English Theatre History

1. 1945 – Today English Theatre History

2. The Arts Council. • In 1946 the Arts Council was established. This ensured the survival of companies like the Sadler’s Wells, the Old Vic and the eventual establishment of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre as well as supporting theatre in the regions and the work of individual artists and companies. • By 1956 the Arts Council was subsidising forty companies across the country and between 1958 and 1970 fifteen new theatres had been constructed with public money.

3. Post-War West End • After the war the West End was dominated by the commercial sector. Farces and who-dunnits became very popular. The most famous being The Mousetrap, an adaptation of an Agatha Christie novel that opened in 1952 and is still going today - the longest running show in the West End.

4. Post-War West End • In the 1950’s, actors flogged to TV and film where they made better money. The size and budget of West Ends shows were reduced. • Fewer risks are now taken by West End producers and commercial managements with the consequence that productions of new plays have been pushed out to the fringe theatres and subsidized sector. • Big budget shows are now nearly always musicals with huge casts and extravagant and technologically complex staging.

5. Joan Littlewood & The Theatre Workshop • The Theatre Workshop was created by a group of actors committed to a left wing ideology. Directed by Joan Littlewood, they devised and commissioned plays by and about the working class in the UK. • The most famous Theatre Workshop production was the 1963 play Oh What a Lovely War! which eventually transferred to the West End and then Broadway.

6. New Writers. • In 1956 John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger at the Royal Court Theatre heralded a new era in British theatre. • This ‘love across the class divide’ story set against the dingy backdrop of a bed-sit caused a huge outcry. The protagonist angry young man, Jimmy Porter, raging against the modern world from a run-down flat in a Midlands town, voiced the frustrations of post war youth, whose dreams of a better life had not been realised.

7. New Writers. • Osborne succeeded in creating a landmark in 20th century theatre which heralded an explosion in new writing. Other writers of this generation included Harold Pinter, Edward Bond, Arnold Wesker, Joe Orton and later Tom Stoppard, Trevor Griffiths, and Caryl Churchill. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard, 1967. The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter, 1958

8. The Royal Court, Round 2 • In 1956 the English Stage Company reopened at the Royal Court Theatre under the artistic direction of George Devine. He believed that the writer was the fundamental creative force within theatre and was committed to creating a venue where new writing could be promoted. In the first season he produced Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and included new international plays by Bertolt Brecht, Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett and Jean Paul Sartre.

9. The Royal Court, Round 2 • In the 1980s Max Stafford Clark took over as director and was responsible for a wave of political new writing, much of it a backlash to the Thatcher years. • Many Royal Court young writers have later won success in the West End, such as Conor McPherson's play, The Weir,

10. The Royal Shakespeare Company • In 1960 the Royal Shakespeare Company was created from the resident company at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre under the direction of Peter Hall. The RSC took on national status, with a London base at the Barbican. • Under Peter Hall and then subsequently Peter Brook, Trevor Nunn and now Michael Boyd, the company diversified away from a repertory of pure Shakespeare to include other classic and more experimental work including a commitment to new writing. Hamlet, RSC, 2004

11. Peter Brook • In the 1960s Brook read Antonin Artaud’s ‘Theatre and its Double’ which led to his explorations of the Theatre of Cruelty. Himself and a dedicated group of actors discovered a powerful theatre, as reliant on physical expression and gesture as the spoken word. • Brook's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream for the RSC in 1970 was one of the most discussed productions of the period, its minimal set putting the stress on the words and the spectator's imagination. The production was set in a three-sided white box. Props were simple: trapezes and stilts were used to suggest the magical elements of the performance.

12. Peter Hall. Hall began directing as an undergraduate at Cambridge University where he met Peter Brook and Trevor Nunn. Like Brook he began directing shows at the Arts Theatre. Peter Hall took over as director of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford in 1960 and was the first director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, founded in 1960. Under Hall the RSC developed bases in Stratford and London, becoming the first national Shakespeare company. Under his lead the RSC also produced work by new writers including several of Harold Pinter’s plays John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson in Pinter’s No Man’s Land.

13. Peter Hall. • After leaving the RSC he took up a post as director at the Royal Opera House in 1968 and later as director of the National Theatre in 1973, overseeing the move from the Old Vic to the National Theatre complex on London’s South Bank. • Hall founded his own company on leaving the National in 1988.

14. The National Theatre • The National Theatre opened on the South Bank in London in 1976. The need to create a theatre to promote and support the best of British talent and expertise was not just a 20th century preoccupation. • Laurence Olivier was appointed director of the first National Theatre company which was based in the Old Vic Theatre. • It moved to it’s present home in 1976, under the leadership of Peter Hall.

15. The National Theatre • The new building had three theatre spaces: the Lyttelton, the Olivier and the smaller Cottesloe. • The National Theatre supports both innovative new work and revivals of the classics. • A great number of very accomplished actors choose to work at the National for it’s outlook, fresh feel and ensemble acting style.

16. Alternative Theatre • The end of theatre censorship in the 1968 saw a surge in the alternative theatre movement in this country. • Companies also explored new ways of creating theatre. They experimented with devised work which aimed to be more democratic, involving the whole company in all aspects of the creative process from initial concept to final performances. • Theatre companies and directors began tackling issues of social and cultural significance.

17. Alternative Theatre • In 1975 Gay Sweatshop began to create a specifically gay theatre. In the 1960s Joe Orton and Shelagh Delaney had created gay characters in their plays, but here Gay Sweatshop created a theatre where they openly discussed specifically gay issues. • Political theatre companies like 7:84, founded by John McGrath, also proliferated. Shelagh Delaney

18. Physical Theatre • In the 1980s companies experimented with a more physical type of theatre. They wanted to get away from realistic and naturalistic drama and create an energetic visual theatre that combined strong design with choreography and physical imagery. Companies such as Theatre de Complicite applied their style to the reworking of classic texts and created new work in collaboration with writers. Shockheaded Peter, Theatre de Complicite, 1998. Street of Crocodiles, Theatre de Complicite, 1992.

19. Physical Theatre • In the 1990s young experimental companies such as Volcano and Frantic Assembly developed a unique style, fusing physical theatre, choreography and text. The cross over between dance and theatre was also explored by dance companies such as DV8 whose work bears resemblance to that of Pina Bausch.

20. Visual Theatre • Companies have also combined other visual media with theatre. Forkbeard Fantasy explores the comic dynamic between film and live performance, allowing actors to merge, apparently seamlessly, from real life into film.

21. ‘In Yer Face Theatre’ • ‘In Yer Face’ theatre describes the wave of new writing in the 1990s that was aggressive, raw, confrontational and angry. Designed to assault the audience’s sensibilities it explored the gut-renching extremes of the human condition and rammed the most extreme excesses of contemporary society down its throat. Many of the characters are morally reprehensible and the language aggressive and raw.

22. ‘In Yer Face Theatre’ • Sarah Kane’s Blasted in 1995 caused one of the biggest press outcries against this brutal form of theatre. The play, which contained rape and cannibalism was condemned as morally reprehensible. The Daily Mail called it ‘this disgusting feast of filth’.

23. Watch This Space • These are a series of free theatre ‘events’ held outside the National Theatre every summer since 2002. • They showcase the very new talent of British Theatre.

24. 1945 – Today English Theatre History