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| Stanley Houghton |
Some other influential playwrights of the time that wrote for the Royal Court came from the Manchester School of dramatists - Harold Brighouse and Stanley Houghton who wrote 'Hindle Wakes' in which the main characters were working class. This play was moved to the Playhouse Theatre in the West End after a very successful showing in Manchester in 1912.
Socialist Theatre
Co-operative societies around the UK ran drama groups producing political theatre to try and promote socialist concepts in the local community. In 1912 the National Association of Carlton Dramatic Clubs established People's Theatre in Newcastle. Across the region, more socialist theatre groups sprang up as a result. These companies were amateur dramatic societies which were a result of people wanting to induce some kind of change in their small communities.
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| Worker's Theatre Movement |
In 1926-1935, the Workers' Theatre Movement wanted to protest for social change through producing theatre that engaged with issues they felt needed addressing. The company were an amateur dramatic group that dealt with promoting Communist ideas. They developed an 'agit-prop' (Agitation Propaganda) style of theatre that involved performing songs and sketches in a similar way to Music Hall, which was still a popular form of Theatre at the time. It was street theatre that engaged with the working class audiences they wanted to invigorate a sense of wanting to create change in. In Salford theatre were the Red Megaphones and in London there were the Hackney People's Players. They developed some physical theatre to reflect the machine-driven industrial age they were looking at in their plays, such as 'Masses and Men and The Machine Wreckers' by Ernst Toller and 'RUR' by Karel Capek which looked at how machines and robots replace the working class in a futuristic age.
'Agit-prop' is simply spreading ideas through explaining them, creating excitement and therefore initiating change. It is a Russian term associated with the Bolshevik ways of initiating change amongst the masses and starting revolution.
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| Actresses' Franchise League |
Founded in 1908, the League supported the suffragette movement in the work they produced. They organised events and readings and wrote their own plays which they put on. Some key influential members are Cicely Hamilton, Ellen Terry, Elizabeth Robins, Edith Craig and Sybil Thorndike. By 1914 the group had 900 members in all the major UK cities. Some of the key plays they produced are 'How the Vote Was Won' (1909) by Cicely Hamilton and Christopher St. John and 'Diana of Dobson's' by Cicely Hamilton.
The group also later supported the war effort in creating the Women's Theatre Camps Entertainment Group which toured military bases around the UK.
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| Edith Craig and Ellen Terry |
Founded by Edith Craig and Ellen Terry (members of the Actresses' Franchise League), the group's plays dealt with current political, moral and social issues. They were above all a Feminist group wanting to spread feminist ideas in their work. Ever since 1773, theatre that was put on was controlled and censored by the Lord Chamberlain, so he was legally allowed to stop any play from being performed and prosecute anyone that did. In order to avoid this, the group performed their plays at Little Theatre which was a Club Theatre. Club Theatres worked so that you became a member and payed a small subscription rather than an entrance fee. This made them private, and therefore censorship was avoided.
Some of the groups plays were 'In the Workhouse' by Margaret Wynn Nevinson, 'The First Actress' by Christopher St. John and 'The Verge' by Susan Gaspell, when the heroine rejects social norms in pursuit of creativity.
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| 'Waiting for Lefty' by Clifford Odets |
Sprouting off from the Workers' Theatre Movement, Unity Theatre started on 16th February 1936 as a reaction to developing anxiousness during the depression. With hunger marches, the republican struggle in Spain, the rise in fascism under Hitler in Germany and Mosely's Blackshirt's (British Union of Fascists) in the UK, the group wanted to expose and try and promote change surrounding some of these issues.
They began based in Kings Cross but moved to an old chapel in Camden near St. Pancreas, renovating the building themselves voluntarily and putting plays on voluntarily too.
The company made it's name with 'Waiting for Lefty' in 1938 written by Clifford Odets (1906-1963). It tells a story of a group of New York Cabbies wanting to take strike action for a better living wage. In this production, the fourth wall was broken as the Cabbies recognised the audience and talked as if it was a meeting not only with the people on stage but with the audience. The action cut between the meeting and the personal stories each Cabbie told like a film. The story affected the audience so much that when the leader of the strike was shot in the first performance they joined in the Cabbie's 'strike, strike, strike' chants and rushed onto stage with them.
Along with this, they developed a new form of theatre: devised documentary in their 'Living Newspapers', satirical pantomimes which challenged Lord Chamberlain's censorship and was the first company to present a Brecht play.
From my research, I have found it really interesting the different Theatre movements that were happening and the different ways Theatre companies were trying to promote changes and ideas. It really has shown me the importance of Theatre in England and the same time as Brecht was making theatre. It also reminds me of the way Theatre Uncut works because they open the plays to anyone that wants them and that means amateur theatre companies can help make a difference in the community in looking at issues in the plays in a variety of different ways.
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