Antithesis: British Political Theatre

Joan Littlewood

British political theatre draws on a rich tradition, going back to George Bernard Shaw in the early twentieth century, who used theatre as a vehicle for his meditations on socialism and feminism. Inspired by the example of Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble in the 1950s, the work of Joan Littlewood and Theatre Workshop suggested an early experiment with devised processes, while uncompromisingly promoting a socialist agenda.

Although Littlewood is credited with discovering playwrights Brendan Behan and Shelagh Delaney, her attitude to performance was based on a comprehensive work-shop approach.

No one mine or imagination can foresee what a play will become until all the physical and intellectual stimuli... have been understood by a company and then tried out in terms of mime, discussion and precise music of grammar. (cited in Leach, 2006, p140)

Her most famous production, OhWhat a Lovely War was based on a radio documentary about WWI, and was created through company members investigating the subject.

At the Royal Court, the rise of The Angry Young Men after 1956 and Kenneth Tynan’s critical championing of the ‘engaged’ play against the absurdists provided the context for the development of British political theatre.

By the 1970s, playwrights like Howard Brenton and Trevor Griffiths mused on the ideologies and failures of the left – even Sir Laurence Olivier found himself as a leftist patriarch in Griffith’s The Party. By the 1980s, David Hare was writing for the National Theatre and the radical fringe companies of the early 1970s were integrated in the mainstream, receiving Arts Council funding (1973 for Red Ladder, while both incarnations of 7:84 folded after funding was withdrawn).

Consequently, many theatre companies who used devised strategies moved towards scripted theatre. Red Ladder, who began life in 1968 as The Agitprop Street Players, originally formed to present a piece during a demonstration: by 1974 they had produced Strike While the Iron is Hot: although this was devised through workshops, founder member Kathleen McCreey is credited as co-author. From early pieces described as 'units,' Red Ladder moved towards a socialist-realist theatre: while The Cake Play was an immediate presentation of inequality, closer to 'performance art,' tensions caused the collaborative approach to falter. 

Richard Seyd’s The Theatre of Red Ladder revealed the problems inherent in this collaborative process: dominant personalities would hold up progress until ‘those in a minority would… make the decision unanimous… just so work could continue’ (cited in Hedden and Milling, p106). 

John McGrath, famous for founding the socialist 7:84 companies in England and Scotland, and co-founder of the feminist company Monstrous Regiment Gillian Hanna contrasted the democratic enthusiasm of ‘pure’ devised theatre against the skill of the playwright. 

McGrath’s 7:84 allowed a degree of group discussion – Boom (1974) was the result of ‘the whole company… throwing in their ideas’ (ibid, p111) – but maintained his status as author: ‘they are skills which need aptitude, long experience, self-discipline and a certain mental disposition in one individual’ (ibid, p. 111). Hanna, meanwhile, reflected on Monstrous Regiment’s adaptation of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes as ‘a disastrous foray into the grave labelled devised writing… incoherent. Too many people had a hand in writing it’ (ibid p113).

John McGrath voiced his concerns about such inclusivity following a joint production between 7:84 and Belt and Braces.

There was total decentralization, a total exchange of roles… everybody could do anything on the show. It was total chaos. The gigs got fucked up because somebody didn’t tell somebody that they’d made an arrangement (cited in Hedden and Milling, p106).

McGrath continues with a trenchant complaint: that he wanted to make socialist, not anarchist theatre. 

Thesis: The Anarchic Theatre
Synthesis: Fanshen