, Theatre Quarterly, VIII, No. 30 (Summer 1978).Google Scholar

11. The most accessible accounts of Reminiscence Theatre as practised by Fair Old Times can be found in: Langley, Gordon and Kershaw, Baz, eds., Reminiscence Theatre, Dartington Theatre Papers, Fourth Series, No 6 (Dartington, 1981–1982)Google Scholar; and Langley, Dorothy M., with Langley, Gordon, Dramatherapy and Psychiatry (Croom Helm, 1983).Google Scholar

12. Nick Sales, ‘Early Experiments’, in Reminiscence Theatre, p. 15.

13. The best of the Fair Old Times shows took on the characteristics of ‘barter’ as defined by Eugenio Barba. See Taviani, Fernando, The Floating Islands (Holstebro, Denmark, 1979), p. 103Google Scholar. A number of the company's techniques were also similar to Augusto Boal's in forum theatre, etc. The international dimensions of theatre for empowerment were an encouraging feature of alternative theatre in the 1970s, though Barba and Boal were then virtually unknown in Britain.

14. The most notable company to carry on where Fair Old Times left off is Pam Schweitzer's London-based Age Exchange Theatre Company.

15. Ritchie, Rob, ed., The Joint Stock Book: the Making of a Theatre Collective (Methuen, 1987), p. 12.Google Scholar

16. Itzin, Catherine, Stages in the Revolution (Eyre Methuen, 1980), p. 224.Google Scholar

17. Gaskill, William, A Sense of Direction: Life at the Royal Court (Faber and Faber, 1988), p. 136.Google Scholar

18. See, for example: Chambers's, Colin ‘Product into Process: Actor-Based Workshops’, in Dreams and Deconstructions: Alternative Theatre in Britain, ed. Craig, Sandy (Amber Lane, 1980).Google Scholar

19. Gaskill, op. cit, p. 135.

20. For relevant accounts, see McGrath, John, The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil (Methuen, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Cheeseman, Peter, The Knotty: a Musical Documentary (Methuen, 1970).Google Scholar

21. Callow, Simon provides a wry account of this period in his Being an Actor (Penguin, 1989).Google Scholar

22. Chambers, op. cit., gives a brief account of the production.

23. Stephen Lowe, The Ragged Trousered Philanthopists (Joint Stock Publications, n.d.), p. 16.

24. Ibid., p. 31.

25. See, for example, the last verse: ‘The moral you've caught I can hardly doubt, / Never on politics rave and shout, / Leave it to others to fight out / If you would be wise. / Better, far better, it is to let, / Liberals and Tories alone, you bet, / Unless you're willing and anxious to get / Two lovely black eyes.’

26. Lowe, op. cit., p. 42.

27. Ritchie, op. cit., p. 134.

28. Lowe, Stephen, Letters from a Workshop, Dartington Theatre Papers, Third Series, No. 2 (Dartington, 1979–1980)Google Scholar.

29. Ritchie, op. cit. p. 25.

30. Edgar, David, The Second Time as Farce (Lawrence and Wishart, 1988), p. 164Google Scholar

31. Ritchie, op. cit, p. 15.

32. See Gramsci, Antonio, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (Lawrence and Wishart, 1973), p. 15–16Google Scholar, and Eagleton, Terry, Ideology: an Introduction (Verso, 1991), p. 118–20.Google Scholar

33. McGrath, John, A Good Night Out (Methuen, 1981), p. 11.Google Scholar

34. See, for example, Brenton, Howard, ‘Petrol Bombs Through the Proscenium Arch,’ in Trussler, Simon, ed., New Theatre Voices of the Seventies (Eyre Methuen, 1981), p. 92.Google Scholar

35. Jameson, Fredric, ‘Postmodernism and Consumer Society,’ in Foster, Hal, ed., Postmodern Culture (Pluto, 1985), p. 125.Google Scholar