Re-Staging Revolutions:
Alternative Theatre in Lambeth and Camden 1968-88
The exhibition is dedicated to the Memory of Kate Crutchley, Oval House Theatre Programmer 1981-91 © Susan Croft and Unfinished Histories Ltd, 2013 First published in 2013 by Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance and Unfinished Histories Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, recording or any storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. ISBN: 978-1-903454-02-2 Exhibition and publication text: Susan Croft Design: Mark Bromley www.markbromley.net Disclaimer Unless otherwise noted material including leaflets and photos has been reproduced from Unfinished Histories collections or from archive material held by members of the theatre companies who originally commissioned it, by their permission. Photographers’ credits are given where known. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders of all images and information used. If you can provide details of owners please contact us. Thanks are due to all those who have given us permission to reproduce material. Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance, Lamorbey Park, Burnt Oak Lane, Sidcup, Kent, DA15 9DF Unfinished Histories Ltd, St Margaret’s House Settlement, 21 Old Ford Rd, London, E2 9PL www.unfinishedhistories.com contact@unfinishedhistories.com This exhibition and publication are part of the project Unfinished Histories Company Links. The project was supported by the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund.
Cover photo: The Travels of Lancelot Quail, 1972 , Welfare State International. Photo: Roger Perry Opposite page photo: Avon Touring Theatre: Pickets by David Illingworth, 1975. L to R: Tim Munro, Howard Goorney, Christine Bradwell, Tony Robinson
Foreword by Tony Robinson
But suddenly we undoubtedly were. There were Pip Simmons, Foco Novo, 7:84, Solent Peoples Theatre, Women’s Theatre Group, Monstrous Regiment, M6, Belt and Braces and hundreds more, all talented radical artists struggling to make meaningful, contemporary theatre.
Capitalism was in crisis, and with a few strategic shoves, would soon collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. That at least is what many of us thought in the late sixties and early seventies. Except that previous social transformations had often been prefigured by the work of a vanguard of artists and performers, whereas the stages of Britain’s theatres currently seemed devoid of any such critical mass.
But then 1979 arrived, Mrs Thatcher and the forces of neo-conservatism emerged, and swiftly we were thwarted… at least for a while. So had we been deluded? Had we spent the best part of a decade wasting our time? Certainly we’d had a profound influence on Britain’s theatre practice, but what about the politics? Were we anything more than the latest wave of bright young things?
There was Joan Littlewood at Stratford East or the latest Wesker or Pinter at the Royal Court, but such productions only underlined the absence of radical theatre created by our own generation.
Today capitalism is once again weak at the knees, and working people are disenchanted with what it has to offer. Could it be that we ragamuffin socialists and utopians were right after all, and that radical new ways of living and organising our society will arise in the not too distant future? And if that happens, will a 21st century version of our 70’s counterculture emerge to announce it?
In Bristol a few of us set up the Avon Touring Theatre. Our aim was to produce progressive plays for working class audiences, an antidote to the tired West End hits performed at the Bristol Old Vic and the like. We argued about the content of our shows, how much we should pay ourselves, and who should do the administration and load the van, and although such debates took up valuable time, at least our rows managed to weld us into a shared culture and personal politics. We also tried to democratise the Arts Council, helped create our own lobbying groups like The Association of Community Theatres and the Theatre Writers’ Union, and successfully reformed our trade union, British Actors’ Equity. I don’t remember when we first realised we were a tiny part of a nationwide phenomenon.
Tony Robinson. 21.10.2013.
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The Companies
Re-Staging Revolutions: Alternative Theatre in Lambeth and Camden 1968-88
More than 700 companies were formed between 1968 and 1988 and this project can only begin to represent around 50 of them. Most companies included were based in the two boroughs, Lambeth and Camden, a few toured and performed in them or developed work at key borough venues. Lambeth primarily through Ovalhouse, but also Nettlefold Hall, St Matthew’s Meeting Place and various other fringe venues was a key borough in the development of alternative theatre. Camden was the borough in which about 50% of London-based companies listed in Cathy Itzin’s vital annual Alternative Theatre Directory were based. Key venues included the Drill Hall, the New End, Pentameters, The Place, the Roxy, as well as many more temporary spaces, the ‘popups’ of their day. But there is an alternative theatre history in every London borough and every region of Britain. Unfinished Histories Company Links fulfils just the first part of an aspiration to document that larger history. If you would be interested in helping take that aspiration forward, please visit our web site: www.unfinishedhistories.com or email: contact@unfinishedhistories.com
The Project
The exhibition documented in this publication forms part of the Heritage Lottery-funded project Unfinished Histories Company Links and of the 50th Anniversary Celebrations of Ovalhouse as a performance venue. The challenge of the exhibition has been to try to give a summation of some of the work of a rich and hugely diverse movement in a few panels, a selection of objects and audio-video extracts. The challenge of this publication is to try to reproduce at least part of that in book form. A near-impossible task, but fortunately just one of several outcomes of the project. Starting with this book, if you want to discover something of the development of Disability Arts or Black and Asian theatre as part of the alternative theatre movement, you will find an outline here, touching on some of the key history and issues within the area, along with some images. If you want to discover more about Graeae theatre company or Black Theatre Co-op then you can visit the web site where our brilliant team of volunteers have worked with staff and the Originators of 50 companies active in that period to record interviews and create web pages detailing company histories, often for the first time anywhere.
Susan Croft, Director Jessica Higgs, Associate Director Co-founders: Unfinished Histories Ltd 2.
Welfare State International staged its spectacular Parliament in Flames, an alternative Bonfire Night celebration at Catford, London in 1981 before an audience of 15,000. The show became a huge annual event
new wave of theatre evolved, Oval House was right there.’ The People Show, the first Gay Pride and early Black Panther meetings all owed their existence to Oval House’s welcoming, broad church, adventurous spirit. Everyone played there from North West Spanner to Forkbeard Fantasy, Natural Theatre to Freehold; companies with wonderfully inventive monikers like Confederacy of Fools or Nervous Kitchens, reflecting equally inventive performance. Sue Timothy, radical arts officer worked there; Judith Knight and Seonaid Stewart were part of the team in the 1970s before setting up Artsadmin: with arts managers, as with artists, it has been a dynamically innovative space. Alphie Pritchard and Ros Price organised the youth arts programme and she later ran the carnival mas camp. By the 1980s, under Kate Crutchley, it became especially the base for an explosion of work by women’s groups and lesbian and gay artists. Under Deborah Bestwick it has continued to emphasise supporting the artistic and professional development of new, emerging artists. Diversity in every sense remains at its heart: South African theatre seasons, site specific work, 120-strong youth theatres in Kennington Park and in 2013, fiftieth anniversary commissions reflecting on the social and political changes of the five previous decades. Ovalhouse remains the seed-bed of a magnificent garden.
Oval House – and Garden
The roots of Oval House, or Ovalhouse as they are now called, go back to the 1930s and the Christchurch Oxford Mission whose radical vision was to set up a number of graduate-run settlements in London and elsewhere. Their aim was to equip young people with skills for empowerment and selfdetermination. `It started as a soup kitchen in the 1930s, ministering to the poor’, says Deborah Bestwick, the current Director `then in the 1950s it became a boys and a girls club, doing things like rowing on the Thames.’ Paternalistic philanthropy, however, gave way in the 1960s to a more daring engagement thanks to Peter Oliver, then `Warden’ of Oval House who started to bring in experimental performance artists. They too were young, investigating new artistic possibilities and sharing them with local youth groups with no distinction between amateur and professional in the anarchic, playful, carnivalesque work generated. For many young people on the local estates the experience and the encounter with Peter and Joan Oliver opened new possibilities and directions: ‘the best time of my life’. From then on, in Bestwick’s words, `as each
(Additional material taken from article by Carole Woddis first published in Prompt Magazine).
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years from 1981 encouraging numerous artists to make new work like Natasha Morgan with That’s Not It or Adele Saleem with Hard Corps or the multi-cultural Changing Women group led by Nancy Diuguid. She brought in or encouraged the verbatim play by Vauxhall Manor School, Motherland, where schoolgirls gathered stories of arriving in Britain from their West Indian mothers. With her own company Character Ladies, she also staged a range of innovative women’s and lesbian work including delicious high camp spoofs and musical celebrations of the Ladies of Llangollen as well as straight plays. She died on 21st July 2013.
Kate Crutchley was a key figure
in the alternative theatre movement and an inspiration to the founding of Unfinished Histories. The range of work she programmed or commissioned at Oval House in the 1980s included Black and Asian theatre, experimental work, gay and lesbian theatre, women’s work and combinations of several of these like Theatre of Black Women, was an inspiration. She had trained as an actress, working in rep and at the Orange Tree, transferring to the West End in The Lady or the Tiger? and was in Steve Gooch’s Female Transport at the Half Moon, 1973. As an actor and director she was part of Any Woman Can, the first lesbian play by Gay Sweatshop, and directed plays for both the men’s and women’s companies including Care and Control, based on verbatim testimony about lesbian mothers’ custody struggles. Other work included directing with Women’s Theatre Group, at the New End and co-producing the major Women’s Festival at the Drill Hall in 1977. She was Theatre Programmer at Oval House for 10
Patience and Sarah 1983, adapted by Joyce Holliday from the book by Isabel Miller, directed by Kate Crutchley, was a great success at Oval and then on tour. Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw of Split Britches fame, in the title roles
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Next page - Lumiere and Son Special Forces: a paramilitary Ballet, 1976. Scripted by David Gale , directed by Hilary Westlake, the show was described as ‘a jack-booted sextet of uniformed, unisex conformity, frameworking a story of militant military obedience’. Cast: Barbie Coles, Claudia Egypt, Neale Gudrum, Eiji Kusuhara, Colette Laffont
Introduction The swinging 60s were a time of cultural upheaval and optimism with burgeoning protest movements for Civil Rights in the US and against the Vietnam War, liberation struggles in former colonies, Czechoslovakia and Northern Ireland– some of them bloodily put down. In Paris 1968, students and workers tore up the paving stones. The contraceptive pill enabled greater sexual freedom. Pop culture and multi-media opened up visual possibilities. In Britain the end of the Lord Chamberlain’s powers of theatre censorship in 1968 released widespread experimentation with new physical, visual and linguistic possibilities. A new generation of theatre-makers and art students were intent on asking fundamental questions about theatre and performance – who should it be for? Where should it be performed? Who should be involved in creating it? What should it look like? Most of their answers led them outside traditional theatres to find new audiences in new performance spaces from streets to clubs to schools. New arts centres were opened all over the country to extend access to culture. The Arts Council, influenced by the commitment of radical arts officers, at first supported the work and funding grew in response to demands such as for increased regional touring and the growing community arts movement.
Forkbeard Fantasy, The Government Warning Show, 1976. Inspired by media antagonism towards performance art and experimental theatre, the show was set in a huge Cofiscation deport full of illegal artefacts and inventions labelled High, Middle and Low Art Content
CAST (Cartoon Archetypal Slogan Theatre) started at Unity Theatre but broke away on ideological and stylistic grounds to create a style they described as ‘agit pop’ rather than agit prop
The Round House. Photo: Roger Perry. The former engine shed in Chalk Farm Rd, Camden was the centre for numerous major counter-culture events in the late 1960s-70s including a visit from the Living Theatre from New York, early Steven Berkoff shows, Joan Littlewood’s Oh What a Lovely War!, Theatre du Soleil’s 178 9 and even the sex show Oh! Calcutta! Later events included rock musicals, La Grande Eugene, 1976 and Lindsay Kemp’s Salome, 1977
John Bull Puncture Repair Kit in Crime Show, Oval House 1975. A performance originally created for a festival at De Lantaren, Rotterdam, with legendary Oval House lighting designer Steve Whitsun. Props ‘included a sports car, the skeleton of a horse, a version of Stonehenge made from polystyrene, a Klu Klux Clan re-enactment with fiery crosses. All the sort of things you would never get away with in a British theatre. Except at Oval House of course.’ (Mick Banks)
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Lambeth Lambeth in the 1970s was also a centre for experiments in alternative living. Brixton became the base for gay men’s groups part of the Gay Liberation Front which refused passively to accept police brutality, heterosexism and other provocations. Other squats were feminist in emphasis or leftist heterosexual. Brixton’s black community was also becoming increasingly radicalized. Squatters and community activists set up adventure playgrounds, education projects, local newsletters and campaigns. Oval House provided both a key resource base through its print shop and café for local activists. Black Power campaigners met here. The Brixton Faeries from the gay squats around Railton Road performed here, as did Black Theatre of Brixton, Brixton Arts Theatre, Staunch Poets and Players, and Zuriya. Under the artistic leadership of Peter Oliver who began its transformation to an arts centre in 1963, Oval House supported the work of numerous artistically innovative, wildly experimental companies including The People Show, The Wee Wees, Lumiere and Son, Matchbox Purveyors, Kaboodle, RAT Theatre, John Bull Puncture Repair Kit, Pip Simmons Group and many more. Youth arts remained at its heart, though, with artists and practitioners from the companies running workshops with young people and taking part in regular large-scale collaborative productions through the Oval’s own companies like Grand Theatre of Phantasy.
Black Theatre of Brixton. Photo: Kevin Tilfourd. Originally set up as Dark and Light Theatre by Frank Cousins in 1971. Norman Beaton wrote in his autobiography that Cousins and Alton Kumalo, founder of Temba, produced more plays by African and African-American writers in 1971 to 1973 ‘ than had been attempted by the English theatre in the previous twenty-five years’
Peter Oliver (1926-2007) ‘part socialist-anarchist, part visionary-clown’. Photo: Sheila Burnett
South Circular magazine was published from the Oval House Community Print Shop, run by Chris Montag and others. Festival at Vassall Rd Neighbourhood Centre, 1982. The ‘bouncy cushion’ may have been made by Action Space. Photo: Sally Grant Street Festival at Heath Rd squats, Lambeth, late 70s Photo: Sally Grant Pre-fab house vandalised by Lambeth Council to discourage squatting. Photo: Sally Grant
Background image - Notice for meeting at Heath Rd squats, late 70s. Courtesy of Sally Grant
Camden In 1963 Geoffrey Fletcher’s The London Nobody Knows included a chapter on Camden, a borough of rundown railway yards and homeless shelters. Urban de-population, cynical mass purchase by long-sighted developers, and planned Council demolition left great quantities of decayed Georgian housing empty. Camden became the site of numerous innovative experiments in building re-use including Britain’s largest squatting community (Prince of Wales Rd), Camden Lock market and numerous performance venues from Action Space Drill Hall to the Diorama to the basement of Better Books, Charing Cross Rd. The borough had long-standing radical traditions. Unity: the Workers’ Theatre had been running in Goldington St since the 1930s; George Eugeniou had set up Theatro Technis working with the borough’s Greek Cypriot population in 1957; the Roundhouse, the base for Arnold Wesker’s Centre 42 plan to bring high culture to the working-class became the base for large-scale rock and multi-media performances. In the late 60s it became home to the initiatives of three radical Americans as Charles Marowitz established the Open Space on Tottenham Court Road, Jim Haynes set up the Arts Lab in Drury Lane and ED Berman recruited numerous supporters of Inter-Action, a major initiative which created the Talacre Centre, the first bespoke-built community arts base, the first City farm, lunchtime theatre, the Weekend Arts College, the first Community Media Van and much more. The influence of radical female Americans has been less acknowledged: Beth Porter with Wherehouse La MaMa, Nancy Meckler with Freehold and Nancy Diuguid in gay theatre.
Logo for Unity Theatre, founded as a theatre for the labour movement in Camden in the 1930s. It was still active decades later in Goldington St, NW1 when CAST (Cartoon Archetypal Slogan Theatre) was established in response to the changing culture of the 1960s
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Alternative food store, Alara Wholefoods, in a squat on the south side of Tolmers Square, Camden, 1979 Graffiti on a squatted shop in Euston Street, near Tolmers Square, 1975 Photos: Nick Wates www.nickwates.co.uk Opening the 1977 Women’s Festival at Action Space Drill Hall (later The Drill Hall) in Chenies St, at the start of a three week-long packed programme. Photo: Ria Lawal Frantz Salieri’s La Grande Eugene, based on drag performance, it ran for three months at the Round House in 1976. Photo: Martin Paling
Background image: Inter-Action’s influential lunchtime theatre programme began at the Ambiance Café on the corner of Queensway. As the ‘Ambiance in Exile’ it moved to Norman Beaton’s Green Banana Club in Soho, to the ICA and Oval House before settling at The Almost Free Theatre in Rupert St, W1. Photo: Prue Grice
POLITICAL THEATRE Politics imbued the alternative theatre movement where many companies were committed to use art to advance revolutionary change. The end of direct censorship enabled theatremakers to respond with immediacy to events and to use theatre to raise awareness and encourage debate about contemporary issues. Groups like, Belt and Braces, Broadside, The General Will and CAST (Cartoon Archetypal Slogan Theatre) worked to take socialist theatre to working-class communities but there were intense discussions about appropriate vocabularies. John McGrath of 7:84 (named because 7% of the people owned 84% of the wealth) was especially influential with his book A Good Night Out, arguing that political theatre should deliver high quality popular entertainment. Others followed Brechtian models or Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed with its emphasis on making the audience ‘spectactors’, actively involved in analysing the stage action as a tool for transforming their lives. Key political events fuelled activist theatre including the anti-Vietnam war protests of the late 60s, the Troubles in Northern Ireland after 1972, the Oil Crisis, Three Day Week and trade union insurgency. Following the election of Mrs Thatcher in 1979 companies fought to survive in a hostile environment of burgeoning unemployment and public funding cuts. Many were actively involved in supporting striking mining communities and staging benefits or in supporting anti-racist and anti-apartheid campaigns. Others took part in events at Greenham Common peace camp, as the accelerating nuclear threat, and deployment of Cruise missiles drove the growth of a Peace Play movement, reinforced by the 1986 nuclear energy disaster at Chernobyl.
Programme for Not So Green As It’s Cabbage, 1978, Belt and Braces. They were one of the few companies to address the politics of Ireland, though the Troubles were at their height in the 70s and 80s. Belt and Braces shows were highly didactic with a strong emphasis on audience education and detailed political analysis printed in the programme
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Solidarity internationally included offering platforms to theatre-workers in struggle elsewhere. Broadside Mobile Workers Theatre wrote this show with the help of the Portuguese Workers Coordinating Committee and presented it to Portuguese migrant workers in West London, 1977 A 1984 benefit for Women in Mining Communities, featuring many women who had been active in the alternative theatre movement
Out on the Costa del Trico devised by Women’s Theatre Group. Julia Meadows, Clair Chapwell. The show dealt with the 1976 strike for Equal Pay at Trico windscreen wipers factory. Photo: Lesley McIntyre
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e r t a e h T t is in m e F / ’s n e Wom The Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s questioned the embedded attitudes and practices of a patriarchal society. In the arts women demanded equality and space to create their own representations of women’s lives. In 1975 the first Women’s Theatre festival took place at Inter-Action’s Almost Free Theatre becoming a space for experiment, lively debate and argument. From it sprang key early feminist companies: Women’s Theatre Group, initially created campaigning issue-based drama, while The Women’s Company and later Monstrous Regiment focused on challenging a theatre industry where women writers, directors, producers were a marginalised minority and roles for women scarce and often stereotyped. The number of feminist companies grew rapidly as groups came together to create shows about body image, domestic violence, contraception, reproduction, sexuality, abuse, the personal as political and numerous other issues. In mixed groups women challenged male domination, demanding a voice or broke away to form their own companies. Workshops and group-devising processes enabled women to explore their own suppressed stories and experiment with innovative theatre vocabularies drawing on punk, surrealism, contact improvisation, Brecht or Freud. Companies supported feminist campaigning organisations and targeted new audiences from one o’clock clubs to women’s prisons to youth groups. Others encouraged participation from those traditionally excluded from theatre by age, education or background. Fierce debate in the movement focused around appropriate representation of sexuality and female desire, class and race.
Mrs Worthington’s Daughters explored the lost history of women writers, reviving lost plays and staging new adaptations. In 1979 these included Margaret Wynne Nevinson’s 1911 women’s rights play In the Workhouse and Michelene Wandor’s version of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh. (Anne Engel as Lady Waldemar, Marilyn Finlay as Aurora). Photos: Lesley McIntyre
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Bloomers was formed by three former women members of Belt and Braces, frustrated with the lack of parts for women within the socialist collective. Eve Bland, Noreen Kershaw, Eileen Pollock in Bloomers 1. It dealt with women and work in the workplace and their invisible labour in the home Companies like Spin/Stir founded in the late 80s were profoundly influenced by the feminist work that had gone before. Naming was a hard-hitting piece about childhood sexual abuse set in a ‘playschool-from-hell’ environment. Vanessa Lee, Joelle Taylor. Photo: Per Laleng
Flyer for The Amiable Courtship of Miz Venus and Wild Bill, by the late Pam Gems, performed as part of the Women’s Festival at the Almost Free Theatre, 1974. Her Go West, Young Woman was the first production by The Women’s Company
Spare Tyre: Clair Chapwell, Harriet Powell and Katina Noble in Gone Shopping, 1989. Photo: Martin Haswell
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Background image - Ad for Spare Tyre’s Woman’s Complaint, 1981 Bottom left - Formed in 1982, Theatre of Black Women were the first company to explore the experience of black women and drew on a poetic approach which would allow a deeper and more inward exploration of black female identity and its contradictions and complexities. Chiaroscuro (1985) was the first play about black lesbians
Below - Women’s Project ’78: Aid Thy Neighbour by Michelene Wandor, directed by Kate Crutchley about a lesbian and straight couple both trying to get pregnant. Elizabeth Revill, Nina Ward, Patricia Donovan. Wandor’s theory, analysing three types of feminist theatre: bourgeois, socialist or radical, was influential and much discussed
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Alice in Wonderland by Pip Simmons Group, 1971. Two Alices played the part, one a young girl, the other her male alter ego. The company’s first shows were developed at the Arts Lab Drury Lane, later at Oval House. Lu Jeffery, Nicky Edmett. Photo: Roger Perry
Experimental
P e r f o r m a n c E
The art-schools of the 1960s were the starting points for a wealth of experiment across art-forms, channeling Dada, surrealism and happenings from New York’s art scene to create companies like Cyclamen Cyclists or Landscapes and Living Rooms. Albert Hunt’s large-scale events, like the Russian Revolution staged in the streets of Bradford, inspired work by Welfare State, who created fire rituals and site-specific celebrations in spaces from rubbish tips to docks, drawing on folkloric traditions and vernacular narratives. Work and influences crossed national and disciplinary boundaries. Companies experimented with physical and visual vocabularies creating hybrids drawing on clowning, mime, dance, opera, drag acts, interrogating conventional performance of gender and sexuality, developing theatre laboratories to explore the theories of Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty or Grotowski’s Poor Theatre. Crystal Theatre combined myth and ritual with innovative light-technologies and live music, creating magical dreamscapes. Elsewhere audiences were central: determining which character became the focus of performance for Wherehouse La Mama or selecting objects as starting points for Sal’s Meat Market manic improvisation. Venues like Oval House, led by Peter Oliver and the programmers who followed, became spaces where risk-taking and the right to fail were enshrined within the creative process. Work ranged from the irreverent invention of Incubus and The WeeWees to the disturbing visions of Impact Theatre. Later under Kate Crutchley it reached from the Kathakali-inspired Centre Ocean Stream to explorations of new female languages of theatre in companies from Burnt Bridges and Blood Group to Spin/Stir. Sal’s Meat Market: Ray Hassett in Phil Teddy’s Fun Palace (1974) Photo: Roger Perry
A Short Tour of Ancient Sights by Optik, 1983. Performed by Heather Ackroyd. The artefact was designed by artist Cornelia Parker. Photo: Barry Edwards
Crystal Theatre in Secret Gardens, 1978. John Schofield, Paul B Davies. Photo: Hans Pattist Blood Group in Dirt, 1983, a piece about pornography, subtitled ‘the sex of theatre and the theatre of sex’. Rehearsal at Chisenhale Dance Studios with Sylvia Hallett, Stephanie Pugsley, Suzy Gilmour and Anna Furse. Photo: Jill Posener
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Incubus : Joanna Southcott’s Box, 1975. Gerard Bell, Ian Blower, Paddy Fletcher
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THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE C O L L E C T I V E : WRITERS AND OTHERS ...............................................
Some companies were writer-led (Portable, Paine’s Plough); others focused on developing new working processes to support playwriting (Joint Stock), others sometimes worked with writers, sometimes devised work in the group. Many companies strove to develop work from writers from under-represented groups. Especially in feminist, community and young people’s companies individuals often discovered their voice as writers through the experience of group collaboration. But there was also conflict between writers and groups, many of which were organised as collectives or co-operatives, between the individual writer or director’s vision and authority and other members of the group. Conflict also arose within collectives over political affiliations to a party or a movement, over division of labour where some put in more hours than others, over pay and union membership, over responsibilities on issues of class, race and gender, such as how certain roles should be represented on stage: what was a ‘positive image?’ what was ‘ideologically unsound’? Some groups deliberately shared skills with less proficient members, but this could be slow and inefficient, as could the notoriously extended group meetings, examining every detail of company practice. Some groups split over ideological differences; others became hierarchies led by Artistic Directors; some lost their grants or were required by funding bodies to adopt accepted management practices. But many found collective working processes and the self-analysis involved energising, liberating and inclusive.
Mouth and Trousers: Death of Harlequin, 1979 by Lesley Ferris, devised with the company. The group combined a commitment to new writing with physical theatre, devising and here used commedia dell arte scenarios. Carol Thompson (on floor), L to R: Mark York, Michael Wilcox, Ingrid Frankenberg, Peta Lily Next page right, detail: Jude Alderson emerged as a playwright and songwriter through her work for Sadista Sisters, the theatre company and band she founded with Teresa D’Abreu
Background image - Tara Arts contribution to the Wordplay ’88 showcase where companies involved in developing new writing were invited to share work-inprogress with an audience of producers
Top - Like The General Will, originally founded ‘to present the plays of David Edgar’, Les Oeufs Malades was set up to do work by writer Bryony Lavery including Sharing, 1976, with Gerard Bell and Jessica Higgs Centre - Bristol Express: Prophets in the Black Sky by John Matshikiza, 1985, Pamela Nomvete, Cleo Dorcas. The play blended the words of two 19th century South African prophets with the living tradition of township songs, storytelling and music Left - Bristol Express: A Bloody English Garden, by Nick Fisher, 1985. Stephen Jameson, Richard Graham, Neil Packham. The company held regular developmental sessions for writers
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WORK IN THE COMMU NITY A ND THE STREETS Key to the alternative theatre movement was developing new relationships with local audiences and outside the orbit of traditional theatre, which was inaccessible, costly and crucially happened elsewhere. A wealth of models of pioneering community-based work were developed. Inter-Action, built large-scale Dramascapes with local kids, such as a giant Gulliver, established Britain’s first City Farm (which rapidly grew into a national movement) and a Community Media Van, while their zany Dogg’s Troupe made performances in the streets and with kids. Action Space provided inventive resources and lent support to Community Festivals across the borough of Camden. Bubble Theatre began by touring to a circuit of outer London boroughs, pitching their tent in parks with vibrant accessible shows. Later work was developed directly with the community, who became makers and participants alongside the professionals. Sidewalk and Salakta Balloon Band formed part of the 1970s constellation of companies around Oval House, developing innovative work including mime, clowning, mask work and sharing it through workshops with local youth and community groups. Post-1976 Bradford-based The General Will increasingly sought to make their skills available to local gay, lesbian, immigrant and women’s groups within their Manningham community to make plays addressing shared concerns, where divisions between company and audience were seen increasingly as artificial. Red Ladder, founded in North London as Agit Prop Street Players split, with most members relocating to Leeds where it anchored itself locally, remaining radical and transforming in response to local needs, from political collective, to theatre for young women, and then developing an Asian Theatre School.
Sidewalk perform Jack’s Trip to the Stars 1974. Norma Cohen, Guy Groen, Tasha Fairbanks, Ken Gregson, Sarah Boyes. This was the company’s first funded production, a commission from Islington Council for a play for children, touring schools and nontheatre venues
Inter-Action’s Fun Art Bus at Tolmers Square carnival. The Bus, a theatre on its upper deck, plied the Camden streets offering free rides and a show Action Space, here at a Tolmers Square carnival, were the inventors of inflatables, forerunners of the nowubiquitous bouncy castle, 1970s. Photo: Nick Wates www.nickwates.co.uk
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Salakta Balloon Band. Johnny Melville in The Flying Frazinis. The company drew on mime, acrobatics, clowning and other circus skills in creating shows for the community
Inter-Action’s ‘Fourth double-back two-faced people’ perform in the streets of Covent Garden. Photo: Peter Harrop (Report London)
The Golden Plot by London Bubble, Bermondsey, 1986. The piece looked at people’s reactions to redevelopment in the area. Different groups performed various sections before processing to the ‘Golden Plot’, a magical piece of land owned by a giant puppet
Present Your Briefs c1976 was devised by the community group, Bradford Gay Theatre Workshop with support from the newly reconstituted General Will, following Noel Greig’s ‘zap’ of the company, challenging heterosexism
N GAY AANNDD LESBIA N GAY LESBIA Gay Sweatshop grew out of the first Gay Theatre Festival in Britain, ‘Homosexual Acts’, staged at the Almost Free Theatre in 1975. In 1976 the company became mixed, touring a double-bill of Any Woman Can by Jill Posener and Mr X by Roger Baker and Drew Griffiths. At Dublin’s Project Arts Centre they received bomb threats and were arrested. But audiences were fervent in their responses: ‘[people] would come up …and talk to you afterwards… in tears… and say, ‘That’s me, that’s my story, that’s my life,’ and ‘I’ve never met people like you before.’ People would come out and you would understand why you were doing it.’ (Julie Parker, 2007). Early shows were driven by a powerful sense of urgency at the oppression of a heterosexist society: Care and Control in 1977 a documentary play on the custody struggles of lesbian mothers helped fuel the campaign to change laws and attitudes. In London the Drill Hall in Camden and Oval House in Lambeth, especially in the 1980s with Kate Crutchley at the helm as Theatre Programmer, became centres for groundbreaking gay and lesbian theatre. The high camp drag queens of New York’s Hot Peaches were an inspiration to groups like Bloolips, the Brixton Faeries and Sexual Outlaws, creating flamboyant work that played with gender stereotypes. Lesbian companies like Hard Corps, Hormone Imbalance, Character Ladies and No Boundaries explored lesbian myths and histories from the Ladies of Llangollen and Radclyffe Hall to Sappho and gleefully confronted the gender confusions of panto. In 1988 the Thatcher government struck back with Clause 28 of the Local Government bill aimed at preventing local authorities from “intentionally promoting homosexuality” which they could be deemed to be doing by funding theatres which staged gay plays. It took till 2003 for it to be over-turned.
Catti Calthrop as Romaine Brooks and Adele Saleem as Dolly Wilde in Les Autres, Saleem’s play exploring the lesbian world of fin de siècle Paris. Photo: Susan Croft
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Nancy Diuguid (1948-2003), a key figure in creating lesbian theatre in Britain Drew Griffiths in Mr X, 1976. The play critiques gays for aping sterile heterosexual behaviour in stereotypical would-be marriages Hormone Imbalance in Ophelia by Melissa Murray, 1979, directed by Sue Dunderdale. Sara Hardy on right. Ophelia becomes a spirited woman who runs away with her maidservant, rather than accede to an arranged marriage
Outcast Theatre were based at the GLC-funded London Lesbian and Gay Centre. The leaflet quality reflects the increased grants briefly available in the mid 80s under the Ken Livingstone-run GLC Flyer for the influential New York drag group Hot Peaches performing at Oval House, where the company hung out for about a year in the mid 70s
Brixton Faeries leaflet for Minehead Revised or The Warts That Dared to Speak Their Name, 1979 about the Jeremy Thorpe affair and the queer-bashing of the Liberal Party leader in the press
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C|A|P|T|I|V|E LS & P R I S O N S O O H SC A|U|D|I|E|N|C|E|S: The Theatre-in-Education movement began in 1965/66 with the Belgrade TIE company attached to the mainhouse rep in Coventry, but grew apace in the 1970s. The Welsh Arts Council, committed to the potential of theatre to support education across the curriculum, even funded a company for every Welsh region. Cross-fertilisation between TIE and other areas of the growing alternative theatre movement, saw expertise, new ideas, writers, performers and directors from each area influence each other. Theatre Centre, working for children since the 1950s became refocused under Artistic Director David Johnston, developing as a prolific centre of new writing for young people. Pam Schweitzer edited the first collections of TIE plays and SCYPT, the Standing Conference of Young People’s Theatre was established, rapidly becoming a hotbed of political argument as groups debated internally about theory and practice and externally about how to address the worsening political climate, the rise of the ultra-Right and Thatcherism. Educational cuts and tightening state control of the curriculum saw a slow strangulation of budgets and timetables, squeezing TIE companies out of schools.
Children’s theatre also often addressed issues such as racial prejudice or abuse: Bully for You by Shirley Barrie, Wakefield Tricycle Company, 1979
1983 by David Holman, one of the season of Peace Plays Theatre Centre produced 1982-83. In Waltham Forest Norman Tebbit branded them propaganda for the nuclear disarmament movement and tried to ban them
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Programme information for Getting Through, a key production from Theatre Centre’s Women’s Company, formed 1983 to create job opportunities for women in theatre and make non-sexist education initiatives
Clean Break perform Avenues for sociology students at Mid Kent college, 1982. Jenny Hicks, Racine Watkins and Jacki Holborough. Photo: Brian Moody
Clean Break: The Easter Egg by Chris Tchaikovsky, 1985, dealt with the relationships between a group of young women just out of Borstal in the 1950s Clean Break: The Sin Eaters, in rehearsal, 1986. Jacki Holborough and Jenny Hicks. The director was Ann Mitchell. The play was based on the life of Judy Ward a woman serving 12 years in the maximum security wing of Durham prison for a crime she said she did not commit
Sewing Mailbags by Bob Farquhar, a burglar who became a painter during long stays in jail
Young Woman by Motylski. Water colour on paper 1979
From 1979 Stirabout’s Gallery in Chalk Farm Rd showed artwork by prisoners
Loss of funding under Thatcherism also caused the closure of Stirabout Theatre which, beginning in 1974, were pioneers in taking theatre into prisons when only a handful of over 180 penal establishments nationwide allowed live performance. They were succeeded by Clean Break, working with women ex-offenders, and others as the effectiveness of drama in working with prisoners gained increasing recognition. 31.
THEATRE& The 1970s saw increasing struggle, debate and activism to challenge the exclusion of socially marginalised groups. For disabled people an immediate focus was the environment which prevented their participation even as audience members. Organisations like SHAPE (founded 1976) worked to create spaces where disabled people could develop their creative talents while Artsline (established 1981) promoted access to venues, from ramps to audiodescription. The first disabled theatre companies began with Basic Theatre Company, formed 1977, and in 1980, Graeae, led by Richard Tomlinson, a lecturer at Hereward College and Nabil Shaban. Nabil had struggled to take even basic educational qualifications where the career height he was encouraged to aspire to was a place in a ‘Sheltered Workshop for Cripples’. Taking their name from Greek legend, where three old women share one eye and one tooth, Graeae dared to demand a theatre where disabled people might make work about their own lives and participate fully as professional actors, directors, performers. They devised work, creating new theatre vocabularies confronting simplified and stereotypical cultural images of disability with fierce humour, energy and complexity, while the integration of signing within shows was important both artistically and politically. Young people’s theatre companies also began to meet these new challenges. Roy Kift’s 1980 Stronger than Superman, about a boy with spina bifida, was an international success. Companies like Theatre Centre, Half Moon YPT, Interplay and Red Ladder began to integrate casting, including disabled performers as company members in shows touring to schools that challenged exclusion and young people’s perceptions.
Previouse page -Wheels by David Johnston, Theatre Centre, 1981 Previouse page - t.m.Murphy, Jenny Jules and Hamish McDonald in Broken Armour by Noel Greig, Theatre Centre, 1988 Theatre of Black Women’s The Cripple was written by a disabled writer about a young black woman, Pauline Wiltshire, the show was performed by t.m. Murphy Leaflet for Broken Armour by Theatre Centre’s Mixed Company, 1988 Leaflet for A Cocktail Cabaret, devised by the Graeae company, 1984 Graeae perform Endless Variety a street theatre show in Covent Garden
Sideshow, Graeae’s first professional show, 1981. Mike Flowers, Nabil Shaban, Jag Plah, Deniz Bulli. Thirty-one years later Graeae played a key part in the acclaimed 2012 Paralympic Opening Ceremony, co-directed by their current Artistic Director Jenny Sealey. Photo by Bob Chase
T H E A R T ST H E A R T ST H E A R T S BRITAIN BRITAIN BRITAIN IGNORED I G. .N. O R E DI G. .N . ORED... In 1976 the Commission for Racial Equality published Naseem Khan’s influential report The Arts Britain Ignores. It detailed a picture of grassroots, community and professional activity. It acknowledged projects of long-standing such as George Eugeniou’s groundbreaking 1957 establishment of Theatro Technis in Camden’s Greek-Cypriot community and more recent initiatives of companies like Dark and Light Theatre (later Black Theatre of Brixton) and venues like the Keskidee Centre. The report encouraged a recognition in the arts establishment and local government including the GLC and ILEA of the need to support culturally diverse work and address racism and cultural exclusion. The 1970 Black and White Power Plays season at Inter-Action’s Ambiance lunchtime theatre, staged the first play by Mustapha Matura. It was directed by Roland Rees whose company Foco Novo went on to stage new work by Tunde Ikoli and Alfred Fagon. Temba Theatre, set up by Alton Kumalo in 1972, toured plays like Sizwe Bansi is Dead and Teresa. It was followed in 1981 by Black Theatre Co-op, staging African-American and Caribbean classics and new black British work and by companies like Umoja, addressing the linked politics of black Britain and the West Indies and women’s companies like Theatre of Black Women and Munirah, whose theatre vocabularies drew on sources from performance poetry to African dance. Among the first Asian companies were Tara Arts (1977) creating theatrical languages to address the migrant experience while British Asian Theatre (1983) aimed to create work that spoke to young British-born Asians.
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Previous page - Money to Live by Jacqueline Rudet, Judith Jacobs, Bob Phillips, directed by Gordon Case, Black Theatre Co-op, 1984
Week in Week Out by Tunde Ikoli, Foco Novo, 1985. Larringtom Walker, Debbie Roza, Cindy Shelley, Maria Charles. Photo: John Haynes www.johnhaynesphotography.com George Eugeniou at the second Theatro Technis base, a disused station in York Way 1971
Inter-Action organised this benefit featuring major African and AfricanAmerican playwrights, 1968
Waiting for Hannibal by Yemi Ajibade, Black Theatre Co-op, 1986 Umoja’s Success or Failure by Gloria Hamilton, 1988, ‘examined life on The Street and the effect it has on domestic life
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Background image: Ahmed the Wonderful Oriental Gentleman by Raj Patel, British Asian Theatre, Oval House, 1983
ormance, f r e p s a t s e t o Pr Performance as Protest... In a time of political ferment, streets and public spaces became the forums for the enactment of dissent and increasingly this took highly theatrical forms. From demonstrations against the objectification of women’s bodies in the Miss World contest to anti-nuclear marches, protests took on irreverent, celebratory qualities. Meanwhile festivals like Gay Pride marches or the Notting Hill carnival enacted the refusal of groups to be marginalised and culturally invisible, revelling in difference and diversity. Theatre groups took part in many of these events, bringing with them the techniques of large-scale performance -making and in turn learnt from them. Companies like the Women’s Street Theatre Group used cartoon images of suburban mothers chained by the Church and Capitalism with placards saying: ‘Fuck the F**mily’ or brandishing giant sanitary towels. At Greenham Common women enacted large-scale collective performances, surrounding the base and decorating the perimeter fence in protest against American Cruise missiles. Alternative theatre groups staged their own street performances including agit prop as performed by companies like socialists Agit Prop Players (later Red Ladder) or Broadside Mobile Workers’ Theatre, at factory gates, strikes or industrial protests or anarchist Rough Theatre on housing issues, or inventive happenings such as when Inter-Action pushed a piano with all the black keys missing through the streets to the home of a National Front candidate in Camden.
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Street Theatre (possibly Mayday Theatre) performing The Tolmers Show or Seeing it All Come Down, on property speculation c1974 Photo: Nick Wates www.nickwates.co.uk Red Ladder in Strike While the Iron is Hot, 1974. Kathleen McCreery, Glen Park. Photo: Roger Perry Broadside: The Big Lump, 1975. The show dealt with safety and building standards in the non-unionised construction industry Previous page - The influential Bread and Puppet Theatre from the US with their director Peter Schumann on stilts leading the 400,000-strong CND demonstration against Cruise Missiles in 1983 Background image - Sketch from the booklet Why Miss World? 1970. Women’s Street Theatre Group members, protesting aganst the contest, attached fairy-lights to their nipples
Detail - Logo for Father Xmas Union, an Inter-Action company
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ER PLACES OTHER SPACES, OTH Bubble performed in a big tent, Inter-Action converted the upper-deck of a Routemaster bus to create a mini proscenium arch theatre. There were performances in disused swimming pools, warehouses, tube trains, zoos, shopping centres and on board ships. Today’s site-specific theatre derives from the early experiments with space in this period. The Phantom Captain built mazes and immersive environments and devised infiltrations of existing contexts where audiences only slowly became aware that the borderline strange happenings in their midst were a performance. Action Space created their own environments, strange brightly coloured inflatable structures, the unsung originators of the now-ubiquitous bouncy castle. Most companies toured, some performing at arts centres which grew hugely in number in this period, another outcome of the desire to bring arts participation to all. Others sought out hard-to-reach audiences in pubs, pensioners’ drop-ins, community halls, factories, schools and young offenders’ centres. Health and safety legislation was less stringent but staff were sometimes hostile at the arrival of this disruption to their order. Performers honed their skills through and improvised their way round technical disasters and bewildered audiences. Every touring company had tales of the dodgy van breaking down in the middle-of-nowhere, of changing costumes in the WI kitchen. Many had stories of sleeping on floors, where the budget would not run to renting accommodation. Press coverage was a rarity but critical feedback was often immediate and electric from discussions with audience directly after the show, formally, in the performance space or informally in the bar. Siren Theatre / Band on tour, 1980s. Jude Winter, Jane Boston, Tash Fairbanks, Debs Trethewey
The Phantom Captain Dramatic Society take over the National Theatre foyer, 1976 Mikron Theatre narrowboat, rudder refit, Staffordshire, 1974 New Bubble tent, 1987 and old Bubble tent, 1973
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£
£
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FUNDING & FUNDERS In the early days, many saw Arts Council officers as ‘friends of the movement’, responsive to their needs. Some, like Brighton Combination’s Ruth Marks, had joined from the movement; others like Sue Timothy set up radical initiatives like the Stopover festivals. Regional Arts Associations were often pro-active creating new companies locally to fill gaps in provision. The Panel structure meant artists were assessed for funding by their peers. The movement created its own support structures like the Independent Theatre Council and TACT (The Association of Community Theatres). When political change brought cuts in the late 70s these rallied to defend their members. As unemployment rose and cuts escalated in the 1980s, many companies survived on benefits and through profit-share, and conflicts arose between unionised members’ desire to defend minimum rates of pay and others’ determination to create the work at all costs. Siren Theatre was one, surviving through a combination of the dole, cash-in-hand jobs, a driving work ethic and by also supporting themselves touring as a rock band. Many British companies were sustained by invitations to perform in the more enlightened venues of Europe: Ritsaert Ten Cate’s Mickery Theatre in Holland and others supported the careers of numerous experimental companies. With the 1981 election of Ken Livingstone’s Greater London Council administration and its positive policies towards grassroots women’s, lesbian and gay and ethnic minority groups a number of companies gained funding for the first time. Recreation Ground’s work and provision of space for other companies was made possible through their occupying a licenced squat in the Swiss Cottage area The Phantom Captain: Somnabulartists 1977. The company created bizarre and inventive happenings, their strategy ‘to tune up reality to the level of art.’ Arts Council funding brought ‘a degree of respectability, or at least responsibility, to satisfy the orderly imperatives of grant aid and contracted working conditions. At times we felt like Scheherazade, compelled to keep the Sultan entertained lest we be beheaded in the morning (we eventually were, in 1980) but soldiered on’
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Women in Entertainment support and advocacy work was made possible through a grant from the GLC The 1986 abolition of the GLC by Margaret Thatcher’s government imperilled the future of many theatre companies. Local borough grants kept some afloat, for a while but there was also infighting over who would survive
The George Jackson Black and White Minstrel Show by Pip Simmons Group, 1972. Photo: Roger Perry. Many of the company’s works were developed at the Mickery Theatre Like many others Geraldine Pilgrim’s work with her company Hesitate and Demonstrate was given fresh stimulation by New Theatre Workshops, the groundbreaking initiative of Arts Council officer Clive Tempest. Goodnight Ladies, Alex Mavrocortados and Lizza Aitken, 1983. Photo: Bob Van Dantzig
Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
In Mark Lawson’s Guardian column following the Opening Ceremony of the London Olympics 2012, he commented that director Danny Boyle and producer Stephen Daldry owed a debt to the political theatre of the 1960s and 1970s. He also pointed to the influence of the pioneering Artistic Director of Theatre Workshop and Theatre Royal Stratford East, the incomparable Joan Littlewood. This is particularly remarkable because neither Boyle nor Daldry worked directly with Littlewood, yet the influence came through nonetheless. It is also worth noting that the Opening Ceremony of the Paralympics 2012, co-directed by Jenny Sealey of Graeae Theatre Company and Bradley Hemmings of the Greenwich and Docklands Festival, matched Boyle’s ceremony in its political daring. Perhaps even more so, considering the inclusion of the defiant Ian Dury anthem ‘Spasticus Autisticus’, culminating in the extraordinary image of a giant Alison Lapper statue; celebrating the disabled body in front of an audience of over 11 million in the UK alone. I’m certain that Sealey and Hemmings would acknowledge a range of influences in their theatrical journeys, particularly
the Theatre-in-Education and Street Arts movements. The 2012 Opening Ceremonies were just two very high profile examples of the abiding influence of the radical theatre in the UK that flourished in the 1960s and 1970s. The DNA of alternative theatre can be detected even further: in mainstream theatre, television, film, visual art practice, participatory arts and across new media as well. Nevertheless, owning their theatrical ancestry could be a more elusive and ad hoc mission for tomorrow’s theatre artists. I have personally been fortunate to have come into contact with some inspirational alternative theatre-makers, including those who themselves were the theatrical descendants of major pioneers. At Theatre Royal Stratford East, I worked under the leadership of Philip Hedley, a direct descendant of Joan Littlewood’s. As a lecturer in Nottingham, I worked with David Johnston, who had been passed the baton at Theatre Centre from Brian Way. Although occasionally Philip and David would pass on
Monstrous Regiment: Scum: Death, Destruction and Dirty Washing by Chris Bond, Claire Luckham and the company, 1976. Cast included Chris Bowler, Gillian Hanna, Helen Glavin, Ian Blower. The play dealt with the struggle of the Paris washerwomen during the Commune. Photo: Roger Perry The Artaud Company: Sally Willis in Story by Michael Almaz, 1974. Sally Willis toured solo all over Europe in a series of powerful one-woman shows for the company with only one suitcase of props and one of personal belongings. Photo: Pam Martell Graeae: Sideshow, devised by Richard Tomlinson and the company, 1981. Michael Flower, Nabil Shaban, Deniz Bull in the revival of the 1980 show, following its successful US tour
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an understanding about theatrical methods from their mentors, it was the groundbreaking spirit and divergent thinking of the pioneers that gave me the most inspiration. Many theatre-makers of my generation, now into our middle age, have been fortunate to feel a strong sense of the history of our work: feeling part of a movement. This has been hugely motivational in imagining new possibilities when beset with the day-to-day pressures of funding and managing theatre companies. When faced with a challenge, I still regularly ask myself: “What would Joan Littlewood do?” I have been lucky to stand on the shoulders of the people who stood on the shoulders of giants. However, the further you are on the human pyramid from the base, the wobblier it gets! As the decades roll forward, future generations, further distanced from their forebears, could lose a sense of history as a vital instrument for imagining the future. Unfinished Histories is now providing this essential tool for future theatre-makers, using new platforms and channels of communication that are at our disposal for the first time.
For today’s theatre-makers to know of and be inspired by radical theatre history, more is needed than the serendipity of meeting the right people. So much exciting work was never adequately documented, the books and plays that have been published only reflect a fraction of the work and, sadly, many pioneers are no longer with us to tell us their extraordinary stories. The materials put together for this exhibition, the Unfinished Histories website and the company’s events are making a major contribution to addressing this deficit. In my work now, as I teach students about theatre, I know that they won’t be as fortunate as I to meet and work with some of the people who made the breakthroughs in those unique decades in the second half of the twentieth century. They will, however, have Unfinished Histories. Danny Braverman Goldsmiths University of London Chair, Unfinished Histories.
About Unfinished Histories
Unfinished Histories was set up in 2006 by Susan Croft and Jessica Higgs with the aim of documenting the history of the alternative theatre movement through recording oral histories and collecting archive material. We have: Recorded a series of nearly 50 extensive oral history interviews (up to 8 hours long) with individuals active in the movement. Created web pages detailing interview content, with biographies and galleries of images from their work. Begun building our own physical archive alongside creating an extensive digital archive of material from the movement including photos, video, flyers, reviews and scripts. Made web pages detailing related archive material held in Special Collections around the country. Organised exhibitions, workshops, talks, tours, discussions and playreadings such as a 40th anniversary reading of Jane Arden’s 1969 play Vagina Rex and the Gas Oven with a discussion with the original cast. For more information see our web site: www.unfinishedhistories.com We have plans to record many more interviews and to recreate the current project, building many more company web pages in other boroughs and regions. If you would be interested in supporting this work through financial help or collaborating or volunteering time or information or donating material, please write to us or email contact@unfinishedhistories.com Patrons: Adjoa Andoh, Baroness Christine Crawley, Stephen Daldry, Tony Elliot, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Pratibha Parmar, Sir Tony Robinson, Dame Harriet Walter Unfinished Histories Ltd + Co. Number: 3950781 Charity no: 1149431 Reg.Office: St Margaret’s House Settlement, 21 Old Ford Rd, London, E2 9PL
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Further
Reading
For detailed sources on the alternative theatre companies featured in the exhibition and this booklet, please see the individual web pages recording their work on the Unfinished Histories web site (History/ Companies). The site also gives extensive details of interviewees, where archives are held, lists of shows, individuals, venues and much more. Key general sources include: Peter Ansorge, Disrupting the Spectacle: Five Years of Experimental and Fringe Theatre in Britain, Pitman Publishing, 1975 ed. Sandy Craig, Dreams and Deconstructions: Alternative Theatre in Britain, Ambergate: Amber Lane Press, 1980 Alan England, Theatre for the Young, Macmillan, 1990 Sandra Freeman, Putting Your Daughters on the Stage: Lesbian Theatre Beryl and the Perils: from the 1970s to the 1990s, Cassell,1997 Nuts, 1979. Th e show was about wome Lizbeth Goodman, Contemporary Feminist Theatres: To Each Her Own, n and mental health. Design: Routledge, 1993 Nicola Lane ed. Trevor Griffiths and Barbara Llewellyn Jones, British and Irish Women Dramatists Since 1958, Open University Press, 1993 Trevor R. Griffiths and Carole Woddis, Bloomsbury Theatre Guide, Bloomsbury, 1988 Adrian Henri, Environments, Performance and Happenings, Thames and Hudson, 1974 ed. Catherine Itzin, Alternative Theatre Handbook, 1975-76, TQ Publications, 1976 ed. Catherine Itzin, British Alternative Theatre Directory, John Offord Publishing, annually, 1979-1986 Catherine Itzin, Stages in the Revolution: Political Theatre in Britain Since 1968 Methuen 1980 Baz Kershaw and Tony Coult, Engineers of the Imagination: the Welfare State Handbook, Methuen, 1983 Baz Kershaw, The Politics of Performance: Radical Theatre as Cultural Intervention, Routledge, 1992 ed. Graham Ley and Sarah Dadswell, British South Asian Theatres: A Documented History, University of Exeter Press, 2011 Kwesi Owesu, The Struggle for Black Arts in Britain, Comedia, 1986 Roland Rees, Fringe First: Pioneers of Fringe Theatre on Record, Oberon, 1992 Richard Tomlinson, Disability, Theatre and Education, Souvenir Press, 1982 ed. Ruth Tompsett, Black Theatre in Britain, Harwood Academic Publishers, 1996 Michelene Wandor, Carry on Understudies: Theatre and Sexual Politics, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986
Unfinished Histories operates a small specialist research facility offering access to books, journals, scripts, digital indexes and theatre reviews, original performance recordings, oral history interviews, special collections across the field of alternative theatre and its historical context. Visits are by appointment and a research fee is payable as we have minimal funding. For further details or for bookings, email: contact@unfinishedhistories.com 45.
Acknowledgements Unfinished Histories is enormously grateful to all those company members who have made archive material available, re-visited old memories, shared stories with us, and agreed to take part in events and to those photographers and artists including the estate of Roger Perry, Sabrina Aaronovitch, Sheila Burnett, Sally Grant, John Haynes, Lesley McIntyre, Jill Posener and Nick Wates who have given permission to reproduce work. For Unfinished Histories Director / Project Leader: Susan Croft Associate Director/ Web Site Manger: Jessica Higgs Web Site Co-ordinator: Sam Nightingale Project Co-ordinator: Vanessa Bartlett Web Site Technical Manager: Shaun Morton Graphic Designer: Mark Bromley www.markbromley.net Our core team of volunteers: Iris Dove, Phoebe Ferris-Rotman, Xi-Mali Kadeena Guscoth, Emma Jackson, Annette Kennerley, Ray Malone, Carole Mitchell, Eleanor Paremain, Lucie Regan, Natalia Rossetti and Sara Scalzotto. We would also like to thank: Peter Beringer, Kim Dexter, Frank Harris, Clarke Hayes, Jacky Hodgson, Alistair Macdonald, Holly Mallett, Jo Stanley, Angela Stewart Park, David Weinberg, Carole Woddis and those company originators who helped us create the web pages and lent or gave material: Action Space – Mary Turner, Ken Turner The Artaud Company – Pam Martell, Sally Willis Belt and Braces – Gavin Richards Beryl & the Perils – Didi Hopkins, Claudia Boulton Blood Group – Anna Furse Bloolips – Bette Bourne, Lavinia Fox Bloomers - Eileen Pollock Bristol Express – Andy Jordan, Hazel Thomas British Asian Theatre – Sarah Dadswell, Dhirendra Brixton Faeries – Ian Townson Broadside Mobile Workers’ Theatre - Kathleen McCreery, Richard Stourac, Rick Walton, Fiona McPeake, Ian Saville Bubble – Chris Hauke, Jonathan Petherbridge Character Ladies – Clarke Hayes, Claire Oberman 46.
. Double Wherehouse La MaMa the bill of shows, 1969, by erican Am company, founded by anch br on Beth Porter as a Lond ry da en of Ellen Stewart’s leg eatre New York La MaMa th
Clean Break – Jude Alderson, Jacqueline Holborough, Cath Kilcoyne Crystal Theatre – Paul B. Davies Forkbeard Fantasy – Tim and Chris Britton, Penny Saunders Gay Sweatshop – Philip Osment, Alan Wakeman Graeae – Nabil Shaban, Jenny Sealey Hard Corps – Sarah McNair, Adele Salem, Debby Klein, Karen Parker Hesitate and Demonstrate – Geraldine Pilgrim Hormone Imbalance – Sara Hardy Incubus – Paddy Fletcher Inter-Action- Ros Asquith, Patrick Barlow, ED Berman, David Powell Lumiere and Son – Hilary Westlake Mikron – Mike Lucas, Alistair MacDonald Monstrous Regiment – Chris Bowler, Gillian Hanna, Mary McCusker Mouth and Trousers – Leslie Ferris, Brian Rotman Mrs Worthington’s Daughters – Anne Engel, Geraldine Griffiths, Peta Masters Bloolips: The Ugly Du Optik – Barry Edwards ckling, 1977. The ugly ducking goes The Phantom Captain – Neil Hornick through No Recreation Ground – Frances Rifkin, Marion Pike, Moe Simpson, Graham Lucas meets th rmality Farm, e punk rocklings, the Red Ladder – Steve Trafford, Elizabeth Mansfield, Kathleen McCreery drag queens and the lea ther men and transforms Sadista Sisters – Jean Hart, Jude Alderson into a beautiful out gay swan Salakta Balloon Band- Johnny Melville Sal’s Meat Market – Ray Hassett Scarlet Harlets – Susan Paxton , Grainne Byrne Sidewalk – Guy Holland (formerly Groen), Hilary Price, Norma Cohen Spare Tyre – Clair Chapwell, Katina Noble, Harriet Powell Spin/Stir – Ness Lee, Joelle Taylor Stirabout – Corinna Seeds, Gary Brooking Theatre of Black Women – Bernardine Evaristo Theatre Centre - David Johnston, Alan Ward, Charles Bishop, Natalie Wilson, Bryony Lavery, Nona Shepphard Theatro Technis – Aris Eugeniou, George Eugeniou Umoja – Alexander James Simon Wakefield Tricycle- Shirley Barrie The Wandsworth Warmers – Sue Elliot, Pippa Sparkes Welfare State International – John Fox, Sue Gill Wherehouse La MaMa – Beth Porter
Special thanks to: Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance, Ovalhouse, Kentish Town Community Centre and the London Borough of Camden Archives without whom this exhbition could not have taken place. 47.
Research at Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance
Collection), Oily Cart and, on extended loan, Routledge’s Theatre Arts Archive comprising material connected to Stanislavski studies in the USA.
Rose Bruford College has developed a research culture reflecting the College’s identity: vocational, diverse, collaborative and inclusive. The perspective is international and multicultural, with the potential for intercultural performance in both discipline-specific and interdisciplinary contexts. Practice-based and scholarly research resulting in a variety of outcomes is complemented by research that informs or is the consequence of pedagogy, or interfaces reciprocally with the theatre industry.
Theatre Futures is RBC’s research website, hosting pages for each Centre; information on current and past projects, and on practice facilities; details of the archives and special collections; four publication sections; Symposia programmes and catalogue; staff research profiles; information on Visiting Professors, Fellows, research associates and companies; and is both a platform for publishing and disseminating research, and a research resource for internal and external use. www.theatrefutures.org.uk
Research is located, promoted and developed in five centres: The Stanislavski Centre; Rose Bruford Centre for Voice and Speech; Clive Barker Centre for Theatrical Innovation incorporating Hubs for Multicultural and Intercultural Performance, New Writing, and Technologies in Performance; Centre for Learning and Teaching in the Performing Arts; and Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) Centre. Each Centre develops research within specific disciplines, enables interdisciplinary projects with other Centres, and collaboration with outside organisations.
Dr Susan Croft is the Clive Barker Research Fellow at the College.
The College houses the Stanislavski Collection, David Bolland Kathakali Collection, and the Archives of Professor Jean Benedetti, Clive Barker, Noel Greig (playwright), Nick Chelton (lighting designer), Sue Frumin (playwright), TYAUK, Theatre Centre, Pam Schweitzer (TIE
Professor Nesta Jones Director of Research
The NAB Show, Brighton Combination, 1970 and Blood Green, Gay Sweatshop, 1980 from the Noel Greig Archive, Rose Bruford College Special Collections. (NAB was the National Assistance Board)
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www.unfinishedhistories.com