Scenes from the Revolution

Making Political Theatre 1968-2018

Kim Wiltshire, Billy Cowan

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781786803375
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

Political theatre thrives on turbulence. By turning the political issues of the day into a potent, dramatic art form, its practitioners hold up a mirror to our society - with the power to shock, discomfit and entertain. Scenes from the Revolution is a celebration of fifty years of political theatre in Britain. Including 'lost' scripts from companies including Broadside Mobile Workers Theatre, The Women's Theatre Group and The General Will, with incisive commentary from contemporary political theatre makers, the book asks the essential questions: What can be learnt from our rich history of political theatre? And how might contemporary practitioners apply these approaches to our current politically troubled world? Beginning with a short history of pre-1968 political theatre - covering Brecht, Joan Littlewood and Ewan McColl - the editors move on to explore agit-prop, working-class theatre, theatre in education, theatre and race, women's theatre and LGBTQ theatre. Featuring many of the leading voices in the field, then and now, Scenes from the Revolution is a must-read for anyone interested in politics in the arts.

Scene 1
Agitprop and Political Theatre

INTRODUCTION

Kim Wiltshire

There is theatre that is political because it is addressing something new that has not been addressed before – theatre by women, for women, about women, for example – and there is theatre that is agitational, that takes an issue and works with those who live with the issue in an attempt to create change. This type of theatre is often known as agitprop. As Catherine Itzin puts it, ‘AgitProp was formed for “the application of the imagination to politics and the application of politics to the imagination.”’¹ Agitprop may at times overlap with other types of political theatre, theatre that might not necessarily agitate for change but perhaps tackles political issues with a different theatrical focus. Often, as the needs of the society and community around those theatre companies change, different ways of working may be explored and borrowed, and so agitprop comes in and out of fashion, in the cyclical manner of many theatre trends. However, there is something very specific about the early work of companies like Red Ladder and Broadside Mobile Workers’ Theatre that highlights what making agitational propaganda theatre means.

One of the differences, as a theatre company, that Red Ladder brought to agitprop was that the group of people who started the company were not necessarily theatre-makers, but rather saw themselves as political activists who used a range of creative and direct-action activities to get their messages across. The early founders included Chris Rawlence, Maggie Lane, Sheila Rowbotham, Kathleen McCreery, Steve Trafford, Madeline Sedley and Richard Stourac.* All acted, wrote and devised the work, as Itzin explains, ‘[i]t was part of the ideology of AgitProp than [sic] anyone could and should learn to do it.’² This ideology immediately places these creatives outside of the ‘normal’ theatre world, a world where the emphasis was on theatre craft and audience experience rather than using theatre as a tool to highlight particular social and political issues.

The way of working, the process, was often seen as more important than the end product. The theatre group would work with a group of people about an issue, for example a tenants’ association about rent rises. The group would attend tenant meetings, research the issue, be aware of the national and local politics behind the rent rises. The group would then work with the tenants to create a play about the rent rises, perform it to the tenants’ association and then visit other tenants’ associations with the play, to raise awareness about the issue. From this, other creative activities might be explored or indeed other direct-action activities, including discussions and workshops with the group. Quoted by Itzin, Kathleen McCreery explains:

The sketches had to be short, twelve to fifteen minutes was the maximum since they had to be fitted into the tenants’ meeting – first restriction. With so little time to say anything, they had to be simple in the extreme: we could only put over a few ideas, clearly. … They had to be topical and flexible since the situation of the tenants was changing constantly. … The function was morale-boosting, unifying, but also to contribute to a tactical debate because there were different forms of action the tenants could take at each stage.³

So, the engagement that the theatre company had with the group extended beyond a simple rehearsal and performance: get in, perform, pack up and go. The theatre company’s relationship with the tenants’ associations was long lasting and continued in a range of forms. It was during this time that the company used an actual red ladder (hence the company name) ‘as a visual device to attract attention – a cheap and portable way to elevate themselves outdoors – and a useful metaphor of the class structure’.⁴

As McCreery says, the shows were very simple and often used a direct address or music-hall-type style, often broad in humour and avoiding the complications of subtle character and plot development. The shows were created and performed quickly. In an unpublished interview, McCreery said, ‘lots of workers saw our work, but the “intelligentsia” did not.’⁵ This perhaps explains the lack of information and academic work on these early plays – and the reason we are choosing to include extracts of those works within this book.

The reason Red Ladder has been chosen as one of the theatre companies explored in this brief historical overview is because they started in 1968 and are still making theatre today, 50 years on. But of course, their work inspired many other companies across that half century. In 1974 Kathleen McCreery and Richard Stourac left Red Ladder to create Broadside Mobile Workers’ Theatre (also referred to here as Broadside) as they felt the connection to the working classes was being lost at Red Ladder. As time went on, Red Ladder moved from London to Leeds and began to work on theatre for young people. This is a direction many of these early theatre groups took – for example, in the early 1970s, the Women’s Theatre Group worked in a similar way and moved for a while into theatre for young people. But Broadside wanted to keep the original focus on work that concentrated on issues that affected working people, issues that were often imposed on workers with little consultation from those in power.

Other organisations, such as Welfare State, 7:84, Belt and Braces, Monstrous Regiment, General Will, Joint Stock, North West Spanner, Banner, Black Theatre Co-Op, Clean Break, Pip Simmons, the People Show (also still operating after many years), and Graeae, through to newer companies like Take Back Theatre and Mighty Heart (amongst many others) still make this connection, and some of these companies are explored in later sections of this book. However, the process of being ‘active’ in the political issue explored through making theatre was a very clear part of the creative method used by agitprop companies.

The main argument against the methods and delivery of agitprop is often that the shows are underdeveloped and ‘on-the-nose’ – that there is no subtlety and therefore no depth to them. Often, those involved with the early companies will admit that this was true, for the reasons detailed by McCreery in the above quote. The performances were often in non-theatrical spaces at non-theatrical times, in the coffee break of a tenants’ meeting for example. Messages had to be formed into something that could be entertaining but potent. Performances of between 10 and 30 minutes were the norm, although many theatre-makers point to the fact that as this type of theatre developed, went into theatre spaces and played to theatre audiences, the entertainment factor often suffered. Having a free performance during a meeting is a very different prospect to going out for the night, spending hard-earned cash after a long day at work to watch a play. Some theatre-makers felt agitprop could come across as ‘worthy’ or even ‘preachy’ and that the theatre-maker’s agenda often superseded the actual group’s issues. However, with a company like Broadside, the success was again in the process, not the end-product. Broadside wanted to involve the workers, and as the company name suggests, they targeted workers for their themes and plays. Again, quoted by Itzin, McCreery explains the process on Broadside’s first show, The Big Lump:

Here we tried something we’d been aiming for – we decided we actually wanted to make the play with workers. After some effort we got together with half a dozen building workers. They didn’t take us seriously at first – they asked if we were ‘Trots’. But the battle won – we were not Trots – they were giving up their Sunday mornings and more.⁶

Broadside explored a range of political issues throughout its life, and one show that focused on a larger political issue, perhaps one that still resonates throughout the Western world, is a play Kathleen McCreery wrote in 1978, called Apartheid: The British Connection. She says about this play:

The programme was widely performed in conjunction with the Anti-Apartheid Movement’s dis-investment campaign, for trade unions, colleges, etc. It was a montage of scenes, songs, narration, rather than a play.⁷

Of course, the fact that a white theatre company was making a play about the political situation in South Africa at this time speaks more to the cultural historical moment and the title itself made it clear that this was about the British connection to apartheid. However, it is also important to note that a company like Broadside was willing to take on such a huge issue, and one that was very divisive; it says much about the work that MPs like the late Bernie Grant booked the show for his constituents in Tottenham.⁸

The extract from Apartheid: The British Connection, previously unpublished, is followed by an essay by David Peimer, South African theatre-maker and writer, exploring what political theatre means in South Africa today, alongside an essay by Rebecca Hillman that considers what political theatre means in the UK today, and whether we can still examine these large political issues in a meaningful w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction A Very Brief History of Political Theatre in the Twentieth Century up to 1968 - Kim Wiltshire and Billy Cowan
• Prologue Lyn Gardner
• Scene 1 Agitprop and Political Theatre
• Scene 2 Working - class Theatre
• Scene 3 Theatre in Education
• Scene 4 Women’s Theatre
• Scene 5 Queer Theatre
• Scene 6 Theatre and Race
• Epilogue Where Next for Political Theatre? - Billy Cowan and Kim Wiltshire
• Further Reading
• Notes on Contributors
• Index