MSU

LIBRARIES
.—;—.

 

 

RETURNING MATERIALS:
P1ace in book drop to
remove this checkout from
your record. FINES will
be charged if book is
returned after the date
stamped be1ow.

 

 

 

 

 

COMMITTED THEATRE IN POST-WAR BRITAIN:
THE APPROACHES OF ARNOLD WESKER AND JOHN MCGRA‘I‘H

BY

Reade Whiting Dornan

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PH ILOSOPHY

Department of English

ABSTRACT

COMMITTED THEATRE IN POST-WAR BRITAIN: THE APPROACHES OF
ARNOLD WESKER AND JOHN MCGRATH

BY

Reade Whiting Dornan

When British playwrights Arnold Wesker and John
McGrath met each other in 1958, they believed they shared a

common perspective on contemporary British theater. Both
men aspired to a working-class theater which offered a
clear: alternative to the commercial offerings of Londonks
West End by breaking away from traditional forms and adding
socijil relevance. They also hoped to challenge the
established categories of theater which stripped

authors

of control over the means of production.

Being socialists, both playwrights dealt with the
economic and cultural relationship of the working-class

community to the hegemony of the upper classes. Committed

theater for them meant espousing a socialist ideology,
selecting art forms to support the political content of

their plays, shaping a distinct role for the audience, and

seeking social reform.

To achieve their goals for a committed theater, Wesker

and McGrath worked together briefly in the Centre 42

movement which promised to offer affordable entertainment
to the working classes and a viable outlet for working-
class artists. Dissatisfied with the lack of progressive
values at Centre 42, McGrath left to establish 7:84, a
theater company that experimented with forms more radical
than Wesker’s naturalistic style. McGrath also made a more
deliberate effort to engage working-class audiences and
provide the impulse for revolutionary change.

Meanwhile, McGrath exchanged letters with Wesker on
the nature of committed theater; 'Their brief debate raised
old questions of representation initially explored in a
well known argument between Bertolt Brecht and Georg
Lukacs. They also divided over political issues which
serve to point out fundamental differences in their
socialist positions. Wesker identified with nineteenth
century reformist socialism and McGrath held a more leftist
position. Since their exchange of letters, they have
sharpened their formulations about the nature of their
respective socialist alliances and they have refined the
forms of their plays and expectations of their audiences—-
Wesker has focussed more on themes about individual
freedom and McGrath has more clearly defined revolutionary
theater. Despite the disparity in their political
positions and the deep differences in dramatic structure,

each playwright maintains an abiding commitment to shaping

new conditions.

To David, Wythe, and Ellen

ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am deeply grateful to Dr. Victor Paananen for his
«expertise and unfailingly good advice. His perspicacity,
sense~of humor, and gentle persuasion helped me through
those moments when the road ahead was not clearly marked.
I offer my warm thanks also to Dr. Clint Goodson, Dr. Jay
Ludwig, and Dr. Roger Meiners, committee members whose
seminars were richly stimulating and whose reading of my
dissertation was insightful. I shall miss these and other
members of the Department of English at Michigan State
University for their refusal to be bound by tradition and
for their capacity to open up for students new directions
in literary thought.

Additionally“ I am indebted to Clive Barker of the
University of Warwick. Without his knowledge of the topic
and pivotal experience with Centre 42 and 7:84, I doubt
that I could have completed this dissertation. I am
grateful as well to Arnold Wesker and John McGrath for
being generous with their time and photocopied materials.

Finally, my deepest appreciation to my family,

especially David, for whom the word "forbearance" has taken

on new meaning.

iii

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

TABLE OF CONTENTS

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Bibliography

General References

iv

33

66

102

146

192

246

259

CHAFNEKONE

It does not merely repeat the pious platitude
that there should be room in art for the big
world of reality outside, but asserts almost
aggressively that a writer is great only to the
extent that he can provide society in general (or
the reading public of the time) with a true
mirror of itself, of its conflicts and its
problems. His success in this respect is
determined by the fact that he himself is no
spectator in the drama he depicts, he is also an
actor. What is required of him is that he should
be a conscious actor.
-"What is ’Litterature Engagee’?" Max Adereth

When the working-class playwright Arnold Wesker began
producing plays in the 605, he was more celebrated by
reviewers because he was considered a socialist writer than
for any other reason. For example, theater critic for the
Observer Kenneth Tynan was fascinated by Wesker15"real,
live, English Communist family on stage." Even though
‘Wesker“s dialog seemed to him "hollowy" he was attracted to
23 political family portrait that illustrated an authentic
political experience. He wrote in a review "u.the
.important thing about Mr; Wesker’s attempt is that they are

real, and they 512 live" (5 Vie_ g_f_ the English Stage 291).

 

And there were other reviewers as well. Theater critic for

the Sunday,Times said about WeSker’s Chips with Everything

 

that it was "the first Anti-Establishment entertainment of
which the establishment might be afraid" (Centre 42 Promo

#37) and literary critic David Craig praised Wesker as a

"(treative socialist for our time" (Marxists 93

 

Literature 21).

Like Wesker, John McGrath was a struggling playwright
in.the 603 and he too found sudden acclaim as one of the
.angry young writers for the television program, g_g§£§, .As
a playwright committed to the working-class perspective,
McGrath was recognized particularly for his socialist
alignment. Critics examined the content of his works, his
class origin, and the political implications of both, to
appreciateethe fresh*viewpoint which seemed relevant for
the times. McGrath’s works and Wesker’s may have
represented aesthetic values for these critics as well, but
it was precisely Egg their political awareness and
commitment to change that they were considered appealing.

At the time when McGrath’s and Wesker’s plays first
appeared, however, the use of the word ”commitment" had
fallen out of vogue. Corrupted by party hacks of the
Stalinist era, the term "commitment" had been avoided for
some decades. Any intellectual likely to discuss the
concept chose to write around the idea without naming it
directly for fear of its political associations. A notable
exception was Jean-Paul Sartre who was able to redirect its
use when, at the end of World War II and still involved in
the French Resistance, he began writing about ’engaged’ or

'committed’ literature as an attack on earlier writers like

Baudelaire who believed it possible and necessary to
produce "art for art’s sake." Later, in his What 33
Literature? (1965), Sartre made it clear that words are
actions. ”To speak is to act," he wrote. "Anything which
one names is already no longer quite the same; it has lost
:rts innocence” (16). Denying the possibility of a neutral
literature, he argued that all writing to a certain extent
reveals the writerks"situation" whether or not the posture
is deliberate. But it is the "engaged writer" who "knows
that words are actions," who "knows that to reveal is to
change and that one can reveal only by planning to change"
(17).

Even though Sartre's essays laid some apprehension
about the term to rest, those who reduce committed writing
to political writing continue to have objections. Raymond
Williams explains:hn"The Writer: Commitment and Alignment"
that in the late 403 and into the 505, some of the backlash
came from those who were disillusioned by the loss of
Britons in the European World Wars and in the Spanish Civil
war. They simply became fatigued by the pressures of
commitment. Additionally, there were leftist writers who,
having weathered the dry years when the causes had grown
unpopular, scrutinized the writings of latecomers for signs
of false commitment because there was always the danger
that they were committed to the wrong principles (22-23).

And finally, there were critics who avoided praising

leftist literature for its commitment out of a fear of
haviJng"to conclude that political "correctness" of the
writer might become one criterion of literature and that
some might incorrectly assume that nonsocialist literature,
for example, was void of aesthetic value (Mander 7-22).
Indeed, to avoid some of the problems with these
associations, Williams himself adds the term "alignment"
which suggest a deeper, albeit a less conscious choice (22-
23).

Nevertheless, the term is a useful one for defining a
constellation of literary practices which acknowledge that
art is not entirely autonomous, not a thing apart, and that
committed literature, concerned with change, attends to
more than content and fornu The term focuses on authors as
‘well, whose conscious awareness of their involvement
becomes a way of situating their works. And it singles out
artists who, although they are discontented with
circumstances, are willing to worszor change. Precisely
that refusal to be appeased impels the committed writer to
assume some responsibility for shaping new conditions. The
British theater movement which began in the 605 attracted
many committed artists who felt an obligation to flood
bourgeois theater with ideas of political reform and, after
turning to activisnu became instrumental in actually

creating social change and political awareness.

With their public avowal of social responsibility came

a Certain structure of relationships between the
Playwrights and the dominant culture in Britain. Implicit
in tflaat relationship was a socialist evaluation of
contemporary middle-class values and a commitment to
alternative and oppositional aims and practices. In the
case of John McGrath and Arnold Wesker, we are speaking of
(an.identification with a working-class consciousness. For
McGrath, that identification meant advocacy on behalf of
those who not only deplore the dominant culture, but
challenge itk As a playwright who represents the vision of
a vastly different British culture and one who agitates for
a significant transformation of the economic structure,
McGrath’s work is oppositional. Wesker’s background gives
him a different role. As a member of the working classes,
Wesker assumes some responsibility for the quality of life
in his community. Articulating a life experience and
exploring communal relationships that are different from
the traditional subject matter of literature, Wesker’s
writings are more reformist than radical, more alternative
than oppositional. Inna as Raymond Williams, who first
made this distinction points out, "it is often a very
narrow line, :hi reality, between alternative and
oppositional "since a meaning or practice in one situation
might be regarded as acceptable, and in other might be

viewed as threatening to the status quo (Problems in

 

Materialism and Culture 42).

Over the years since the 603, McGrath and Wesker have
Inolded and refined their relationships--alternative and
(oppositional--to mainstream literary practices in Britain.
And reciprocally, their works have been conditioned and
circumscribed by the structures of distribution, exchange
and consumption in the British economy. As committed
artists they have become increasingly aware of their
audiences, and in the process, have searched out forms
which might establish solidarity with the social movements
with which they identified. Not only have they sought some
form of expression by which they might "appeal" to the
reader (as Sartre would say), but they have also needed a
vehicle for mirroring their own vision. Finding a form
sensitive to audience demand and an means of production
equitable to the author have been contingent on a
recognition of mutual personal integrity, something Adereth
calls "the relationship between creative freedom and social
responsibility” (463). Just as the nature of their
individual commitments is fundamentally different, so are
the forms they choose for representing their situations in
deep conflict, and therein lie the origins of tension
between McGrath and Wesker. Morally and ideologically
bound by their respective, sharply focused definitions of

commitment, they have rejected solutions not rigorously

adhering to those self-imposed principles.
John McGrath and Arnold Wesker met each other in 1958, at
the time of McGrath’s first play, A Man Has Two Fatherg.
It had been mounted as a student production at Oxford
University and had been favorably reviewed by Kenneth
Tynan in the Observer. Wesker and his wife, Dusty, drove
to Oxford to see the new work which had been praised for
its innovation and to meet John McGrath, its student-
author. They also met the student-actor who would
eventually become McGrath’s wife, Liz MacLennan. The
twenty-five year old Arnold Wesker was already a celebrated
"working-class" playwright enjoying a groundswell of praise
for his most recent production at the Royal Court Theatre,
Roots, part three of a: very successful trilogy. Two
earlier plays, The Kitchen (1956) and Chicken Soup with
Barley (1957) had already established him in London as a
playwright with a future.

Wesker’s curiosity about McGrath was as much
professional as personal. He had been attracted to
McGrathfs play, A Man Has Two Fathers , since it contained
a socialist statement condemning both the United States and
Russia for their imperialism and, like McGrath, he was
interested in theater as a vehicle for socialist
expression. Wesker was also curious about the student who,
like himself, was an aspiring working-class playwright.

Their first meeting was amicable; Dusty and Arnold Wesker

found much to admire in Liz MacLennan and John McGrath.
They recognized in each other the kinship experienced by
most working-class, political playwrights of that period.
If nothing else, the fact of their small number brought
'them together (Dornan interviews with the playwrights).
Encouraged by George Devine at the Royal Court
Theatre, both Wesker and McGrath began finding a niche for
their plays as "working-class authors,” a term signifying
some sort of political alignment which had suddenly become
fashionable in the press. In the beginning they had their
working-class backgrounds in common and an interest in
writing for and about the working classes. Not only did
they share a common goal of placing class experience at the
center of their writings, but there was also a recognition
between them that their perspective was uncommon. For
Wesker, the working-class theme appears for the first time
as an autobiographical and self-conscious statement about

the closeness of an immigrant family in Chicken Soup with

 

Barley (1958), a closeness he finds characteristic of the
working-class community. For McGrath, the working-class
themes surface in plays of social protest and concern for
the worker’s condition. In their early works, both writers
use their identification with "working-class" theater as a
tool to articulate some aspect of the counterculture,

confront capitalhmn, and challenge the domination of

professional West End theatre in London.

Neither Wesker nor McGrath, however, like the
label of the "working-class writer," because they believe
'the concept is limited. That sort of epithet was exploited
by British journalists who created the persona as a
marketing technique for the trend in socialist drama. In

1959, one year after the appearance of Chicken Sogp with

 

Barley and shortly after the premiere of A Taste 9_f_ Honey
by Shelagh Delaney, inc. Worsley wrote a particularly
arrogant account of Delaney’s new play in the September 21,

1959 New Statesman:

What a sense of liberation we felt when the
proletarian writers seemed to have burst through
the class barrier of the sensitive novel! And,
doubtless, young writers for the theatre now feel
the same thing. It is an exhilarating sensation,
but they had better make the most of it, for it
is, as Wordsworth found and history shows, short
lived. (254)

And Wesker, sensitive to the fact that some critics were
already losing interest in his works because they were
yesterday’s news, fired back:

So, we ’prole’ playwrights must make the most of
it must we? We’ve been given our little say and
now the hierarchy is a bit tired and we must
finish amusing them? .”I didn’t write Chicken
Soup with Barley simply because I wanted to amuse
you with the 'working-class types’, but because I
saw my characters within the compass of a
personal visionI I have a personal vision, you
know, and I will not be tolerated as a passing
phase. (New Statesman 28 February 1959, 293)

If anything, Wesker and McGrath would have preferred at

that time to be known as ’political’ writers or

10

'alternative’ writers, even ’fringe' writers--any
designation which suggested political and social change--
hurt Wesker in particular objected to a term which
symbolized at once trendiness and condescension.

Until 1956, when the Royal Court Theatre was taken
over by the English Stage Company, none of the postwar
commercial theatres offered working-class playwrights,
especially those with a political agenda, an outlet for
their works. Before that time, mainstream theater was
dominated, even monopolized by West End theatre, a middle-
class preserve with pmedominately university-educated
writers and bourgeois values. Producers in the West End
were not interested in playwrights like Arnold Wesker or
John McGrath. Most of the material was light and
undemanding of its audiences. Popular were light comedies

like the revival of Charleyfs Aunt and thrillers (The House

 

Ay the Lake with Flora Robson), or musicals like The Boy
Friend (1953). The genteel drawing room was so commonplace
in British theatre that drama critic Kenneth Tynan wrote:

Nightly, in dozens of theatres, the curtain rose
on the same»set. .French windows were its most
prominent feature, backed by a sky-cloth of
brilliant and perpetual blue. In the cheaper
sort of production, nothing but the sky was
visible through the windows, and the impression
was conveyed that everyone lived (”1 a hill.
There was also a bookcase, which might even--if
the producer was in a devil-may-care frame of
mind--be three-dimensional and equipped with real
books. (A View gf the English Stage 249)

11

Indeed, out of twenty-one plays running in the summer of
‘1954, Tynan counted sixteen farces, light comedies or
mysteries (251).

Bound by its conservative tradition, experiment in

British theatre foundered. When Ionesco’s The Lesson

 

opened in February, 1955 it attracted little attention
(Taylor Anger and After 17). Audiences had been educated to
the serious verse drama of Christopher Fry and TJL
Eliot, but they were unprepared for the best that Europe
had to offer. Limited travel allowances and meagre
rationing of space in the newspapers had allowed critics
little opportunity to develop readership interest in non-
British drama, so managers, afraid of a low turnout for the
relatively unknown drama, were unwilling to take chances.
Some of the problem in mounting experimental drama also lay
with a monopoly of playhouses by the theatre managers who
owned the buildings. They assured their income by charging
straight rent, or--if the production were a certain
success--by sharing the production’s profits, or by a
combination of rent and profit sharing. Additional income
might be made by purchasing an option on the production’s
script. In any case, management had a strong interest in
assuring a full house with a long run. Clive Barker,

director, actor, and editor of the Theatre Quarterly,

 

notes that many contracts required.a‘combination of rent

and a percentage of the profits as soon as the production

12

began to draw crowds. He adds

In such a case, a'Pheatre Manager would have a

strong interest in letting his theatre only to

successful productions, playing as near capacity
business as possiblen.it would be reasonable for

him to insert a clause in the contract giving him

the right to serve notice of quittal, if the box

office figure failed to rise above the level at

which his profit began in a specified number of

weeks. (Alternative Theatre 2)

Such a system made it difficult for Producing Managers,
those who mounted the plays, to take risks with
unconventional productions which might take weeks to
attract a following.

Rental of the building for a new production was costly
enough, but the rent did not necessarily include adequate
lighting or sound or maintenance. Producers had to pay for
those amenities and any other additions themselves.
Because most of the buildings had not been significantly
renovated since before World War I, the cost of maintenance
alone was a problem for some producers. Management of
these theatres were unlikely to risk capital for any
ordinary building renovation, much less lend their support
to experimental productions, many of which required
smaller, more intimate houses with viewing in the round, a
new concept.at that time. Because most of the buildings
were old and expensive to maintain, many managers

eventually sold them them or allowed them to be torn down

to make room for new government offices and television

13

studios, creating something of a short supply and driving
the rents up even more.

Then, too, the audiences were generally not interested
in new trends from the Continent. Unlike the audiences at
the turn of the century who were the wealthy middle and
upper class which had grown out of industrial wealth
(Barker Alternative Theatre 8), the new audiences were
mostly petit-bourgeois women. Employment during the war,
high losses of marriageable men, a shift in the class
structure, and a liberated etiquette had produced a new
breed of single woman who was independent enough to attend
the theater unescorted. Her tastes ran to plays with
themes about the moneyed classes, particularly those by
Somerset Maugham with settings in expensive London flats
and country houses. (Concurrently, a large number of women
dramatists rose to popularity with plays about petit—
bourgeois women who enjoy a sudden turn in fortune when
they marry well. Since audiences did not change much
immediately following the Second World War, few theatres
would venture to accommodate the latest in French or German

drama. Richard Findlater, author of The Unholy Trade wrote

 

in 1952:

Playgoers may see occasional Ibsen and Chekov (in
bad translations), the more sensational Broadway
successes, and some of the fashionable pieces of
Sartre and Anouilh, but most of the names in any
history of world drama are only names to
Englishmen. (16-17)

14

.As a result of economic and social pressures, English drama
:bemained relatively unaffected by the European trends in
constructivism, expressionism, surrealism. What held
British drama to some measure of success was the strength
of the accomplished British actor who was so strikingly
talented, that audiences often attended the theater more
for the acting than the staging or the content of the
plays. Stratford-on-Avon celebrated its (nus hundredth
season in 1959 with a cast of Dame Edith Evans, Sir
Laurence Olivier, Paul Robeson, Charles Laughton, and Sam
Wanamaker (Tynan, A Egg! 9; the English Stage 258). Other
uncommon talents of that era were Margaret Leighton, Peggy
Ashcroft, Sir John Gielgud, Wendy Hiller, Michael
Redgrave, Alec Guinness, John Neville, Dame Sybil
Thorndike, Vivien Leigh, Flora Robson, Anthony Quayle,
Peter Ustinov, Paul Scofield, Peggy Ashcroft and Richard
Burton, but their reputations were mostly dependent on
their work in traditional drama which required training in
"naturalistic" gestures and the King’s English. Only the
most select actors could expand their repertoire to
include the plays of Pirandello, Sartre, or Strindberg,
partly because of their narrow training, partly because of
limited opportunities to consider such roles.

Resistance to influence from foreign drama was
vironically beneficial to the British stage, since

political pressures at home forced some theater managers

15

tx: book unknown local playwrights who had been encouraged
try the shake-up in the post-war social structure and
<Jpportunities for higher education to consider writing as a
profession, an option that had not been readily available
to the working classes up to that time in Britain. There
appeared in the mid-fifties a spate of new writers who were
anxious to find producers.

Optimism had run high for these would-be playwrights
as long as the post World War II climate suggested a
healthy economy. Expectations for full employment with a
rapid growth in personal income and consumer confidence had
been awakened by the return of Labour government to power
in 1945. That hope was reinforced by the promise of
improved education for the working classes in comprehensive
secondary schools and Red Brick colleges, post-war
institutions of higher education which opened their doors
to students of working-class backgrounds. Some young men
from the working classes were suddenly thrust into what
seemed to be promising circumstances. One example was
George Scott, an up-and-coming writer who was unexplainably
sentin 1943, by the Admiralty to Oxford for six months
before he was to report to service. Like many others, he
returned to Oxford after the war to complete his education
in the belief that upward mobility was possible for anyone

with talent and industry (Barker, Alternative Theatre 35).

16

Freedom to choose a profession, however, turned into a
false hope for many young playwrights, since few who
attempted to enter the middle class achieved any measure of
success.

Although many anticipated different results from the
Wilsonian government, jobs did not materialize after World
War II for various reasons: a flood of immigrants diverted
the government’s capability to subsidize retooling and
encourage much needed private investment, competition from
foreign markets was keener than expected, and Britain had
to adjust to changing patterns of Commonwealth relations
as evidenced by the reduction of income following the Suez
crisis. In the making were articulate and hostile young
men, many of them educated out of the working classes and
prepared to fulfill their potential. They were also well
groomed to express their cynical rejection of empty
promises that abounded in the period of post-war optimism.

One playwright ready to register the bitterness of

his generation was John Osborne whose Look Back l2 Anger

 

(May, 1956) still marks the breakthrough of new drama into
the British theater. It was the English Stage Company (ESC)
housed in the Royal Court theatre that gave him his
start, and it was George Devine, visionary director of the
ESC, who began renovating the Royal Court in 1955 to
feature some of the leading French works of the period and

to attract important new British writers. Devine proposed a

17

"writers’ theatre," that is, he promised the writer that
'the:director would make no cuts without permission, and he
offered the writer an open door to rehearsals. He also
formed a Royal Court Writers’ Group comprised of select
playwrights who were invited to read scripts and attend
rehearsals or performances of other writer in hopes that
they might learn from each other. Furthermore, he
encouraged young writers like Wesker and McGrath by
emphasizing a willingness to mount drama that may not be a
commercial success. He then employed would-be writers as
script readers to help him screen prospective holdings.
Arnold Wesker and John McGrath were both readers for the
Court, although at different times. Finally, Devine
approached novelists like Carson McCullers and Doris
Lessing with some success, but not the results he wanted.
Many novelists were not interested, and others did not
produce good scripts. He finally settled on playwrights
like Arthur Miller and John Osborne (Hayman, Egg §EE.HE
148-151).

Although Osborne is not a working-class writer, he
made his reputation as a playwright with a working-class

character, Jimmy Porter of Look Back £2 Anger. Porter

 

articulates emotions that seemed innovative to post-war
audiences--the powerlessness of the young, their dashed

hopes and unfulfilled desire. One of his frustrations was

18

his job as a candy vendor, which he claimed to enjoy out of
a reverse snobbism, contemptuous of middle-class values.
Even though he was a graduate of a British Red Brick
college, he could expect little more than the work he had.
Porter blamed the rich mostly, but his criticisms were not
sweeping and he did not speak for the whole of society.
He spoke largely for the young and excluded who had become
the frustrated.andlcynical. Even so, his anger seemed to
voice the alienation of his age as he says:
I suppose people of our generation aren‘t able to

die for good causes any longer. We had all that

done for us, in the thirties and forties, when we

were still kids."There aren‘t any good, brave

causes left. If the big bang does come, and we

all get killed off, it won‘t be in aid of the old-

fashioned, grand design. It’ll just be for the

Brave-New-nothing-very-much-thank-you. About as

pointless and inglorious as stepping in front of a

bus. (104-105)
Porter’s resentful protest set the tone for many
playwrights who followed Osborne. His bursts of anger were
so influential that one critic commented that every second
young writer began asking, ”And how dreadful were your
parents?" (Trewin 22). But it was his forthright
expression more than belligerence or didacticism which
served as a model for others. Devine's production of The
Good ngan 2: Sezuan five months later in October 1956
reflected Osborne’s influence which encouraged a theater of

outspoken playwrights. The plays which followed over the

next fifteen.years so resembled this model that director

19

liindsay Anderson characterized it as "a whole movement of
\vriters working in a style characterised in ethic by a kind
(of non-schematic progressive conscience and in its
treatment of character by a passionate concern, sometimes
fierce, sometimes tender, for the individual human being"
(Hayman, T_h_e_ Ag; ER 155). Others accused it of having a
"left-wing bias," although it might have been difficult to
find good playwrights at the time who claimed to be right-
wing.

The financial success of Anger alone was enough to

keep the ESC afloat. After a modest opening, Look Back 22

 

Anger was a great financial success with its box office
receipts, film rights, and the profits made by transferring
the play to the West End. It brought in enough money when
coupled with grants and other income at the Royal Court to
cover any deficits over the next five years (Hayman, 2A3
Set-up 152-153).!Nith its financial success, the English
Stage Company was able to mount over 270 plays from 1956 to
1973. More than 140 of them were written by new writers,
221 by contemporary writers, 178 by British dramatists, and

many of these were British premieres (Elsom, Post-war

 

British Theatre Criticism 81). The list is impressive:

Faulkner“szeguiem for E Nun, Genetfs The Blacks, Carson

 

McCuller’s Member 93 the Wedding, Ionesco’s The Chairs and

 

Rhinoceros, Osbornefis The Entertainer and Luther (see

 

appendixL.As important as these plays have become, very

20

few of them made significant profits at the time they were
introduced to London. In fact, John Russell Taylor reports
that out of seventy-one productions up to 1963, only
thirteen plays at the Royal Court covered their expenses
(A9333; Egg Af_t_e_r_ Appendix, 329). Without Devine’s courage
of conviction and Osbornefs inspiration, as well as his box
office successes, the Court might never have been able to
encourage other new writers like John Arden, Edward Bond,
David Storey, Ann Jellicoe, John McGrath, or Arnold Wesker.

Wesker frankly acknowledges his debt to the Royal

Court since he was to see his first play, Chicken Soup with

 

Barley, directed in 1958 by John Dexter at the Belgrade
Theatre, Coventry, and transferred to the Royal Court for
a second weekfs run.‘Wesker had met, by chance, the film
director Lindsay Anderson who sent this play and another
(The Kitchen) to George Devine at the Court. Wesker had
approached Anderson as he was standing in front of the

theater where his film, Every Day Except Christmas was

 

playing and asked the filmmaker to read one of his plays
(Trussler interview 81L.Anderson read the play and liked

it enough to recommend it to George Devine. Chicken Soup

 

with Barley subsequently won an Arts Council grant of £300,
which he used to marry Doreen (Dusty) Bicker in 1958

(Leeming Theatre Facts 3).

 

When later asked why he had turned to theatre rather

21

‘than develop his talents in poetry and fiction, Wesker
said, ".“it could simply be that the atmosphere was one in
which the drama seemed to surface to the top as the most
exciting of the art forms, and certainly I was excited

after having seen John Osborne’s play, Look Back _i_r_1_ Anger,

 

which made me rush away immediately and write Chicken Soup

 

with Barley" (Bigsby interview 1). Indeed, it is easy to
see Osborne’s influence on Arnold Wesker, even though
Chickep Soup with Barley is not as steeped in bitterness.
Like Look Back Ag Anger, it draws attention to the working-
class consciousness and to working-class family life vis-a-
y}§_the political milieu, Like Jimmy Porter, many of the
family members learn through bitter experience that their
services are not needed, but the characters in Wesker’s
plays also find a source of hope. In Chicken Soup they
discover resilience in the strength of an indomitable
Jewish mother clinging to socialism, while the family is
forced to fight Mosley"s Fascists in the streets outside
their basement apartment.

Challenging the mother Sarah, is her son Ronnie who
wants to know how she can carry on in the face of defeat.
He ridicules her blind faith in a political institution
like socialism: they have lost their fight, the family has
dispersed, and still she holds on. In answer to those who
cannot live by their convictions, in answer to those Jimmy

Porters who believe "There are no more brave causes," Sarah

22

finally shouts, "You’ll die, you’ll die--if you don’t care
youill die" (Vol. I, 76). Wesker later told Simon Trussler
in an interview that his generation was looking for
something to believe in:

We were all of us somehow absorbing the same kind
of atmosphere: the war had been a formative part
of our lives, followed by the hope of 1945, and
the general decline from then on. So that we were
the generation at the end of that decline,
desperately wanting to find something, being tired
of the pessimism and the mediocrity, and all the
energy that was spent on being anti-Soviet and
anti-Communist. I think this was one of the
things that I wanted to achieveein Chicken Soup:
it seemed to me that the Left had debilitated
itself by being so violently anti-Communist, that
somehow a halt had to be called, and one had to
say, you can’t go on forever crying over spilt
milk, and instead of kicking against the past you
have to look for something like, for want of a
better word, a vision. (83)

 

Wesker's ability to capture on stage the commonly held
feelings in Britain--not only of anger, but also of an
Optimism that vindicated their political activism—-made

Chicken Soup with Barley representative of its times.

 

Despite their differences in approach, Wesker deeply
admires John Osborne. To this day he counts Osborne’s
plays among the most important writings in British
literature (Dornan interview, 2 May 1985). Although
Wesker’s approach is generally more positive than
Osborne’s, he borrows from Osborne an economy of style and
individualistic characters who feel free to moralize. Like

Osborne, Wesker also focuses on family tensions and the

23

struggle of the individual outside a group relationship.
Besides being one of Osborne’s stylistic legatees, Wesker
profited by Osborne’s financial successes at the Royal
Court Theatre where, by July, 1960, Wesker had enjoyed the
openings of three p1ays--Chicken Soup yith Barley, Roots
and The Kitchen.

Being slightly younger than Wesker and a student at
Oxford until 1959, John McGrathis works did not open at

the Royal Court until his production of The Tent in

 

October, 1958. The play was picked up by the Court after it
attracted attention at the 1958 Edinburgh Festival. It was
subsequently produced for the Royal Court’s Sunday
afternoon performances at the Theatre Upstairs, in a low-
budget showcase for new writers called."production-without-
decor" (19 October 1958). These usually well-rehearsed, but
simply staged plays were begun in 1957 to present untested
material. Because of rising costs for producing a new
play, the Theatre Upstairs was first set aside as a venue
for the unknown and untried, When plays did unusually well,
they were sometimes moved to the main stage. Today the
plays have longer runs, and seem to lead to fewer full-
scale productions than those in the early years which
sponsored plays by John Arden, Edward Bond, Christopher
Logue, ELH. Lawrence, and others (Hayman, The Set-Up 159).
Although 2A2 Egg; did not lead to a full-scale production,

The Royal Court later produced a two-act musical by

24

lchrath, Out 93 Our Heads, and Trembling Giant, all in

 

 

1977. They also produced a longer play, Trees Ag the Wind,

in 1980, and g; You Want gg Know the Time (1979), a special

 

Inemorial performance for Blair Peach.

After their experiences with the Court, both McGrath
and Wesker have a great deal of respect for George Devine,
for his courage and innovation and for the start he gave
the young playwrights. That Wesker remains positive about
the Royal Court to this day is evidenced by his article,
"Debts to the Court", in which he says, "They didn’t like
or understand what I wrote, but they took the risk. I’d
like to think they trusted the writer. Perhaps they only
trusted the directors--[Lindsay] Anderson and [John]
Dexter. But whoever and gggever, they gave this writer
self-confidence and to them Ilowe an unreturnable debt--
unreturnable, that is, in any way other than through my
work" ("Debts to the Court" 82).

McGrath, however, has became more and more
disenchanted with the Court, as it became evident that the
management was not as risk-taking as it had once claimed
to be. In 1979, he told a class at Cambridge:

The curious fantasy that the values of that place

were anything'other than.bourgeois, elitist and

utterly whimsical is a refinement which must have
come later. What the Court was looking for was

the theatrical frisson, the unusual talent

exposing itself in-Erre-xtraordinary moment', the

presence of ’danger’ on the stage, of the
unpredictable, the over-stimulated, the hyper-

25

thyroid, the abundantly vital...Perhaps there is
somethingungenerous in my reaction to this
experience of theatre, but it did in fact cause
me to reflect on the real significance of the
’Post-Osborne’ theatre, and to come to the
conclusion that this famed New Era/Dawn/Direction
of British theatre was no more than the
elaboration of a theatrical technique for turning
authentic working-class experience into
satisfying thrills for the bourgeoisie. (A Good
Night Qgg,lO-ll)

McGrath objected, furthermore, to the Court/s appropriation
of its working-class authors when it "absorbed and
penetrated the bright youth thrown up by the 1944 Education

Act in appreciably large numbers" (A Good Night Out 12).

 

And he found the Court’s system for choosing new works
deplorable. If the play excited one of the Court’s
directors--Lindsay Anderson, John Dexter, William Gaskill,
or Anthony Page--it was selected for production. That's
how they established the trend of plays written by the ’new
bourgeoisiefl Finally, McGrath spurned any suggestion that
the Court was building new audiences by attracting the
working classes. He told the Cambridge class: "The
audience changed very little in the theatre, the social
requirements remain constant, the values remain firmly
those of acceptability to a metropolitan middle-class
audience, with an eye to similar acceptability on the
international cultural market" (15%. He was nonetheless
grateful for the start they gave him in commercial theater.

About McGrath’s uneasy peace with the Court, Raymond

Williams wrote,

26

He is hard on many of his contemporaries, but
mainly in terms of the social and cultural forms
to which they have adapted or which they have
come willingly to represent. What he says, for
example, about 1956 and the Royal Court--that
heavily mythicised moment--not only needed saying
but comes with particular appropriateness from
him, since he has at once been close to it and
yet shown the possibility of other plays and
other ways.(Fbrward, A Good Night Out ix-x)

 

While McGrath’s points about the mainstream character of
the Royal Court Theatre are valid, the Court/s willingness
to take a chance on unseasoned writer, especially socially
committed writers, was unusual then and now.

There was little in Wesker’s resume, for example to
recommend him as a promising writer to George Devine, but
Devine took a chance with his work anyway. Up to the time
of his first play, Wesker had spent two years National
Service as an airman in the Royal Air Force, and worked as
a carpenter’s mate, a bookseller’s assistant, a plumber’s
mate, and a pastry cook. Born in 1932 of a Russian-Jewish
father and a Hungarian-Jewish mother, he was raised with
such a respect for learning that he continued to educate
himself by reading and writing on his own, even after he
lost his opportunity to pursue a formal education when he
failed his eleven-plus exam (Leeming chronology).

Although he is widely read and enjoys an
intellectual’s discussion, he remains self-conscious about
his family background, employment history and technical

education, particularly since several critics--John Elsom,

27

Richaini Findlater, and Walter Allen-~tagged Wesker and
others including Shelagh Delaney and John Arden as
"kitchen-sink" dramatists. The nickname was taken from a
503 school of painters in North England known for their
realistic portrayal of (flu: working-class environment
(Egbert 540). The group, including Wesker, had a
reputation for being committed and involved because«of
their association with working-class interests.

McGrath” however, was never included as one‘of the
"kitchen-sink" writers. One reason may be that his early
successes in television script writing, particularly his
cops-and-robbers series §_gggg, seemed to exempt him from
a category largely reserved for playwrights with domestic
themes. Then, too, some critics do not regard McGrath as a
working-class writer, perhaps becauseehe was educated at
Oxford and his father was a secondary school teacher.

He claims a working-class background, nevertheless,
because he grew up in the working-class neighborhood where
his father taught school. He also counts his grandparents
on.both sides were Irish Catholic immigrants who went to
England "around the turn of the century, or just before, in
search of potatoesnmand goldu.and pavements" ("Better a
Bad Night in Bootle 39). His paternal grandfather worked as
a boilermaker in the Birkenhead yards and the family was

settled in the area until the bombings of World War II

28

‘when they were evacuated to a council estate in North
‘Wales. There John went to grammar school in a working-
class district. When he was sixteen (1951) the McGrath
family returned to Merseyside. .Like Wesker, John took his
turn at manual labor in a laundry near Birkenhead and on a
farm, although both experiences were shortlived.

McGrath fulfilled his two-year National Service as
Gunner, Bombardier, then Artillery Officer in the Army,
where he was deemed officer material because of his Oxford
education. McGrath seized the opportunity to sign up for
officer's training in order to leave Germany where he was
stationed and go to Egypt shortly before the Suez crisis.
He was later shipped to Jordan and Malta as well. His
travels in the Army only confirmed the political lessons
first taught him by fervent socialists at the Alun Grammar
School in Mold, North Wales ("Better a Bad Night in Bootle"
40).

Even though working-class writing has had a
history recognized for more than a century, playwrights
like Wesker and McGrath were suddenly regarded by critics
of the late 503 as fresh and original, partly because
traditional, middle-class drama was worn and mechanical and
partly because critics were hoping for the making of a
new movement, one that could show the British a new
direction, one dedicated to reshaping the future of

mainstream British theater. McGrath and Wesker were among

29

'the small group of emerging artists who shared a working-
class perspective, an attachment to the Royal Court
Theatre, and an acute awareness of a political crisis in
Britain. What made these playwrights different from their
predecessors, however, was not simply the political and
moral consciousness, but a need also to commit themselves
to include the marginalized in their vision and tocoffer
clear alternatives for change.

The times were also different. The works of John
McGrath and Arnold Wesker anticipated, to a certain extent,
the remarkable explosion of political theater in 1968. As
Catherine Itzin points out in her comprehensive
encyclopedia of 603 British drama, §ggggg _i_g Egg
Revolution, 1968 was the year of the Soviet invasion of
Czechoslovakia, the year of the Martin Luther King and
Robert Kennedy assassinations, race riots in America, civil
rights marches in Londonderry, the beginning of Watergate,
the war in Biafra, and the Six Day War in Israel. And, of
course, it was the year that the Vietnam War peaked in the
Tet Offensive and anti-Vietnam demonstrations raged
worldwide. British theater acted like a seismograph for
these events (l-ll).

While attempting to maintain their equilibrium. from
the dizzying effect of these events, IBritish theatre

responded with a flood of new theater companies and venues.

30

Their purpose was, as journalist Sandy Craig said, was

to restore theatre to its traditional position of

importance by re-creating a fresh, unsullied

language of theatre; tolextend the social basis

of theatre to include the working class, the

oppressed and dispossessed; and to make obvious

the enjoyment and the possibility of creation--

particularly, collective creation--as something

neither mysterious nor the privilege of the elite

few but the democratic right and the inherent

human capacity of the many. (9-10)
Building on the tone, style, and content of the earlier
"working-class" playwrights, these later writers created
their "new drama" out of the chaos of the times and the
works of their antecedents. They received their final
impetus from the opening which the British government
handed them in 1968 by relaxing the censorship laws.

Before that time, theatre of political protest had
been subject to the whims of the Lord Chamberlain who could
darken the house lights on a play with one vernacular
reference to homosexuality, birth control, or venereal
disease» The guidelines were often broad enough to find
offensive all sorts of plays. It was considered indecent,
for example, to "do violence to the sentiment of religious
reverence" and to "represent on the stage in an invidious
manner a living person or a person recently dead"
(Robertson 248). So the ridicule of Hitler, for example,
was considered grounds for censorship. Up till 1939,

irreverent attacks on Nazism were not allowed because

restrictions were placed on satire of foreign governments.

31

Decisions of indecency were often arbitrary and politically
motivated for the first generation of 605 protest
playwrights. These were the sorts of restrictions on
Arnold Wesker and John McGrath and others whose protest
subject matter pressured Britain/s mainstream institutions.
Drawn together by the common enemy in the uneven
distribution of wealth and power, by the tumultuous current
events, and by the aspirations for a theatrical revolution,
Wesker, McGrath and others like Trevor Griffiths, John
Arden and Margaretta.EVArcey, Edward Bond, and David Edgar
discovered in each other and their common aspirations for
alternative theater and their desire to restore the
community they had lost at the end of World War II. What
they had in common, most of all, was their sense of
commitment. What they had not begun to discuss in any
thorough way were questions which would soon divide them:
in whose service were they working? where did each of them
stand relative to key questions of social reform? what
style of their theater best served their aims?

Almost at once, these artists enjoyed the energy of
their movement, particularly when they grasped its full
impact, and the speedy realization that whatever cohesion
they had achieved through a shared vision had already been
splintered into special interest groups: community theater,
feminist theater, theatre-in-education, actor-based

theater, agit-prop, ethnic theater, and political theater.

32

‘When their numbers were counted at the end of the 605, the
hundreds of small companies added up to a staggering
diversity in size and diversity. And yet, most of the
committed playwrights could be categorized by two key
political alignments-~gradual reform (n: revolutionary
upheava1--in short, whether or not theater is to be
employed as a weapon for radical change. A study of the
aims and practices of Arnold Wesker and John McGrath
illustrates fully tflua conflict 1J1 these differing

perceptions.

SHUnHDCHAPTER

Many literary critics and reviewers for the press
Inistakenly use the terms "working-class"auul"socia1ist"
interchangeably when speaking of committed writing. But
taking the political alignments of the authors for granted,
they tend to overlook fundamental differences in the
playwrights’ socialist alliances, a distinction which may
explain structural differences in the content and form of
their plays. And yet, if Wesker or McGrath were asked in
the 60s how they would identify themselves as writers,
neither Wesker nor McGrath would have used the term
"working-class." Like their contemporaries and
antecedents, they preferred to be known more by their
political commitment than their working-class backgrounds.
Indeed, most of the Royal Court’s best dramatists in the
505 and 603 wrote with a political interest. Many critics
understood that trend, of course, but they conveniently
overlooked it when reviewing the Court’s plays. No critic
to date, for example, has taken note that the source of
antagonism between Wesker and McGrath or any other pairing
of Britainfs contemporary playwrights can be attributed
first to the differences in the nature of their commitment
and only after that, to formal literary considerations.

Wesker’s middle-of—the road socialist plays can be

33

34

traced, for example, to the early drama of the Independent
Labour Party (ILP), Fabianism, and the Co-operative
movement of the 19203, and McGrath’s Marxist plays can be
traced to the more leftist Workers"Theatre Movement (WTM),
a political theater which reached its pinnacle in the
thirties. A short history of nineteenth and twentieth
century political theater in Britain will clarify the
distinction and illustrate the fact that socialist
novelists like Robert Tressell have been around since the
time of Queen Victoria, and working-class dramatists have
achieved distinction since they became quite popular in
Edwardian music halls. Whatever its origins, working-class
entertainment grew in popularity till its peak at the turn
of the century. It drew crowds again in the thirties with
the run-away hit, Agyg’gg Egg leg, and others. Indeed the
success of working-class literature in Britain seems to
parallel the strength of socialist movements. When
socialist parties gain strength and Britain’s electorate
moves to the left, working-class literature then suddenly
finds currency. Such was the case in the late 505 and
early 603 when the Labour government returned to power, and
the literature of socialism and the working classes began
to thrive as it had thrived in the thirties.

Up until the later decades of the nineteenth century,
political themes were often embedded.in*various forms of

popular and working-class theater--particularly melodrama,

35

equestrian entertainment, pantomime, and the mummers’
plays. A popular theme for melodrama, for example, might
have been the rescue of an inept middle-class hero by the
resourceful working man (Reid 81), and depictions of the
Crimean battles and Waterloo were used in Equestrian drama
(Bratton 112-113). Mummers’ plays as well, particularly
those in rural areas often mocked changes brought about by
industrialism (Green 142). Very little is known about
Victorian rmummers’ plays, but extrapolating from
contemporary examples and some historical accounts, it can
be said with some certainty that action, costumes, and
make-upvof these productions were fantastic and surreal,
as opposed to naturalistic or realistic. Bizarre
combinations created a satirical, imagistic theater which
only suggested recognizable frames of reference. The
central character of one mummers’ play, in fact a
traditional figure in the genre, was a "wild horse" with a
costume made from a real horse’s skull, but painted red and
black. Three of its legs might have been human and one
wooden. Dialog, full of whimsy and nonsense, also
reflected the precarious balance of the real and unreal--
most often for the purpose of political satire (Green 150-
2).

Political themes had their place in Victorian and

Edwardian popular drama” but plays were used very little

36

for explicit moralizing, since most of the audiences at that
time felt the purpose of theatre was strictly
entertainment. It was not until the various socialist
groups found in drama a way of teaching ethics, that plays
were used as a weapon of struggle and enlightenment, but
that discovery was not immediate. Despite the
proliferation of performances by poets and musicians during
the early days of the ILP meetings, drama as a weapon of
political reform was not well-developed, largely because it
was relegated to fundraisers with light entertainment.
Historian Raphael Samuel speculates that elitism in turn-
of-the-century commercial theatre and gentrification of the
acting profession may have also made traditional dramatic
forms seem inappropriateeas popular entertainment. .And,
too, because it was attractive to female audiences, drama
seemed less interesting to the male dominated political
movement, so the language of many socialist zealots
overruled the use of subtle dialog required by traditional
British drama. Art forms other than drama may have been
considered best for the propagation of socialist aims (11).
Only the Fabians used drama to any serious extent as
a vehicle for itszmovement. George Bernard Shaw was, of
course, its most prominent spokesperson. His ggg Egg
Superman was produced by Harley Granville-Barker, a recent
convert to the Fabian movement, at the Royal Court in 1905

(Britannica, 14th edition). Under Granville-Barker the

 

37

Royal Court Theatre between 1903 and 1907 featured a host
of works compatible with socialist thought written by Shaw,
Ibsen, and Chekhov and later "social problem" plays by
Galsworthy, Barrie, and Drinkwater (Samuel 9). These
writers were to influence others like Mrs. Lyttleton whose

Warp and Woof was used to organize a dressmaker’s union and

 

Stanley Houghton whose Hindle Wakes features a factory-girl

 

heroine. Despite the social content of these plays, their
concentration on the individual hero or heroine and their
use of the naturalistic style put them, for the most part,
in the mainstream of drama which was already being produced
on the commercial Edwardian stage.

It was not until after World War I that political
theater, drawing on Edwardian traditions, began to expand
through dramatic societies promoted by the Cooperative
Societies, the Labour Party, and more particularly by the
Independent Labour Party (ILP) for the purpose of educating
the working classes. A sponsoring agency like the Labour
Co-op or the ILP often provided a center for the trade
unions at a time when the Labour Party was not a majority
party in the country or even among the working classes
(Samuel 27).

The ILP then used drama to promote socialism throughout
England. In London it encouraged plays at their meetings

as much for entertainment purposes as for propaganda,

38

partly to build attendance. Drama in these theater
movements was a tool for exploring political themes of
interesttxaits membership--especially anti-militarism,
class conflict, and ethical themes. Unconventional
attitudes about religious orthodoxy, the place of women in
marriage and the professions, and new forms of family life
were also prevalent, but these themes took second place to
moral questions that sought a balance between idealism and
materialism, liberation and violence, humanity and
necessity. Despite the innovative content of these plays,
the form depended heavily'on the conventional theater of
its time: a kind of naturalism which meant realistic
drawing-room settings, an emphasis on individual
achievement within the family environment, and commercial
theatrical strategies.

All branches of the ILP tried some type of drama in
their meetings, often in the form of dramatic recitations
called ”Penny Readings," but those branches with the larger
membership eventually mounted works as complex as Shaw“s

Candida, Robertson’s Castez Shakespeare’s Much Ado About

 

Nothing and Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (Samuel 22). In the

 

early twenties the ILP lent financial support to a national
drama movement which established amateur dramatic
companies and sponsored films (Samuel 22). With the help
of professionals like Sybil Thorndike, Lewis Casson, Elsa

Lanchester and Miles Malleson the "Masses Stage and Film

39

Guild" staged productions as diverse as revolutionary-
pacifist drama like Upton Sinclair’s Singing Jailbirds and
EM (Samuel 26). The Labour Party, although less
ambitious at that time than the ILP, also supported
cultural events. Above all, principles for social justice
were given priority as they were worked out through
comedies, farces, and sometimes heavy morality plays (31).
Classical literature, particularly Shakespeare, was
especially popular. Although the Labour Party was not as
involved with cultural events, there was, by 1924, a
London Labour Choral Union, a: London Labour Dramatic
Federation, and a London Labour Symphony Orchestra (Samuel
23).

Response by the working classes to these cultural
events was outstanding. Many were attracted to middle class
literary evenings, both for their low prices and foriflua
intrinsic merits of the performances. One devotee of the,
penny readings was Thomas Wright, journeyman engineer. At
some length, he described evenings where readings of
Shakespeare, Macaulay, Dickens, Hood, Tennyson, and
Thackeray enthralled working-class audiences.

I have attended them in all parts of England, and
more especially in the manufacturing districts,
and I am glad to find that they are exceedingly
popular all over the country. Of the many plans
that have been devised for providing the working
classes with that amusement of which, it is

admitted upon all hands, they stand in need, the
penny readings, considered upon the principle of

40

judging a tree by its fruits, are the best. The
many thousands of working men and boys who
frequent them give unmistakable evidence of their
appreciation of them; and, apart from this
consideration, I know, from constantly mingling
with the working men of the densely populated
manufacturing towns, that the penny readings are
immensely popular with them. (Some Habits and
Custogg g; the Workigg%Classes Engineer, 174)

 

 

Wright attributed the popularity'of these penny readings
partly to the vastness and variety of English literature
and partly to the high quality of the performers. He also
believed they were well attended because "there is no
parade of special or pecuniary patronage of their class
connected with them” (174). Wright was referring to
the fact that, since there was no reserved seating for
these performances, the moneyed classes sat with the rest.
With the open seating, everyone was treated equally. The
widespread appeal of the penny readings, which erased
distinctions usually made about class tastes, thereby
produced some levelling effect.

Closely connected with early socialist movement were
the2Co-operative Societies which provided a whole community
with meetings for young people, concerts, lectures,
carnivals on May Day and Co-operators Day, light opera, and
sometimes full-length plays. Their aims were twofold:
”educating members in the principles of socialism, and
cultivating ’a love for the higher and better dramatic
art7" (Samuel quoting Len Jones’ dissertation from the

University of Warwick 30). Drama was used extensively by

41

the cooperative movement as a strategy for education,
particularly ethical and political. It was hOped that the
themes of great literature would not only teach appropriate
political attitudes, but also instill the membership with
middle-class habits of thrift, diligence, honesty and
temperance. More than not, however, education took second
place to entertainment, as the latter provided release from
the tensions of working-class conditions.

The Co-operatives often operated on the assumption
that many of the working classes wanted to escape the
conditions of their existence by adopting middle-class
tastes and habits. Certainly many out of the working
classes hoped for freedom from the deplorable conditions of
their employment and poverty, but they were not anxious to
surrender the integrity of the working-class culture which
could be defined in its own terms. Even so, many upwardly
mobile working women, attempting to escape their hum-drum
existence as domestic servants and other menial work,
attended drama classes offered by the Co-operative movement
where they learned elocution, grammar, and comportment as
well as the "refined" practice of reading traditional
literature. At a time when the servant class was
disappearing and labor was developing into a separate
estate, drama offered the hope of an enriched future

through cultural enlightenment. Samuel writes:

42

Labour Co-op drama sometimes invoked the term
’working-class’tx:describe what it was doing,
but the fundamental inspiration was that of
access to a higher culture, elevation to a more
spiritualized plane--in brief, emancipation from
the working class’s condition of'existence. Just
as poetry was read for its ’beauties’ (Walt
Whitman was a favourite with co-operators on this
score), so literature and art generally were
thought of as representing transcendent values, a
purer state of being: love of them was bound up
with a post-Christian morality in which reading
became an act of dedication. Propaganda was
subordinate to the more general aim of making
’great art’ available to working people. (29)

 

 

There was also some suggestion by the cooperatives and the
trade unions that the quality of life could improve through
fine art and moral behavior, even if the conditions of
employment remained the same. These organizations were
followed in 1903 by the WEA (Workers’ Educational
Association), an educational association that still offers
evening classes and lectures to people who have not had a
full opportunity for a university-type education.

Drawing on a century and a half of tradition
established by the ILP, the Cooperative Societies, and the
Fabians, Wesker and others like him decided once again in
the early 603 to appeal to the trade unions for help in
developing the arts for the workers. What he wanted to
avoid were the pitfalls of efforts like the WEA which he
described as "brave ventures which failed because they
were penniless, isolated or unco-ordinatedP (WArnold Wesker
on the Age of Trivia," an article of unknown origin

reprinted as Centre 42 promotional material). To goad the

43

unions into action, Wesker published an April, 1960
pamphlet entitled, "The Modern Playwright, 01"O, Mother is
it worth it?" The text was originally given as a lecture
at Oxford as an attack on the labour movement for
neglecting their role in the arts. Not wanting to limit
his audience to students, he sent a transcript of the
lecture to the Secretary of every trade union in the
country.

In the lecture/pamphlet he argued that the labour
movement should take responsibility for developing a first-
rate cultural environment for everyone, not just for the
middle classes. He noted at the time that 200,000 Britons
out of roughly 58 million attended the theater. Four
million sat home "indiscriminately watching television"

(The Modern Playwright 12). Wesker speculated that few

 

of the theater-goers were dock workers, steel men,
railwaymen, housewives, or office workers (6-7).

Later that year he addressed a New Statesman essay to
George Woodcock, General Secretary of the Trades Union
Congress (TUC). Wesker expanded in that Open letter on his
beliefs, "u.we want a principle established--that art is a
common heritage, not the habit of the few" ("Vision!
Vision! Mr. Woodcock!" 153). .Art should be made available
to everyone, including the working classes, but someone

forgot to tell the "stultified worker that he was as

44

entitled to a fair share of the nation’s economic life as

anyone" (The Modern Playwright 9). Linking the quality

 

of work life to the quality of life, he said, "The social
and cultural habits of a group will continue for
generations unless something is done to break them just as
much as the economic habits will continue unless action is
taken to weaken them" (9). To assist in breaking through
economic barriers, workers must have the perspective of the
arts. To make those connections, trade unions should take
the lead because "the distinction between man as an
economic being and a social one is a false and disruptive
one." 'Unions have the moral responsibility to make the
rank and file aware that "the enjoyment and excitement of
art is the enjoyment of the fruits of the struggle for a
better life, and is also the only real expression of that
better life" (Labour and the Arts:II).

In his youthful enthusiasm, he exhorted fellow writers
to pick up poems, plays, films, "tuck them under [their]
arms and go out to the public and do battle with them"
("Let The Battle Commence" 98). He envisioned an explosion
of high quality literature across the country; ‘works
similar to those of Chekhov, Shakespeare, or Lorca. The
bastions which he planned to assault, however, were not the
offices of funding agencies. He wanted to attack the
strongholds of mass culture and to invade the homes of

working classes where television, darts, and football pools

45

were preferred to any theatrical production. Wesker was
convinced that workers could improve their quality of
living by changing their habits of leisure. In his
estimation, their only obstacle to a better life were those

who believed the working classes incapable of enjoying the

arts and those in the working classes who believed the
arts were not meant for them. He made his appeal in this
way:

I believe working, playing, laughing, crying,
eating, singing, dancing, studying, leisure and
creative art, to be not separate aspects of
living, for separate people, but natural
manifestations of the whole act of living for
everyone to indulge in or enjoy. In other
words--for example--I do not believe in serious
books for intelligent people, and funny ones for
simple people, but in literature for us all.
Unfortunately again, however, we have managed to
organize our society'intolclasses where some of
us have time to develop our intelligence and some
of us are denied this time, where some of us, in
other words, can develop this faculty for this
whole process of living and some of us are
stultified. (Egg Modern Playwright)

 

 

Creation and enjoyment of art, however, is so natural to
human existence and so essential to a productive and
satisfying life, that anyone--given an exposure to itlat
the highest levels--could appreciate the way it stirs the
human spirit (Fears g; Fragmentation 21-38).

Like his predecessors in the ILP and the COOperative
Societies, Wesker believed that class differences in taste
depended more on education than on sources of income. With

some optimism he said, "The man in the street no longer

46

says art belongs to his master and not him because those
terms are no longer used; but the fggg remains that the man
in the street still believes that art is not for the likes
of him--and the way in which he thinks this has subtly
changed--it has become a sort of inverted snobbery, an
isolation, a sort of ’Iin what I am and I’m proud of
it’...I’ve always considered the role of revolution was to
do away with the third class and make everything first
class" (26). Since a universally accessible art could
create a social revolution, it should no longer be treated
as a commodity to be bargained away in the market place,
but a part of the "life-or-death pursuit for an
understanding of the complex world we live in," and a
necessary part of everyday experience (65).

To effect the art revolution, Wesker added, every
aspect of society must stress the importance of art: trade
unions should promote it through their meetings and by
lending financial support, the government would have to
spend more on art, the schools would have to teach art with
the same urgency as they teach arithmetic, and art would
have to be valued everywhere as a "pursuit for sanity,"
rather than regarded a simple palliative against boredom as
it is today ("Art--Therapy or Experience" 44). In Weskerks
calculation the best art education, "the only way to

communicate the impact of say, a play, was to perform it

47

and expose people to it" (Fears gf Fragmentation 116). Art

 

education on all levels has to be stepped up, therefore,
if the survival value of art were ever to be universally
appreciated.

Echoing earlier advocates of adult education and the
importance of the role of the trade unions, Wesker realized
that the arts, especially literature, could have a profound
effect on anyone who would enjoy them. Like early members
of the cooperatives, he believed that education.in«drama
could better the lives of the working classes, even if
conditions of employment remained unchanged.

Recalling the nineteenth century, the golden age of
Labour’s involvement in the arts, Wesker also demanded that
the National Trade Union sponsor an orchestra, offer grants
in the arts to TUC children, commission works of art, and
create a literary community like those at the Royal Court
Theatre or in Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop. Wesker
hoped to reawaken through a working-class community, that
included the TUC and working-class writers, a love of
literature--especially the classical literature of Balzac,
Steinbeck, Gorki, Miller, Chekhov, and contemporary
literature of Shelagh Delaney, Doris Lessing, and Harold
Pinter. He imagined a community that improved the quality
of life in working-class neighborhoods, just as the
Cooperatives did in the nineteenth century. But he

pictured a much bigger role of change for the arts than

48

that developed by the ILP or the cooperatives.
Wesker“s(aesthetic, although neither systematic nor
polished, is consistent. He repeatedly insists that since
truths are recreated and illustrated through the arts, we
can grasp through them "the chaos and complexity of the

human condition"(Fears gf Fragmentatiog 89%. At a 1968

 

Tokyo conference honoring Wesker, he summed up his
philosophy:
Art is a delicate human activity, a desperate
attempt by man to understand his own nature and
the world in which that nature exists. It is one
man’s reverence for Ell men and for this reason
commands our respect and pleasure: our respect
for its reflection of man’s uncertainty and his
courage in attempting to overcome that
uncertainty; our pleasure for its reflection of

his achievements. To experience art is to bear
witness to a profound human anguish or joy.

(121)

Tied to the revolutionary potential of art is a primary
role for artisans in the British community. Realizing the
need for a center which could assume the leadership needed
to organize others in this revolution, he looked to the TUC
for sponsorship.

While writing the lecture for the Student Drama
Festival at Oxford in April, 1960, "0, Mother, is it Worth
it?", Wesker suddenly envisioned places all over England
that could serve as collecting points for artists and
audience, and could provide outlets for voices not

ordinarily heard in London theatre. As a companion piece to

49

his lecture at Oxford, he and trade unionist Bill
Holdsworth wrote "Labour and the Arts:II or What Then is to
be Done?" a constructive proposal with a list of practical
suggestions for trade union support of the arts. Among
other things, Wesker and Holdsworth asked for sponsorship
of a National Trade Union orchestra, a publishing house,
films, theatres in industrial centers, and folk music.

Responses from the unions surprised everyone. .Four
unions replied: the ACTT (Association of Cinematograph,
Television and Allied Technicians), NATSOPA (National
Society for Operative Printers and Assistants), the Tobacco
Workers’ Union, and the society of Technical Civil
Servants. All of them wanted to help, even if they were
not certain how it could be done. Then in September, 1960
the TUC (Trade Union Congress) passed Resolution 42 to
investigate ways to encourage greater participation in the
cultural life of the community:

Congress recognizes the importance of the arts in

the life of the community, especially now when

many unions are securing a shorter working week

and greater leisure for their members. It notes

that the trade union movement has participated to

only a small extent in the direct promotion of

plays, films, music, literature and other forms

of expression, including those of value to its

beliefs and principles. Congress considers that

much more could be done, and accordingly requests

the General Council to conduct a special

examination and to make proposals to a future

congress to ensure a greater participation by the

trade union movement in all cultural activities.

(Coppieters 39)

Following that preposal, Wesker was given two E25

50

donations-- by a group of painters and sculptors and by the
AESD (Association of Engineering and Shipbuilding
Draughtsmen), and AESD also mounted an art exhibit for any
town where a trade union conference might be held.
Resolution 42 was just the indication Wesker needed that
the unions were ready to assume a more dynamic role in the
arts much like the ILP of the nineteenth century. He quoted
one painter as saying, "There can never have been gggg a
private viewing before. We didn’t even lay on cocktails!"
(”Resolution 42”). From this early show of support Wesker
projected that Resolution 42 was going to affect the way
the British prepare the "future, leisured generations"
("Resolution 42"). The TUC resolution became the
cornerstone for a working-class theatrical project, Centre
42, which Wesker and others were about to propose.

Centre 42 became a focal point for many British
authors in the early 603 who felt the new group represented
an alternative to the dominant middle-class culture.
Although the idea of offering alternative theater to the
rural communities had been bandied about for a number of
years by John Arden and Margaretta DTArcy, no one had acted
on it (Barker; "All at Sea"'7L. Even John McGrath joined
the group briefly. He was drawn into the Centre 42
movement by Doris Lessing and Gareth Wigan, but he had

already been thinking along similar lines. Before he heard

51

about Center 42, he and others were planning a socialist
theater in a garage somewhere in the north of England
(Barker letter to author December 1985L. But McGrath.did
not stay long with Centre 42 hung for that matter, did
Lessing or Wigan), because, although he admire the concept
in general, he opposed much of wesker’s approach.

First of all, McGrath could not, even in the early 605
accept Wesker’s gradualist definition of socialism. He did
not articulate his differences, however, until after his
experiences with the 1968 student uprisings in Paris.
Following his return from France, McGrath was convinced
that he wanted to work in socialist theater as opposed to
writing socialist plays. In short, he wanted to direct his
energies toward a more comprehensive effort of economic and
social transformation than he had attempted to that point.
In his formulation he drew up a distinction between social
democratic theater, a practice which represented to him a
form of cultural complacency, and socialist theater, which‘
he laid out later in his "Theory and Practice of Political
Theatre." Socialist theater, he wrote,

had at its base a recognition of capitalism as an

economic system which produces classes; that sees

the betterment of human life for all people in

the abolition of classes and of capitalism; that

sees that this can happen only through the rise

to state power of the current under-class, the

working class, and through a democratization--

economic as well as political--of society and of

its decision-making processes. A theatre that

sees the establishment of socialism, not as the
creation of a utopia or the end of the dialectic

52

of history, but as another step towards the

realization of the full potential of every

individual human life during the short time that

every individual has to live. (43)

Its complement, social democratic theater is less practical
as an instrument for the "betterment of human life for all
people” because it is utopian (and thereby ineffectual),
and because it seeks improvement through a "process of
gradual gains within a basically capitalistic framework,
needing no revolution of power or consciousness, merely
material improvement which requires as its precondition the
health of the capitalist system” (43). McGrath believes
that as long as its proponents are content to work within
the capitalist system, social democratic theater will never
improve the conditions of the working classes.

Another reason McGrath had for quitting Centre 42 was
his little faith in the will of the trade unions to effect
real change. In his "Theory and Practice of Political
Theatre" he debated the advantages and disadvantages of
being supported by an organization--either a political
party or a trade union. If a political party were
organized and did, in fact, offer the needed assistance,
McGrath could find good reasons to join forces with the
group:

There is a possibility with a political party of

follow-up to make the involvement of the audience

more permanent, and not just getting everybody
going and then leaving them to it. It raises the

possibility of the audience becoming active,
becoming the actors, not passively receiving.

53

There is a further benefit in belonging to a

party: within the group itself there will be more

coherence or identity of purpose.... (49)
But the drawback to union sponsorship was that the trade
unions were too conservative in their thinking. Those most
militant in the Labour Movement--on shop stewards’
committees,in certain union branches, trades councils, in
the universities, in tenants’ associations, on community
projects, in women’s groups--were finding they were
increasingly alienated from its national bureaucracy
because the bureaucracy was unable to respond to the
volatile core of groups at the center of the Labour
Movement which were working towards socialism, but
disagreed on the practical level. Although these groups
connected as activists, there was no single, unified
political party which gave them direction, nor any single
issue which held them together.

Even if a viable, central political party were
successfully organized, McGrath feared it become a
lightning rod for the opposition who would find ways to
contain it. The British Arts Council could have withdrawn
support, since they did not fund subsections of political
parties, and other mainstream institutions could have found
equally effective forms of censure. McGrath commented,
"the moment [these groups] show any sign of winning a

struggle, they become the most reviled group of individuals

in society, turned by the screeches of the media and the

54

major parties into the lepers of the Welfare State" (50).
Until such an organization exists that can help him raise
the level of militancy among the working classes, give
depth and confidence to the Labour Movement and effect
change, McGrath will have to be content with the limits of
a small political theater company, but even in the 605 he
was unhappily aware of the limited choices.

Just as importantly, McGrath left Centre 42 because he
disagreed with Wesker’s fundamental premise of wanting to
educate the working classes to the classical arts.
Articulating his objections in a guest lecture at Cambridge
in 1982, McGrath challenged Wesker’s assumptions that the
working classes were philistines in need of education.
Because he felt he was uniquely successful in developing
the forms of working-class theater which he inherited from
the nineteenth century radical traditions and from Unity
Theatre, McGrath was irritated by playwrights like Wesker
and others who assumed that working-class audiences lacked
a refined taste in theater. McGrathis answer was that
there was no one arbiter of true art or culture. He wrote,
"there _a__r_g indeed different kinds of audiences, with
different theatrical values and expectations, and”;we have
to be very careful before consigning one audience and its
values to the critical dustbin" (A Good Night Out 3).

He objected specifically to an evaluation of popular

55

tastes using the criteria of middle-class aesthetics.
Working-class theater had elements that could never be
embraced by bourgeois audiences: alienation to the
conditions of the middle class and an enthusiasm for
popular culture. The corollary to his argument was his
proof that no form of art can be considered universally
salutary. To that point be debated:

1. that art is universal,capable of meaning the
same to all people;

2. that the more ’universal’ it is, the better it
is;

3. that the audience for theatre is an idealized,
white middle-class, etc., person and that all
theatre should be dominated by the tastes and
values of such a person;

4. that, therefore, an audience without such an
idealized person’s values is an inferior a
audience; and

5. that the so-called ’traditional values’ of
English literature are now anything other
than an indirect English cultural expression
of the dominance over the whole of Britain
of the ruling class of the south-east of

England. (A Good Night Out 3-4)

 

Simply stated, McGrath argued that the so-called universal
forms of art are meaningless to the working-class
experience. To find a legitimate art form expressive of
working-class tastes, one would have to do more than add a
bit of regional dialect (as did Wesker) orlclass-related
subject matter. Forms of drama specific to to working-class
needs are required. Good working-class theater, for
example, mixes a variety of popular forms of entertainment
like rock music or vaudevillian routines with a direct

political statement of relevance to working people. Humor

56

and content with a local slant are also important.
Undermining Wesker’s argument that anyone can enjoy and
benefit from the classical forms of art, McGrath agitated
for new approaches with an energy and determination that
was remarkable, even for a type of theater that is driven
normally by passion.

The form that McGrath was to develop drew on
principles for contemporary drama which were first
established in Germany by Erwin Piscator, Vsevolod
Meyerhold in Russia, the Workers’ Theatre Movement (WTM) in
Britain from about 1910 to 1939, and Bertolt Brecht. The
fall of the Labour government in 1924 and a General Strike'
by miners in 1925 were likely incentives to the rise of the
Workers’ Theatre Movement (the WTM) in 1926, a theatrical
movement distinctly different from that begun by the
Fabians. Loyalty of the rank and file in the General Strike
and deepening conflicts between the miners and the British
government gave voice to a leftist group emphasizing class
struggle. Closely linked to the Communist Party, the WTM
offered drama that drew on traditions already begun in
Germany with Edwin Piscator and with Meyerhold and
Eisenstein in Russia. They were also inspired by a well-
known group of miners, the Bowhill Players. Their leader,
Joe Corrie, was an outspoken collier whose popular play

depicting the struggle during the General Strike, I_g Egg

57

g; Strife, toured the Scottish mining districts in 1928
(Mackenney, 17). Another antecedent was the Plumstead
Radical Club in South London which promoted the values of
the working class at a time when the press, schools, films,
radio broadcasts, and churches treated their contributions
with contempt.

Most of the WTM’s productions were revues with
monologues, songs, and sketches as they turned from
naturalistic drama and the ’discussion’ play to agit-prop,
a form of drama which is usually written by workers for a
short-lived, didactic theater that focused on political
issues of class interest. Agit-prop used the dialectic and
conflict to in short, fast-paced skits that were largely
satirical and may include music. The skits are often a
part of a larger campaign covering local and national
concerns and were accompanied by leafleting; The characters
developed by the WTM were based on types and the costuming
depended on stereotypical recognition-- bosses wore top
hats; workers wore cloth hats. The vocabulary was simple
and.so was the message as it tried to raise the working-
class consciousness. WTM repudiated any drama which
appeared imitative of middle class tastes (like that put
forward by the ILP and the Labour Party), because they
believed workers were the ’coming class’, those who would
eventually determine the future of England. As a result,

they rejected the ’theatre of illusion’, a naturalistic

58

style which accepted the fact of things as they appear on
the surface. They tried, instead, a ’theatre of ideas’
which looked through the surface to those controlling-
cultural and social forces which are usually invisible.
Because it was tailored to an audience which was
economically struggling, WTM’s theater satisfied a ”feeling
of brotherhood among working people" (Samuel 213-228).

When they were full strength, the WTM had over 30
member groups nationally and their own journal and offices,
but they grew estranged from the organized working class
partly when, following Joe Corrie’s departure, they were
largely run by working-class and upper-middle class
Bohemians. To compensate, some drama troupes took to the
streets with theatre which featured current news and
relevant issues. Using the "living newspaper,” mass chant,
speech-choir, popular music, and agitprop they drew
attention to workers’ struggles and coordinated campaigns ‘
to fight against capitalism. Many of their ideas came from
Germany and the United States.

The WTM was replaced, for loss of audience, by the
Left Theatre in 1934 and the Unity Theatre in 1936. These
new groups hoped to break away from sectarian goals like
those adopted by the WTM which had attacked socialism, and
establish a more united front against fascism. They

conceived a new kind of play for a new audience. Although

59

impressed by the Rebel Players, a British agitprop troupe
of the mid-thirties, Unity’s founder Andre Van Gyseghem
aspired to produce plays which looked forailink.between
agitprop and the more abstract, or philosophical work. In
an effort to encourage serious drama, his Left Theatre
produced Friedrich Wolf’s Sailors g: Cattaro, a German play
about sailors who mutiny, and a translation of Gorki’s
Mother; Like later works in the Theatre Upstairs of the
Royal Court, his plays were often performed for one or two
Sundays only--at Shoreditch, Stepney, Hackney, and
Woolwich--working-class districts in London.(Wesker grew up
in Stepney). They also performed for clubs, especially
trade unions and groups associated with the labor movement
like the local co-ops, the Amalgamated Engineering Union
(AEU), the Left Book club, and the Labour or Communist
Parties (Gyseghem 209-215).

In 1938 his group was invited to perform in South
Africa and they chose to depict in pagaent form the
development of the Co-operative Movement starting in feudal
England. Their hope was to receive some sort of funding
from the London Co-op, a bid that did not meet with
success. Their pagaents were quite popular, however, and
the seeds of another sort of socialist drama were sown.
About the series of pageants performed in South Africa
(1937-39), Van Gyseghem writes:

It was not a subtle performance, but simple,

60

straightforward and visually effective.
Everything that was said was pertinent, but not
said at too great length. This I found very
impressive, a form of mass theatre which I and
the actors could believe in. It is not an ideal
form, because it does not go to any great depth;
it shows only the broad outlines of human
development. But living pictures do make an
impression on the mind of an audience, and that
was our aim. The theatre is a weapon, and we
were using it in numerous forms. (217)

Unity was not only successful with pagaents, it also ran

full length plays like Clifford Odet’s Waiting for Lefty,

 

mass recitations like Ernst Toller’s A Ag _a_n<_i_g Wgrggg, and
dance productions to large audiences. Their popularity
often attracted big name stars like Paul Robeson who
created a stir when he turned down lucrative parts with the
West End to perform with Unity. His performance in Plant
Ag Egg §gg won the Howard de Walden Cup, in an annual
competition sponsored by the British Drama League (Clark,
229). Their biggest success which ran 162 performances to
over 40,000 people was Babes Ag the Woods, a musical satire
with a political message. Though heavily influenced by the
Communist Party, Unity Theatre found its audience as a
broad based leftist theatre of the 305. Like WTM, they
found their success largely through nontraditional forms
and by stressing political themes over individual conflict.
At the time, the Unity proved a financially viable
alternative to West End commercial theatre.

Once World War II intervened, however, few remembered

the successes of early political theatre as it was known in

61

its hey-day, and the gains which Unity Theatre and others
had made seemed to have had little impact on Britain’s
mainstream theatre. But the precedence of the WTM the
Unity, and other British alternative groups carved out a
tradition which held its place in a wider community.
The tradition was carried over in Britain by a spate of
political playwrights who appeared in the late 605, and
slightly earlier than that by Joan Littlewood. Littlewood,
also of working-class origin, started up her Theatre
Workshop immediately after World War II. With some
assistance by Ewan McColl, her husband of a few years, she
led a poverty stricken, high quality leftist theater group
through an eight-year tour of Europe and a two-year

production of Wole Soyinka’s The Lion and The Jewel in

 

 

Nigeria. Her celebrated Oh, What A LoveAy War produced in

 

 

1963 became a landmark for those who were writing political
theater in the 60s, and her idea for a popular socialist
theater, the Fun Palace, bore a close kinship to Wesker’s
idea for Centre 42.

But Littlewood was not the only post-war leftist
theater which carried on with the Unity spirit. Good
political theater was also found at Glasgow Unity Theatre
(successor to Glasgow WOrkers’ Theatre Group 1937-1940) and
in the continuing music hall tradition which perpetuated

the popular tradition of theater, ballad, folksong, and

62

humor in pubs, union halls, and on recordings.

So when Arnold Wesker and John McGrath appeared as
’fresh and original’ playwrights for the 603, they may have
seemed unusual to a string of young critics looking for an
alternative to the worn-out and mechanical forms, but a
fifty-five year old tradition (since Shaw’s ggg ggg

Superman played at the Royal Court in 1905) stood behind

 

them in British mainstream theatre, and a much longer
history in working-class theater. As part of that
tradition, they took their places on either side of the
debate dividing committed theatre.

Although both mid-twentieth century playwrights work
from socialist ideals and working-class backgrounds, the
results are distinctly different. Between them lie the
ideologies which shape their goals and the content of
much of the oppositional drama in England today. The form
and content of Wesker’s naturalistic plays are conditioned
largely by his identification with the dominant modes
established by bourgeois playwrights, nineteenth century
socialism, and early forms of the Labour Party. With his
drama, he has been concerned mostly with promoting a
resurgence of high-quality theater in terms that could be
understood by the widest audiences. He therefore battled
for a theater which would be even better than commercial
theater because it would have social commitment and,

thereby, life-enhancing values.

63

McGrath’s plays are shaped by his subscription to the
earlier radical leftist theater of the WTM and Unity
theaters. They explore more experimental forms tailored to
working-class tastes. Like his predecessors, his goals are
to demystify theater by stripping away the proscenium and
curtain with street drama, short episodic agitprop,
contemporary music, and other popular forms of
entertainment. His is an oppositional, not alternative,
theater, an expression of struggle against the hegemony of
the bourgeois ideology.‘ It is also an interventionist
theater that actively seeks fundamental changes in the
infrastructure and an instrument for building a "counter-
culture based on the working classes, which will grow in
richness and confidence until it eventually displaces the
dominant bourgeois culture of late capitalisnw ("The Theory
and Practice of Political Theatre’ 44). Not only are the
lines between the two forms--their style and function--
ideology-linked, but ideology may also explain some aspects
of the differences between structures of their respective
theater companies, the types of audiences they attract, and
their histories of public subsidy.

The contrasts seem obvious in retrospect, but when
McGrath and Wesker’s paths first crossed at the Royal Court
in the late fifties,they appeared to have everything in

common. They were both ’working-class’ playwrights

64

interested in exploring the potential of political drama.
Neither they nor their critics were aware of significant
differences, especially since McGrath had not yet developed
his ideas and the cataclysmic events of the 603 had not yet
played themselves out. And, too, they had very little
opportunity'at that time to know each other. It was not
until 1962 when they came together to work on Centre 42, a
project which might provide affordable entertainment for
the working classes, that they began to define their
relative positions.

In 1970, after a decade of association, they began to
articulate their polarized positions in an exchange of
letters. Their debate started with a vitriolic review for

the Marxist paper, Black Dwarf, written by John McGrath of

 

Wesker“s play, The Friends“ Once Wesker responded, there

 

ensued a brief flurry of letters which established clearly
the points of departure. With their principles delineated,
it is possible to trace influences on their plays--not
only by the working-class movement in Britain, but also by
the critical traditions of Georg Lukacs and Bertolt
Brecht--and note the way in which these influences affected
their uses for drama as well as content of the plays. What
we see in the works of Arnold Wesker and John McGrath is
the Lukacs/Brecht debate in motion, the application of
inherited forms and attitudes which explain much about

their productions and the productions of their successors

65

in post-war British theater.

Political commitment, which should have brought them
even closer together,separated them as natural allies. It
was their alignments within socialism and their politically
different approaches to theater--Wesker’s approach
traceable to the early drama of the Independent Labour
Party (ILP), William Morris, and the Co-operative movement
of the 19203, and McGrath’s approach traceable to the more
leftist Workers’ Theatre Movement (WTM), a political
theater which reached its pinnacle in the thirties--that
define the boundaries of the debate. These divergent views
are reflected not only in the content and forms of their

plays, but also in the structure of their respective
theater companies, which became an extension of their

conscious attempts to bring about change.

CHAPTERCHflUfl!

Just as John McGrath and Arnold Wesker anticipated,
very little came of the encouragement they had initially
received at the Royal Court Theatre in the late fifties.
McGrath based his predictions on the Court’s internal
management which was, in his estimation, fundamentally
bourgeois, interested primarily in novelty, and lacking any
real social or political commitment to the working classes.
Wesker based his predictions on a suspicion that working-
class playwrights would be treated as a "flash in the pan,"
ironically an expression that a drama critic later did use
in reference to the working-class playwrights (Taylor, "Ten
Years of the English Stage Company" 128).

The Royal Court/s commitment to these writers was so
tenuous that many speculated that the central purpose of the
Court’s director, George Devine, was strictly a theater of
interesting writers and innovative entertainment (Taylor
123). And as his directorship devolved, Devine may have even
lost the thrill of the earlier movement, since new plays
were not coming in at their former rate, and the company
seemed to have lost its initial impetus.

Devine’s sense of defeat towards the end of his
directorship may have also been partially the result of his
illness, since he died 20 January 1966. He might also have

66

67

been exhausted after years of battling for financial
stability. What Devine had discovered after the Court’s

initial successes with Look Back Ag Anger was that, even

 

though the political playwrights attracted attention for
their novelty, alternative theater as a whole had not caught
on with middle-class audiences; nor had it attracted a new
following among the working classes.1 Commercial successes
at the Court were rare.‘When.a play seemed to demonstrate
the ability to draw large sell-out audiences, a small
theater like the Royal Court would often sell the right to
produce it to a larger theater in the West End. During the
first seven years of the English Stage Company, only
thirteen productions covered their running expenses, and
much of their revenue came from the sales of film rights or
transfers to the West End. Fifty-eight main productions in
those seven years lost money'(Taylor 126%.And many of the
plays which were box office failures at the Royal Court were
written by Sartre, Ionescon and Williams, plays which are
considered dramatic classics today, even though they are
still not necessarily box office hits.

A sparse turnout for the performances could, in part,
be attributed to a mixture of low name recognition and
mediocre reviews which only resulted in a poorly informed
audience. Also, as McGrath and Taylor pointed out years
later, Devine may have been confused in his aims. Although

he seemed committed to a social revolution through theater

68

at the time, Devine may not have held a clear idea of how a
theater should act responsibly to society, so he appeared
uncertain about what function this theater might fulfill in
precipitating social reform. His primary concern,
therefore, became that of producing the best drama possible
at a minimum loss. Commercial interests had to be
considered, when so few of the plays were box office
successes--at least in the first run. Weskerfs Chicken Soup
with Bgrley, for example, met only 40% of its expenses in
1958 (26% at the box office), but when it reopened two years
later, it met 90% of its expenses, and his Roots failed to
achieve any measure of success until its second run in 1960
to sell-out audiences, when his play met 100% of its
expenses for the first time.

At issue are familiar questions: how can artists mount
any productions with new ideas if they fail to receive
stable, financial support for experimental work? How can
those playwrights who are marginalized, even though they are
writing for the British working classes who are in the
majority, find an reliable outlet that is responsive to
their views? ‘Who decides which artists are worthy of
support? Who should finance works of art that lack strong
public support from any sector?

In Britain these questions are largely settled by the

British Arts Council, since most of Britain’s theater is

69

publicly funded. The Arts council has been providing
support of some sort since 1945, but it is rare to find
anyone who is satisfied with the system. As long ago as
1947, JxB. Priestley called the Arts Council one of the

"enemies of the theatre" (Theatre Outlook 22). He was

 

alluding to the disproportionately high sum of money
received by the government from Entertainment Duty as
compared to the amount restored to the theaters in
subsidies. And even then, the budget which was considered
unfairly small was allocated to the maintenance of
buildings--a "bricks and mortar" policy--rather than
allocating the money to raise the artistic level of stage
production (22-32). Many complaints today about the Arts
Council’s policies echo those of Priestley.

The Arts Council’s relationship to the artist is a
complicated one, as it too is governed by a complicated
network of hegemonic relations linked to Britainfis mixture
of capitalism and socialism and to the bourgeois culture,
which lock the government policies into the values and
beliefs of the dominant class. Even more, the Council is the
agency which regulates, to some extent, the material
resources for leisure, entertainment, art--many of the ways
people relate to each other socially.

The goals of alternative playwrights have been to
establish a closer relationship between the text’s own

comprehension of itself and its production, and to develop--

70

even revolutionize--the existing forces of artistic
production. For greater control over the production of
their plays, therefore, many contemporary playwrights have
found it necessary to form their own theater companies.
By managing their own theater companies, dramatists
discovered greater flexibility in determining the forms,
their venues, and, to a certain extent, the composition of
their audiences. Wesker and McGrath are cases in point
since each of them established their own companies and the
histories of those companies are a part of the ideological
structures which condition their works.

Around Christmas 1960, several artists--mainly writers
and directors including Bernard Kops, Ted Allen, Ted
Kotcheff, Clive Barker, Sean Kenny, Doris Lessing, Alun
Owen, Tom Maschler, Clive Exton, Jeremy Sandford--met to
toss around ideas for establishing their own means for
producing works independent of the commercial
establishment. Many of them had been talking informally for
some time about possibilities for a system of alternative
theater to respond to a "sense that society was changing too
rapidly and the processes of change were no longer
apprehensible to the man in the street" (Barker, "All at Sea
Without a Rudder" 9). They met formally to discuss a
proposed theatrical project, eventually known as Centre 42,

that might offer an alternative to the commercial system

71

which had taken their "work and converted to its use the
vigor, energy and vernacular realism, and had gently but
firmly squeezed cum: all the social,relevance, and
progressive intentions" (Barker, "The Centre 42 Project and
the 42 Movement" 2).

They hoped for a theater that was not judged first in
commercial terms--by box office receipts, by viewing
figures, by the price a film company would pay for its
screen rights. They wanted an expression of alternative
values, and they were searching for an instrument that would
bring together neighbors isolated from each other by
economic and social barriers in the class structure. They
also wanted the chance to work outside London, that is, to
decentralize enough to work in the regions among the
communities they knew best (3). The early organizers were
later joined by Frank Ward, Shelagh Delaney, Arnold Wesker,
Gareth Wigan, and John McGrath.

The groust participants agreed that the purpose of
Centre 42 should be to "wrest artist activity from
commercial domination and, in combination with the trades
unions, to establish a new social role for the arts"
(Barker "All At Sea"'7L. If these writers could organize
the company themselves, they might surmount many of the
obstacles normally placed before working-class writers:
high rent, fashion-minded producers, croneyism among

directors, and the narrow-mindedness of middle-class

72

audiences.

Their idea was not unique. Since the days of England’s
Unity Theatre and Glasgow Workers’ Theatre Group in the
thirties, several writers, including John McGrath, had toyed
with possible ways to break out of the fixed traditions of
established theater. Being unsure how they could accomplish
their aims, they agreed to work with the Centre 42 group
who seemed full of ideas for the future. Since Wesker’s 9_L
Motherl Ag I_t: Worth It? speech at Oxford which complained
about a lack of union support, he had continued to look for
donations by the trade unions to the dramatic arts.
Although the unions had not initially provided much money,
many in the group believed --on the strength of Wesker’s
initial success--they could eventually find reliable
patronage through the trade unions or elsewhere.

They held their first public meeting on 28 May 1961 at
2 Soho Square in London to explain their purpose and to
expand their base of support. Producer and director Clive
Barker opened the meeting with a proposition "to create
suggestions, to create potential venture, to create
something which had no limituualmost a cultural revolution
for this country”. Director Ted Kotcheff addressed the "95%
[who] seemed to be cut off from any artistic experience"
because "the press, television etc. seemed to be in the

wrong hands." Novelist Doris Lessing pointed to the local

73

excitement for adventurous theatre. Listing Eggggg
magazine, Joan Littlewood, the Royal Court, and critics
like Kenneth Tynan, Lessing called for a center in a
working-class area that would be available to a young
audience. She envisioned a place for games, jazz, films,
and theater. Arnold Wesker then described the center which
would be open to activities from morning to night with art
exhibitions in the morning, tennis table championships in
the evening, children’s theater in the afternoon, and
lunchtime concerts. He also outlined a role for the center
of directing festivals and making connections with the
factories and schools. Theater scenery designer Sean Kenny
described the physical plant as a place which might
minimize the gap between the audience and writery a place
which would dismantle the "Victorian birdcage between the
two" (Unpublished Minutes of the Proceedings 9). He
imagined a flexible space that could accommodate a play or a
circus, a place like an Elizabethan inn "where a group of
travelling players come in and tell their story on the
floor, and then the audience can go back to their
drinking"(lO-11L. Business advisor Mike Henshaw insisted
that the artistic members volunteer their services.

‘Their discussion was infectiously enthusiastic and
organized, reflecting months of exchange. The atmosphere
was charged with expectation and optimism. In June 1961 an

"Audience-Participation Committee" was formed to explore

74

ways of "creating and sustaining a new kind of audience"
(Coppieters 40). They decided to use as their model, Roger
Planchon’s socialist experimental theater group in France.
In July 1961 the group went public with their plans. Their
program consisted of a central plant for all the arts that
should house a permanent acting company, orchestra, visual
arts department, jazz band and dance company. They also
announced intentions of going, when invited, to the regions
for the purpose of providing entertainment and encouraging a
grass roots movement which would eventually supply its own
entertainment.
After a series of meetings they settled on a list of
objectives for Centre 42 which would become
-A vehicle with a more revolutionary message
-Independent from the commercial system
-An outlet for nontraditional writers, directors, actors
-A link between audience and artist
-An alliance with trade unions
-Preparation for generations of leisure
-A voice for Britain’s popular culture
(Centre 42 Annual Report)
And they had decided to accomplish these goals in four
steps which were announced at their launching party on July

24, 1961:

-Estab1ish in the beginning one Centre which would
house facilities for all the arts under one roof.

-Set up its own permanent acting company, orchestra,
visual arts department, jazz band, dance group and so
on.

-Serve the immediate area around the Centre with
cultural presentations, and, when invited, bring arts

75

festivals to outlying areas. Invitations were to be

accepted from community bodies, such as trades

councils, co-op guilds, universities, or similar
groups which intimated the presence of an interested
but by-passed audience.

-Encourage local bodies to organize their own festival
or event. The Centre would simply provide the
programme--the talent, and selection of plays or
dances or such--from itscurrent repertoire.
(Coppieters 41)

The group appeared to be working in harmony with one
another, but a divided purpose was already emerging between
two factions--one defined by those who, like Wesker, wanted
a strong base of operations in a center located in London,
taking steps one and two before accomplishing anything else;
(and the others who, like Barker, saw their best work being
done in the regions, establishing a closer link between
artist and audience and giving voice to the popular
expression of Britain.

In August 1961, Clive Barker sent a position statement
to the Provisional Council of Centre 42 which included
among others Jennie Lee, General Secretary General of the
Arts Council (later appointed Minister of the Arts under
Harold Wilson), Bill Carron, president of the Amalgamated
Engineering Union (AEU), and Frank Cousins, Secretary of the
Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU) outlining plans,
detailing financial needs, and asking for their reactions.
He wanted their endorsement for the following points of

agreement among steering committee:

-An acceptance of socialist values which would

76
de-emphasise the monetary and competitive aspects of
life;

-The establishment of art/s importance and of the links
between artist and community;

-The search for ways in which artists could take
control of their own means of expression;

-Condemnation of individual isolation and a lack of
communal spirit;

-An effort to "break down all barriers, social,
economic and psychological that stand between the
people of this country and full participation of the
arts." (Unpublished letter, 30 August 1961)

The group’s unspoken hope, as suggested in the position
statement, was that private donors and government grants
would take their part in this venture by lending financial
support, thereby enabling the proposed Centre 42 with its
high aspirations to proceed without constraint. As its
spokesperson Barker mentioned the expectation of first-year
contributions of £80,000, a small sum when compared with
most investments by the private sector in the entertainment
industry.

Barker also made it clear in the letter that he was
not seeking large amounts of money from the trade unions.
He believed, first of all, the trade unions would
antagonize the general membership by asking for large sums,
(little did he know, the general membership had passed
Resolution 42 over the objections of the General Council);

second, he believed the inexperienced Centre 42 should wait

until the operation was running smoothly before asking for

77

trade union money; and third, they were likely to attract
too many ”bandwagon jumpers” looking for easy money.
Barker’s greatest fear, however, was that the group’s
purpose might be diluted or lost, or worst yet, that they
might eventually compete for the money against that West End
manager who "would become a Trade Union overnight". So a
second point of difference between Wesker and Barker had
arisen: while Wesker was still trying to raise money through
the trade unions, Barker was playing down the possibility.
Withdrawing their appeal to the trade unions was a change
in policy for Centre 42, a change that solved immediate
relations since little financial support had been
forthcoming, but created some later uncertainty among the
trade unions about their responsibility to the arts. Barker
would argue that the trade unions had, in any case, little
interest in Centre 427s proposals.

To balance their opposing factions, the Centre 42
planning group had, meanwhile, appointed Wesker as the
Artistic Director of Centre 42 and Barker as its Technical
Organiser. Wesker was selected for his imagination, energy,
enthusiasm, viable ideas for fundraising--even if the trade
union support had not been as strong as he supposed--and
he had a reputation of being committed. In April 1961 Wesker
had been arrested as one of hundreds in a sit-down, anti-
nuclear demonstration in Whitehall, for which he was later

fined £1. In September Wesker had been arrested along with

78

Robert Bolt, Lord Bertrand Russell, and approximately thirty
others in an anti-Vietnam War demonstration sponsored by the
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and sent to jail, a
sentence which gave him credibility as a social reformer.
Barker was selected because he was down-to-earth,
dedicated, experienced in community theater, equally
energetic and equally committed. He had proved himself by
his earlier work in Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop,

taking part in the first productions of The Hostage and

 

Fings Ain‘t What They Used TVBe at Stratford East and

appearing in the West End productions of Oh, What A Lovely

 

War!. He had also worked with Ed Berman’s Fun Art Bus

taking part in the first productions of The Hostage and

 

Fings Ain‘t What They Used TVBe at Stratford East and

 

 

appearing in the West End production of OhL What.A Lovely
EEEl. Being committed to a more leftist political and social
alignment, Barker“s appointment balanced the Wesker faction.
After the dissolution of Centre 42 in 1969, he joined the
board of directors for John McGrath’s theater company,
7:84, where he found greater compatibility. Objections which
he eventually raised to Wesker“s policies in the management
of Centre 42 anticipate the ideological objections which
McGrath raised a decade later, in 1970. During the initial
stages of Centre 42, however, neither Barker nor Wesker had

a full understanding of his own political position, so the

79

clash between them in the early sixties seemed only a sign
of the theater company”s growing pains.

Besides, they were too busy with the formulation of
their plans to arrive at a deeper understanding of their
differences. Before they were officially registered as a
national charity, they began arranging the festivals.
Originally they had intended to wait until they had raised
enough money to build a theatrical center in London before
offering any entertainment, but the invitation came to
participate'in a festival in Wellingborough, a small town
about 75 miles north of London, so they seized the
opportunity to see what they could accomplish. Many of the
planners, particularly Barker, felt it important to
"demonstrate the power and validity of the idea," even
before they had a building ("Centre 42 Speakers’ Notes" 4).
Believing it was ”unthinkable" to turn down the invitation,
the committee decided to defer fundraising for the proposed
center.

By October 1961 the group was plunged intotactivity.
Organizers drew on all the popular traditions for ideas--
the Workers’ Educational Association, the music
associations, the travelling theaters, orchestras, and
exhibitions. The final program in November included the
following:

1. A trade union exhibition in which the work

and materials of various crafts and industries
were placed in juxtaposition with the work of

80

sculptors and painters.
2. One evening of theatre in the round.

3. A film performance of films from the Free
Cinema Movement.

4. An Any Question Evening on the place of
cultural activities in Trade Unionism.

5. Folk singing in the public houses throughout
the town in which there was also a exhibition of
work of local artists.
6. A surprise performance by Pete Seeger in one
of the public houses. ("Centre 42 Speakers’
Notes 3)
The festival in Wellingborough was such a success, that it
was followed in 1962 by invitations from others in
Wellingborough, Nottingham, Leicester, Birmingham, Bristol,
and Hayes and Southall. Much of their success came from
the work of the visual arts director, Beba Lavrin, the film
committee run by Clive Barker (because of his work in
cinema, McGrath was placed on this working committee for a
short time), the efforts of Michael Kustow and Arnold
Wesker as well as the‘artists, technicians, secretaries,
trades-unionists who worked the fourteen hour days

(Coppieters 44%

The second year of festivals was marked by Solly Gold,

 

a specially commissioned play by Bernard Kops, a reading of
The Nottingham Captain, a play by Wesker written for the
events, and Michael Croft’s National Youth Theatre
production of AggAgg. There was also an EJLI. film by

Charles Parker, The Maker and the Tool about the

 

81

relationship between man and his tools complete with oral
histories taken from the regions, and folk songs by Peggy
Seeger, Ewan MacColl,.AJL.Lloyd with many others. They
also included the Tommy Watt Orchestra, a big band
consisting of sixteen top British jazzmen, an original
score written in the jazz idiom by Wilfred Josephs, and a

performance of Stravinsky"s The Soldier’s Tale. There were

 

films, poetry readings, an exhibition which gave a brief
history of the trades union movement, a local artists’
exhibition, and a collection of work by local children.
The work was hung in factories, libraries, pubs, a bowling
alley, a cinema, a betting shop, a doctor’s waiting room,
stores and other frequented public places (Coppieters 41-
44). The events of those fifteen weeks were wide ranging
and impressive.

Attendance for most of the shows was excellent, even
though publicity was poor and ticket prices were sometimes
too high. Although the pervasive mood for the organizers
was hectic and often disorganized, many felt that "the
festivals had an important impact, in that they encouraged
new groups, stimulated argument about the role of art in the
community and the principle of state subsidy, and released
new energies" (Coppieters 44). Barker later wrote,
"Whatever its failures, Centre 42 has been responsible for a

change in the cultural climate of this country. it has

82

brought many people face to face with questions which
previously they had never faced ("The Centre 42 Project and
the 42 Movement" 15%. He meant that Centre 42 had forced
discussions about the forms and functions of working-class
art.

Centre 42, however, had gone into debt. In July,
l962--before the end of the second series of festivals--
Michael Henshaw wrote in the Centre 42 first annual report,
"If you accept that salaries, overheads and rents are the
first charge on our total financial expentations, then
virtually nothing is in the kitty for the 1962 festivals and
we are already contracting with firms, local councils,
actors, and so onJ' Adthough they were in debt by only £450
at the end of the first of four festivals, their deficit was
a serious problem for a group which already had future
commitments and no visible means of future income.

At the completion of four festivals they estimated
debts of around £35,000 and by June 30, 1964 they owed
approximately £48,000, still very little money when one
considers that the Edinburgh Festival at that time was
losing £110,000 annually and smaller festivals (at
Aldeburgh and Cheltenham) cost even more to launch("Centre
42 Speakers’Notes" 4). They had counted on substantial
support from outsiders and yet neither the British Arts
Council nor the TUC had contributed much. The only

significant donation was a £16,000 grant from Gulbenkian

83

Foundation, but it simply was not enoughz‘ Many blamed

overly ambitious plans, others blamed Wesker, perhaps
unfairly, for a lack of managerial expertise.

Recognizing they could not manage the festivals while
raising money, they set up a Friends of Centre 42 whose
sole function was development. The list of sponsorship in
1963 was impressive: Countess of Albemarle, Dame Peggy
Ashcroft, Sidney Bernstein, John Berger, Robert Bolt,
Bishop of Coventry, Graham Greene, Harold Hobson, Richard
Hoggart, Sir Laurence Olivier, Joan Plowright, J.B.
Priestley, Terence Rattigan, Sir Herbert Read, Vanessa
Redgrave, Sir John Rothenstein, Peter Sellers, Alan
Sillitoe, C.P. Snow, Kenneth Tynan, Lord Walston, Raymond
Williams, among others. Clive Barker, Technical Organizer,
and Director Arnold Wesker remained in charge.

The watershed for Centre 42 seems to have been
reached in 1962-1963 when the Council of Management debated
its future..Again differences between the visions of the
two groups surfaced. One faction, which included Wesker,
continued to promote a permanent headquarters for the
organization in London, which would serve, as a nexus for
working-class entertainment. He was concerned that a small
organization without a home might be perceived as temporary
and would lose potential donations, particularly from the

unions. The other group which included Barker was concerned

84

about becoming too large and commercial and thereby risking
the loss of their social energy. Barker resisted the
proposal to turn all their attentions to a central location
in London. Since Centre 42 had at least sixteen invitations
to mount festivals in 1963, he wanted to continue the
"social revolution" as they had begun. Barker argued that
demand for their form of entertainment was coming mostly
from the regions where the festivals filled the need of the
people more than a center in London, and that the tremendous
energy generated by the festivals would eventually support
their London center. Any shift away from the festivals
would, therefore, threaten their continuation ("Centre 42:
Can We Control the Revolution?"). The Council of Management
decided, nevertheless, to postpone the festivals for two
years until they had established a home in London. 'Their
accumulated debts effectively precluded ambitious plans for
the future.

Despite the unpaid bills and lack of trade union
response, Wesker and the Council began raising funds for
the new center. Since most donors would be reluctant to
make contributions for meeting old debts, the Council
created a separate building fund, the Round House Trust.
The Round House was named for the 1847 railway engine shed
on Chalk Farm Road in Camden. In size and shape it seemed
an ideal building to remodel for a gathering place that

would collect all the arts under one roof and serve as a

85

meeting place for artist and public, "not as idol to the
fans, but.as human beings each concerned with the opinion
and responsible comment and simple humanity of the other"
(Barker "The Centre 42 Project and the 42 Movement" 7).
With conference rooms, food, drink and entertainment, it
could serve as a communal hub. Alec Coleman and Louis
Mintz, a financial controller of a large dressmaking firm,
donated the money needed to write off the sixteen year
lease. And Arnold Wesker himself donated £10,000 from the
sale of the film rights to his play, Chips With Everything.
Nevertheless, Centre 42 needed an additional £600,000.
Determined not to go further into debt, the Centre 42
Council rejected commercial options like bank loans and
private investors for the Round House. They wanted,
ironically, to be free of judgment about the way the money
was spent, so they sought unattached gifts instead. Even
with Lord Harewood, Director of the Edinburgh Festival and
patron of the opera, as the Chair of the Appeals Committee,
relatively little money was raised. Part of their problem
was Centre 42’s reputation an: idealistic organization
lacking cost efficiency and practical experience--"a bit
long-haired and starry eyed" said George Woodcock, then
General Secretary of the Trades Union Council whose
promises of support, contradicted by a poor showing, were

always a source of disappointment to Wesker (Centre 42

86

promotional materials #20). Wesker, however, remained
optimistic, believing that someday they would build enough
goodwill to win over the Trades Council or the rank and

file (Fears gA Fragmentation 47-48). The Camden Council and

 

the Transport and General Workers’ Union each donated £2,500
and an anonymous donor offered £50,000 in guaranteed
overdrafts, but with those exceptions, relatively little
money was forthcoming.

Centre 42 might have raised the necessary contributions
had large public institutions also been willing to lend
their support. After twelve years of leadership by the
Conservative government, however, there was little money for
the arts. In any case, the Conservative government seemed
unlikely to fund a group that was both artistically
experimental and politically competitive. The Conservative
structure for the allocation of resources through the
British Arts Council so strongly favored the established art
institutions that the return of the Labour Government with
Harold Wilson in 1964 (one year later), made little
difference in the funding. Not even appointing a member of
Centre 42’s Council of Management, Jennie Lee, as Minister
of the Arts changed the funding practices of the British
Arts Council for theater in the sixties. Seventeen years
later Barker wrote that lack of government commitment was
largely responsible for the unsurmountable difficulties they

faced:

87

The failure of Centre 42 to continue effectively
after 1963 was the direct consequence of the
~election of the Labour Government of 1964 and its
failureto fulfill expectations which had become
pressing concerns during the previous thirteen
years of Conservative rule. The ensuing sense of
disillusionment affected not only the cultural
scene but spread wide across the social and
political responses of the community and gave

rise to new movements and strategies in both

these areas. ("From Fringe to Alternative

Theatre" 49)

Centre 42 was in an odd bind. They had taken their purpose
as alternative theater from the socialist values they held
in common- .And yet, they had to disavow overt political
aims and intentions of raising money on behalf of their
ideals for fear of losing their charity status. Only one
gift was presented by members of the government, and that
was £40,000 raised by Prime Minister Harold Wilson at a
Downing Street tea party to convert the Round House into a
small performing area (Téeni 412-413). In 1969, the British
Arts Council offered the Round House Trust £10,000 for a
"guest programme," but the money had come too late and would
have, at best, promoted artists who were already known and
established.

Tied to the £40,000 donation was the appointment of a
new financial adviser for the Round House Trust, George
Hoskins. Hoskins’lappointment effectively stripped Wesker of
his power as director. On the face of it, the Round House

Trust was a good idea because it separated the building fund

from the debts of Centre 42 allowing greater potential for

88

development; unfortunately it also gave license to an
associative group not answerable to Centre 42’s original
philosophies and opened the way for exploitation of the
artists who performed there. ‘Hoskins’ goal was to make the
Round House self-supporting until Centre 42 could raise more
money, but such policies permitted a system antithetical to
Centre 42’s original intentions.

The Centre 42 project had been formed so that art would
not have to pay for itself. Whatever their points of
difference along the way, the planners continued to agree
that art should never be selected on an economic basis, that
is, art should not have to pay for itself, and that profit
from the artist/s work should never be a consideration. The
Council Members of Centre 42 stood by their statements in
the 1961 Annual Report:

We do not here question the merit of profit but

we do question the attitude that views art as

having to pay for itself. If we want the arts to

be the social responsibility of the community

then we must never consider profit from an

artist/s work. In other words, no such contract

should ever be entered into; we feel that,
however heretical a procedure it is, we should
contract with an artist only to earn back that
which it has cost to present his work. After

that he must be free to gain from his work as

and how he can. (30)

Shifting to a profit-making enterprise, the administration
was violating Centre 42’s original aims through the Round

House Trust.

Because new policies at the Round House subverted the

89

group’s original purposes, trustees were discouraged from
raising money to meet Centre 42’s debts which, with the
bank interest, were quickly adding up. The Centre 42
movement was at a stalemate: they had lost the momentum for
the festivals, as Barker had feared; and they lacked
sufficient funds for either the building or regional
theater, as Wesker had feared. The success of the Centre
42 group had been mediated by the patrons, the audiences,
the town councils, other audiences, other playwrights, and
so forth.

In a developed capitalist social formation the dominant
middle classes may permit, even encourage, an experimental
group like Centre 42 for informal distribution and
consumption, but may not choose to sustain the group. The
failure of a‘working-class theater company like Centre 42
could largely be attributed to a disjunction between
the company and the traditions and practices of the ruling
classes. Centre 42 sought subsidies before granting
mechanisms were in place for patronage of working-class
theater. Unable to function either within the dominant
literary modes of production, or even parallel to them, the
group’s functions were eventually modified until the
structure of their company and its operations were
compatible with those of the commercial theater of its time.

Centre 42 limped along until October, 1970 when it

90

was dissolved after Wesker’s resignation. Lack Of money
and, finally, unacceptable: commercial strategies
contributed to its slow death. Also contributing to its
collapse were the ideological differences between Wesker and
Barker, differences which go to the heart Of polemics within
political theater in Britain.

Wesker and Barker had recognized their incompatibility
'early on. When Centre 42 was still in the planning stages,
Barker scribbled in the margins of one Of his papers, "The
difference between Arnold and me is between John Wesley and
John Ball." Both historical figures were zealots in their
own way: John Wesley was an itinerate Methodist preacher who
depended on spreading his faith through conversion and John
Ball achieved change when he led a peasant uprising in the
fourteenth century. TO Barker, Wesker’s statements seemed
tO make inflated claims for the arts as an instrument for
saving the wretched. Barker was thinking Of statements like

that in Fears gA Fragmentations, in which Wesker said, "I

 

believe that art is the means with which we break down the
whole terrible wall Of myths that confuse, frighten and
limit us--and only when those walls tumble can we grow into

real human beings (Fears gA Fragmentation 38). For Wesker,

 

any education gained through the arts is power, a key tO
self-determination, tO more Open social interactions, and
to a resistance Of oppression. Wesker’s preacher-like

metaphors rang out with moralistic overtones.

91

On the other hand, Barker viewed himself as a
revolutionary with a volunteer following like radical leader
Of the 1381 peasantry rebellion.¢Quoting French historian
FrOissart, Ball once contended that “things cannot gO well
in England, nor ever will until everything shall be in
common" (Morton 122). Ball was referring tO the peasants’
demands for an abolition Of serfdom and compensatory payment
for services at a flat rate Of fourpence an acre. Barker
also wanted more than a change in the social and cultural
climate Of the working classes. He wanted nothing less than
a social and economic revolution in the ownership and
management Of the arts. The purpose Of Centre 42 in
Barker’s mind was not merely a matter Of morals, but Of
ownership Of the arts. In this tongue-in-cheek comparison,
Barker was also characterizing the polarized positions
within Centre 42.

Those in the Centre 42 movement who sided with Barker
were largely instrumental in promoting the the regional
festivals. The issue Of the festivals appeared tO represent
a simple disagreement over the allocation Of resources.
After all, the festivals seemed a good idea to everyone,
including Wesker, and they seemed controversial only because
no one could agree on gggg that money should be spent. But
the issue Of the Festivals actually stOOd for a more

fundamental question Of whose voice should be heard--the

92

professional artist or that Of the local talent.

In an August 1961 letter to the Provisional Council Of
Centre 42, Barker wrote, "u.we are trying to recreate a
popular culture in this country and helping tO forge a new
community with a national identity and character" (3L.By
"popular culture" Barker meant the traditions Of the people
in music and other forms Of entertainment, as Opposed to the
”classical culture" which be characterized as being already
"in pawn to commercial interests." Hoping to encourage the
participation Of nonprofessional entertainers and Open up
those forms Of folk art which lay outside the grips Of
commercialism, he deplored the infiltration Of Britain by
American pOpular culture with its "mid-Atlantic accents,
pseudo-serious and pretentious concern for society, its
debasement Of classical and folk art in the name Of
entertainment, its patronisingly coy attitudes and complete
lack Of any ethical, moral or responsible standards
whatsoever.”

Barker was, no doubt, referring tO commercial American
’folk singers’ who professed anti-war sentiments but lacked
ideological conviction. In any case, he wanted tO reawaken
the popular culture Of his own country in each particular
region and tO bridge the gap between popular and classical
forms Of entertainment without overpowering the voice Of
the people.

He was also committed to the importance of locally used

93

language as one means for preserving working-class values.
Toward that end, Barker said that Centre 42 could
investigate and record the oral histories Of the Scots,
Irish and regional English. By establishing vernacular
libraries for those groups, Centre 42 could reinforce the
English language in all its variation, especially the
rhythms and inflections Of local accents systematically
silenced by the demands Of most directors. He wrote, "The
people are inarticulate--we as professional artists must be
ready and willing to help them to find their new ways of
expression." Centre 42 could become an agent for local
expression.

Barker reiterated his position in 1963 while
discussing the importance Of staging local festivals, "The
enquiries and invitations have never been for Centre 42 tO
take culture tO the masses, they have always been a cry for
articulation" ("Centre 42: Can VH3 Control the
Revolution?"). Barker believed a need for articulation was
coming from those who had lost a sense Of community. Since
shortly before World War II neighbor had been isolated from
neighbor. New housing estates, increased standard Of
living, dissolution Of Old institutions which used tO bring
people together had contributed tO the trend Of
fragmentation. Centre 42, they hoped, would provide a new

way for people to come together through self-expression with

94

the arts (Centre 42--Speaker’s Notes).

Wesker, in fact, agreed with many Of Barker’s points,
especially those on the issue Of local language. Believing
that language is the basis for empowerment and self-
discovery, Wesker wrote plays which gave breath to rural and
domestic characters who usually have little tO say in
middle-class British drama. Roots heroine Beatie says,
”Well, language is wordsmuItfs bridges, so that you can get
safely from one place to another. And the more bridges you
know about the more places you can see! And do ygg know
what happens when you can see a place but you don’t know
where the bridge is?" (VOl. I, 90). Beatie demonstrates the
power Of language to actualize through self-expression, but
she also seem to be suggesting self-promotion through
language. Using the character Of Beatie, Wesker is
suggesting that social reform is possible through the
betterment Of each individual. Barker, on the other hand,
argued that through a greater sense Of community and an
outlet for expression, the working classes could become the
dominant culture, rendering useless any need for social
advancement.

But Wesker disagreed with Barker on the importance Of
popular culture. If the arts Offer education and, through
education, self-determination and freer social interaction,
then their contribution was sufficient. It is the fine arts

which assert those truths that resist tyranny, and the

95

lesser forms--like those in popular culture--are wanting in
this regard. In Wesker’s estimation, only the fine arts are
capable Of shaping a man’s "sensibilities and hence his
humanity" and Of allowing man to realize that his humanity

”needs tO be shaped” (Fears gA Fragmentation 66).

 

Wesker did not Oppose popular culture altogether. When
performed by professionals, certain popular entertainment
was acceptable but Wesker was deeply suspicious Of some
forms. He once said, for example, that he was sometimes
"paralysed" by pop music because "The act Of defiance that
pop culture carries has become so desperate that it has
become an act Of cowardice" (Fears gA Fragmentation 68).
Wesker did not accept popular forms in drama and could not
understand why sO much was made Of them when the larger
stakes Of production seemed a more important question.
Ultimately, he did not understand that the debate over forms
was a battle that was a part Of the whole process Of
changing the culture and was a necessary factor in shaping
relations between playwright and audience.

Barker and Wesker exchanged Opinions on this point in a
1964 issue of Views (Spring). Wesker was making the case
once more for excellence in entertainment, suggesting that
art will have an impact only when "a civilisation ’sings’
ghrough its artists” (his emphasis, 45). As a way Of

denigrating amateurs in the arts he wrote, "As therapy, art

96

can involve people with no talent as participants for their
own private reasons and benefits; art as an experience
should be exposed only tO the most professional work" (44%
He meant, Of course, that the recreational arts are all
right for amateurs, but the serious arts are best left to
the professionals. Barker questioned him closely in a
follow-up at the end Of the article:

Your two categories Of Art as therapy and as

experience seem tO split society into artist and

audience. But couldn’t it be argued that such a

split would tend tO re-inforce the passive

consumer roles which capitalist society requires

people to take up? (47)
Wesker“s answgr deflected the political implications Of the
question, by directing Barker to consider the possibilities
Of Opening up the human potential through education and
through an exposure to new art experiences. For Wesker, any
education gained through the arts is power, a key to self-
determination, to more Open social interactions, and to a
resistance Of Oppression. He told Barker:

Neither do I talk about lessons in schools on the

"appreciation Of the arts”. Ifin'talking about

the need to acknowledge that the artist/s work is

a battlefield where ideas are fought and values

affirmed."0ne isn’t asking for an educational

system that states a preference for the writings

Of one man rather than another, one is simply

asking that differences be acknowledged so that

growing generations know that a choice Of values

can be made, and such a choice cannot be made

unless the language Of art is taught. (47)

Using similar arguments, Wesker Opposed amateur performances

in the Festivals because they tOOk something away from the

97

professionals and because he believed the professionals more
capable Of educating the public.

Debates like these between Wesker and Barker register
radically Opposing approaches tO working class and
political drama. Although both men had the backgrounds for
understanding the nature of the working-class community,
they drew their conclusions from different perspectives.
Wesker viewed his working-class neighbors and their
educational backgrounds from a greater distance, a position
he had developed while growing up in London/s East End among
books and among family members who conferred on him an
appreciation Of fine arts. And Barker, watching the break-up
Of his own ’community'and others in post-war Britain, wanted
to restore and preserve the pOpular expression that was once
identified with that community. Barker believed that
theater could Offer more than a nostalgic gesture to the
past by Offering itself as a vehicle tO local expression,
and doing so, forestalling the disintegration Of the
communal life.

Opposition between directors--more than a lack Of
organization--may account for much Of Centre 42’s internal
problems. What seemed like disorganization to critics
outside Of Centre 42 may have been the release Of energies
by polarized forces. They agreed on the more abstract
issues Of localized language, rights Of artists, ownership

Of production, and the villainy'of government funding, in

98

short on revolutionary social reform through the arts.
Where they disagreed so fundamentally was in their judgment
Of the working-class potential.and.in their definition Of
the function Of working-class art. Differences between
Arnold Wesker and Clive Barker were profound. Nevertheless,
the Centre 42 movement might have been able to accommodate
all points Of View if the funding were generous enough to
allow each director to develop his own ideas for Centre 42,
that.is, if there had been enough money for both the Round
House and the festivals. Without subsidy they were forced,
finally, tO surrender their holdings tO commercial
interests.

TO this day, both Barker and Wesker have mixed feelings
about the movement they rode tO the finish. Barker wrote in
a letter on 29 June 1985:

In more than one way, Centre 42 could not

have ’worked’. In the form in which it was

envisaged it was already 15 years tOO late.

CentreV42 should have been started in 1945. It

is a valid criticism that we were trying to put

the clock back to another time. We also did not

know nearly enough about the historical

precedents. We knew little or nothing about the

French turn-Of-the century popular theatre

movement, the Volksbuhne, that had been tried in

Britain between the wars. Had we known this, we

might never have been fOOlhardy enough to have

gone ahead.

Even an» Barker recognized that Centre 42 contributed

significantly tO the future Of alternative theater in

Britain. The movement laid the groundwork for a public

99

debate on the importance Of arts for the working classes in
Britain. More than that, it forced a discussion on public
funding for alternative theater. In the same letter Barker
acknowledged some Of the gains made by the Centre 42
movement:

For a start, some Of us gained a valuable
education in cultural politics. Then, the
publicity surrounding the project materially
changed the debate on the arts and society. Many
people with smaller projects and ideas who were
struggling tO survive and tO articulate their
policy were encouraged tO come out into the Open
and to join with the debate on local terms.
There is a sense in which the grass-roots
movement, which I wanted tO develOp, was already
on the way and Centre 42 was the blockbuster that
broke on tO the front pages Of the newspapers and
laid the ground for validated other people’s
work. Whatever happened after, we also laid the
ground for the large increase in public subsidy
under Wilson’s government. One can map out the
betrayal Of the principles and the pursuance Of
the form without the content in the later
development Of the Arts Council, but the fact
remains that theatres were built and companies
subsidised as a result Of our efforts.

Barker was quite right. Not long after the expiration
of Centre 42, the British Arts Council and many municipal
councils,including the Greater London Council (GLC) began
budgeting more money for alternative theater. Documenting
the growth Of alternative theater in Britain, Catherine
Itzin counted only about a half dozen alternative theaters
in 1968, but by 1978 more than a hundred. In 1968 Britain
had only 34 arts centers. By 1978, that number had
increased to more than 140. In addition, there were, in

1978, at least 200 small touring venues in London and the

100

regions and at least 250 playwrights who were considered
part Of alternative theater. Just a handful Of such
playwrights could be identified in 1968 (Stages A_ the

Revolution xiv). Itzin, tOO, credited Centre 42 for its

 

role in forcing increased government participation.

Few, however, have acknowledged contributions made by
Centre 42 in changing the direction and function Of
committed theater, for demanding protection for artists from
commercial interests and in seeking out nontraditional
audiences. Then too, few have recognized the demands that
Centre 42 put on the trade unions, widening their function
and involving them in the life Of the community. Perhaps
Centre 42 failed to some extent in each Of these attempts,
but it was also revolutionary in the attempt.

Barker sees each Of these achievements and the
influence which Centre 42 was to have on the political
theater which followed. Again, in the June 1985 letter he
summarized the movement’s shortcomings and sphere Of
influence, particularly on writers like John McGrath:

Lessons were learned. lnxbeing the first major

project, Centre 42 was both after its time and

before. the social development which it sought

tO arrest had gone beyond the point Of no return.

On the other hand, the artists who ought to have

taken advantage Of the Opportunities Offered by

Centre 42 were largely not yet to be seen. We

ended up, by default, in taking the best Of the

existing art forms to a wider and more
democratically based audience. But the work we

Offered was all tOO Often shaped by the dominant
middle-class modes and was conceived tOO rigidly

101

in terms Of performance for an audience.
Doubtless, given time, we might have encouraged
new audiences and developed new ways Of working.
We didn‘t, but others did. If McGrath takes
issue with Arnold, he nevertheless had not
formulated his own ideas at that stage. Later he
came up with alternatives, after Centre 42
spurred him tO do this. My own later work is
conditioned by Centre 42 and the need to find
participatory forms Of work (in which the session
I led in the first Wellingborough festival opened
up new avenues).

Barker suggests that Centre 42, while successful in ways not
yet fully appreciated, had served its purpose as an
experiment, but the time had come tO test those ideas in
other forms. Barker moved on to work with Ed Berman in
Interaction, a project that tOOk much Of its direction from
the lessons Barker learned at Centre 42. Wesker was invited
to join them, but he declined. He had had enough Of
committee work and preferred to return to play writing.
Centre 42 closed its doors 31 October 1970. McGrath/s
theater company, the 7:84, began touring a few months later

in 1971.

NOTES

1. Clive Barker estimates that less than 3% Of the audiences
Of the sixties were from the working class.

2.The Gulbenkian Foundation continued to fund Centre 42
with later donations Of £10,000 and £6,000.

CHAPTER FOUR

Until the founding of 7:84 in 1971, John McGrath took
his time to learn the trade. After his initial successes at
the Edinburgh Festival and the Royal Court Theatre in 1958,
he worked at a number of jobs which educated him to
complexities of theater; He continued for a short while as a
reader of new plays for the Court. Then in 1960 he co-
authored a pilot series for television with Dudley Moore who
wrote the music, and he collaborated with Moore again in

1963 on Basement in Bankok. In 1961-62 he toured England

 

with Mike Horowitz"New Departures with one night stands of

Ionesco, Becket, and some of his own plays (Mitchell 12).
McGrath joined the script department of BBC in 1964-65,

writing and directing a show he co-founded with Troy Kennedy

Martin, E Cars. It was based on the American Highway Patrol

 

television format, but written as a documentary based on the
lives of the people in two small British communities. The
point of the series was to focus on the realities of
working-class life. The series was so popular, however,
thatthe policemen eventually became the center of attention
and when that happened, McGrath left the show (O’Toole).
But he did not leave television altogether. In those
early days the television industry had a looser

administrative structure which allowed for a certain amount

102

103

of "anarchy," as McGrath called it. The writers, designers,
technical managers, and cameramen, directors were given
certain license to break out of worn, old practices
inherited from the theater industry.

Working on Diary g a Young Man, McGrath and his

 

colleagues seized the opportunity to break out of the
conventions of naturalism. Doing so, he attacked naturalism
as a dramatic form which represents human relationships out
of context by dealing primarily with isolated verbal
relationships in a realistic style. He wrote:

Naturalism contains everything within a
closed system of relationships. Every statement
is mediated through the situation of the
character speaking. Mediated to the point of
triviality. It is a way of not saying anything,
of indicating that everything is tangential, and
the relative to its own milieu. In terms of
presenting a picture of society it can only
reveal a small cluster of subjective
consciousnesses, rarely' anything Inore.
Naturalism, of course, can and does achieve a
great deal. But as a form, it imposes a certain
neutrality about life on the writer, the actor
and the audienceu.It encapsulates the status
quo, ossifies the dynamics of society into a
moment of perception,crystallises the realities
of existence into a paradigm, but excludes what
it refers to. ("TV Drama: The Case Against
Naturalism" 101-102).

In an effort to de-emphasize the personal relationships of

television drama which inevitably dominate larger social

issues, Jimmy MacTaggart, Troy Kennedy Martin, and John
McGrath tried to avoid camera work which would highlight
dialog between two characters using two-shot and three-shot

formulas. They avoided, first of all, moving the camera

104

until the plot required it, sometimes holding the camera in
place to the end of a scene. They also attempted to break
away from other cliches of camera work like the use of
close-ups to involve the viewer emotionally in a character’s
situation and began to exploit the natural "objectivity" of
the camera; that is, the way in which the televisionfis image
reduces "empathy in the viewer to the point where one is
looking _a_t the screen, not being drawn into it" (McGrath,
”TV Drama: The Case Against Naturalism" 102). McGrath was
later to combine these techniques with Brechtian drama to
develop his own forms for a working-class theater.
Additionally they experimented with devices to free the
plot structure from natural time so that play time did not
match TV audience time. McGrath in particular was also
interested in experimenting with Brechtfs alienating effects
which might force even greater distancing and allow them to
tell their story with minimum suggestion. He was attracted
to the potential of the barest suggestion of scenery, like
the use of a soundtrack and lighting to establish the sense
of a forest, or the use of cartoons as a way of moving the
plot along quickly, an idea he borrowed from Tickets to
Trieste, an in-studio production starring Michael Caine.

In a later show, The Adventures of Frank (based on a

 

1978 play, The Life and Times of Joe of England), McGrath

 

tried to achieve other alienating effects by exploring the

105

use of Quantel, an electronic machine which could change a
television image by turning it upside down, riffling it like
pages in a book, distorting it into different shapes, and
achieving unusual juxtaposition (Craig, "Have Story, Need
Quantel!" 18). What McGrath wanted was to challenge his
audiences to look beyond the surface images for the assumed
values which permit those images.

Despite a valuable opportunity to try out new ideas,
McGrath was never fully comfortable with television as a
medium, partly because it lacked the sensuality of the large
cinematic screen, and partly because he felt uncomfortable
with the way in which "the television image is conditioned
by all the other images that have preceded it" ("TV Drama"
102). Because each scene has meaning only in the
established context, McGrath found the images of television
drama ponderously slow-moving and inauthentic. There is
certainly little in its deliberate rhythms which might serve
McGrath's idea that theater must be fast-paced to activate
working-class audiences. Indeed, he grew to believe that
without the sensuality of the movie theater or the dynamic
pace of legitimate theater, television offers little more
satisfaction than one would get after staring at any other
piece of furniture (102).

He left television finally when he decided that the
medium reduced every idea to a valueless meaning. He once

said, "I had to stop working in the BBC completely. I did

106

nothing for a year. I suppose when you’re working in
television you’re feeding this great monster all the time
and you get a kind of acquisitive mentality, constantly
looking for something to put into the monster, which I
recognised fortunately quite early on and stopped. It took
a year to rinse that stuff out of my head and at the end of

the year I wrote The Bofors Gun" (O’Toole). In addition to

 

other objections, McGrath had grown disillusioned with the
medium’s bureaucracy and increased requirements for
pretaping which ruled out the immediacy of live programming.
The layers of centralized control--directors, producers,
script editors, heads of plays, heads of series and the
head of whatever with the small notepad--were cutting,
altering and rejecting too many ideas before they had a
chance for transmission. It had not always been that way,
but television had become too institutionalized for John
McGrath.

Meanwhile, he was also writing screenplays for Ken
Russell, Fred Zinneman, and others. His films include

Billion Dollar Brain (1967) and The Reckoning (1970) and at

 

least two unmade films, Seven Lean Years, a thriller written
for Ken Russell, and an adaptation of Man’s Fate. McGrath

spent eight months writing Manfs Fate for Fred Zinneman and

 

three years off and on negotiating for permission to produce

it. For political reasons the film was never made.

107

Similarly disappointing was Ken Russell’s unfinished
project, Eggs, an adaptation of a novel by Patrick White
which McGrath admired.

In 1965, he returned to his writing for the theater. As
a form, McGrath was more comfortable with film than he was
with television. For one, he had considerable experience in
the medium with productions of his plays, The Cheviot! the

Stag, and the Black, Black.0il (1974) and Blood Red Roses

 

(1985), and with the writing or broadcasting of at least a
dozen other productions. Secondly, he discovered some
freedom from executive scrutiny once he founded his own film
company. He has been nevertheless continually frustrated by
the lack of money for films which go against the grain of
the dominant culture. Many worthwhile cinematic projects
are "desperately underfinanced, poorly acted, badly shot and
put together" and are thereby “doomed to the ceneastical

ghetto whose mentality encases it" (A Good Night Out 109).

 

In a wishful mood, McGrath said of the film industry

It would be nice to think of a British cinema
which was answerable to its own audience, which
explored the lives, the experiences, the rich
imaginations, the mythologies, the history of the
British people, which can grow from those roots
to whatever heights its makers can take audiences
up to. It may appear like arrant chauvinism, but
I don‘t think British films will ever be any
good, or even exist at all, unless they can be
made with both eyes fixed on a Britishaudience.
(A Good Night Out 110)

 

After some exploration with the television and film

industries, McGrath returned to live theater, taking with

108

him all that he had learned in television to search out the
form that might reach British working-class audiences. Much
of McGrath’s major work at that time--Events While Guarding

the Bofors Gun (1966), Random Happenings in the Hebrides

 

(1970), and Bakke’s Night of Fame (l972),--falls short of
the results he envisioned. In each, McGrath made some
attempt to try out new styles, but the form remain largely
naturalistic.

At the time, he could not predict the techniques which
he would develop after his exposure to revolutionary leader
Jean-Jacques Lebel whom he met during the Paris
demonstrations of 1968. McGrath met Lebel after he crossed
the Channel with an old Chevrolet convertible and savoured
days of political turmoil driving around Paris with Lebel
who introduced him to Trotskists, Maoists, and "a healthy
combination of anarchists" (Van Erven, 117). Those months
were a turning point for McGrath not only because he
experiencedkminds much more radical than his own, forcing
him to define himself politically, but also because Lebelks
activities made him understand what he should be willing to
undertake in political theatre. McGrath explains:

.uJean-Jacques Lebel literally created

barricades and scenes of confrontation and it

was--though it sound denigratory to say it--a

form of theatre. The nightly confrontations with

the CRS made one suddenly realise the tremendous

dramatic impact of this. That is not to say it

wasn’t serious; it was immensely serious. But in
Paris the street battles were theatre in the

109

sense that they were more than themselves. There

were 10 million people on strike throughout

France. These battles were vital expressions of

a total situation. Revolution cannot be reduced

to theatre; but at times like these theatre can

aspire to express revolution. The strength of

these confrontations was the mobilisation of the

workers in the factories. In the absence of such

mobilisation, such actions become opportunistic

charades. ("Power to the Imagination:" l4)
Particularly significant was Lebel’s taking of the Odeon
Theatre, an event McGrath considered hardly possible to
replicate in England (14L. He realized for the first time
that, without experience and leadership, British radicals
did not have the imagination to take to the streets. He
suggested that socialist theater might supply the force that
"will take people’s vision beyond the constrictions both of
Marxist and consumer-society ideologies" ("Power to the
Imagination"(15).

After those months in Paris, McGrath set two goals: to
outline a political agenda which had clearly defined
revolutionary principles (as opposed to generally
socialistic practices) and to find a theatrical form which
could convey that message so effectively that his audience
would recognize the need for social reform and realize the
means for achieving it.

What he sought was a popular form like that which
Brecht defined in his debate with Lukacs on the function of

popular culture:

Popular means: intelligible to the broad masses,
adopting and enriching their forms of

110

expression/assuming their standpoint, confirming
and correcting it/representing the most
progressive section of the people so that it can
assume leadership, and therefore intelligible to
other sections of the people as well/relating to
traditions and developing them/communicating to
that portion of the people which strives for
leadership the achievements of the section that
at present rules the nation (A Good Night Out 63).

 

Although McGrathfs definition for popularism is broader than
that conceived by Clive Barker for Centre 42,:many of the
same elements are there--the popular appeal to the working
classes, the outlet for local self-expression, and the use
of traditional voices. McGrath, however, was also interested
in providing moral leadership through theater with a
dialectal approach, challenging audiences to understand
their relationship to bourgeois culture and their position
in the social order. Like Brecht, McGrath’s concept of
popular theater encouraged audiences not only to participate
in "historical development but actively usurp it, force its

pace, determine its direction” (A Good Night Out 63). He did

 

not refine his strategies for working-class entertainment,
however, until he had formed and toured with his own theater
company which allowed him to experiment with the forms that
best achieved his goals.

John McGrath founded 7:84 in 1971 with his wife Liz
MacLennan, his brother-in-law Dave MacLennan, and with the
help of some friends--Victor Henry, Gillian Hanna, Feri
Lean, Sandy Craig, Gavin Richards, Tony Haygarth, Stephen

Rea, Roger Sloman, Vari Sylvester, Shane Connaughton,

111

Deborah Norton, Tamara Hinchco, Peter Sproule, John Joyce,
Paul Kessel and others. Their purpose was--1ike that of
Centre 42--to find an alternative to commercial theater
which reached out to the working classes. But more than
that, they wanted to create oppositional theater. The goals
which McGrath layed out for his play,Fish ig the Sea, also
articulate the company’s goals as a whole:
The main elements I wanted to set in some form of
dialectical motion were the need for militant
organisation by the working class; the
anarchistic anti-organisational violence of the
frustrated working-class individual in search of
self-fulfillment here and now; the backwardness
of some elements of working-class living;
attitudes to women, to socialist theory, the
sexual oppression, poetry, myth, etc; the
connections between this backwardness and
Christianity; the shallow optimism of the
demagogic left, self-appointed leaders of the
working class and the intimate realities of
growing up and living in a working-class
home....(Introduction)
In short, they hoped to illustrate those social
relationships which destroy the quality of working-class
life and their ultimate purpose was to inspire radical
social reformation, They chose a trademark that marks the
fact that roughly seven percent of the population own 84
percent of the wealth, a visual reminder of social inequity
demanding radical reform. Unlike the Centre 42 movement
which hoped to effect gradual change through a partnership

with the trade union movement--and their name reminds us of

their identification with the TUC Resolution 42--7:84’s name

112

keeps in View the need for a more basic overhaul of the
system.

Learning from what they perceived as the mistakes of
Centre 42, McGrath decided to avoid commitment to a
building, opting instead to tour small communities as
cultural agitators. The CheviotL the Stag; and the Black,
Black Oil was the first play they toured in 1973, It was
performed initially at an Edinburgh conference and then
taken on tour for six weeks through England, Wales and
Scotland with a small grant from. the British Arts Council.
Their home base was McGrath’s living room and everyone, at
first, earned the same £28 a week wage. An egalitarian
arrangement worked in the beginning, but it has evolved into
a company in which those members who contribute the most to
7:84 earn the most. McGrath prefers a communal-like
management structure, but he has found over the years that
actors raised in a capitalist society have come to expect a
hierarchical structure and have little understanding how to
use communal techniques like group critiques (Mortimer
Interview, Part I).

A lack of steady funding has also been a significant
problem. As it has developed--for better or for worse—-7:84
was forced by economic circumstances to experiment with
various organizational structures. At the end of their first
tour in 1971, most of the company had to find other work

because 7:84 had no foreseeable income. This continued to

113

be a problem until 1975 when the British Arts Council
finally provided a grant sufficient for hiring actors over
the entire year. When 7:84 could not guarantee wages and
other companies could, many of the cast were hired away.
Their biggest problem lay in maintaining a core of committed
and involved members. With each new casting, 7:84 had to
reeducate his staff to the founding principles of 7:84.
McGrathfs ideal company would be an army of performers who
understood the necessity for a socialist change, and who
could in turn enlist the audience in their common cause. .As
McGrath said, "To make an intervention you need consistency
of purpose and identity and a growing relationship with the
audience” ("Theory and Practice of Political Theatre" 48).
To that purpose, McGrath liked rehearsals to begin with
a half-hour discussion. During rehearsals for FigA ig_tAg
S23, for example, they began these sessions with a
discussion of Maofs essay on collectives. McGrath also liked
to hold regular company meetings during productions for
members to share material which they had collected while
researching ideas for the play. In Agy 9;: (1975), for
example, they researched nationals and multi-nationals: in
The Cheviot, the Stag, the Black, Black Oil, they researched
the holdings of the wealthy Scottish landowners. With each
new cast, the company inevitably lost momentum and turnovers

in staffing have cost them grants and used up precious

114

rehearsal time. Novitiates have also been a concern when
they could not work with the 7:84 philosophy. Problems have
arisen sometimes with middle-class actors who romanticized
the working-class condition, but little understand the
involvement and personal commitment it took to change that
condition, and other problems have arisen with working-class
actors who, feeling little social commitment, use the
profession as an escape from a working-class profession.

Throughout the years, therefore, a large number of
writers, directors, and actors have signed on and left, and
some have even returned. Disputes within 7:84 are well
known among the touring companies, particularly when
factions have broken away to form new companies. Belt and
Braces, Monstrous Regiment, Project Theatre (Dublin), and
Wildcat were all formed by departures from 7:84-~some
amicable and some less so. Belt and Braces, for example,
was directed by a one-time director of 7:84, Gavin
Richards, who has maintained his independence from 7:84 yet
retains close ties; and Wildcat was founded by David
MacLennan, McGrath/s brother-in-law.

Many of the defections seemed to occur after long
absences by McGrath, an indication that stronger leadership
might have been required to settle disputes. But he has
often been loathe to step into conflict, and sometimes he
has walked away altogether. Generally herfeels he.has too

little time to do all that a small company requires. Unlike

115

Centre 42 which was plagued with the problems of opposing
directors who divided the company’s purposes, 7:84 has had
the problem of an artistic director whose time has been
divided between the twol(English and Scottish) companies.
And yet, McGrath has also been accused of having taken too
much control, particularly over other writers who have
worked with 7:84 (Mortimer interview, Part I 26). Whatever
the case, 7:84 has used the talents of many of the best
socialist writers--David Edgar, Steve Gooch, Richard Eyre,
and John Ardenand Margaretta D’Arcy. After some trial and
error the management structure has evolved from the time
when decisions were taken by an equal vote of all the
company members on tour to a hierarchical structure in
which McGrath as director and writer makes most of the major
decisions on advisement from his senior staff members.
After McGrath decided that democracy actually crushed
individualism, each new idea being diluted by a variety of
suggestions for changes, he has asserted more authority in
his position as Artistic Director and has delegated
authority to a few others. But that decision came only
after his near resignation and after deliberation. The
concept violates Mao’s teachings which warn against small
business owners that are "blind to the strength of the
collective" (B993 Introduction 9).

Ironically, it was the British Arts Council which

116

prevented McGrath’s departure when they threatened to
withdraw their funding if he,in fact, resigned. They
recognized his leadership as crucial to the stability of the
company because without his guidance, his deep social
commitment, and his vision, 7:84 would not have continued.1

McGrath nevertheless regrets his role as a director in a
structure which treats the actor as a commodity. Given the
funding structure, management problems, and the pressures of
touring, McGrath feels he has little choice about his
treatment of the actor in 7:84. One incentive for
his remaining with the company has to be a belief that-~if
he could alter traditional relationships between stage and
audience--he could effect radical social change and
eventually'that.might.enable a4different structure within
the company.

During the first 7:84 tour in 1971, McGrath simply
observed audiences for six weeks. The company”s circuit in
the first year included conventional venues for touring
companies--arts centers, universities, the Everyman Theatre
in Liverpool--after which McGrath and company decided they
would like to reach beyond the middle-class audiences they
were attracting in those venues. They then began to look
around for places which the working classes would find
familiar-- pubs, union halls, village halls, and working-
class clubs. They also relied more on the "bush-telegraph"

than expensive advertising (Barker interview).

117

Sincel97l, they have been exploring innovative
techniques of presentation which would break down the
traditional gap between actor and audience. They based
their explorations on a few basic premises: if reform is to
occur, it is the working classes which will precipitate it;
the target audience should,'thereforen be primarily from
the working classes; if spectators are to be mobilized, they
must be thoroughly involved during the play; and involvement
will be most effective when the play is an expression of
the spectators’ own needs for change.

To achieve their goals, McGrath employed in his writing
and direction a number of devices to encourage direct
contact with the audience. In a 1971 production, Trees 13
Egg Wigd, for example, he used "simultaneous actions,"
musical interruptions in the naturalistic framework during
which the actors on three different stages surrounding the
seats stepped 925 g£_their parts to speak directly to the
audience, breaking down the barrier of the fourth wall. In
Unruly Elements, a 1972 production, actors used a style of
"heightened naturalism" in which they simply spoke more
deliberately for Wmore directness or articulancy than one
normally expects such a person in such a situation to have"
(Barker interview 10). With each new play that McGrath
wrote, the interactions between stage and audience grew more

informal. In later productions, like The Cheviot, the Stag,

118

and the Blacky Black Oil and Baby and the Bathwater (1984-

 

 

 

85), McGrath drOpped the naturalistic forms almost entirely
and replaced them with stand up comedy routines and "epic
style acting," which is described by Liz MacLennan as a
gesture that is "larger than life, but fiercely true to it"
("The State of Alternative Theatre Today" 2). The epic
style of acting, based on Brechtian technique, will be
discussed at greater length in the next chapter.

7:84 continued to experiment with stage-audience
interaction. Sometimes they were able to break down
barriers by inviting people to join them on the stage and by
talking with the audiences at the end of the show.
Sometimes they deliberately destroyed the mystique of the
stage by referring to each other by their everyday names.

After the The Cheviot, they made a regular habit of asking

 

the audiences to join them for singing, dancing, and
drinking after the close of the show; often the revelry
would last into the early morning hours. In the small towns
they often lodged in homes and met people in pubs before and
after performances, which afforded them a more intimate
contact. Efforts to reach audiences were often tiring, but
personal contact, they felt, was one important difference
between middle-class, institutionalized entertainment and
the new form they were trying to establish, a form that
would not only be popular with its audiences, but would also

include their reality. Liz MacLennan explained this in an

119

interview with Clive Barker:

Speaking as an actress I suppose it was a
question of alienation that drove me out of the
more commercial channels in the sense that
working in the conventional theatre your contact
with the audience iscn:a.very limited scale in
the sense that you are the mouthpiece of the play
for that evening and the audience see you as an
actor acting well or acting badly and you
certainly have no way of talking to them outside
of this role. They sit on one side of the
theatre or the room and you sit on the other and
they come in a separate door and you come in the
back door and at the end of the play they go
away and they’ve been impressed or they’ve not
been impressed. Working in this kind of theatre
lie. 7:84] I felt that one would be able to make
a part of a statement which would carry not only
the weight of your artistic experience, but also
the weight of your political beliefs and one must
try and do this. (7) '

Response to these strategies among working-class audiences
has been generally enthusiastic, largely because the actors
may be known as ordinary people. CMt of popular demand for
more performances of The Cheviot, 7:84 even had to
arrange a second tour.

After years of trying to satisfy the needs of working-
class audiences McGrath has found most powerful a
combination of Brechtian techniques and intimate audience
involvement. And he has found that a clear, directly stated
message is more effective than subtle innuendo and oblique
reference, "the working-class audiences have minds of their

own and they like to hear what your mind is" (A Good Night

 

Out 54L.They prefer forms which avoid metaphor and other

elaborate literary structures which bury meaning. For this

120

reason, some of McGrath’s experimental work like the

Trembling Giant (1977) with cartoon-like figures have been

 

less successful than his works which establish a
straightforward message. He also felt that message more
meaningful if it were delivered in a variety show format of
music, comedy and dialogue. Most effective appear to be the
plays which draw on traditional popular forms that once
combined jugglers, musicians, bingo, strip-tease, wrestling

and music (A Good Night Out, 53-59). Moreover, McGrath has

 

discovered that the plots for working-class theater require
more "moment-by-moment effect," meaning more turns in the
action. And often he finds that the effect is best enhanced
by heavy doses of emotion, particularly sentimentality.
Plays with a slow build-up, little action, a reserve of
emotion, and long-winded dialogues are, without a doubt,
better suited to middle-class audiences A Good Night Out,
57).

Finally, unlike middle-class audiences who identify
themselves to a larger extent with a cosmopolitan or
international community, working-class audiences respond to
localism, that is, characters who use the local dialect or
special references with jokes and historical context to
local events and subcultures. McGrath/s plays for the north
draw heavily on Scottish nationalism, folksongs, local

humor, and local expression, Performed by 7:84 Scotland,

121

Joe’s Drum (1979) is‘about a popular uprising in Scotland,

and Big Square Fields (1979)--a 7:84 England production--is

 

about land enclosures in England.

McGrath is careful when employing these strategies,
however, because the worst of working-class theater is
mawkish when sentiment is overdone, simplistic when the
concept of directness is misunderstood, sexist and racist
when the comedy is in poor taste, manipulative when
emotional, and cheap entertainment can obscure judgment (A
Good Night Out 59-60). What McGrath hoped to develop is a
form which neither panders to working-class understanding of
ideas (a kind of ”tailism") nor fails to take moral
leadership in criticizing working-class values. In this
sense also, McGrath and Wesker could find grounds for
agreement. In short, McGrath feels he can establish
standards for working-class art forms without resorting to
bourgeois tastes, and more than that, without creating
artificial distinctions between the popular culture and
bourgeois art forms.

Although he has come to expect unfavorable reviews
written by middle-class journalists misunderstanding
working-class theater (of. Itzin’s "Alternative Theatre in
the Mainstream" as one example), McGrath was surprised by
fellow playwright David Edgar’s article that advances the
argument that working-class forms are not possible. Edgar’s

position was all the more a surprise because he had worked

122

with 7:84 England in 1977 when the company performed his
play, Wreckers, and it would seem his exposure to the goals
of 7:84 had not changed his opinion that working-class
drama necessitated its own conventions. Edgar stated in a
1979 lecture, delivered not long after the close of his 7:84
tour (and later published in the Theatre Quarterly) that he
was skeptical about the efficacy of political theater.

Edgar doubted, first of all, the feasibility of
creating a revolutionary movement through theater alone. 1%:
also disputed the claim that socialist theater would ever be
successful in organizing a mass movement. Edgar concluded--
as Wesker had also done in a 1971 letter to McGrath--that
very little more could be done by theater groups to
accomplish significant social changes until the workers
themselves were better prepared for revolution: "In the
absence of mass organizations of advanced workers, it is no
surprise that theatre groups have found it impossible to
relate in any'consistent way to them. The organizational
form--even the geographical spaces in which to appear--are
just not present” ("Ten Years of Political Theatre" 28).

Furthermore, Edgar asserted the failure of the

revolutionary left to develop a new theory of aesthetics
to carry the message:

It seems clear to me that, in the same way that

the absence of mass revolutionary organizations

has prevented the building of a dialectical
relationship between socialist theatre and

123

class, the absence of a consequent mass

revolutionary culture has obviated the growth of

new theatrical forms. And in the same way that

the lack of mass movement forces theatre groups

into the arms of bureaucratic organization, so

the lack of a revolutionary culture forces them

to relate to reactionary forms. (29)
Brecht’s work, Edgar argued, while effective in its day
needed to lead to new forms, forms that recognize theaterks
influence lies in a slow and deep penetration of the
community’s consciousness. But, be emphasized, the process
takes time. To change the minds of those who presently
accept capitalism without question, theater needs a form
which exposes those truths that lie below the appearances,
a form which would expose the social and political forces
that affect human interaction.

Edgar took this gradualist stance after working nearly
a decade with political theater. ‘ His background combined
the political philosophy of Marcuse, the counter culture of
the sixties, and an apprenticeship with The General Will
theater group in the early seventies which gave him some
experience with the various forms of political theater.
Furthermore, he believed agitprop, once superior to

naturalisnlor realism3

as a dramatic structure depicting
political realities, had been rendered inadequate by a
recent emphasis in leftist theater on entertainment over
education. Edgar added that agitpropfls techniques were

"incapable of dealing with questions of consciousness,

precisely because they portray only the assumed objective

124

essence of a situation, rather than the dynamic between how
people subjectively perceive that situation and the
underlying reality" (29). Theater for contemporary
audiences, essentially the educated bourgeois, demanded a
combined form that not only accounted for invisible truths,
but also included well-developed, three-dimensional
characterizations which more fully portray the way people
operate and their motivations.

The new form should, moreover, be disruptive and
shocking like Brechtian theater, but should be more
accessible than most Brechtian theater. He wrote, "What is
obviously needed is a way of transforming the techniques
that have been developed in metropolitan theatres into forms
that are formally and geographically accessible to audiences
directly involved in struggle against exploitation and
oppression" (32). In the absence of a mass revolution,
however, playwrightsshould assess realistically what they
were able to accomplish and what their strategies should be
to meet those ends. With the appropriate forms, Edgar
argued, alternative theater should be able to educate
audiences effectively to the gap between a genuine crisis in
the present system of government in Britain and the response
of Britons to that crisis.

In his attack, Edgar implied that alternative theater

companies like the 7:84 had indulged in an illusion which

125

failed to admit the actual composition of their audiences,
the realities of social revolution, and the obsolescence of
their work. Edgar concluded, in effect, that political
theater should abandon its aim of playing to working-class
audiences, who were more attracted to other forms of
entertainment, and should concentrate its efforts on
targeting a ready-made clientele, the bourgeois
intellectual.

John McGrath’s response to Edgar“s essay was clearly
that of anger and disappointment. He answered Edgar first in
a scribbled postscript to a 1979 Theatre Quarterly article
"The Theory and Practice of Political Theatre," in which he
objected to Edgar’s ”indifference to the development of
working-class culture, and an attempt to substitute an inept
variety of high culture with a low one" (54). He took
exception to Edgar’s proposal for "deserting the working
class and settling down to experimenting with ’the upending
of received forms’ for the cosmopolitan cultural elite..."
(54). Later he accused Edgar of an "attitude that comes from
a profound but automatic elitism, and is usually coupled
with ignorance of the complexity'of the nature'ofjpopular

culture, and lack of experience of it" (A Good Night Out

 

63).
McGrath was outraged because he had spent two decades
of work in political theater and half that time, at least,

identifying the features of working-class entertainment, and

126

he was disappointed that Edgar would undervalue his work,
would too readily dismiss it. Even more, he was surprised
that Edgar had failed to mention 7:84’s innovative use of
local, popular forms like the Ceilidh 4 in Scotland, the
291931 llawen in Wales, the Talent Night in a Dorset pub, a
fiddle band in the Shetlands while discussing the
development of popular forms. Indeed, Edgar had recognized
their use of the folk form, but he had referred to such

forms as "atrophied" (A Good Night Out 33), somewhat

 

surprising a judgment as 7:84 seems to be making a valuable
contribution to the Unity tradition of political, working-
class theater where popular forms were valued, but never
thoroughly explored.

Unfortunately, McGrath’s contributions to British
theater are rarely given the full credit they deserve.
Edgar’s judgment is not uncommon for critics with middle-
class readerships. One example might be Benedict
Nightingale, critic for the New Statesman for more than
twenty years, who confessed after reviewing his own
treatment of McGrath’s works that he has perhaps been too
harsh in his evaluations of 7:84 productions (Dornan
Interview). Casual disregard by London’s critics has been
particularly problematic when 7:84 has needed recognition
for its ground-breaking work in the board rooms of the

British Arts Council, a government body uninfluenced by the

127

thousands ix: the Highlands vnun have attended 7:84
productions.

Like Centre 42 which preceded it, 7:84 is annual
subjected to the scrutiny of its operations by a public that
is skeptical of its politics and ignorant of its
contribution to British theater. Their distrust appears to
be compounded by a pmflitical bias against the radical
principles which inform much of working-class drama. In
1973, the company was scheduled, finally, to receive the
Arts Council annual grant when they were suddenly taken to
court for slanderous language in their production of 1A3
Bollygombeen Bequest written by Margaretta D’Arcy and John
Arden. The story concerned evicted tenant farmers in Ireland
and to that point, 7:84 had handed out the names, addresses,
and telephone numbers of absentee English landlords with the
playbills. D’Arcy and Arden settled the suit out of court,
even though they did not believe their play was libelous,
and the judge would not allow the testimony of historians,
sociologists, politicians, and journalists who gathered to
speak on the historical oppression of Ireland. When
informed that these were famous playwrights, the judge
replied, "I’ve never heard of them. I have no pretensions
to being called a man of culture!" (Itzin Stages 36).

Shortly following the court action which totally
silenced Bollygombeen Bequest, McGrath was called into the

Arts Council and was told that the play was offensive to

128

the Ministry of Defence because of its violent scenes which
attacked the tactics of Provisional IRA and the British
troops who were sent to Ireland. McGrath explained:

His argument was, ’Well, the taxpayer is paying

the Army, the military in Northern Ireland and

surely it is contradictory for the taxpayer also

to pay for us to undermine their work.’ My

argument was that, as far as I knew there was

more than one taxpayer. If we could have, as a

subsidy, a proportion of the money that the Army

got, proportionateeto the number of people that

supported us, as opposed to the number of people

that supported the Army, then we would be well

funded. But that argument didn/t get a lot of

credence. (Mortimer Interview, PartI 13-14)
The Arts Council representative then told McGrath that 7:84
was not going to receive the annual grant as expected.
McGrath has hesitated to call it censorship, but it has
become a text-book case of clumsy suppression after 7:84 was
made an example for all theater companies applying for
financial support from the British government. Shortly
after the threats of litigation subsided, 7:84 established
two companies--7:84 Scotland and 7:84 England--which
received funding fairly regularly from 1975 to 1984, when
the Arts Council withdrew all support from 7:84 England.

Their first annual grant was in 1975. Up to that point
7:84 had been receiving subsidy on a play-by-play basis.
Budgets with information about venues, potential revenue,
and production costs had to be submitted months in advance

for each play. Even then the company received less than they

requested, so all the projections had to be modified to meet

129

the Arts Council allotment. Not permitted to carry over an
excess from one play to the next, they had then to prove
they had a loss. The process prevented any yearly planning
and kept 7:84 under the authority of the British and
Scottish Arts Council for approval of every play.

Despite inconveniences of the funding practices, the
Arts Council grants have been crucial to the companies’
operations. The value of the subsidy was never clearer than
it was in 1984 when 7:84 England lost its funding. The
company fought to retain their grant with an elaborate
appeal and letters. In the appeal he suggested that the Arts
Council had made a mistake by not placing the achievements
of 7:84 England in the highest class. The English company
had, first of all, won awards for the three preceding years:
in 1981 they had won the Critics Choice at the Edinburgh
Festival for 922 Big Algw, in 1982 they were awarded a
Festival Fringe First for Rejoice, and in 1983 they had won
the Critics Choice award and a first for Spikg $2 the First
Egglg War, after which 7:84 took the play on a record-
breaking tour. McGrath noted that the company had also
participated in the Glasgow International Festivals, Mayfest
twice, one of few companies invited to do so. .Also included
in their appeal to the Arts Council were more than fifty
letters of support from trade unions like the Post Office

Engineering Union (POEU), the Transport and General Workers’

130

Union, and the National Union of Tailors and Garment
Workers, from actors and actresses like Glenda Jackson, from
other socialist theater companies like Foco Novo, from the
Universities of Warwick and New England (Australia), from
the ex-mayor of Great Yarmouth as well as representatives of
the BBC and the National Theatre ("Reasons for Not
Terminating the Active Life of 7:84 Theatre Company
England").

Through a catalog of awards and supporters McGrath was
trying to prove "artistic standards," the criterion that the
Arts Council uses in selecting award recipients. The
concept of standards of excellence is so edusive that
playwrights are forced to speculate about its meaning.
Wesker has the old-fashioned idea that merit is recognizable
in any form:

I think what is meant by excellence is the
excellence of the imagination, the excellence of

the thought, and the excellence of the execution.

And I think if an audiences is confronted with an

empty space and six very fine performers

performing without any props, that would be
recognized as excellent if it were excellently

done. I think that the objection is just against

tatty productions--which hope they will get by

because their hearts are in the right place, when

very often one ends up with sloppy thinking and

sloppy production (Griffiths, "Playwriting for

the Seventies" 61).

More radical playwrights, however, believe that the Arts
Council has set up the National Theatre with its hefty

grants and a definition of excellence established by middle-

or upper middle-class audiences which all must follow

131

regardless of their annual budget, audience needs or company
aims. Others perceive a well entrenched group of judges
who use tradition and convention as arbiters. As John Arden
says, "... they tend on the whole--unless you’ve got an odd,
eccentric Prime Minister--to appoint a series of people who
fall within the standards already laid down by previous
holders of the job" (Griffiths "Playwriting of the
Seventies” 61). And, of course, many believe that the
definition of excellence is stamped by the political bias of
the Standards and Reassessments Committee at the Arts
Council.

The struggle for a stable funding source has persisted
to this day. After nearly two decades of vulnerability and
a decade of the Thatcher government, 7:84’s annual subsidy
is once again in danger of being withdrawn. In 1989, the
Scottish Arts Council plans to increase the companyTs grant
by four percent to £135,000 (by contrast, the Scottish Opera
will receive £3.2 million), but thereafter the company will
have to apply for funding on a play-by-play basis. Citing
management problems and variable quality of the work, Anna
Stapleton of the SAC denied that the decision might have
been politically motivated.

But the announcement came less than a year after the
Arts Minister for the Thatcher government, Richard Luce,

gave a speech loaded with innuendo. Ostensibly referring to

132

a new scheme of fiscal accountability for the arts, he
chided the arts world to recognize that the ”collectivist
mentality of the 605 and 703 is out of date" (3), and that
they must "accept the economic and political climate in
which we now operate" 02L. Particularly telling was the
following paragraph:

The business of the arts is to pursue excellence

and enrich the human spirit. I believe in state

funding for the arts for this purpose and I want

to get that message across. But I need the help

of the arts world to do so. That help is frankly

not most effectively given by abusing the

politicians who have to take the decisions.

("Richard Luce Sets the Scene for Government" 4)
Disconcerting is its threatening tone. Not only that, the
passage is unsettling because of its joining of two
seemingly disparate ideas-~reward for excellence and the
admonition against criticism. Luce appears to be speaking
only of the funding process, but the deep structure of the
statement signals a more serious message. Liz MacLennan’s
response to both the SAC announcement and Luce’s speech is
simply "We are stalked without mercy" (Letter, 22 May 88).
The general fear at 7:84 was that the SAC was "using all the
’quality of work’ arguments to disguise political
hostility." In any case, the 7:84 plans to satisfy the
SAC’s requirements.

So knitted is the class structure to the funding of

alternative theater in Britain that McGrath has categorized

theater groups by the grants each group receives. The type

133

and size of the subsidy determines and is determined by the
relationship of the theater group to the general mode of
production, but is also dependent on the relationship of the
group to commercial theater, the choice of the ruling
classes. Thus, West End theater--including the Aldwych and
perhaps the Royal Court--makes up the first sector. The
largest subsidized groups--the National Theatre, the Royal
Shakespeare Company, and the main repertory theaters like
the Crucible in Sheffield make up the second sector. And
in the third sector are the alternative theaters and the
touring companies, most of which are oppositional and
playing to working-class audiences.

McGrath points out that his categories for theater
correspond roughly to three categories drawn up by Raymond
Williams describing the different economic sectors in
Britain, each with its own mini-ideology and therefore, each
with its own relationship to the economic base. The
"dominant" sector of British theater, or that which
exercises hegemony over the others, would be the National
Theatre and those repertory theaters receiving large amounts
of subsidy from the government. The ”residual" element, or
theater which has been held over from another period, would
be most commercial West End theater with its nostalgic
musicals and revivals or imitations of drawing-room comedy.
The ”emergent" element, or that theater which outlines new

practices. and new relationships, would be the fringe

134

theater and touring companies whose future is always
uncertain, partly because future funding is always uncertain
("Theory and Practice of Political Theatre" 43-45L. The
structure of McGrath’s categories reflect again the
dominance of bourgeois tastes and accordingly a
determination of "artistic standards" by the British Arts
Council.

In answer to the complaints about class and political
biases and to those who would object to their withdrawal of
subsidy from certain theaters like 7:84 England, Sir William
Rees-Mogg of the British Arts Council said that, since its
formation in July, 1945 the Arts Council has been committed
to public support without censorship. He quoted the Arts
Council’s first chairperson, Maynard Keynes, "...everyone, I
fancy, recognises that the work of the artist in all its
aspects, is of its nature, individual and free,
undisciplined, unregimented, uncontrolled. The artist walks
where the breath of the spirit blows him.uThe task of an
official body is not to teach or to censor, but to give

courage, confidence and opportunity.”" (The Glory gf the

 

Garden, iii). And then to explain the Council’s priorities
he pointed out that one of their first commitments is to
address the imbalance of monies to London.by«distributing
more funds to the local authorities of each region. Making

no apologies for the money given to the National Theatre,

135

however, he simply stated that the regions needed more.
Rees-Mogg did.not say how the regions would receive more,
especially when he was forced to recognize a limited source
of funding. Even so, in defense of their record for
distribution of funds, he could have argued that the Council
had doubled the number of its annual grants since 1950 and
had encouraged hundreds of new theater projects.

They had, in fact, funded so many different applicants
they had decided to revise their policies. Instead of
offering small amounts to the many small groups who applied
for the money, they had resolved as of 1984 to be more
selective about its recipients. They based their formulas
on several principles: improving the standard of quality in
the arts, increasing funds to the regions, redressing
historical imbalances which favored some art forms over
others, matching locally raised funds. He seemed to be
telling Britain’s theater companies that political
motivation played no part in their funding policies. But
the debate does not end there.

Charles Marowitz, director of Open Space, spoke out
frankly, "the establishment merely tolerates alternative
theater" (Itzin, Stages 158). He was referring to the
disparity between the percentage of the total allocation for
drama which goes to the establishment theaters and that
which is alloted the alternative theaters. In 1973, for

example, sixty alternative theater companies divided

136

£250,000, half the £500,000 grant received by the National
Theatre alone. In 1977/78 the National Theatre and the
Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) received between them £4.2
million, £4.75 million went to theater buildings, and 33
touring companies had to divide £872,000 which amounted to
less than £26.5 thousand each (Stages 158). Consequently,
the British Arts Council funding--because it is
unpredictable and seemingly arbitrary, and because it is the
main source of income for most theater companies--has both
encouraged new theater companies and has caused many of them
to attenuate. Many theater companies have also failed, even
though their staffs were generally willing to work for less
than minimum wage, and even though their best known writers
received surprisingly little compensation for their work.
Wesker’s income is a case in point.

Despite his continuing popularity around the world,
particularly in Japan and Sweden, Wesker’s average annual
income, fluctuating between £9,000 and £24,000, is modest.
Because he has had a play in production somewhere in the
world every day since the early seventies, most of his money
comes from abroad. For example, Wesker’s income in 1970/71

was roughly:

UK ABROAD
Theatre 800 2,207
Amateurs 330 -
radio 67 500

Television 40 2,050

137

Publication Rights 00 1,130
£2,037 £5,887

(Hayman, Th3 Sgg‘gp 286)

To this day, writers for alternative theater who work
outside of British theater can generally expect to earn more
than their domestic counterparts, and those who work in
mainstream theater can expect to earn more than those in
alternative theater. These inequalities are largely the
result of British Arts Council practices which favor artists
at the three largest institutions and leave very little for
anyone else.

Many British writers complain about these discrepancies
and to other objectionable Arts Council policies as well--an
apparent ideological bias, a lack of clear funding formulas,
and unfair representation on the Drama Panel-- as problems
which invite charges of censorship and repression in the
arts (Griffiths, "The Drama Panel Game").131the last two
decades the Arts Council has altered its structure slightly
by placing on the panel more socialist playwrights (McGrath
served on the panel briefly), in an attempt to correct some
of the problems, but few are satisfied with the results.
Criticism of their disbursements comes from all sides:
conservatives object to money that is given to any left-wing
drama, believing that the national showcases should receive
all the support; recipients are predictably dissatisfied by
the allocation formulas; and the far left criticizes the

entire scheme as a system of dependency which reduces left-

138

wing drama to pandering.

One of the most controversial critiques has come from a
member of the socialist community, Bruce Birchall, who
contends that increased Arts Council funding has raised the
expectations of socialist theater companies to their own
detriment. The net result, Birchall claims, has been a
conditioning of its recipients.

In an unsigned 1977 article for Egggg, Birchall alleged
that political theater groups have been spoiled by increases
in equity wages which have more than doubled (from £18-£30
a week minimums in 1974 to a £38.50 minimum in 1977) since
the Arts Council has raised its funding levels. Seduced by
the comfort of higher wages and dreading the possibility of
unemployment, subsidized actors have ”begun to see
themselves as professional ’theatre workers’ like their
Equity chums, whose skills they rather admired” (8) and have
forgotten their original motives for being in theater. The
"Invasion of the Grant-Snatchers" is the term Birchall gave
to theater groups who have grown so concerned with bookings
and subsidies that they have been altering scenes in plays
and making other compromises to avoid offending potential
donors. They even found themselves "defending the very
establishment organisations they had set up their own
companies to oppose. They did so without voicing so much as

a teensy weensy remonstrative ideological critique to

139

justify what they were doing.u"(8) In short, working-class
theater companies have been corrupted by grant money--from
the Arts Councils, private sources, or the Trade Unions-- to
the point of being cut off from their intended audiences.
He concluded that if socialist writers want reform, the Arts
Council grants might have been more effectively spent
producing leaflets, pamphlets, and newspapers.

Predictably, leftist theater companies and writers were
offended by Birchall’s allegations, but Birchall must have
gathered some of his material from the dramatists

themselves. Earlier that year Theatre Quarterly had

 

sponsored a round robin discussion among fifteen leftist
dramatists (including Arnold Wesker, Bruce Birchall, John
Arden and Margaretta D’Arcy, Caryl Churchill, David Edgar,
Michlene Wandor, and Steve Gooch) which confirmed his worst
fears. The group had begun by identifying the changes in
political theater since the mid-sixties. Acknowledging the
boom in professional opportunities over the preceding
decade, Gooch then added:

u.the greater the resources you/re'using in the
theatre--the larger the sums of money involved--
the less freedom you have. In other words, it’s
easy enough to be free and ’doing your own thing’
when you’re all on social security, or when
you/re working in a small place with a small
number of people. But the more you try and work
with bigger resources, the more your hands are
tied administratively. And in the end,
politically. (Griffiths, "Playwriting for the
Seventies" 36)

Arden agreed with Gooch. He then regretted that few

140

playwrights took risks losing money with the same daring of
the late George Devine at the Royal Court Theatre. And
Michlene Wandor agreed with Arden generally, but then argued
as a feminist writer that political writers are more likely
to be cut off from subsidy.‘Wandor“s remarks raised from the
playwrights a litany of ways in which they felt inhibited by
British patterns of patronage: the size of casts, the need
to promote sensationalism, the public’s preference for
realism which discouraged experimentation, the need to pay
actors who have learned to expect bourgeois wages,
disinterest in certain subject matter (like feminism), and
the lack of solidarity among the theater companies and
writers. They blamed many of their problems on Arts Council
requirements. The writers felt most oppressed by British
Arts Council requirements for accountability: companies had
to prove that they were reaching certain audiences and that
their political positions were unsupported by other grant
giving.institutions.

At that same meeting Birchall reluctantly noted, "We
have had political intellectuals and we have had political
playwrights in the past, but the dominant culture has always
tended to trivialize them, or to make them reformist if they
become successful” (Griffiths, "Playwriting for the
Seventies" 51). The dominant culture is felt nowhere more

forceably than through the Arts Council funding. Faced with

141

the threats of subsidy cuts, theater groups had lost sight
of their drive to effect the full influence of socialism.
For the most.part McGrath might agree with Birchall’s
assessment, but would add that the crux of the problem lies
not so much with theater companies that are willing to be
appropriated by the system, but with the capitalism itself
which is corrupting as it fractures social structures into
haves and have-nots. McGrath understands that theater, by
its definition as form of representation--representing the
experience and history of the people--is more closely linked
to social reality than other forms of art and is thereby
more deeply affected by the myriad institutions of the
capitalist system-~parliament, civil service, education
system, church, the media, the army, the police force--than
most cultural work and activity. Even when theater
functions as an art form that encourages emancipation from
the whole of capitalism, contradictions are inevitable. One
of the contradictions is that works created by the best
socialist writers are consumed by a demand for their novelty
and discarded. He wrote, "ungood as these works may be, the
process is not contributing to the creation of a new,
genuinely oppositional theatre. They become ’product’ and
the process remains the same: they are in constant danger of
being appropriated in production by the very ideology they
set out to Oppose" ("Theory and Practice of Political

Theatre" 46).

142

As one element of social domination, the Arts Council
has thus shaped modern British drama, particularly in
political theater; Because of funding practices, company
membership changes constantly and many companies have
subsequently redefined their aims and objectives. Because
of funding practices, plays are shaped by available
resources, so they tend to use smaller casts and minimal
scene changes. Because of funding practices, the content of
alternative theatre, aS‘well, seems to have been mediated
through a false consciousness created by the condition of
living under capitalism. Organization problems such as
these lead one to believe that the counter-culture, produced
by the dominant culture, also finds itself neutralized,
reduced or incorporated by the hegemonic.

And yet, as Raymond Williams has pointed out in Marxism
and Literature, it is virtually impossible for any dominant
social structure to maintain a consistent hold on the
cultural process. The finite but significant openness of
many works of art produces breaks in the system through
which a shift is recognized by forming and formative
processes. The process is centered on institutions which
appear to be fixed and present, but are moving, being
constantly redefined by emerging ideologies. In literature
the structure is particularly evident with the emergence of

some new formation which begins to push aside literary

143

convention. Often linked to its antecedent, its appearance
is not always noticed or identified, and yet it may exert
pressure long before it attains classification or definition
(132-134).

The breech in the dominant order often opens up by the
individuality of the author which asserts itself out of the
full range of human practice. It can be seen, for example,
in the emergence of the politically committed writer where
it surfaces out of the subjective content of art, arising
out of "the subjective as distinct from the objective,
experience from belief, feeling from thought, the immediate
from the general, the personal from the social" (Marxism and

Literature 129). Williams sees the personal impulse as an

 

endless challengetxathe ideological systems of seemingly
absolute formations which are rendered relatively powerless
by the challenge: "muno mode of production and therefore no
dominant social order and therefore no dominant culture ever
in reality includes or exhausts all human practice, human
energy and human intention” (125). For this reason art is
not linked directly to the dominant mode of production.
Even as an arm of the hegemonic body is embracing one form
of theater, multiple possibilities for displacement are
calling the relationship into question. But, as Williams
points out, new vitality "depends crucially on finding new
forms or adaptations of form" (126).

Each in its own way, Centre 42 and 7:84 have exerted

144

individualistic pressure on Britainis dominant mode of
theater. As oppositional theater, Centre 42 demanded
artistic freedom from commercial constraints, primarily by
seizing their own means of production. They also established
a theater for and by the working-classes, an idea that had
been suggested by many up to that time, but had remained
untested. Through experimental work in Centre 42, a modicum
of independence was won for later theater companies through
government funding, and working-class authors gained in
respect through the institution which was later known as
"fringe” theater. After the emergence of Centre 42, British
political theatre created solely by individual initiative
and personal commitment has achieved a more open climate,
more democratic practices of management, and a higher
standard of performance for both middle-class and working-
class entertainment.

In a later development, 7:84 explored innovative ideas
for popular forms, using audience response as one standard
of measure along with the ideals of socialism and the values
of the working class. If nothing else, these companies as
examples of British alternative theater have challenged the
drama of the West End by competing with them for audiences
and by questioning the conventions of British theater. As a
result, a rich multiplicity of productions in Britain today

continues to attract audiences in a time when television is

145

a more convenient form of entertainment.

1.

NOTES

Little recognized in this statement are the contributions
from McGrath’s family that also keep the company running.
Liz MacLennanksfine acting and unflagging commitment
have been given little credit. And the whole family has
had to adjust to the tour’s timetables and pressures,
uncertain income, and hectic pace. They have sacrificed
many middle-class comforts, like security and stability,
that could have been provided by a steady writing job
with BBC which would have made McGrath restless.

Morf,extensive definitions for agitprop! naturalism, and
rea 15m will appear later.

 

Much of my understanding of McGrath’s communal purpose
and the forms which support those aims comes from an
excellent article by Gunther Klotz, "Changing Functions
and Forms of Modern British Drama" Hungarian Studies i3
English, Debrecen, 1979.

4.A Ceilidh is a gathering--"with or without the aid of

whiskey" that becomes a collage of singing, dancing,
and story telling. It includes audience participation and
local politics, often stories of oppression.

CHAPTER FIVE

After a decade of association as colleagues in
alternative theater, Arnold Wesker and John McGrath began
to articulate their relative positions. Fifteen years of
professional experience and personal lessons from the
political upheaval of the sixties made possible a clear
statement of differences. Their debate began in 1970 with
a vitriolic review of Wesker’s play, The Friends, written
by John McGrath for the Marxist paper, Blggk_ Dwggf (12
June, 15) and was carried on over a few months through
three letters: one written by Wesker to McGrath on June 18
in answer to the review, a reply by McGrath on July 6, and
a final rebuttal by Wesker on October 4, 1970.

Wesker’s play, The Friends, concerns the breakup of a

 

designers’ cooperative for working-class artists by the
impending death of one of itsmembers, Esther. Since they
had hoped to effect radical reform with their workshop’s
(ideals, her death represents for them not only the loss of
a friend, but also the potential dissolution of their
cooperative energy and a diffusion of their influence. They
each seem anxious in their personal search for a sense of
coherence and for values they can believe in. Sometimes
provocative, sometimes elegaic, the play also discusses why

friends have trouble communicating, especially in troubled

146

147

times. To that point, malicious and vengeful disputes

dominate the second act as the friends turn on each other.
In their arguments they vent repressed anger which has been
allowed to fester, partly because of class differences.
Shortly before her death, Esther condemns violence as a
warning to her friends about their bickering, but she is
barely heeded. A weak reconciliation among those who are
mourning her death ends their quarrels.

Esther rejects violence for the personal pain and
suffering it brings. Hatred born of ideological conflict,
particularly when it leads to a rupture, frightens her.
Esther’s idea of a revolutionary is one who seeks
alternatives to a violent resolution of differences.
Foolish men “who ggjgy_ the violence of opposing [a
capitalist society]" (II, 106) are merely rebels, not
revolutionaries. But her ridicule of violent upheaval is

only one examination in The Friends of the concept of

 

revolution. Her brother Manfred reviews a long string of
scientific revolutions with the implication that they
transformed civilization with more long-lasting effect than
political overthrow. And Simone, the only middle-class
member of the artisan’s workshop, argues that because the
working classes are not as politically educated as they
should be, revolutionary moments yield the platform to
reactionaries and bigots who are unaware of nonviolent, and

therefore more constructive, alternatives. Simone will join

148

the cause of the worker, but without battledress, "In the
end there is sweetness...in hidden places, someone is
always rising up to take wing, and I want to be there" (II,
125).

Exploring the variety of revolutions, the friends seem
to be searching out ways in which their workshop might
have succeeded. They hope that the mere establishment of a
cooperative which seeks to set standards of a working-class
aesthetic is seed enough for a revolution of their own. In
any case, their goal--an artisan’s workshop which effects
lasting reform for the working-class--reminds us of
Wesker’s aspirations for Centre 42. The end of a working-
class artist’s cooperative movement through the impending
insolvency of Centre 42 was clearly on Wesker’s mind as he

wrote The Friends. Indeed, seven months after the play’s

 

opening, Wesker resigned from the Roundhouse Trust, a fund—
raising wing of Centre 42, and urged similar action for the
Centre 42 Council, a recommendation which also closed their
doors. Never again did he join forces with other working-
class artists to revolutionize the structure of British
theater nor did he try again to appeal to working-class
audiences through his drama.

In his review McGrath mentioned the failure of Centre
42, but he also had more important topics to discuss.

Having just spent time in Paris where he discovered the

149

"real theatre of revolution," (Mitchell 396), he had become
frustrated with the lack of clear action within the
British political theater movement and with those who claim
to believe in a socialist revolution, "but somehow can’t
act on it" (Letter 6 July 1970).

Wesker’s play to him was symptomatic of a decade of
British working-class theater which hints at revolution,
and advocates reform. Theater touted by many as
oppositional was to him nothing more than "romantic,
nineteenth century pre-Marxist utopian socialism" which
found its audience among the middle-class elite. Referring
in his review to Wesker’s "tremulous flirtation with
’progressive’ ideas," McGrath attacked the gradualist

ideology expressed in The Friends, a political philosophy

 

which was common to Britain’s nineteenth century socialist
groups and still finds its adherents today in the labour
movement. At the end of the review came for Wesker the
unkindest cut of all:

Wesker and his people are stuck in the sad
attitudes of an Aldermaston marcher’s
reunion rally; Wesker could outdo Tiny Tim
himself in hard—line nostalgia, albeit for a
different decade. What he must do is not to
confuse anybody including himself into
thinking that he is in any way socialist or
that this play relates in any way to any
possible form of socialist theatre. (15)

McGrath had attacked Wesker’s art and his politics. He
later telephoned Wesker to warn him about the article and

to assure him that it was not a personal attack, but Wesker

150

was not mollified.

His initial reaction to McGrath’s review was to defend
himself as a good socialist, the son of a Communist and
one who had always be known as a socialist playwright. He
was outraged by the insinuations that his papers were not
in order. He wrote angrily to McGrath deploring his "old-
style Stalinist degree-making" which passed judgment on
others’ political purity in public. After considering the
accusation over the years, however, he realizes today that
he is 22E comfortable with the socialist label.

Even though the position is not a popular one among
his contemporaries in political theater, Wesker calls
himself these days a "simple, old-fashioned humanist,"
(Itzin interview 20). The description seems appropriate to
a sensitive playwright seeking spiritual wholeness for
himself and a fragmented world. After two decades of
reconsidering those socialist values which call for violent
instruments of change, he has decided to spurn the labels
of socialism altogether. There were some signs of this
change in 1971 after his debate with McGrath, when Wesker
said with some disappointment in himself and others that
most great art reflects the "conflict between what men
would like to do and the way they end up doing it"
(Interview, "System and the Writer" 11). The long

discussion in The Friends about revolution also points to

50C

va]

27]

ab:

of

pea

We:

um

 

 

 

 

 

151

reservations he had all along.

McGrath was, therefore, essentially -accurate about
Wesker’s politics. Even though Wesker has always aligned
his political views with the leftists, particularly with
the William Morris tradition in England, he has never
actually endorsed revolutionary socialism. Instead, he has
preferred evolutionary strategies which might, in the end,
afford workers more freedom and self-determination. In
the' summer of 1968, the same summer that McGrath was in
Paris, Wesker explained to an interviewer that he saw
social revolution "in a tragic perspective" in which human
value is weighed against conflict and disorder (Anderson
27). A case in point would be the mixed feelings he held
about the Cuban revolution. While he admired the courage
of the revolutionaries in the early sixties, he was less
positive about the results of revolution itself. In 1965,

Wesker dedicated his play, The Four Seasons to the

 

"romantic" revolutionaries of Cuba because they too were
undaunted by the threat of failure:

not because you would ever win if
the big fight came

but because you are not afraid that you
might lose.

Nevertheless, in a 1970 letter to McGrath, Wesker argued
that any radical overthrow of the system has its
liabilities: "Cuba still suffers from the withdrawal of

0.8. technicians and capital, despite aid from Russia and

152

China" (4 October). And as time wore on, he had similarly
mixed feelings about the Centre 42 movement, a "revolution"
which changed very little in Britain even after it had been
fought at great personal sacrifice.

Wesker may not advocate violent overthrow, but he does
agree with the Morris tradition which believes in the power
of the arts to improve the quality of both society and the
lives of the individual. And like Morris, he applauds many
practices of the working-class culture and strives through
the arts, to temper those values which have a "crippling"
effect on man. He told McGrath that one should ”analyse
working-class values, not all of which work for good and
many of which imitate the pettiest of the upper class,"
(Letter 4 October 1970), and address those self-destructive
elements in his working-class art. Because of his
conviction that reform should be led by the socially
committed artist, British Arts Council Director Jennie Lee
also recognized some similarity to the Morris tradition.

In an August, 1962 Encounter, she wrote, "William Morris

 

had the same vision and fought against ugliness and
everything shoddy with all his many-sided genius" (96).
Other comparisons between Wesker and Morris appeared
frequently in the popular press of the sixties as well.
Many saw a kinship between Wesker and the Pre-Raphaelite

Brotherhood’s social attitudes, a celebration of individual

153

freedom and tolerance for religious and political
diversity.

In any case, his more explicit use of Morris’ writings
comes from a portion of a speech on "Socialism," an address
given in March 1886 at the Victoria Hall, Norwich. Morris
warned the workers that they will lose their opportunity to
take charge of their own destinies if, after wresting
control from the upper and middle classes, they do little
to assume some responsibility for what remains to be done:

...and accordingly the Trade Unionists and their
leaders who were once the butt of the most
virulent abuse from the whole of the Upper and
Middle classes are now praised and petted by them
because they do tacitly or openly acknowledge the
necessity for the master’s existence; it is felt
that they are no longer the enemy; the class
struggle in England is entering into a new phase,
which may even make the once dreaded Trade Unions
allies of capital, since they in their turn form
a kind of privileged group among the workmen; in
fact they now no longer represent the whole class
of workers as working men but rather as charged
with the office of keeping the human part of the
capitalists’ machinery in good working order and
freeing it from any grit of discontent.

Now that’s the blind alley which the Trade Unions
have now got into; I say again if they are
determined to have masters to manage their
affairs, they must expect in turn to pay for that
luxury...remembering that the price they pay for
their so-called captains of industry is no mere
money payment--no mere tribute which once paid
leaves them free to do as they please but an
authoritative ordering of the whole tenor of
their lives, what they shall eat, drink, wear,
what houses they shall have, books, or newspapers
rather, they shall read, down to the very days on
which they shall take their holidays like a drove
of cattle driven out from the stable to grass....
("The House, A Lecture in Birmingham" 9, and
Preface to Their Very Own and Golden City)

 

154

Impatient with the trade unions for passively abdicating
the role of their own leadership, particularly in their
failure to dream about the potential for Britain, Wesker
passionately urged the workers to take charge of their own
destinies, to become more aggressive about assuming
responsible leadership within their own working

communities. In the play Their Very Own and Golden City,

 

he elaborates on that expectation with his lead character,
Andy, who tells the story about some people stranded on an
island who build a boat to take them to the mainland. The
design and structure of the boat is good enough to take
them much further than anyone could imagine, however. As
Andy explains, "they don’t seem to realize they could live
on it, trade in it, travel right across the world in it..."
(Vol. II, 178). The story is an analogy, of course, for
the shortsightedness of the trades unions which could take
their members much further than they have done.

Although he hoped for stronger leadership directing
the membership and shaping structures to meet social need,
Wesker neither encouraged nor anticipated revolutionary
overthrow by the trade unions. Because he accepted some,
but not all of Morris’ revolutionary ideals. he offended
by some comparisons with Morris, especially those which
trivialize the content of his plays. Wesker therefore took

exception to McGrath’s remark in the Black Dwarf review

155

which characterized I’m Talking about Jerusalem as a play

 

about "admiration for hand craftsmanship and the rural
utopia" (15).
i The "cultural revolution" for which Wesker fights in
Britain is, in fact, more metaphorical than cataclysmic
(see also Chapter One). Like some aspects of Morris, the
Fabians, and G.B. Shaw, he believes that education is a
more practical means for change than upheaval. Also like
his antecedents, wesker believes that a lasting and
productive change can only grow out of knowledge: "One idea
will act upon the imagination of another man who will
produce another idea; and we know how ideas have activated
movements and revolutions." Using a gradualist’s argument
for revolutionary change, he concludes "...the only
validity ideas have in art are in the way they make an
impact on people and what it brings them to do" (Interview,
"System and the Writer"). The concept of education through
the arts has a long history of support beginning with Marx
and Engels who, believing in power of knowledge, placed
great importance on education as a determiner of the
future. The difference is, of course, that Marx and Engels
foretold a more explosive, form-destroying role for
education.

Nevertheless, if socialism has any validity at all for
Wesker, it serves as a tool not only for man and his work

but for personal contact: "how to live and treat other

156

people" (Rothberg interview 497). Wesker said in a 1966
interview, at a time when a social revolution seemed
immanent in the West, that socialism will be necessary
even in the new economic order, ”when men are not competing
for survival" because "there is such a problem to being a
human being at all that to complicate it even more with
economic problems is to confront people with the wrong
battle.” He concluded by saying, ”...it follows that once
the economic battle is over there is still the battle of
being alive, of being a human being--"(Gordon interview
17). Wesker’s commitment to socialist theater continues to
be moral, in the sense that it may indirectly improve man’s
condition, more than it is political.

While Wesker rejected the prospect of revolution and
the more violent proposals coming out of socialism, he had
not given up altogether on his socialist ideals. At the
time of his exchange of letters with McGrath in 1970, he
had not considered the possibility that they may not have
shared a common political tradition. So when McGrath
accused Wesker of departing camp, Wesker responded by

quoting Simone’s speech from The Friends, a speech which he

 

altered slightly for the letter:

In your haste to mobilise support you’ve given
blessings and applause to the most bigoted, the
most loud-mouthed, the most reactionary instincts
in the people...And now I will neither wear cloth
caps nor walk in rage nor dress in battledress to
prove I share his cause; nor will I share his

157

tastes and claim the values of his class to prove
I too stand for liberty and love and the
sharing between all men of the good things this
good earth and man’s ingenuity can give. Now
shoot me for that! (18 June 1970)

And when McGrath wrote that Wesker displayed in the
Trilogy a ”lamentable ignorance of the strengths and
values of the working class itself" by wanting to bring to
them "the values of a good liberal education," Wesker
reminded him of the human value of the arts for everyone,
especially for those from the working classes who waste
their hours betting the football scores and drinking. To
Wesker, a true counter-revolutionary is one who will stand
opposed to such popular practices, because such a stand
is obviously on the frontline of change:
... against the wall I would still declare you

to be the counter-revolutionary because I ve

always spoken about what the working man could He

and felt anger that he’s abused for what He is;

and in doing this it was necessary to tell Him

what he is as I know him from experience. He’s

my class and my background and therefore what I

say I say from love and a concern for wasted

lives. You might want him to remain only a happy

’pint-drinker’ but I say you are patronising and

insulting to do so. He is capable of infinitely

more and within him is a spirit which I want to

see as other than the sour doctrinaire and

uncharitable spirit such as emanates from your

article. That’s what my revolution is about. (18

June 1970)
Since Wesker’s priority lay in a liberal arts education for

the working classes, he argued for this change, one that
should make a significant difference in the quality of

life, so he was suspicious about any promises of economic

158

reform that seemed, in the end, to settle for less. But
when he could see that their argument was leading nowhere,
Wesker appealed to McGrath with Peter Weiss’ "Lay down the
ice-axe, comrade.“ He had had enough of the quarrel and did
not want to continue any further.

But McGrath wanted a polemical argument in which
ideas were exchanged, as he put it, "to mark out positions,
to define [their] values, to awaken the contradictions, to
heighten the ideological temperature, to confront each
other’s consciousnesses boldly...” Hoping to deploy the
historical dialectic as an instrument to reset the course
of British alternative theater, McGrath wrote one month
later, "We Aggg_polemics. We 339g to reach conclusions, to
take up positions, to make decisions--all of which will no
doubt be transcended, opposed, acted upon, challenged,
altered-~but we must struggle with force and energy for
correctness, for demystification, for action” (6 July
1970). His drive toward a debate seemed hopeful of
converting a fellow working-class playwright whose politics
needed some correction.

In pursuit of those ends, McGrath requested that
Wesker put aside his distaste for such debates, a distaste
which McGrath believed was the function of a more general
phenomenon: a mixture of an obsolete fear of Stalin, the
British aversion to contention, the British propensity for

reticence and understatement, and a misguided spirit of

159

reform.

The revolutionary rhetoric took Wesker by surprise.
He had not considered that option for some years. In the
October letter he wrote, "We are not in a revolutionary
situation in this country, however unfair is the
distribution of wealth. When you urge people to an action
that is absolutely remote to them then ygg are a counter-
revolutionary because you are encouraging the dissipation
of energies and discrediting our political judgment."
Following that, Wesker’s advice to McGrath was to depend on
art and education as vehicles for the transformation of
capitalism. And he added to that advice, a warning to
exercise patience: "...you have to face the fact about the
nature of art and education that their impacts are not
immediate. Their effects accumulate over a period of
time...the answer is neither exciting nor romantic..." Then
he made an observation that David Edgar was to echo nine
years later, that, while some in Britain are being
exploited, the nation is not ready for a revolution, and to
act on that assumption is to exaggerate the conditions.
(Letter, 4 October 1970). Wesker would not jettison his
reformist views. He could see no reason to do so. He
asked McGrath in the same letter, "What does being a
reformist mean? You advocate that we should ’get in

amongst’ the mass media; doesn’t that involve compromise?

160

What is the advantage of compromise over reform?"

McGrath was unwilling to tolerate what he saw as
Wesker’s revolutionary-reformist contradictions,
”contradictions that run through Eduard Bernstein, through
Karl Ebart and Ramsay MacDonald and Attlee and Mendes-
France, through Sweden and Norway and Denmark, right down
to Harold Wilson," McGrath also attacked Wesker’s approach
to drama. Referring to these contradictions, he argued in
the July 6, 1970 letter,

They lead to your failure to grasp an argument

and dispute it ruthlessly,to your claim to be a

socialist without one word on the subject of

class struggle, class consciousness [in the

Friends]..." [They also lead to a failure toI

reveal certain truths about our condition, to

raise the questions, to fight with these forms
until they are capable of holding more and more,

of doing more and more.

A portrait .of Lenin over Esther’s bed was not enough.
And to flirt with bourgeois concepts of revolution was to
squander theater’s potential which lay in opposing
ideological bankruptcy and in articulating the strengths of
working-class values.

To McGrath, a play is an argument which forces the
audience to take sides. Failure to challenge audience
response beyond a passive understanding was, to McGrath, an
abrogation of a committed playwright’s prerogative and
responsibility. The playwright of the counter-culture and

an obligation to social action are inseparable:

Are we going to create a revolutionary culture,

161

whose task is to transform working class culture,
as it now exists, and to work with the political
movement to create a revolutionary consciousness
amongst the people? Or are we going to sit on
our arses and moan about the backwardness of the
people? (Letter, 6 July 1970)

 

To be true to his ideals, a political playwright uses his
works to critique the conditions which resist change. To
that end, the issues must be addressed on stage and
explored. The playwright who fails to engage the medium on
behalf of class struggle, ignores the most valuable
resource, the theater, a resource ”of inestimable value to
humanity.” McGrath:

...though [the theatre] may not be socially of
the greatest importance, it is a place where
certain values can be maintained. At a time when
the visual image is dominant, with all its sense
of flux, imprecision and ambivalence (qualities
that endear it to ruling classes everywhere), the
theatre can be a place in which the precision of
the word and the disciplines of verbal structure
are kept alive. It can be a place where humanity
remains essentially at the centre of the
experience, where truths and insights can be
communicated at their most naked, directly from
one person to another person in the same room.
(Letter, 6 July 1970).

Because it has the power to touch its audiences with

"truths and insights," the oppositional playwright must use

the plays more directly for social change: to move his

audiences to question the conditions beyond the theater’s

walls, beyond the dimensions of the performance. McGrath

does not believe theater can actually EEEES social change:
It can articulate the pressures towards one, help

people to celebrate their strengths and maybe
build their self-confidence. It can be a public

162

emblem of inner, and outer, events, and

occasionally a reminder, an elbow-jogger, a

perspective-bringer. Above all, it can be the

way people can find their voice, their solidarity

and their collective determination. ("The Year of

the Cheviot" 30)
Nevertheless, McGrath sees the role of theater going beyond
that of a purely critical force. Although theater in the
streets is most effective, theater within four walls can
still aspire to express revolutionary ideas and make an
impact. The best of the early experimenters in agitational
theater were Russian and German. .Among them were Meyerholt
who "was using the theatre as a building with some people
in it to present new forms of ritual" and Mayakovsky who
"was using the visual elements of theatre, incorporating a
sort of futuristic style, and his own highly charged verbal
style, to present images of a transforming society” ("Power
to the Imagination" 14). In formulating the type of theater
which 7:84 would perform, McGrath was deeply influenced by
these models and even more by the theater of Bertolt
Brecht.

To develop an attitude of inquiry in the spectator,

Brecht experimented with the ”Alienation Effect"

(Verfremdungseffekt). The "A-Effect," as it is sometimes

 

called, is a strategy to hold the spectator’s involvement
at a distance from the play’s unfolding actions. For that
purpose, the theater is stripped of its magical effects

whereby the audience might momentarily accept the play’s

163

illusions through the use of scenery which contains only
minimal suggestions of a setting and with actors whose
posture is one "of a man who is astounded and contradicts"
(Willett 137). The actor, avoiding a transformation into
his character, continually questions the validity of the
character’s relationship to others.

Using a stylized gesture, the actor forces audiences to
remark, like him, on the stage directions, the lines and
the character’s part in the action. The character,
meanwhile, has not been developed by the author to stand
alone as an individualistic figure, but is drawn from life
by the author and the actor as a conceptual device. Says
Brecht, "...the characters are not simply portraits of
living people, but are rearranged and formed in accordance
with ideas" (Willett 278). While they regard the character
as a third person being examined, the actor and the
audience engage in a direct exchange which tears down the
fourth wall of the stage and interrupts the inclination of
the audience to identify with the character. The play’s
content also pressures the spectator by presenting a
problem which must be solved and by pressing the spectator
to make moral choices.

In these ways, the Alienation Effect deliberately
inhibits illusion and causes ordinary objects to seem
unfamiliar. After experiencing a provocative theatrical

production, one that forces an examination of events on the

164

stage, the spectator may gain new insight and a critical
attitude of history and everyday events. Brecht:
Characters and incidents from ordinary life,

from our immediate surroundings, being familiar,

strike us more or less natural. Alienating them

helps to make them seem remarkable to us.

Science has carefully developed a technique of

getting irritated with the everyday, self-

evident’, universally accepted occurrence, and
there is no reason why this infinitely useful
attitude should not be taken over by art.

(Willett 140)

Like a scientist using his reason to question invisible
forces and relationships, the spectator is asked to employ
"an extremely cold, highly intellectual" curiosity about
the play’s phenomena. Brecht’s plays demand a bourgeois
education and sophistication of audiences which enable them
to enjoy a play which renounces emotional involvement in
the plot or its characters. He wanted a "quick-witted
audience that knows how to observe, and gets its enjoyment
from setting its reason to work." Referring to those from
all classes seeking sentiment, Brecht said, "I’m not
writing for the scum who want to have the cockles of their
hearts warmed (Willett l4).

Brecht was reacting, of course, to the theater at the
time of Hitler which subverted reason through a mob
response. Deeply suspicious of the highly emotional
experience, he preferred to appeal to the spectator’s

powers of understanding. Brecht did not discount the

emotional response altogether, but when it was a factor in

165

shaping empathetic imitation of an admirable character for
example, it became a conscious choice. Careful education
of the working-class theaters and their audiences was the
key to the critical attitude he hoped to engender.
Similarly, McGrath has hoped to make available to his
audiences a clear understanding of relationships and their
social contexts. But after a few years on the road with
7:84, he has decided not to adopt the Brechtian A-Effect.
Although he still considers Brecht’s theater "of immense
value," especially efforts to embrace new dramatic forms
and subject matter, McGrath is concerned about "its

hostility to the audience" (A Good Night Out 37-40).

 

Arguing that Brecht’s approach to theater was
primarily pedagogical and not necessarily appealing to
working-class audiences. McGrath also pointed out with
some disappointment that, at a time when the workers most
needed support against Hitler for Communism, Brecht was
trying out his "pseudo-scientific ’objectivity’ in place of
the frank admission of a human, partisan and emotional
perspective--coldness, in place of shared experience..." (A

Good Night Out 41). He feels that Brecht squandered his

 

 

Opportunity as an oppositional playwright to establish
solidarity among his working-class audiences by diverting
his attention to the Epic Theatre, a form which drew

crowds, but unfortunately, "98 per cent of the time they

166

were the hated bourgeoisie" (41). Brecht did not
deliberately exclude the working classes, but because of
the size of the production company and the patronizing
nature of the forms, his plays were best performed "within
smart bourgeois theatre" where the structures of bourgeois
theater could be maintained. McGrath remarks with dismay
that the Berliner Ensemble, Brecht’s theater company torn
apart by rival factions, has become a symbol of power
struggles in the theater and has all but given up its
ability to produce innovative theater. He concludes:

There is a sense in which all cultural work which

is at all conscious of class struggle must place

the question of class power in the centre of its

ideology. But I think that with Brecht the

problem is that of displacing class power into a

rather bourgeois form of artistic privilege,

which does have certain correspondences with the

political hierarchies of the Soviet Union and

Eastern Europe. (43)

Troubled by Brecht’s disproportionate interest in
dramatic technique, especially at the expense of developing
a working-class based audience, McGrath has adopted the
the goals of social change, the Brechtian language, and
some aspects of the Brechtian forms, particularly
techniques which infect the audience with an awareness of
their role in social change. Like Brecht he also replaces
the traditional forms of European high culture with popular
forms developed in the German and Russian theaters of the

205 and 30s and adopted from the British Music Hall. His

work tends, moreover, to be anti-naturalistic.

167

Nevertheless, McGrath has rejected strategies which
might distance his audiences. Keeping in mind working-
class tastes in entertainment, he chooses instead to offer
to foster a growing relationship with his audiences. He
does this by seeking to understand his audiences and to
create performances on their terms. "Identification should
take place between the performers and the audience on a
personal level," McGrath wrote, "which is certainly not the
case in bourgeois theatre" (”Theory and Practice" 48).
McGrath’s works are not intended for the intellectual,’ nor
are they meant to appeal to bourgeois audiences. The 7:84
deliberately promotes an informal setting where the ticket
prices are reasonable, a decent pint of ale is available
at any time, and "some young working-class blokes [come]
with their wives for a good night out" (51-52). To evoke a
critical attitude, McGrath uses a warm, familiar atmosphere
where he can develop a feeling of community, and his
characters can exchange dialog with the audiences outside
the traditional conventions of theater. Even though he has
discarded distancing devices like the A-Effect, McGrath
has, on his own terms, developed a dialectical structure
within a more congenial setting.

McGrath’s combination of Brechtian techniques,
Eisenstinian film devices and German expressionist drama

work well for his purposes. His plays are quite popular in

168

working-class districts where his audiences are receptive
to the ideas and responsive. One newspaper report has it
that "several miners who had not before been out on the
picket-line, went out and picketed, after seeing 7:84
England’s production of §i§.!§2.2£ Dorset" ("No Politics
Please"). The plays draw particularly well in the
Highlands where the working-class Scot, often seeing his
own history for the first time, welcomes direct expression
of his local concerns. McGrath justifiably believes he has
developed a real socialist theater, one that honestly
appeals--more than Bertolt Brecht, Clifford Odets, or
Sergei Eisenstein--to the working classes. Although seen
by some middle-class critics like Catherine Itzin as "out-
dated didacticism" (”McGrath Ten Years After" 7), the plays
have power and appeal.

McGrath’s successes have convinced him, more than
ever, that Wesker, and other playwrights like him, have
force-fed the working classes with a fare of empty rhetoric
that hints at sustenance, but offers no real nourishment or
relief from oppression. He urged Wesker in his letter to
turn away from middle-class naturalist drama and
concentrate "on bringing a truly socialist consciousness to
bear on the mggg forms of television and film." Wesker
should "relate directly to the conflicts and history of the
working class," by demystifying the bourgeois forms.

McGrath further suggested that Wesker might be more

169

successful with the working classes using popular forms of
culture like television, music, and film, an idea that
McGrath shared with Brecht. At that time he felt that much
work was yet to be done, however, to explore the potential
of the mass media, since ”the cultural forms so far
developed by an urban working class cynically fed on
escapist rubbish under capitalism are not, as yet, either
matured or even viable." Thinking he had a sympathetic ear,
he asked Wesker for advice:

But what are we to do about it? You are an
artist. The forms of television are potentially
art forms. In the hands of David Mercer, the TV
play has a certain stature. Peter Watkins has
produced television films, which, to say the
least, cannot be dismissed. The Series, much
abused, has the same potential as the Victorian
weekly magazines held for Dickens. Similarly,
the pop song today has, if anything, rather more
potential than the Tudor lyric as Wyatt found it.
In the cinema, the comedy, the adventure-story,
the drama, the epic are all forms which may not
yet have revealed their full powers. Do we walk
away from all this, because Coronation Street is
not Barchester Towers, because Mick Jagger isn’t
Beethoven, because The Dirty Dozen isn’t Chekhov?
(6 July 1970)

 

 

Pressing Wesker as an ally in the struggle to redefine
working class drama, McGrath envisioned a radical reshaping
of theater’s purpose with new cultural values, values that
place human needs before commercial profit and an
exploitative culture:

At a time when the visual image is dominant, with
all its sense of flux, imprecision and
ambivalence (qualities that endear it to ruling
classes everywhere), the theatre can be a place

170

in which the precision of the word and the

disciplines of verbal structure are kept alive.

It can be a place where humanity remains

essentially at the centre of the experience,

where truths and insights can be communicated at
their most naked, directly from one person to

another person in the same room. (6 July 1970)

And then he asked Wesker to abandon old, worn out forms,
bourgeois theatrical experiences for the working classes.

In response, Wesker firmly denied that accepted
cultural values necessarily ”imitate" bourgeois values,
"sometimes they do; sometimes they don’t" (4 October 1979).
By that, he meant all classes contribute to the shaping of
the best in theatrical entertainment. The middle classes,
for example, look sometimes "down the scale" for
entertainment values.

Offended by McGrath’s remark that the working-class
audiences at Wellingborough involuntarily sat through
Centre 42’s shows, Wesker bristled all the more at his
suggestion that the working-class playwright should adopt
popular forms of entertainment, which seemed to him
inferior. He was reminded of a statement made by the
Economic Planning Commission (the P.E.P.), who when it was
proposed that they might withdraw aft funding for the
working classes, responded, "A large section of the
population is completely indifferent to anything that comes
under the general heading of culture, and they have every

right to stay in this state of non-grace" (P.E.P. 319).

Wesker was equally outraged that the forces on the left

171

(like McGrath) and the power elite on the right would not
support funding in the fine arts for the working classes.
The government justified a cut in funding for the working
classes by smugly arguing, ”The appetite for culture in
this country is less voracious than many of us pretend..."
(330) and McGrath’s position on the arts did not disprove
their case. Wesker believed that if theater were going to
be written for the working classes, it must shaped by
cooperation among the working-class artists and it must be
informed by standards of highest quality. For all he could
tell, those standards were best defined by literary
convention.

The debate between McGrath and Wesker on forms was
remarkably similar to earlier discussions which Wesker had
with Clive Barker when the latter tried to promote popular
entertainment at the festivals. (Despite continued
opposition to his ideals, Wesker remained steadfast to his
convictions. He wrote to McGrath in the June letter, "Both
you and the [P.E.P.l inherit the same ruling-class
attitude--a peculiarly English sneer at the notion that the
working class could or should ever be interested in more
than pint drinking...In fact, you and they are repeating
the ancient ruling class arguments that the workers are
best left happy and undisturbed" (Letter, 18 June 1970).

McGrath and company had their own manner of undervaluing

172

the working class audiences.

Not only did popular entertainment represent to Wesker
just another way of patronizing the working classes,
certain forms of the popular culture-- folk art, for
example--seemed to Wesker ”primitive." He denounced all
the rest as unfulfilling:

...the actual experience of Led Zepplin or the

Moody Blues, however much I enjoy them, is

different from the feeling I experience listening

to Mahler or Pergolesi...there is a difference
between art and entertainment, with art having

the additional advantage of containing
entertainment in its blood; (Letter 4 October
1970)

Whether produced by members of the working classes or for
the working classes, the most efficacious forms of art are
perceptive and demanding of our intellect and feeling, and
engage "all our being...leaving us refreshed rather than
spent, or exhausted by muscles well used rather than
soporific” (Letter 4 October 1970). No argument-~for class
or for revolutionary causes--could justify a use of the
lower forms to Wesker. Indeed, he could not vindicate
popular forms of art for any political reasons, partly
because he felt the working classes deserved better, partly
because he felt these forms were inadequate to the task of
expressing human values.

In his defense, Wesker summoned the authority of Georg
Lukacs whose Marxist case for traditional literary forms,

specifically realism, against the experimental forms

173

introduced by Brecht is well known. Lukacs, like Wesker who
followed him, believed in the mandate on art to express the
truth. To that point Lukacs disapproved experimental
constructions which distort reality in favor of the
classical forms of art, particularly in literature, which
recreate a truer picture of the human condition:

Those who do not know Marxism at all or know
it only superficially or at second hand, may be
surprised by the respect for the classical
heritage of mankind which one finds in the really
great representatives of this doctrine and by
their incessant references to that classical
heritage...”But all this is long out of date,”
the modernists cry. "All this is the
undesirable, outworn legacy of the nineteenth
century," say those who--intentionally or
unintentionally, consciously or unconsciously--
support the Fascist ideology and its pseudo-
revolutionary rejection of the past, which is in
reality a rejection of culture and humanism.
(Studies ig European Realism 4)

 

Experimental forms are not only weak stylistically, they
falsify and mislead, lending credibility to slander and
misrepresentation.

Like Marx and Engels before him and Wesker after him,
Lukacs believed that the greatest works of literature are
founded on the potential which the writer has for a
truthful account of reality. The artist, like any
individual, is a participant in the social process, and as
such, is connected to contemporary historical movements.
As a member of society and therefore a constituent part of
the historic whole, the artist’s vision, if undistorted,

represents a truthful account of material reality,

174

particularly when he uses the concreteness of his own life
as it relates to the historical moment (The Meaning pf

Contemporary Realism 54). For Lukacs this connection

 

between the part and the whole makes the writer accountable
to a faithful account of reality in the work of art. He
writes:

It follows that everything in a writer’s life,
every individual experience, thought and emotion
he undergoes, however subjective, partakes of a
historical character. Every element in his life
as a human being and as a writer is part of and
determined by, the movement from and towards some
goal. Any authentic reflection of reality in
literature must point to this movement. The
method adopted will vary, of course, with the
period and personality. But the selection and
subtraction he undertakes in response to the
teleological pattern of his own life constitutes
the most intimate link between a writer’s
subjectivity and the outside world. (55)

Failure to connect the personal experience with the larger,
historical context, and more particularly, a deliberate
refusal to reflect reality authentically because of a
perverse desire to express alienation, fragmentation, or
isolation is to Lukacs a "willful twisting of reality"

(The Meaning 9: Contemporary Realism 49). The work of art

 

 

must show a balance between the generality of history and
the particularity of the individual. The individual
consciousness is best described as mediated through the
social reality.

In drama, Lukacs explains, the characters bear much of

the weight of the authorial interpretation because in the

175

limited experiences of the characters lie the reader’s
orientation to the meaningful structures of the work. The
realist--as Opposed to the modernist like Brecht--examines
the contradictions, tensions, and conflicts between the
individual and the social environment using concrete detail
and a focus on the individual to avoid distortion and to
reveal deeper complexities. The greatest realistic writers
begin in the particular and move, not to any ordinary
reality, but to an historic movement, thus establishing the
dialectic between the individual and history ("Franz Kafka

or Thomas Mann", The Meanipgggf Contemporary Realism).

 

 

Believing, moreover, that truth will emerge if the
writer simply allows the story of the character and his
integral relationship to the community unfold without
manipulation, Lukacs looked to the classical heritage of
literature to model the central problems of man’s existence
when he determined that characters "once conceived in the
vision of their creator, live an independent life of their
own; their comings and goings, their development, their
destiny is dictated by the inner dialectic of their social
and individual existence. No writer is a true realist--or
even a truly good writer, if he can direct the evolution of
his characters at will" (Preface to Studies ig_ European
Realism 11). Without contrivance, the realist must seek

out true-to-life figures that act as types which embody

176

both the individual and the typical, the idiosyncratic and
the universal, which is meaningful to the reader as a
reference to a knowable experience.

Unlike earlier drama in which ethical value judgments
rest upon accepted metaphysical foundations, contemporary
drama has the problem of "an individualism which relates to
the external world within a reduced scope of expressive
significations" ("The Sociology of Modern Drama" 159).
Instead of a hero who acts in a morally certain
environment, the new drama features an isolated individual
who often becomes a proxy for something external to him,
something which is not always given definition. The
individual is additionally absorbed by his environment and
helpless to act on his own. He is alienated from others,
lonely, and "detached from the particularities of
individual men," so much so that a sense of the
individual’s personal tragedy is meaningless: "Literature
shows man only in the succession of his feelings and
thoughts, which means it cannot entirely exclude the causes
of the feelings and thoughts; at most it will somewhat
conceal a portion of these causes, this is, the external
world, which is their immediate origin" (161). Rather than
a reflection of modern man’s true condition, this state as
described by the modernists exaggerate the displacements in
the relations among men.

Lukacs described distortions such as these in

177

anticipation of Pinter or Beckett or Brechtian drama. What
concerned him was the breakdown of literary forms which
depended on the interrelatedness of ethical systems. In
Lukacs’ view, the subordination of art to the doctrinaire
purposes of the artist overemphasized the subjective,
trivialized the thematic material of drama, and alienated
the reader (or audience) who has little access to the
author’s mind. Lukacs wrote to that point of view:

In realism, the wealth of created life provides
answers to the questions put by the readers
themselves-~life supplies the answers to the
questions put by life itself! The taxing
struggle to understand the art of the ’avant-
garde’, on the other hand, yields such
subjectivist distortions and travesties that
ordinary people who try to translate these
atmospheric echoes of reality back into the
language of their own experience, find the task
quite beyond them. (Aesthetics and Politics 57)

 

Lukacs was speaking, in this instance, about movements
in art like expressionism and surrealism to Ernst Bloch
and Hanns Eisler, but he could well have been referring to
egregious examples of such failure in the literary works of
the modernists, particularly Bertolt Brecht, whose
intellectual approach misconstrues reality by centering on
the limits of the individual’s own experience. While
excluding an accurate depiction of the larger social
context, Brecht manipulates reality in his drama to fit a
predetermined purpose. Using techniques like montage,

artists like Brecht sacrifices a sense of the whole,

178

thereby losing connection with reality and a penetration
into the network of relationships. Says Lukacs quoting
"that expert on decadence" Friedrich Nietzsche in reference
to the artificiality of modernist devices, "’The whole as
such no longer lives at all; it is composite, artificial, a

piece of cerebration, an artifact’" (Aesthetics and

 

Politics 44).

Even though he has developed his own definitions for
the terms ”naturalism” and "realism"1 in his discussions of
art, Wesker agrees with Lukacs on these and many other
aesthetic principals. Like Lukacs, he has condemned the
artist who ignores reality to exercise a narrow, personal
view at the expense of truth, who introduces some form of
plot which satisfies a ”wish-fulfillment,” or turns to
material which conveniently illustrates the author’s point
of view. For these reasons he was compelled to remind
McGrath in the letters that England--despite the uneven
distribution of wealth--was not in a revolutionary state
that McGrath had described. "There is injustice in
Britain," wrote Wesker, "but no oppression--we cannot
borrow ’other people’s urgency" (Letter, 4 October 1970).
Writing in his notebooks four months later, Wesker attacked
playwrights like McGrath and Brecht by implying that they
are propagandists of sorts who twist their art out of
political necessity. In the February, 1971 journal entry,

Wesker differentiated between "construction" in art and

179

"arrangement." In the former instance, artists "cheat" by
contriving to select characters and present pat situations
that fit their "construction" of reality:

He can make every character behave in the way
that allows his spokesman conveniently to say
what it is Ag, the writer, wants said; everyone
is conveniently quiet, has conveniently said the
wrong things, conveniently disgraced themselves.
(Distinctions 166-67)

 

In the case of arrangement, artists also select material,
but in this instance, the selection is "more human,
tentative, as flawed as the human condition with which it
is concerned. It deals in complicated and quintessential

truths" (Distinctions 24). Although he is not troubled by

 

the overly subjective, solipsistic forms of modernism, as
Lukacs was in his writings, Wesker is nonetheless concerned
with verisimilitude and an undistorted exploration of the
truth "from nature or the imagination or both, in a way
such as to re-create and at the same time illuminate our

experience of nature and the imagination" (Distinctions

 

164). There are no better examples of his painstaking
attention to detail than the recipes he provides in his
plays for the food that his characters prepare on stage, or
the minute explanations he gives for replication of the
Norfolk accent, or the long stage directions he uses to
instruct the actor about the mood of a character.

Just as he believes that all art deals with reality

and must correspond to reality, Wesker also argues that one

180

cannot fully reproduce the experience in the theater. In
this respect, Wesker’s aesthetic differs from Lukacs’.
Fully cognizant of the need for a shorthand language to
represent some of the detail from everyday life, Wesker
writes:

The concept of ’realistic art’ is a concept
involving contradictions. The re-creation of
total reality in any artistic medium is
impossible. It is even impossible to experience

total reality, reality being the sum total of'so
many different elements. (164)

 

The controls that Wesker deliberately uses to capture
reality are two-fold: traditional theatrical conventions
and a selective use of ’inherent symbols’ which are
"inevitable, unavoidable, unambiguous" in drama. He also
uses ideas which are juxtaposed without predetermined

design. For examples he turns to his own work, The Friends,

 

in which he links the concept of sterility with discussions
about the DNA molecule of heredity, family photographs, and
death (307-310). Wesker defends his use of these devices
in plays like The Four Seasons or The Friends by explaining
that they are natural "within the p1ay’s terms of

reference" (Distinctions 313), and he takes some pains to

 

explain his use of ’inherent symbols’ for several reasons:
to answer the critics’ claim that some details in his plays
are not realistic, to ridicule those critics who overlook
the obvious on the hunt for symbols, to reinforce the point

that he did not write the plays "to fit a theory"

181

(Distinctions 315). It is through these ’inherent symbols’

 

that Wesker connects the individual to a larger historical
context. Referring to the use of these symbols, he makes it
clear that they refer to a knowable community of relations
and that he includes them without doctrinaire intentions.
Like Lukacs, he believes that "no great work of art is
without meaning," but he also believes that the message
should never control the work, but grow out of its
characters and situations and out of the artist’s own
perceptions after close observation of nature and natural
behavior.

Wesker’s interest in fullness of character and his
Opposition to characters, which are made important more for
the ideas they represent than for their veracity, is
reminiscent of an earlier debate which Marx and Engels
carried on with German socialist Ferdinand Lassalle whose

polemical play, Franz von Sickengen (1859), was the

 

 

 

subject of controversy. Although the play expressed
agreeable political sentiments, Marx and Engels called it
"tendentious." By that they meant that the playwright’s
biases dominated the characterization of the play. Marx
advised Lassalle to "Shakespearize" more, that is to build
well-developed characters who are so realistic that the
audience may share in the illusion. And again referring to

Lassalle’s play, Franz von Sickingen (1858), Marx said, "I

182

consider Schillerism, making individuals the mere
mouthpieces of the spirit of the times, your main fault"

(Marx and Engels, Literature and Art 48).

 

Their complaint with Lassalle was that he did not
adequately represent the causes of Sickingen’s downfall and
he was unable to illustrate the forces at work in the
events of 1520 through the use of his characters because he
used stock figures. More than structure or plot, Engels
critiqued Lassalle’s work on the author’s realistic
depiction of the class struggle and the portrayal of that
struggle through characterization. He wrote, "Realism, to
my mind, implies, besides truth of detail, the truthful
reproduction of typical characters under typical
circumstances" (41). Although ideology is the content of
literature, individualization is foremost in capturing the
truth of the times. The unique qualities of the character
are made significant by his typicality. If too
intellectually conceived, however, the character becomes a
token and cannot adequately represent the intended
abstraction. Engels believed, in fact, that the best
artists of socially significant literature simply select
honestly wrought individual characters and thereby
subordinate their own biases to artistic truth. In doing
so, they inadvertently reveal conditions as they should be
portrayed. If an author like Lassalle understands less

about the conditions than he should, the characterizations

183

similarly suffer.

For that reason, he praised Margaret Harkness in an
1888 letter, for her City Girl because, although it was
"guided all the time by the principle that the
emancipation of the working class ought to be the cause
of the working class itself," he found no evidence that

she wrote a Tendenzroman, a novel written "to glorify the

 

social and political views of the author" (42). He
added, "The more the author’s views are concealed the
better for the work of art" (42).

Even though little can be said with certainty about
their critical theories because they wrote so little on
the topic, Engels may have based many of his views on Marx’
postulate that society is an organism in which every
activity is related to every other. In such a model, a
truthful characterization will naturally reflect the
interrelatedness of the whole and will, thereby, illustrate
universal qualities as well. Marx’ own position on realism
is unclear. Believing that novelists were better suited
than "politicians, publicists and moralists" to reveal
essential truths, to express the "character of the object,"
he particularly trusted the classical heritage in
literature to reveal the social conditions faithfully. He
listed Balzac and Shakespeare among his favorites.
Although he prized essential truth and believed that as a

universal it could not be restrained, he offered very

184

little in opinion about the best forms for the expression
of truth. Later socialists like Lukacs were to insist on
realism, however, in a belief that of all the forms, it
best served social need, and their judgment was based,
perhaps out of humanist concerns, on the authenticity of
the characterization as much as the accurate description of
class relations and a faithful picture of living
conditions.

Even though the novel and the modern forms of drama
were essentially bourgeois, Lukacs, and later Wesker,
preferred the classic style because they too believed it
satisfied their need for an opportunity to explore the
human quality in literature, for example with characters
which were fully developed, three-dimensional and self—
determined. To Wesker, naturalism means recreating reality
according to nature, "everything that is naturally

experienced" Distinctions 164). Like the naturalists of

 

late nineteenth century literature, he sought to draw
attention to the working class condition, but unlike Zola
and other representatives of the earlier movement, Wesker
ignored a preoccupation with determination or an
exaggeration of life’s emptiness.3 In this respect also he
agreed with Lukacs who wrote, "There is no necessity for a

writer to break with his bourgeois pattern of life in

making this choice between social sanity and morbidity, in

185

choosing the great and progressive literary traditions of
realism in preference to formalistic experimentation" (The

Meaning 9: Contemporary Realism 80). Whether writing about

 

Shakespeare’s Shylock or William Styron’s novel, Sophie’s
Choice, Wesker is concerned with what did happen and what
could have happened. Like most realists, he is occupied not
by "the trivializing of reality by art, but the limit of
art by reality" (Distinctions 231).

McGrath’s debate with Wesker over the definition of
revolutionary drama, the use of popular forms, and the
administration of a theater company is more than a matter
of form or ideology. It originates in epistemological
differences. Like most socialists McGrath wants to
reveal essential truths and to express the ”character of
the object," but he believes the task is not quite so easy
as representing surface reality. McGrath’s calling in the
theater grew out of the perception that the role of the
working classes in its struggle against the hegemony of the
bourgeois ideology is not readily apparent. The
playwright, therefore, must grasp, then interpret on stage
the inter-relationships of reality that are hidden from
view for the average person in a presentation/re-
presentation dialectic. McGrath points out, for example,
that the dependence on workers by the capitalist state in
Britain is easily apprehended. But "the correspondence

between the new ideology of technological social democracy,

186

the servile welfare state, and the stuff to be seen on
these stages" is less obvious ("Theory and Practice of
Political Theatre" 45). For McGrath there are no
universals in art because there are no universal audiences.
There are only signifying practices and competing
interpretations of reality which order and interpret
personal experience. As an alternative playwright his duty
is to reexamine the practices in class terms and to
demystify power relations. McGrath explains:
For that class consciousness to be there,

more than the individual worker’s own immediate,

family, and local experience needs to be present

in his or her mind. Very often that experience

itself has been mediated through a false

consciousness created by the process of living

under capitalism, and requires representation:

also, the experiences of other workers in other

towns doing the same job or in other countries

working for the same multi-national, or at other

times in history, or even just down the street,

need to be presented. Theatre is a graphic way

of presenting other people’s experience--even of

re-presenting our own experience and history to

ourselves. This is a valid social function of

theatre. ("The Theory and Practice" 47)
The forms chosen for revealing that which is normally
suppressed must therefore be dialectical, throwing the
responsibility of discovery and understanding onto the
audience. But the writer for working-class audiences must
first be direct in his message, without that the dialectic
may not begin.

Wesker’s approach, on the other hand, is that of the

realist who posits a real world independent of the

187

playwright’s imagination and vision, a world which is,
nonetheless, knowable to the playwright’s apprehension and
a world that is recognizable to the audiences. Wesker
believes that the artist has no mandate other than that of
being honest and of honestly portraying human experience.
As an answer to those who, like McGrath, try to dictate
self-imposed purposes for art, he writes, "Theories about
what art mm§E_ do and the way people EEEE conduct their
lives are more to do with wish-fulfillment than with truth"

(Distinctions 164).

 

Theirs is a clash not only in ideology, but in the way
they experience the world. For McGrath, art redefines
surface appearances to show things as they really are.
Confining art to one simple reflection of reality is asking
the impossible. To seize the revolutionary character of
art, the writer must reach beyond the accepted, stabilized
images and fixed attitudes of the historical situation
toward a depiction of new models. Producing art is a
process that aspires to new perspectives, a process that
begins with the artist and is validated through audience
response, a process that recognizes itself as a construct.
As such, the artist is continually seeking new materials,
new techniques, new forms of expression.

In sharp contrast to McGrath, Wesker believes that the

artist has not only access to the truth, but also the

188

powers of perception to reveal those truths. It’s not the
structures of artists’ works, but "it’s the quality of
vision, the perception of reality, their values which
create the true affinities and divisions between artists"
(139). Once again echoing Lukacs’ emphasis on the writer’s
intentions, Wesker says about himself as a writer that he
”begins with experience rather than ideas." Drawing a
distinction between his works and those by others which are
more doctrinaire, he says:

I’m not a writer who illustrates ideas, or

explores ideas through invented characters and

situations; rather I’m a writer whose experience

drives me to organize that experience into a play

or story because it seems to illuminate to me

some aspect of human behaviour. (Distinctions
142)

 

And elsewhere he says his plays "are attempts to continue
arguments [he has] had with friends and relatives and
people that [he] worked with...The plays continue human

relationships as well as arguments..." (Theatre 32 Work 78-

 

80). The greatest works of literature are those which
spring from the artist’s experience, and so it is through
the' author’s careful observation and straight forward
presentation that he produces art.

_ If the author’s theory of knowledge and ideology
contribute to the literary form, then the playwright’s
relationship to the audience is also a factor. As a
realist Wesker historicizes reality and accepts a shared

understanding of that reality as a natural fact. He not

189

only trusts his audiences to recognize that reality, but he
also trusts them to embrace the values, ideas and images
embodied in his works. Nevertheless, the burden of
responsibility for successful theater rests not on the
audience, but on the playwright and the production. The
humanistic truth he reflects, however, seems to appeal
best to the middle classes, and the literary conventions he
employs are best understood by middle-class audiences.

As one who challenges the validity of realism, McGrath
sees art as a form of social production which acknowledges
the plurality of viewpoints and therefore chooses one kind
of drama based on the assumptions of rural, working-class
audiences. The plays becomes "less a reflection gf, than a
reflection gm, social reality" and the playwright invites
the audience to co-produce the meaning (Eagleton Marxism

and Literary Criticism 65). By focussing on the

 

spectator’s response as much as the play’s content, McGrath
has developed a relationship between the stage and the
audience new to working-class theater. He trusts his
working-class audiences to understand his goals and to
respond responsibly by engaging in the machinery of
revolution.

Both playwrights draw on honored lineages in
nineteenth century traditions in working-class and

socialist theater, both have paid their dues to the

190

disappointing business of fund-raising in the arts, and
both have practiced their aesthetic philosophies with high
ethical standards and consistency. More than that, their
debate echoes an earlier exchange between theoreticians in
literature, and because they are both practical more than
theoretical, they have added significantly to the history
of ideas on this subject, bringing more contemporary
experiences to bear on the issues.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez said in 1982, "In reality the
duty of a writer--the revolutionary duty, if you 1ike--is
that of writing well" (1). Both Wesker and McGrath seem to
recognize that that is their charge and they respond to it
with grave seriousness. It is appropriate that British
audiences and, crucially, the British Arts Council
recognize their value as a challenge from emergent forces,
as new ideas which undermine and revitalize the old. It is
equally important in the spirit of cooperation and for the
future of socialist theater that they likewise recognize in
each other the value of Opposition and the value of the

other’s contribution.

NOTES

1. As Raymond Williams has noted in Keymords, the
definition for ’naturalism’ is a complex matter. It would
appear that American contemporary usage of the term differs

191

from the British, and their respective applications of the
term often fail to account for the nineteenth century
French origins. After careful reading in Distinctions and
other essays by Wesker, I have finally decided that
Wesker’s definition of naturalism comes closest to that
used by Stuart Hall in a 1961 issue of Encore. Naturalism
to Hall is a form that is basically realistic with the
added features of "the desire to recreate working class
life, the preoccupation with humanist values, and an
interest in the attack upon Establishment values through
social criticism" ("Beyond Naturalism Pure" 13).

 

In the Official Program of the Edinburgh International
Television Festival, Raymond Williams argued that form
includes the l)methods of presentation, 2)varieties of
selected experience, and 3) the relations between producer
(or, in this case, the playwright) and the audience. The
latter sections of this chapter attempt to demonstrate how
the forms which Wesker developed, even though he calls them
’naturalism’ correspond to the forms of realism which
Lukacs preferred.

2. Published under the pseudonym "John Law."

3. Lukacs uses the term, naturalism, in reference to the
French nineteenth century dramatic style that takes
incidents from ordinary life and introduces no additional
characters to discuss moral and social theory. The
characters tell their own tales in their own words, but
they distort the truth: in this case, by attempting to say
too much about human nature, by relying too heavily on
extraneous detail and thereby sacrificing a focussed
account of the human condition. Naturalism fails because
it obscures meaning and, more importantly, ideology. With
an emphasis on social, biological, and economic determinism
as a way of accounting for behaviour, naturalism also
removes human responsibility for events over which one
seems to have no real control Despite their inadequacies,
Lukacs finds in both literary forms--naturalism and
modernism--assumptions of realism because, even in their
opposition, they address social and historical realities.

4. Much of this argument using epistemological models and
their ’application to Wesker and McGrath is based on Terry
Lovell 5 Pictures of Reality: Aesthetics, Politics,

 

 

Pleasure, in which Ehe discusses Brecht and Lukacs, but
makes no mention of Wesker or McGrath.

CHAPTER SIX

McGrath’s debate with Wesker in 1970, coincidentally
or not, marked a turning point in their respective careers.
For the most part, they were moving in new directions
anyway. But the letters became a milestone of sorts which
signed off the end of a decade that was generous to the
first generation of 60s political playwrights and began a
period which introduced the second wave. Among them were
committed playwrights like McGrath, less bound by
convention and more consciously political than their
forerunners.

Because he had found his direction and support of his
audiences, McGrath looked forward to the 703 with great
confidence. Fully aware of what he wanted in a "truly
revolutionary theatre," he launched 7:84. Although the
company’s first few years were marked with a number of

notable productions in Trees mm_the Wind and Occupations by

 

 

Trevor Griffiths (performed by 7:84 England in 1972 and

1974 respectively), and The Cheviot, Egg Stgg and the

 

Black, Black Oil (performed by 7:84 Scotland in 1973),

 

they struggled with a fair-minded arrangement of payment
without sacrificing needed leadership, uncertain funding,
and definitions of leadership. Restricted to some extent

by the threat of funding cuts by the British Arts Council,

192

193

McGrath and company nevertheless explored fresh subject
matter and new forms. McGrath experimented with Brechtian
theater and, with his new audiences in mind, discarded it
for other stylized, more appealing forms. Unlike Wesker, he
found his direction quickly after those early years.
Wesker, on the other hand, suddenly found himself
without support in the 705. Like other first generation
603 playwrights who had risked reputation and sometimes
professional opportunity to fight the rigidity of Britain’s
class system, he was unfortunately trapped by the changing
climate. After a decade of being a spokesperson for
socialism and working-class playwrights, he found himself
surprisingly unpopular in the press, and even worse, the
new generation of playwrights had no longer any use for
him. Joe Orton expressed the sentiments of many who found
Wesker’s work outmoded:
Every good play expresses something of the time in
which it was written and at the moment we’re
living in a very sick society. During the 505,
when people were still concerned with changing the
world and finding useful political solutions,
plays like Arnold Wesker’s Chicken Sou witm
Barley were quite representative. But to ay there
is a general sense of despair about politics
because we know it can’t provide any real
solutions. Still, I would never claim I was a
pessimistic writer. I’m too amused by the way
people carry on to give in to despair. (Lahr 166)
And yet, Wesker had accomplished what he set out to do--the

government supported theatrical groups that would never

have found earlier success, working-class playwrights were

194

welcome in a variety of venues, social protest in the
theater was the rule more than the exception.
In any case, Wesker’s future at the beginning of the 705
looked uncertain. Wesker had come to the end of his most
productive decade. With some sadness and bitterness he had
also laid his hopes for Centre 42 to rest. Indeed, he
regarded his career with mixed feelings: he had not
exhausted his ideas, nor had he lost his will to do battle
with his plays; nevertheless, he had lost his original
fervor.

The next few years did indeed bring deep
disappointments to Wesker. The Old Ones, scheduled to open
at the National Theatre in 1972, was withdrawn from
production by Kenneth Tynan. In an unprecedented and
unrelated incident also in 1972, the actors hired for 323
Journalists rebelled, refusing to perform in his play. And

his 1977 play, The Merchant, suddenly lost its star Zero

 

Mostel, who died of a heart attack shortly before opening.
During this difficult period, Wesker slowly began his shift
away from themes which directly reflect the socialist
faith in the collective effort to a focus on one or two
lone characters largely isolated from the stream of human
activity. It was a remarkable turn-around from his
earliest works which were popular primarily because they
spoke for the individual who engages in the concerns of his

age.

195

Shortly after World War II, Wesker’s plays, which
carried a mixed message of disillusionment and hope were
celebrated by Britons who were themselves feeling some
measure of despair and yet a longing also for a sign of

optimism. The trilogy--Chicken Soup with Barley (1957),

 

Roots (1958), and I’m Talking About Jerusalem (l958-59)--

 

excited audiences who were attracted to his faith in the
power of humanism, his confidence in his working-class
background, and his concern for the leftist movement in
Britain which appeared to be dying. As critic Stuart Hall
wrote, "The sense of life to which Arnold Wesker responded
[was] not somewhere in the distant future, to be brought
about by the rising and falling of anonymous masses of
people: it [was] here and now, pushing through the crevices
of our class society and our class culture, breaking fresh
ground where it can, taking root in people’s lives..."
("Something to Live For" 113).

Critics and audience were particularly responsive to
the struggles of Wesker’s Jewish, working-class stage
family with strong socialist roots, largely because the
family speaks for a similar loss of purpose and a profound
disappointment in the Welfare state, but also because they
retain their enthusiasm, self-initiative, and feisty
spirit. The Kahn’s son is a young agitator whose story

runs through all parts of the trilogy. In Chicken ngp 3339

196

Barley (1957), he joins his Communist mother in organizing
anti-fascist act in London’s East End. The play covers two
decades of frustration in political activism, during which
Ronnie and his mother Sarah struggle to hold on to their
commitment.

Defeated first of all by an apathetic system, they
find themselves also opposed by Ronnie’s sister who is
tired of political in-fighting. Ada complains particularly
about party labels that stand between people: "God in
heaven save me from the claptrap of a three-penny pamphlet.
How many friends has the Party lost because of lousy,
meaningless titles they gave to people" (Vol. I, 42). She
continues, complaining next about working-class activists
like her parents who do not really want to eliminate "the
jungle” of industrialism, but surreptitiously hope to own
the industrial complex themselves. Later, a friend is
critical of Sarah for using simplistic terms, like good and
evil, to explain everything. Speaking of Sarah he says,
"For her the world is black and white. If you’re not white
so you must be black." He added, "The only thing that
mattered was to be happy and eat. Anything that made you
unhappy or stopped you from eating was the fault of
capitalism. Do you think she ever read a book on political
economy in her life? Bless! Someone told her socialism was
happiness so she joined the party" (Vol.1, 62).

Even Ronnie, tired of the struggle, accuses her of

197

putting her party loyalties before the needs of the family.
He is disillusioned with communism after the Russian
invasion of Hungary. But Sarah does not falter in her
conviction, "Socialism is my light, can you understand
that? A way of life" (Vol.I, 74). Begging Ronnie not to
decamp, she tells him about a neighbor who saved Ada’s life
with a bowl of chicken soup with barley. Through this
anecdote, it becomes clear that the community spirit of
cooperation and caring is more important to Sarah than
particulars of the party’s ideology:

Nothing means anything! There! Philosophy! I

know! So? Nothing! Despair--die then! Will that

be achievement? To die? You don’t want to do

that, Ronnie. So what if it all means nothing?

When you know that you can start again. Please,

Ronnie, don’t let me finish this life thinking I

lived for nothing. We got through, didn’t we?

We got scars but we got through. You hear me,

Ronnie? You’ve got to care, you’ve got to care

or you’ll die. (Vol. I, 75)

Ronnie tries to embrace her words, but he fails, "I--I
can’t, not now, it’s too big, not yet--it’s too big to care
for it, I--I..." (Vol.I, 75).

The scene is uncomfortable, partly because Sarah seems
to demand too much. Like Ronnie, audiences today feel
they probably can not follow Sarah’s advice, but they
respond to the sincerity of someone who does care in an age
when it is more fashionable to be cynical. In the mid-

fifties, audiences were rather startled by the emotional

outbursts. John Garforth, for example, writer for Encore,

198

commented at length on the weaknesses in Wesker’s impulses,
but ended his article by praising them:

He has little idea of what we should do, but by

God he cares! He cares enough to traipse around

the country begging support from philistine trade

unionists, he cares enough to go to gaol against

nuclear diplomacy, to look naive and perhaps look
pompous, because it is the only thing to do.

Maybe these things are grotesquely insufficient,

as we all feel when we vote Labour and sit down

in Trafalgar Square, but we have to do something,

if only to show we care. For when we stop

caring, we may as well be dead. (Vol.I, 43)

Wesker’s search for values, his passion, and his relentless
sense of responsibility caught the imagination of many who
had already been stirred by Osborne and Arden.

What they imagined in Wesker was a simple worker who
revealed the truth about working-class life and socialist
ideals in one or two gripping dramas. What they got was a
playwright who was driven more by a righteous indignation
than a political ideology, and who refused to conform to
the latest fashions, and who planned to make a career of
playwriting. Wesker was not their simple worker-poet or a
party mouthpiece, but a complex playwright concerned about
the basic morality which protects the individual. He
subscribed to socialist values as long as they coincided
with humanist issues. Hence, socialism in any narrow sense
was never the issue so much as a protest against the many

variations on tyranny which constrict the human spirit.

Indeed, throughout his plays run the passionate belief

199

in the potential of humankind and a brooding over the
obstacles that deaden aspiration. Some of his sensitivity
is personal, to be sure, in that he has fought what he saw
as an attack by small-minded critics and other
’lilliputians’ in his profession, but from the beginning--
long before he believed in a conspiracy among London
critics--he has championed the rights of Jews, of
Palestinians, of his family, of the Irish, of women, of
indeed anyone whose individualism is threatened.
Particularly in the early years, Wesker’s "ongoing
struggle to achieve justice" was the primary focus of his
plays, and socialism was seen as a remedy for social
injustice. In BEEEE (1958), for example, he indirectly
attacked the crippling effect of class attitudes. In this
second part of the trilogy we never see Ronnie Kahn, but we
feel his influence on Beattie Bryant, an impressionable,
young girl from a rural poor family who would like to know
as much as he does about politics and classical music.
Throughout, she badgers her family with Ronnie’s teachings:
It’s no good having friends who scratch each
'other’s back,’ he say. ’The excitement in
knowing people is to hand on what you know and to
learn ’what you don’t know. Learn from me,’ he
say, I don t know much but learn what I know’.
(Vol.I, 114)
Beattie’s family is annoyed, but polite for the most part,

and listen even though they are absorbed by other, everyday

details of their lives. She continues with her preaching

200

and teaching as she puts on for them a record of Bizet’s

L’Arlesienne Suite,

 

Now list. This is a simple piece of music, it’s
not highbrow but it’s full of living. And that’s
what he say socialism is. ’Christ,’ he say.
’Socialism isn’t talking all the time, it’s
living, it’s singing, it’s dancing, it’s being
interested in what go on around you, it’s being
concerned about people and the world’" and she
dances around the room. "Listen to that Mother.
Is it difficult? Is it squit? It’s light. It
make me feel light and confident and happy. God,
Mother, we could all be so much more happy and
alive. (Vol.I, 128-9)

The scene has a description of socialism which is very
close those which Wesker used in his 1960 pamphlet,

O,Mother, l§.lE Worth It? which he used to stir up trade

 

union support for Centre 42.

In the third act the tension mounts, however, as it
becomes more and more apparent that the city boy who seems
to know so much about intellectual matters is not planning
to honor his commitment to her. Beattie’s family is
justifiably angry with Ronnie and with her. They argue
with Beattie, urging her to re-embrace their way of life.
As long as she believes that she has learned very little
from Ronnie, she heeds their advice, but she is also angry
that she has no roots, no understanding of the forces that
rule their lives, and no power to change things.

Beattie is frustrated until she again discovers
another opportunity to teach them something. She begins

by quoting Ronnie and stops. She can carry on without

201

him: "D’you hear that" D’you hear it? Did you listen to
me? I’m talking. Jenny, Frankie, Mother--I’m not quoting
no more...God in heaven, Ronnie! It does work, it’s
happening to me, I can feel it’s happened, I’m beginning,
on my own two feet--I’m beginning..." (Vol.I, 14).

Much of this play is autobiographical. Like Beattie,
Wesker achieved some measure of actualization by talking
about the virtues of self-education. But he goes beyond
the autobiographical to attack class prejudices, both from
inside and outside the working classes. He makes it clear
that unspoken strictures limit the working classes who can
better their lives with a will to overcome the inertia of
custom and habit. And Aggmg addresses the problem of post-
war apathy by suggesting that the British middle-class
could also improve their own lives, if Only they would take
some initiative to loosen the rigid class structure.

Wesker continued exploring themes about the stunted
human potential in the third part of the trilogy, A;m

Talking about Jerusalem (1958-59). Here again is the Kahn

 

family, but it’s much later. Ronnie’s sister Ada has
married a veteran of the Spanish Civil War and World War
II. The couple wants to move to a rural Norfolk area where
they can live a natural, rural, noncapitalistic life making
handcrafted furniture, where they can reintegrate work and
living.

Being from the city and already corrupted by the

202

invidious power of capitalist competition, however, Dave
makes some mistakes of his own. And his success is further
blocked by others who are also contaminated by the post-war
industrial system--by disloyal and dishonest customers, by
workers who take no pride in their work, and by competitors
in the factories who can produce furniture at a much lower
cost. Dave and Ada eventually give up their venture and
return to the city, much against Ronnie’s advice. Sounding
the earlier indignation of his mother, he regards their
failure as symptomatic of the contradictions in their
generation:

They sang the Red Flag in Parliament and then

started building atom bombs. Lunatics! Raving

Lunatics! And a whole generation of us laid down

our arms and retreated into ourselves, a whole

generation! But you two. I don’t understand

what happened to you two. I used to watch you

and boast about you. Well, thank God, I thought,

it works! But look at us now, now it’s all of

us. (Vol.I, 215)
By this time Sarah has grown philosophical. She has
learned to accept political defeats, "Did you expect the
world to suddenly focus on them and say ’Ah, socialism is
beautiful’, did you silly boy? Since when did we preach
this sort of poverty?" Ada joins Sarah by explaining to
him that being successful in any idealistic enterprise
requires a whole philosophy of living. One cannot succeed

in a capitalist system merely by making a solitary gesture;

one cannot achieve satisfaction with anything less than a

203

"complete statement," and that requires many others to join
in public and economic cooperation. Without the help of
others, their efforts amounted to nothing more than a
foolish experiment.

It would appear that Wesker is here advocating
socialism because it can afford to protect the worker in a
nonprofit enterprise. There was certainly a time when
Wesker believed in the unqualified power of socialism to
shield the worker from a profit motive. But more than
advance the cause of socialism in Jerusalem, Wesker is
criticizing any system that becomes too large to make
allowances for the nonconforming individual, in this case
the artisan who wants to employ old-fashioned technique.
As Wesker later said, "I don’t believe it is any more
pleasant living in a socialist than a capitalist society if
you are still a tiny cog in a huge industrial machine. The
notion that you own the machine is no comfort" (Avis).
Conscious of being lost in the system, Dave points out the
futility of his dreams to Ronnie:

Face it--as an essential member of society I

don’t really count. I’m not saying I’m useless,

but machinery and modern techniques have come

about to make me the odd man out. Here I’ve
been, comrade citizen, presenting my offerings

and the world’s rejected them. I don’t count,
Ronnie, and if I’m not sad about it you musn’t be
either.

Dave then challenges Ronnie to follow up his own dreams,

to pursue his own socialist ideals, to act on his beliefs.

204

In the end we see the hope of Jerusalem slipping away,
partly the fault of Ronnie’s irresolution and partly the
inability of Dave’s community to support him in his vision.
Discussing the socialist themes of his trilogy to the
Mornipg Star, Wesker said the plays demonstrate that"you
must pay attention to three component aspects of human
activity and relationships if you wish to build a socialist
society":
The first [in Chicken Soup] is the importance
of maintaining a political stand in public. The
second [in Roots] is to do with private
relationships--you don’t only have to talk about
a better society, you have also to consider your
private actions as far as possible. And thirdly
in Jerusalem] there is the question of man’s
relationship to his work. (Avis)
And it could also be said that Wesker’s corollaries to
the socialist themes are that individuals need freedom
enough to make a political stand in public, even when the
stand is not fashionable; one also needs the freedom to be
a participant in the political arena, even with a working-
class background or a limited education; and one needs the
freedom to earn a living wage in a climate that values high
quality products made by the individual, even when they are
not profitable. In short, hindsight shows.us that while
Wesker’s themes have been read largely with a socialist
interpretation, they may also be seen as humanistic.

Moreover, those themes which appear to be inherited from

the politics of his Communist mother, even in his earlier

205

plays about work and exploitation, can more accurately be
read in terms of Wesker’s Jewish background and its
passionate concern with freedom and justice for the
sanctity of the individual.

If 17m Talking about Jerusalem was significant for its

 

discussions about economic relationships, then even more
important was The Kitchen (written first in 1956 and
rewritten for production in 1959) which had its setting in
the workplace. Here again is a statement of Wesker’s
outrage at the inhuman treatment workers receive when
production schedules take priority over the employees’
personal problems. One of the few plays of its kind, the
Kitchen focuses almost exclusively on workers at work, in
this case, where food is being prepared and served. The
pace of the rush hour is pressured and unrelenting. Even
when the workers fight violently with each other, fall in
love, incur accidents, and collapse from the strain, the
meal hour proceeds as usual and customers are served with
dispatch. At the end of the lunch hour the new cook
objects to the pace and the impersonal treatment, but
waitresses and cooks carry on with business as usual:
PETER: What do you want?
KEVIN: Well, speak a little human like, will yer please?
PETER: No time, no time. Next.
CYNTHIA: Two cod.
JACKIE: One cheese salad.
VIOLET: One ham salad. [Tearfully after someone else
has knocked into her].

BETTY: My steaks ready yet?
VIOLET: A fruit flan and two coffees.

206

GASTON: About time.
BETTY: I’m sorry.
DAPHNE: Two roast chicken...(Vol.II, 45)

During the interlude Peter tries to bring into the
factory-like atmosphere the human touch:

We are all given a chance to dream. No one is

going to laugh, we love each other, we protect

each other--someone tell us a dream, just to us,

no one else, the ovens are low, the customers

gone, Marango is gone,it’s all quiet. God has

given us a chance now, we never have the
opportunity again, so dream--some--who?

Dimitri--you, you dream.first. (Vol.II, 49)

But no one can think of anything significant to talk about,
and few want to reveal their personal selves. Later, when
pressed by his work, Peter remembers a disappointment in
his own failure to relate a dream: "I can’t, I can’t. I
can’t dream in a kitchen!" (Vol.II, 61).

Only when Peter, the erratic fish cook, violently
loses his temper is the assembly line brought to a stop.
Mr. Marango the proprietor has become angry with him for
feeding a vagrant, Monique, his lover, has just spurned
him, and when orders have backed.up,‘Violet has tried to
serve herself from his station. Unable to stand the
pressure, Peter attacks the gas line which feeds the
stoves. His hands are badly hurt in the fight that ensues.
Only then does the boss take notice of his workers. Peter
comments sarcastically, "Now he caresfl' As they help Peter

to the hospital, Mr. Marango questions the workers’

ingratitude, "Why does everybody sabotage me, Frank? I

207

give work, I pay well, yes? They eat what they want, don’t
they? I don’t know what more to give a man. He works, he
eats, I give him moneyu This is life» isn’t it?" .And he
shouts at Peter, ”What more do you want? What is there
more, tell me?" (Vol.II, 68-9). We can assume that, once
Marango collects himself, service as usual is resumed.

Although the play brings the workers into focus and
denounces their exploitation, nowhere does Wesker advocate
a socialist corrective. To read the Kitchen narrowly as an
ideological statement overlooks a deeper commitment in
Weskerfis principles to basic human compassion. Following
the success of the Kitchen, Wesker wrote a variety of plays
which similarly featured men frustrated in their
professions by a society that holds a flagrant disregard
for the individual.

In Chips with Everything (1960), a banker’s son and a
young serviceman who can’t stop smiling are tyrannized by
the officers and their demands of conformity to
regulations. For some perverse Oedipal reason, Pip wants
to be an enlisted man, although he qualifies for officerks
training. He refuses to join the officers, even when he
has no real sympathy'for his mates.!kesays with disdain
that the working classes breed babies and they eat chips
with everything, "Chips with every damn thing" (Vol.III,
17).

Despite Pip’s desultory personality and his

208

unconscious choice to associate with the working classes to
rebel against his wealthy father, we are drawn to his
cause, his right to be a rich boy in a working man’s army.
And we watch with some feeling of helplessness as the
officers wear him down. As critic Glenda Leeming points
out. the‘conversion happens in stages, first as Pip first
realizes why he’s rebelling, and then decides ”he is
incapable of becoming one of the chip-eating masses"
(Wesker 62L

Smiler’s case is even sadder. Because they are unable
tx>"train him to the maximum of efficiency, discipline, and
obedience," that is to stop his smiling, the officers
torment him with insults and repetition drills to the last
scene in which he appears a completely broken man. He has
run away in a blind fury and has returned a bewildered
child. His mates bathe his bleeding feet and put him to
bed, but the Pilot Officer wants him arrested anyway for
desertion. In defiance, the men surround him on his bed,
all except Pip. While the Pilot Officer is shouting out
orders for their arrest as well, Pip begins to change from
an airman’s uniform into an officer’s. He has capitulated
to protect the men:

Don/t worry, Charles, nor you, Ginger, nor you,

Andrew-~none of you, don’t worry, you shan’t be
harmed--it was a good act. We like you for it,

we’re proud of you, happy with you--you do agree,
don t you, sir? These are men we need and these
are the men we must keep. We are not hard men,

209

Charles--don‘t think ill of use, the stories you

read, the tales you hear. We are good, honest,

hard-working like yourselves and understanding;
above all we are understanding, aren’t we, sir?

There, that’s a good fit, I think. (Vol.III, 67)

Pip then takes the roster and reads it with the authority
of an officer. The destruction of Pip and Smiler is
complete.

Capitalism and the army as institutions would have
been easy targets for Wesker’s social criticism. The focus
of his attack, however, was not primarily on the threat of
capitalism or the military LGE s_g, but more specifically
on the forces of destruction that he apparently finds
isolatable within any system, forces that undermine the
human spirit, forces that arise in all aspects of human
endeavor and cut across the boundaries of all institutions.
What destroyed Pip and the Smiler, for instance, was
intolerance for diversity, a pernicious impulse that is not
restricted to any one ideology or government body.

Narrow-minded authority which kills the "yeast of a
creative artist’s personal vision” was the theme of
Wesker’s next major play, Their Vepy Own and Golden City
(1963-64). In it, he attacks petty ill will, jealousy or
lack of faith which stands in the way of implementing a
grand and new project. The "lilliputian" mentality, as
Wesker later put it, refers to "the mean-spirited person

who feels compelled to reduce people to his own miserable

stature" (Thg Journalists 144). He offered examples:

 

210

The lilliputian lover competes with his (or her)
loved one instead of complementing her. The
lilliputian journalist resents the intervieweeks
fame, influence or achievement rather than
wishing to honour it or caution it or seriously
question it. the lilliputian bureaucrat
(involved in the same process, but in reverse)
seeks to maintain his own size by no t
acknowledging the possibility of growth in those
over whom he officiates; he doesn’t 3mg down to
size, he keeps down to size. The lilliputian
revolutionary is more concerned to indulge
resentments or pay off private scores than to
arrive at justice. (The Journalists 12)

 

One victim of a lilliputian bureaucracy is Andrew Cobham of

Their Very Own and Golden City who tries to find support

 

for building six model cities, six golden cities which he
hopes will "lay the foundations of a new way of life for
all society" in "England’s green and promised land"
(VOl.II, 176). It is a dream he has had since he was
young: "cities of light and shadeuucities for lovers that
frighten no one".cosy cities, family cities.ucities for
crowds and lone wolves.ucities with sound for the blind
and colour for the deaf" (VOl.II, 187-88). He needs to
find, however, trade union endorsement and 16,000
subscribers who will pay to build the cities in
installments over five years’ time.

Andy’s project bears an uncanny resemblance to
Wesker’s the early stages with Centre 42 --its six music
festivals, its push for subscriptions and its compromises.
Like Wesker, Andy is hampered by a disbelieving political

climate, and he is ultimately defeated by short-sighted

211

bureaucrats and politicians who, ignoring the potential of
art to act as a remedy for insane behavior in this world,
succumb to "tarnished values and confused manners" (a
phrase Wesker borrowed from.RuskinL. His efforts are so
frustrated by a lack of support in government and labor
unions that only one city is ultimately built, much to
Cobham’s disappointment. What finally disheartens him is
the unavoidable fact of compromise. Although he achieves
some degree of public acknowledgement for his work, he has
bargained away his dreams. And he bitterly blames the
leftist political forces around him:

Prefects! That’s all; the Labour movement

provides prefects to guard other men/s principles

for living. Oh we negotiate for their better

application, shorter working week and all that

but--prefects! They need them, we supply them.

(Vol. II, 202).
He feels betrayed by the very community he had sought to
endorse. And out of this experience he concludes that--
whatever the pmflitical affiliation--there are politicians
who need to control the outcome, even at the expense of
those who would like to support their cause. Cobham makes
his point between clenched teeth, "I don‘t suppose there’s
such a thing as democracy, really, only a democratic way of
manipulating power. .And equality? None of that either,
only a gracious way of accepting inequality" (VOl.II, 202-
203). The play ends with a flashback to the hopeful, or

possibly ironic, words of Cobham as a young man who asserts

212

his faith in a benevolent outcome, whatever the obstacles:
YOUNG JESSIE: They’ve locked us in.
YOUNG ANDY: I can/t believe there’s not one door open in
this place
YOUNG JESSIE: You and your stories about golden cities--
they’ve locked us in.
YOUNG ANDY: I know there’s a door open, I tell you...
YOUNG JESSIE: He’s found one, he’s found one--Paul’s found
an open door...
YOUNG JESSIE: How did you know, my ragged-arsed bothers?
YOUNG ANDY: Because we’re on the side of the angels, lass.
YOUNG JESSIE: --and are people good?
YOUNG ANDY: Aye--and people are good... (VOl.II, 203-204)
Cobham/s disillusionment must have been Wesker’s way of
expressing his own pain at the pending demise of Centre 42.
Especially in scenes where Cobham asks if it35"better'to
risk defeat or compromise," Wesker must have been weighing
the dire consequences of his refusing to compromise
his own artistic aims against the economic survival of the
Roundhouse. Like Cobham, Wesker resented the political in-
fighting and commercial considerations that dominated and
exploded their ideals.
During this period of intense wrangling with the
directors of the Roundhouse and Centre 42, Wesker wrote two

plays which began to show his shift away from explicitly

socialist themes--The Friends (1967) and The Old Ones

 

(1970). In the Friends, as McGrath pointed out in his
Black Dwarf review, Wesker began to question the effects of
social revolution as compared to scientific revolution, of

collective ownership, of sacrificing friendship and unity

for a cause. And in The Old Ones, political institutions

 

213

play no appreciable role at all. But in all these plays
Wesker tenaciously pursues old themes which champion the
rights of the individual. And he seeks those abstract
qualities that make human relationships worth redeeming,
while repudiating the forces that make men suffer.

In The Friends and The Old Ones, we find once again

 

defiance in characters who are oppressed, in this case by
old age and death, and once again, themes of hope and
despair in an utter rejection of defeat. Fashionable or
not, Wesker continued to articulate the Jewish temperament
of ”melancholy optimism" and nineteenth century socialist
ideals which protect the common man and believe in the
restorative value of high art. His ideas in these plays
have not changed. They are essentially echoes of his

trilogy or Chips or The Kitchen, pronounced earlier as good

 

examples of socialist theater. But two changes have
occurred: Wesker’s characters are no longer the mouthpieces
for socialist themes since they are no longer victims
exclusively of economic and social oppression, and the
expectations of his audience have shifted. Having been
educated by the changes of the 605, they now expect more
leftist, radical theater. So Wesker’s plays with their
nineteenth century socialist principles seemed oddly out of
place next to Edward Bond/s plays, the 7:84, Belt and Brace
Roadshow, or the Gay Sweatshop. Although Wesker moved

slightly away from socialism in the selection of his

214

subject matter, he has not changed as significantly as his
readership which, at the same time, shifted to the left.
In retrospect, we can also recognize some aspects of his
earlier work that indicated a basically conservative
approach.

Speaking in 1977 to the communist newspaper, the

Morping Star, he defended the consistency of his position:

 

I think that while I’ve lost none of my capacity
for outrage against inequality and injustice, and
racism and so on, I suppose I’m more and more
worried about contributing toward the creation of
a state of society which then considers it is
doing me the favour of giving me my liberty.
I suppose more than anything I am disturbed
at what appears to be the emergence of Socialism
in the east as a system which graciously, and
often not so graciously, confers and takes away
individual liberty and feels it has the right to
do so. (Chambers)
Because it deliberately ignores the collective, his
statement sounds almost reactionary for a socialist
playwright. And many reading it would feel vindicated in
their long-held opinions that Wesker was only a socialist
in the abstract. And yet, those who expected a Marxist
socialist were bound to be disappointed because, although
he has always concerned himself with socialist issues
against exploitation and for a social justice, he was never
fully in agreement with all of socialismfs aim. Indeed, he
subscribed more faithfully'to a profound individualism,

and in that conviction was a source of conflict with the

-215

collective principles of socialism. After the collapse of
Centre 42 in 1969, and while Wesker was under attack from
McGrath and others, he simply resolved that conflict by
rebuffing any group identification, particularly a
political affiliation.

Shortly after Wesker’s debate with McGrath, Wesker wrote
another play set in the workplace. He wrote 322
Journalists (1972) after spending six weeks observing the
staff of the Sunday Times in which he used a format very
similar to that of the Kitchen, in that each employee
operated out of a work station and the story unfolds amidst
productive activity. Like the Kitchen, there is remarkably
little plot. The emphasis of the play is rather on the
methods of production and the motives of the workers who
are,in this case, situated in a newsroom. Significantly,
because Wesker was beginning to drop his socialist themes,
the play was not about worker exploitation, but about the
harm caused by jaded and cynical newspaper writers.
Finding in the journalist a mirror of lilliputianism in all
of us, Wesker’s attacked the corrupting effect of what he
sees as a way of life in Britain--the sardonic remark, the
lack of appreciation for excellence, the need to mock
seriousness.

The lead character in the Journalists, therefore, is

 

not one of the oppressed, but among the oppressors. She is

a news analyst who searches out likely subjects which she

216

uses as object lessons for her readers. One of her targets
is a National Health Service gynecologist who refuses to
perform an abortion on a 12-year old girl. Mary wants her
reporters to find out if the doctor’s married, if she has
had an unhappy love affair, if they can get a photograph of
her, "even if it’s of her peering reluctantly round a door"
(106). Over the objections of others who call it ’Harold
Robbins’ journalism, Mary carries on. Without bothering to
look first for the truth of the matter, Mary suspects
everyoneVs motives, except her own.

Among the giants she tries to topple is a charismatic
MP who is allegedly the leader of a band of young people
who act as a foil for the ’Angry Brigade’ and who play
Robin Hood for the elderly. They are suspected of robbing
supermarkets for old-age pensioners and banks for the
strikers’ payroll. Also they allegedly kidnap a store
manager to teach him a lesson in civility. Mary is
determined to expose thenu "It’s sentimental nonsense which
belongs neither to our nature, our history or our situation
and I despise it" (The Journalists 121).

Trying to warn Mary to back off, her editor tells her
that as a journalist she should not exaggerate the facts to
support her construction of the truth. As one of the other
characters later said sardonically, a journalist is one

"who possesses himself of a fantasy and lures the truth

217

towards it" (133). Attempting to counter that impulse in
his staff, the editor admonishes Mary, "You can’t reveal,
you can only infornu" She must examine the complexities of
the news before arriving at simplistic judgments,
regardless of how morally correct she believes she is:

".we have the power to tip it one way or the
other; not simply by what we say but 2113 may mg
£21 _i_t;. The habit of knocking down gods is very
seductive and contagious and weVre very good at
being spiteful. I’m not all that proud of the
history of journalism, Mary, but I don‘t want to
the Sunda nggm perpetuating it. (223

JournaTists 213

 

As it turns out, Mary"s speculation about the gang and its
leader seem to be correct, and the paper has the
opportunity to break the news first. But the editor kills
the story without telling her, partly because the details
' are unconfirmed, largely because it appears that Mary’s son
is one of the idealistic bandits. We are left wondering if
the editor’s choice was in the best interest of reporting
the truth and, whether Mary would have made the same
decision if she were put in a similar position. More than
that, for the first time in Wesker’s plays we are forced to

realize in the Journglists that it is not only tyranny that

 

causes suffering, but also the demeaning effect on
management which is driven to keep the machinery in motion.
Even the oppressor may be intimidated by the system. The
topic is something of a switch, since up to that point,

Wesker’s had focused exclusively on victims of Oppression.

218

Using the Journalists, Wesker fully developed the

 

destructive nature of intimidation, an idea which runs
throughout his works to one degree or another, but becomes
particularly potent in his plays about employer/employee

relationships. In The Journalists and The Old Ones,

 

 

 

 

however, where power struggles lie outside of economic
relationships, Wesker laid out other forms of intimidation:
the brutal potential of the press, and in The Old Ones, the
scarcity of time and the pain of inevitable deterioration
for those who "have nothing to lose but their life” (III,
160).

The theme of intimidation is handled somewhat
ambiguo’usly in 1'22 nggmmg Eggs-1; (1972) when a
magnanimous, but arrogant employer violates British class
etiquette by attending uninvited the wedding party of an
employee. At evening’s end, the shoe manufacturer Litvanov
has been humiliated by the very people he controls in his
factory and he has been forced to accept the wide disparity
between his station and theirs, even though he was born a
peasant. Critic Benedict Nightingale rightly points out
that it is the system itself that is under fire, rather
than the manager or the worker (Dornan Interviewfl. It is
the system which drives apart human beings and which blocks
a recognition of their commonality. But, depending on the
director’s preference or even the audience’s viewpoint, the

play could accommodate just as easily either a socialist

219

or capitalist interpretation. More important, Wesker could
have tipped the balance himself in the writing, but he
opted instead for a delicate handling of both sides. An
earlier Wesker might have portrayed a less sympathetic,
flatter figure in Litvanov--someone more like Officer Hill
in EEiEE or the Kitchenfs boss Marango--but the mature, yet
still self-righteous Arnold Wesker settled for the more
judicious theme which somehow makes everyone a victim.
Nowhere is his defense of the individual over the

state more in evident than it is in his reshaping of

 

Shakespeare’s Merchant gf Venice. In Wesker’s Merchant

 

(1975-76); Shylock tends more to his scholarly pursuits
than to'his wealth. But when his close gentile friend
Antonio wants to borrow money, he cannot lend it, according
to Venetian law, without a contract which.specifies when
the loan will fall due and what the conditions of the
default should be. To make a mockery of the regulations
governing jews in business, which both Antonio and Shylock
find injust, they agree to draw up a bogus contract which
requires a pound of flesh as recompense in the event that
Antonia must default. In this respect, the openhearted and
generous Shylock is similar to the expansive Litvanov and,
like the manufacturer, cannot accept that a basically good
man like him must be governed by humiliating laws and

customs. In the end, Portia saves Antonio, just as she

220

does in Shakespeare’s version, but the Venetian courts
punish him anyway'by‘taking.away*his books. A victim of
the system which drives a wedge between two well—meaning
parties, Shylock leaves the courtroom quite embittered.

Two points make The Merchant important for the

 

discussion here. First, the play comes closest to
exploring Wesker’s understanding of the conflict between
the individual and the state. Not long after he wrote 2A3
Merchant, Wesker lined out his distinction between.’state-
right freedom’, in which the individual is subordinated to
the state, and ’birth-right freedom’, in which the state
entrusts the individual with certain "responsibilities of
freedoml (Distinctions 223-226). In his spring, 1979 essay
he argued that the conditions of a state-right freedom
should be tolerated only in times of crisis. But, he
lectures, citizens should be educated sufficiently to

recognize a true crisis. Possibly recalling his stern
words to McGrath in which he wrote, "we cannot borrow
’other people’s urgency’," Wesker warned against assuming
that any national dilemma constituted a crisis. He
admonished Britons to keep some perspective, to maintain an
awareness of history and to call upon the "nation’s
collective conscience, a kind of ever-present and
constantly added-to body of writings which persistently nag
away and question what a majority has taken for granted, or

been misled into accepting, or been forced to accept"

221

(224). He 'was referring to the contributions by
legislators, judges, philosophers, politicians, and, of
course, artists, who keep the debate over the endowment of
individuality and free thinking alive.

Second, The Merphant is yet another example of

 

 

wesker’s drift away from explicitly socialist themes.
Indeed, lengthy discussions tend to raise religious
questions more than political ones. From the time of :22
Merchant on, over the last twelve years, Wesker has written
mainly one-acts, in which an institution, political or

religious, is rarely mentioned (One More Ride gm the

 

Merry-go-Round, which is not a political play, is an

’

 

exception). He has concentrated, instead, on isolated
persons, mostly women, who are imprisoned by disease,
stereotyping, loneliness, mistakes in judgment. In
Mothers, Yard Sale, Whatever Happened pg Betty Lemon, Annie
Wobbler, they are alone--separated from lovers, at odds
with their children, out of reach of family, unfulfilled by
their profession. In each of the vignettes the women endure
their isolation, but they also fight their oppressor,
however abstract, demonstrating always a: fierce
determination to maintain self-respect and dignity. Only
in Caritas (1980), a play about a cloistered nun, is the
woman situated within a system. But here the system is

again threatening as she feels the attempt to absorb her.

222

But in all of the later plays, regardless of the
circumstances, the woman fights bravely to overcome her
private oppressor.

It is difficult to say why Wesker has brought his
talents to bear almost exclusively on these figures. In
many ways, they remind us of his own shaken confidence
since the days when he realized he was no longer part of
the latest London craze in theater. He told a Guardian
interviewer, "I don‘t think I’ve quite recovered from that

disastrOus production of The Friends in London. It was the

 

director’s fault--my fault. I allowed the actors to be
terrorized by one other actor" (Leeming, Wesker 93). Wesker
may also find the one-woman production easy to cast and
easy to produce since he has had some trouble finding a
venue. And too, having been accused for many years by
feminists of not understanding the female psyche, Wesker
may have made these women a deliberate study in fortitude.
Or, and this seems most likely, the portraits of these
women may be in some way autobiographical.

In his essays, in his large productions and small,
Wesker consistently and staunchly defended the primacy of
the individual. Early Wesker celebrated individuality in
the working classes, in families and at work. Later Wesker
found interest in the individuals from all socio-economic
levels, but they are isolated. The full spectrum of his

works illustrates more accurately a spirited outrage at

223

intimidation in all its forms and "supremacy of the human
being over the state, over repressive authority, over that
which aims to frustrate initiative, crippleeimagination,
induce conformity (Distinctions 283).

This emphasis contradicts, of course, earlier
characterizations of Wesker as primarily a socialist
writer. Where convenient, Wesker drew on his socialist
upbringing and sympathies, but over the years he has
refined his stance and his writings to reflect a less
political and more ”universal" interest in the human
condition. As Barker described it, "Wesker’s work shows a
decline of faith in corporate action and a retreat into

individual concerns, a redefinition of the meaning of

revolution from the social to the personal" ("All at Sea

 

Without a Rudder" 10)

The watershed appears to fallin the early seventies,
around the time of his debate with McGrath. From that
point on Wesker"s plays deal more and more with those who were
abused, not by a particular system, but by misfortune. And
the solutions, if offered, could rarely be construed as
political. That is not to say, however, that Wesker has
lost his sense of commitment. To the contrary, he is still
writes with all his principles in full view. But without
socialist solutions for his isolated figures, the

palliatives seem SO‘weak that the characters graphically

224

illustrate what Wesker has been telling us all along, that
because of differences in values, experiences,
personalities, and backgrounds, communication between human
beings is "far more difficult than [we] imagined"
(Distinctions 8).

Where Wesker’s plays have left off, with isolated
individuals battling the forces which create barriers
between human beings, McGrath’s plays began. In most of

his earliest.works--Events While Guarding phe Bofors Gun

 

(pub. 1966), Random Happenings $2 the Hebrides (pub. 1972),
and Bakke’s Night gf Fgmg_(pub. l973)--we find lone heroes,
some of~them wildly rebellious, in direct conflict with
social institutions, and not always offering socialist
solutions. Unlike some of Wesker’s later lead characters,
however, McGrath’s figures always protest social injustice,
even while suffering personal abuse. In Events While

Guapging the Bofors Gun, for example, we have Gunner

 

O’Rourke, "a bmawling, hot-tempered, sardonic,
irresponsible man, brooding on reaching his 30th birthday"
(Mitchell 402). After becoming "blackly drunkfl'(TRourke
exposes the hypocrisy of his superior officer and the
absurdity of his guard duty when he first throws himself
out of the NAAFI canteen window and later commits suicide.
O’Rourke’s death is a real inconvenience to Evans whose
hopes for promotion are ruined. He dies next to the Bofors

gun, drawing attention to the pettiness of a system which

225

demands wasted manhours to guard obsolete weapons that
Evans says, "somebody might need". later on, when the time
comes" (9). In O’Rourke’s last speech he says sarcastically

".as my thirtieth year looms up to strike me
between the eyes, I would indeed do anything,
anything, to preserve and shelter from all
Bolshevik harm, a thing so beautifully useless,
so poignantly past it, so wistfully outdated, as
my youth, or a Bofors gun. I would, and I shall,
lay down my life for it. I have tried already,
and failed. Here, in the sacred presence, of the
Bofors gun, I can only succeed. (83)

 

The lone character in Bakke’s Night 2i Famg, in this
case a prisoner in his last night on death row, is
similarly manic, possessed by an "ultimate despair deep

w

within? (Bofors Gun 8). Although cool on the surface, he

 

too reveals a quiet desperation while he toys with the
consciences of the warden and priest, both corrupted by the
immoral system of capital punishment. He plays a game in
which he seduces his jailers into into questioning their
sense of reality, making them doubt their confidence in the
truth. At one point, for example, Bakke drops hints of
his innocence to the priest who believes he might have, at
last, heard what actually happened when the girl was
murdered. But Bakke then calls himself a compulsive liar.
Using lines from Agmlgm which call into question the
problem of appearances and reality, he also discloses that
he was onceean actor. And yet, his earlier hints seem so

truthful that the priest and the audience are left

226

wondering if he were, in fact, innocent of the crime for
which he was finally electrocuted.

Jimmy Litherland in Random Happenings g; the Hebrides,

 

 

_m The Social Democrat and the Stormy Sea is another

 

 

misfit, although not quite so uncontrollable as Bakke or
O’Rourke. As a young city boy from Liverpool trying to
find a home in the Scottish islands, he often finds himself
at odds with their values and, as a result, strays
momentarily from his own goal to advance the case for
socialism in the Hebrides. Litherland is a person
accustomed to winning and, like Bakke and O’Rourke, forces
or manipulates others to get what he wants. Unlike Bakke
and O’Ro'urke, however', he ultimately learns the value of
communal life and the collective solution. After being
rejected by Catriona (a part written for Liz MacLennan),
Jimmy goes off to London in his newly elected position as a
Labour MP and marries a fashionable woman with conservative
connections. He rediscovers the importance of the Hebrides
-'in a battle against an American owned corporation that
wants to relocate to a more profitable area, destroying
local opportunity for employment and ruining family
businesses. Although the play lacks the confidence of many

that follow it, Random Happenings demonstrates the:first

 

signs of the style which McGrath was soon to develop. It
is the style of a political theater in which the hero is no

longer the central feature of the work and vague themes of

227

social injustice found in earlier plays give way to issues
clearly aligned with radical socialism.

Unruly Elements, also published in 1972, was another

 

play written during a period of transition. Performed
originally at the Everyman Theatre (Liverpool) as a May Day
celebration of six pieces, the published version contains
only three short vignettes. They are tales of the urban
wounded, almost every character is somehow maimed
psychologically, the human dignity destroyed by the
pressures of a post-industrial society, by the corruption
of a "commercially oriented media world" (Gibbs interview
XIII). In "Angel of the Morning," the neurotics are the
seductiVe Tralee, a sentinal for ’urban-guerrillas’ who
have_chosen to loot the home of a middle-aged, white collar
worker, and Mr. Lodwick who cannot decide which is more
alarming, the news that his daughter robs banks to support
a terrorist organization or the notion that her friends
have stolen his life savings.

In "Plugged-in to History," Derek and Kay have no hope
of meaningful communication. Their failure to talk to each
other as strangers on a park bench is representative of the
ruptured male/female relationships in their private lives.
Derek has been carrying on a violent exchange with a woman

whom he genuinely loves, and Kay responds with stories that

sound like news bulletins:

228

Thailand Secures Itself Bankok Monday. High
Thai Military men revealed late last night that
iJI’SOft/ areas in Northern Thailand vulnerable
to Red infiltration, American Pacification
experts had already taken over the administration
of villages and communities. ’We intend to re-
organise these people’, said an anonymous
American peace leader, ’in such a way as to
facilitate their total retention of the
democratic freedoms without external interference
in their affairs..." (VII).

As McGrath says, "She eventually breaks under the pressure
of being ’plugged in’ not to her own history but to an
artificial one created by an outside power. (Gibbs
Interview XIII)

‘The last piece in Unruly Elements, "They’re Knocking

 

Down the.Pie-Shopq" concerns a daughter who, unjaded by
losing causes, tries to motivate her family into actively
protesting the loss of a small pork pie shop to monopoly
capitalism. Her engineering brother hopes they will, in
the construction process, widen the road. Her father is
"theoretically correct" but unmoved, and her mother rushes
out to buy the last pies before they are replaced by an
”American "posh” hotel. What makes this play transitional
is the political content which only occasionally centers on
specific socialist causes, thereby linking.ittx>earlier
works, and the stylized pieces which are McGrath’s
experimental attempts to get away from the theater of
naturalism. The loose format is reminiscent of agit-prop,
which is usually played as a series of stories without a

storyline using cartoon-like props and scenery, and

229

television commercials. The scenery here , for example,
consists ofloversized.objects--a six foot tooth brush, a
ten foot cokelbottle, giant detergent boxes--to break out
of the mimetic mode.

The loose structure of monologues and the exaggerated
characters are a clear departure from the naturalistic
plays which he wrote earlier and the first sign of the
resolution he had made between 1968 and 1972 for a
workers’ theater. The forms were not new, of course, since
much oleritish political theater in the 605 and 705 was
already experimenting with similar devices, but they were
an experiment for McGrath and a trial run for later plays..

By'the time that §$§2.12.E22.§2§ was published (1977),
McGrath.had‘clearly hit his stride: he and the others had
taken 7:84 through its infancy, he had worked with the
Ardens on a new version of Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance
(1972), and he had realized some measure of success with

Trees mm the Wind which was first performed at the

 

Edinburgh Festival in 1971, and had repeat performances at
the Northcott Theatre (Exeter) in 1975 and at the Royal

Court in 1980. More important, with Trees imthe Wind he

 

had begun to work with music in a serious way, something he
had not tried since the two short plays he wrote with
Dudley Moore in 1960 and 1963. But the focus on a love

interest with four realistic characters was a throw-back to

230

a naturalistic structure, so McGrath deliberately looked
elsewhere for ideas.

By 1977, 7:84 had also had a second hit in their first
7:84 production, The Cheviot, the Stagy and the Blacky
Black Oil (pub. 1974). It is a play which protests the
appropriation of Scotland/s land over the centuries by the
power structure--for raising sheep, for hunting grouse and
stag, for exploiting the oil reserves--to the exclusion of
the peOple who belong to the land. Using the Scottish
Ceilidh, it was McGrath’s first real attempt to use local
issues as primary subject matter and the vernacular in
Gaelic folk song and dialog. Added to that, The Cheviot
was popular for its rollicking humor and song, despite the
grave subject matter, and for the unforgettable images of
the reenactment of the closure evictions. His satire of the
Scottish aristocracy drew a guffaw from one ”tweedy lady"
and her ”tweedy husband" from Skye who said, "It’s so nice
to be able to laugh at oneself,” and a young boy picked up
'the more serious theme: "It’ll be great round here when all
this starts happening--when people start demanding their
rights" ("Year of the Cheviot" xvi).

The balance of merriment and message was deliberate,
since it was important to the point of the play and to
McGrath:

One thing I had insisted on was that we broke out

of the ’lament syndrome’. Even since Culloden,
Gaelic culture has been one of lament--for exile,

231

for death, for the past, even for the future.
Beautiful, haunting lament. And in telling the
story of the Highlands since 1745, there are many
defeats, much sadness to relateu But I resolved
that in the play, for every defeat, we would also
celebrate a victory, for each sadness, we would
wipe it out with the sheer energy and vitality of
the people, for every oppression, a‘way to fight
back. At the end, the audience left knowing they
must choose, and that now, of all times, they must
have confidence in their ability to unite and win.
("The Year of the Cheviot" xxvii-viii)

Being their first production, The Cheviot also became an

 

instructive exercise for the 7:84 in playwrighting, since
the members wrote it cooperatively. McGrath was proud of
the process initially, "Not the purist’s improvised
theatre. Not ’collective creativity’, or group therapy.
But a written text that all the company were part of, and
deeply involved in, and excited about"("The Year of the
Cheviot" xi).

Nevertheless, McGrath changed his mind about the open
process of composition, while writing Aggm (pub. 1975)
because, as a routine method for composition, it became
cumbersome and divisive. McGrath was somewhat defensive
about taking over the writing process. He discussed it in
the p1ay’s introduction: "Writing a play can never be a
totally democratic process. They are skills which need
aptitude, long experience, self-discipline and a certain
mental disposition in one individual. They demand leaps in
to the dark, liberated instincts, arrogance of the

imagination and autocracy of the intuition" (9). McGrath

232

apologized possibly because Boom drew more directly on
revolutionary material than any play to date and that Boom

was not as successful structurally as The Cheviot.

 

With its potpourri of short scenes about socialism in
Tanzania, land redistribution in Cuba, and land speculation
in Scotland, m reminds us of Unruly Elements. Another
play written in 1975 is The Game’s 2 Agggy, again a loosely
formated series of scenes that Gunther Klotz, drawing an
analogy to the term Living Newspaper, 1abelledaa"Living
History Bookfl' The form echoes an agit-prop technique that
forces the spectator to concentrate on the relationship of
the scenes because every image is making a point. Often
one scene will present a dialectical opposition to another,
or the sequence will repeatedly reinforce an idea. The
juxtaposition. in either case, creates aldynamic montage
that requires close spectator attention and disciplined
writing.

McGrath seems to enjoy the loose structure because it
allows him to feature all the elements of working-class
theater--short messages of local and current interest
interspersed with humor and music. The "Living History
Book" also breaks away from the middle-class emphasis on
the individual and gives him plenty of political material.
Furthermore, the format is flexible and adapts itself well
to the erratic nature of a touring company. But using the

form repeatedly he risks formulait:and predictable works

233

which audiences can ignore because they think they have
heard it all before. A loose structure also risks a
potentially diffuse message that has little effect. The
technique is best used in short scenes with familiar
subject matter, since it tends to be confusing if the
scenes are sustained.

The loose structure is also unsuited to a play which
attempts to uncover a complex set of hidden relationships.

Such is the case with Baby gnd the Bathwater which has

 

scenes that are deeply moving, but the overall message is
lost while one tries to keep up with the monologues
delivered by the six different and unrelated characters.
In the play are George Orwell, a young girl who has won a
trip to Russia, a middle-aged civil servant, a Guatemalan
woman who has suffered at the hands of the Yankees and the
guerillas in Central America, a South American singer, and
a Yankee soldier fresh from Central America. Each is
somehow satirizing America’s irrational fear of a Russian
takeover and the heartless demolition of human life and
property in the name of protection. One of the most
interesting and complex characters is Orwell who makes no
apologies for being an upper-class spokesperson for the
poor and, in that regard, parodies himself. But he also
deplores the use of his works as a propagandist weapon

against Russia and makes a plea to leave Central America in

234

peace. The built-in contradictions are too complicated for
the serialized nature of the play in which none of the
characters appear together and only a few appear twice, so
the cohesion of the play must be accomplished in the end by
the audience. Klotz finds McGrath’s technique of
stringing many small scenes together innovative, "although
this type of play has not yet succeeded in integrating its
personal stories with the levels of documentary
information..." ("Internationalism and Present British
Drama" 41).

Achieving continuity and cohesion in his scripts is
less a problem when McGrath either develops a strong story
line or uses a character or group of characters to carry
the theme. Looking for a more personal story for £111} i_n
Egg S33, McGrath brought back the misfits in Andy and
Yorry. Andy is a wild man in the tradition Of CYRourke and
Bakke, but the matured McGrath does not give him the same
romantic treatment as he gave the earlier heroes. Andy is
neither the likable, impulsive rebel that we find in
O’Rourke, nor the perceptive insurgent of Bakke, but a
unfulfilled and violent anarchist whom McGrath condemned as
counterproductive to organizational efforts. His character,
however, sets in motion a dialectic which includes "the
backwardness of some elements of working-class living:
attitudes to women, to socialist theory, to sexual

oppression, poetry, myth, etc." (Introduction).

235

In Fish 1 the Sea, McGrath finally pulls together the

 

results of his experimental probes and develops a
purposeful plot with complex characterization without an
emphasis on one individual. The heroic action, for
example, is spread over three figures in the father and
Yorry who are constructively working as political activists
and Mary who resists the more destructive elements of
working-class life, and, at the same time, believes in the
strength of the community. Yorry’s background as an
overprotected boy is interesting in that, in his enforced
isolation, he has become an outsider like Jimmy Litherland,
CYRourke, or Bakke, but he quickly overcomes his alienation
by immersing himself in the communal effort. Although the
storyline of EiEE £2 Egg S23 is episodic, it is held
together by the strength of these characterizations and by
the metaphor suggested by Mao Tse Tung that the "Party or
Front [is] the head and body of a fish, and the population
[is] the water through which it moves" (Introduction),
showing the value of the people as a life-support system
for any movement. Lyrics to the songs, some of McGrath’s
cleverest, carry the theme through the sung narrative and
choruses.

An Older version of Mary surfaces in a later play,

Yobbo Nowt (pub. 1978) about a single mother trying to

 

raise two teenage children after she throws her worthless

236

husband out. At first, Marie is naive about the
exploitation of women in the workplace, but she quickly
learns about the tricks of employers who pay low wages
during a prolonged ”training period” and thereafter for
piece work. She is also educated to the humiliation of
capitalism by a social worker, a newspaper publisher’s
assistant, the wife of an industrialist, and a Labour
candidate whose contact with her fails to sensitize them to
the oppression of a working-class woman. She is a "yobbo
nowt," nobody worth anyone’s attention.

Strangely, the play drew fire from feminists who
objected, one can only speculate, to her self-deprecation
and degradation by others. Their reaction is surprising
since McGrath often writes parts for courageous women who
often must carry the flame alone. Such a part was Bessie
McGuigan/s in Blood Red Roses (pub. 1981) who carries on as
a union organizer regardless of her weak husband, willful
children, and loss of job when the plant closes. When she
tries later to get work, she finds herself blacklisted. In
the last scenes, she is pregnant again, this time with the
baby of a 22-year old. Her situation is daunting in light
of an eroding class consciousness, the "charred industrial
battlefield," the "corpses" of empty factories, the
”unemployed and the youth” (84). Still, Bessie’s last
words, said somewhat sardonically and out of despair, are

"Fight on, eh?" Blood Red Roses was filmed for BBC IV

 

237

(1986) with Liz MacLennan as Bessie and, shortly
thereafter, was adopted for the schools in Strathclyde,
Scotland.

Another remarkable female figure developed by McGrath
is the Guatemalan Rigoberta Menchu who tells her story in

Baby and the Bathwater (first performed in September,

 

 

1984). Quietly she speaks of the invasion of American
forces in Central America and the effects of
destabilisation.on her community. Taken from an eye witness
account published by New Left Books (IuRigoberta Menchu),
her shattering words are those of a woman who has endured
massacres, family loss, and anguish. Given characters like
Bessie McGuigan, Rigoberta Menchu, and Mary, and given the
conscious effort McGrath makes to avoid the cheap laughs he
could get with sexist humor in pubs, the feminist response

to Mariefs character in Yobbo Nowt and the old socialist

 

woman in Little Red Hen is difficult to explain. McGrath/s
own response is unequivocal:

Sometimes I think that there is a sort of coterie
of women in London who tend to be middle-class,
who are removed from the working-class experience
of life. They want to see a completely
idealistic approach to the relationship of men
and women on stage. For our audiences this would
be an utter waste of time. These London women
don’t understand the realities of our audience,
don‘t credit then! with perception and
intelligence. Our strongest and most intelligent
supporters in Scotland are women and that’s
because we show the reality of the working-class
women. Frankly I get thoroughly pissed off with
this idealistic, wanky criticism, because it

238

really is a middle-class fantasy world that

they’re trying to thrust on our work. (McFerran

interview 13)

Besides the use of strong characterization to shape a
play, McGrath has turned occasionally to historical sources

for plot. Little Red Hen is one of the more successful of

 

McGrath’s Lessons in history because it not only relates
how well known socialist MPs leave Scotland with good
intentions, but are absorbed by London’s parliamentary
system. Their stories are related by an ordinary woman
with extraordinary means to analyze the truth for her
granddaughter.

Joe’s Drum is another historically based play about
General Joe Smith of Edinburgh who could stir people to
action with his drum. His function is to prod his
audiences into voting. To that purpose, he chides them for
their apathy in a recent election which gave seats to the
Tories. And then he tells stories from history about
Scottish heroes who have battled for the people so they
might have protected civil rights. In the course of the
play he introduces Tom Muir and Robert Dundas who speak for
themselves and for others like James Connolly. The detail
of history is somewhat tedious for those who are not
Scottish and the structure again is that of a string of
characters. But the characters relate fairly well to each
other and create a pattern of meaning, even though the play

seems complete at the end of the first half.

239

Lately McGrath has been working on recovering the
history of the Scottish people, a trilogy that may contain

The Cheviot, the Stagy and the Black, Black Oil as the

 

first part and, as the second part, Border Warfare, a play

 

about "the making of Edinburgh, the Borders, the lowlands,
and the current north/south divide" (MacLennan letter, 20

July 1987L.Border Warfare will be shown at the Edinburgh
Festival in August, 1988. Linda Mackenney of the 7:84 has
supplemented McGrath’s historical work with a 1983 revival

of The Gorbals Story (1946) about working-class life in

 

Glasgow, and a 1985 reconstruction of Men Should Weep

 

(1947) abOut Glasgow tenement life in the 405. Mackenney
also brOught out in 1985, Am T_i_mg O_’ Strife (1929), a play
about the life of the collier Joe Corrie.

Given the recurring socialist themes of
exploitation and economic hardship, repetition is a real
danger for McGrath’s audiences, and yet, the surprising
variety of non—naturalistic devices and forms which he has
developed keep the performances lively. Indeed, because
the themes and plots are fairly predictable, his plays are
generally noted for their invention and their unflagging
spirit.

One wonders what compels McGrath to continue writing
socialist works at a time when Prime Minister Margaret

Thatcher is dismantling socialism by starving Britain’s

240

National Health Service, crushing unions which strike, and
privatizing the government’s holdings at such a rate that
the trend appears irreversible. Indeed, the condition of
socialisnlin Britain looks critical. Not only could the
government funding for 7:84 evaporate, but their audiences
could turn to the television out of apathy.

The 7:84 company is, to be sure, discouraged, and John
McGrath and Liz MacLennan have obviously considered other
opportunities. McGrath has worked occasionally in New
Zealand, Australia and Hollywood. The company, moreover,
has played the Brecht festival in Toronto and at the
Alliance-Festival in Sydney, Cape Breton (both in 1987).
But, as.Liz MacLennan writes, "Our [1987] election result
was unspeakableu.but the need to change things is more
than ever pressing" (Letter, 20 July 1987). Certainly they
believe that the political climate will change
precipitately, once Thatcher’s policies have their full
effect. Perhaps the 7:84 sees the need now more than ever
for educating the public. Furthermore, they must sense the
necessity for maintaining cohesion among their followers.
At a time like this, ”preaching to the converted," a
perceived weakness that was once levelled against their
work by many critics including David Edgar and Bruce
Birchall, now boosts their ranks and shapes the community
by lending it some sort of unity.

Still, the frustrations of looking for venues,

241

enthusiastic audiences, and stable funding must often seem
as difficult today as they did thirty years ago, when
McGrath, and Wesker as well, had the energy which each new
generation enjoys. The force that drives them (”1 is
perhaps nothing more than dedication and commitment to an
ideal. They are both dreamers of sorts, spinning out moral
visions of what could be and what should be. For the
”melancholy optimist" in Wesker’s plays, the dreams are
often articulated in an abstract and emotional expression
that suggests the possibility of progress within the
system. McGrath/s plays, however biting and sardonic, are
just as hOpeful, advancing the potential of a world without
exploitation, once the system undergoes a radical overhaul.

And both playwrights do battle for the rights of the
worker, using their drama to educate all parties to the
destructive elements of the ruling class. In Wesker’s
estimation, however, courage, blind determination, and a
passionate conviction benefit the individual more than the
support of a political community. Moreover, individual
rights include access to a middle-class education,
including the fine arts, and freedom from intimidation or
the tyranny of alienating ideologies. For McGrath, the
achievement of the workers’ rights is conceivable only when
the people realize they are being exploited and make moves

to effect changeu Until that time, workers are freer by

242

knowing "that their values and their ways of living are
good, worthwhile, and something that we like, something
that’s got a richness, and a depth, and a fruitfulness
which is of more value in the ultimate than the values of
the middle class and the upper middle class whoflre actually
doing the exploiting" (Gibbs interview, XIV). Education
for them must include increased awareness of their own
worth and strategies for seizing control of their future.

Finally, both playwrights thrive on opposition and
contradiction. Their plays fulfill their own need to
rewrite the British tradition in theater, to challenge the
social condition, to writee"against the grarnfl'as Terry
Eagleton would have it. Saturated by their own history--
family background, social and political relationships--and
shaped by their language, their texts unfold, sometimes
with and sometimes athwart the ideology of the antagonist.
Both agitate for social reform and challenge and shape the
theater of the West End, just as they condition each other.
Whether or not their 1970 debate had a direct impact on
their writing, and the evidence is not clear either way,
recognition of the other“s purpose contributed from that
point on to a clarification of their positions and a
refinement of form.

Certainly, the emphasis of their writing changed as
did their relationship to the theater community. Since

1970, Wesker has written more about his Jewish experience

243

and has largely concentrated on one-woman casts. His
writing has also become less and less overtly political.
During the same period, McGrath’s work with 7:84 has
introduced him to new material, and he has become more
self-consciously interested in the revolutionary aspects of
socialism. Neither playwright has compromised his values,
however, or altered his fundamental view of human
relationships. But a variety of factors--including their
exchange with each other--has made each playwright
increasingly self-conscious of his pmflitical position and
style.

In his essay on "Commitment," Theodor Adorno doubted
the possibility or efficacy of committed literature.
Pointing to the gap which comes between reality and a
reflection‘of it, an aporia created by the shaping of
reality into an aesthetic form, he remained skeptical that
committed art could successfully achieve a meaningful
reference to the real world and, if it did, it could not
stand as an aesthetic experience. Even if the artist’s
notions were politically motivated, they remained
"politically polyvalent," as long as they were

aesthetically conditioned by form (Aesthetics and Politics

 

176).
Wesker and McGrath implicitly accept the risks of both

possibilities. To writers like them, the conscious

244

commitment of the authors, the authors’ intent to become
involved, is as important as the appeal they make to their
audiences. Neither playwright deludes himself into
believing that his plays will effect immediate change or
that the spectators will find themselves unconditionally
persuaded by their arguments. But they believe, like
Brecht, in offering the choice, "the structured
possibilities for reflection on the nature of capitalist
(and socialist) relations and the place of the spectator
within them" (148). They risk, of course, the possibility
that "Bad politics becomes bad art, and vice-versa’ (Adorno
187), but.set against that risk is their drive to refine
their art and their need to attract audiences, and too, the
pressures they feel from each other to sharpen their
respective political positions.

What is at stake in the debate between Arnold Wesker
and John McGrath is not simply the question of whether the
audience will enjoy a plurality of political views
represented on stage, but also whether artists may enjoy
the freedom to express those views in whatever form they
choose. This aspect of their exchange is drawn straight
from the heart of the debate between Brecht and Lukacs
whose arguments Wesker and McGrath put to test in their
theater practice.

Concerned with the question of artistic integrity,

Raymond Williams has raised the possibility that a

245

committed literature which could be politically offensive
and asked if it were possible that a fascist could be a
good writer. He answers the question himself, "It is
better to recognise social reality, which in our own time
as in other has produced good and even great reactionary
writers, as well as all the others whom we may prefer, for
different reasons, to honour and remember" ("The Writer:
Commitment and Alignment” 23). For that reason, we cannot
give a literary evaluation to the writings of Arnold Wesker
or John McGrath on the basis of their political alignment
alone. But we can admire them for their moral impulse to
make a commitment to change and, because of that
commitment, we respect their efforts to contribute enduring
works to ameliorate the human condition. We can also
admire the works themselves on their literary merit and on
the contributions they have made to our understanding of
commitment in theater. Williams points out that that
conscious step towards commitment, committing "far enough
to social reality to be conscious of this level of
sociality," is significant not only for the artist, but

for all of us.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I o I I
Adereth, Max. ”What is Litterature Engagee‘?" MarXists gm_
Literature: Am Anthology. Ed. David Craig. Middlesex:
Penguin, 1975.

 

Aesthetics and Politics: Debate Between Bloch, Lukacs,
Brecht and Adorno. Trans. ed. Ronald Taylor.
Afterword by Fredric Jameson. London: Verson, ed.,
1980.

Anderson, Michael. "Arnold Wesker, the Last Humanist?"
New Theatre Magazine Summer 1968:10-27.

Avis, Peter. "Who Wants to Be a Cog in a Machine?"
Morning Star 20 July 197l:2.

Barker, Clive. Untitled Paper on Alternative Theatre.
Unpublished manuscript, n.d.

—--. ”All at Sea Without a Rudder." ATA Convention. St.
Louis, Mar., 1985.

---n "Centre 42: Can We Control the Revolution?" Tribune
1 Feb. 1963:n.p.

. "Centre 42. Speakers Notes." Unpublished manuscript,
1963.

---. "The Centre 42 Project and the 42 MovementJ‘
Unpublished manuscript, 1964.

---. Letter to Provisional Council of Centre 42. 30 Aug.
1961.

---. "From Fringe to Alternative Theatre." Zeitschrift fur
Anglistik und Amerikanistik. 26 Januar (I978):48-62.

---. Letter to the author. 29 Jun. 1985.
---. Letter to the author. 5 Oct. 1985.
. Letter to the author.

246

247

Birchall, Bruce. Unsigned article. "Grant Aid and

Political Theatre 1968-77. Part I." Wedge: A
Revolutionary Magazine 9; Cultural Practice and
Theory. 1 Summer 977:4-8.

 

Bratton, J.S. ”Theatre of The Crimea on the London

Stage 1854-5." Performance and Politics in Popular,
Drama. Cambridge: CUP, 1980: 119-138. ’-

Centre 42 Promotional Packet

1.

2.

8.
9.

10.
11.

12.

13.

14.

”Play Competition Awards." The Times, Literary
Supplement 21 Sept. 1959: n.p.

Untitled article. The Times, Literary Supplement 17
Aug. 1982: n.p.

"Marzotto Prizes for England." The Times 26 Oct. 1964:
n.p.

"Mr. Arnold Wesker Talks About the Way He Got His
Chance.” The Times 10 Jun. 1959: n.p.

 

"Arnold Wesker." The Times 12 Dec. 1963: n.p.

 

"Arnold Wesker Pays £1 Fine." The Times 25 Jul. 1961:
n.p.

 

"Lord Russell Goes to Gaol: 31 Others Also SentencedJ'
The Times 18 Sept. 1961: n.p.

 

"Dramatic Value." Sunday Times 19 June 1966: n.p.

Untitled article. Evening Standard 9 June 1966:
n.p.

Untitled article. Guardian 12 Sept. 1969: n.p.

Arnold Wesker. Labour and the Arts: A; gm What, then
is to be Done? Oxford: Gemini, 1960, and The Modern

PTa__ri—ht or :9 Mother, EE ES Worth it?’ Oxford:
Gemini, 19607

 

 

 

 

Untitled article. The Times Aug. 1960: n.p.

 

”Ordinary People and the Arts" The Times 10 Apr. 1961:
n.p.

"Ideas for Bringing More Culture to Workers." The Times

 

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.
26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

248

17 July 1961: n.p.

"Move to Popularize the Theatre." The Times 21 Mar.
1962: n.p.

 

"£10,000 Grant for Arts Group." The Times 13 Apr.
1962: n.p.

 

"Culture comes to the Bar." The Times 12 Sept. 1962:
n.p.

 

Christopher Logue. "The Poet at the Canteen TableJ'
The Times 3 May 1963: n.p.

"Wesker on 42." Observer 7 July 1963: n.p.

”Art, the Unions and the Future of Forty-twoJ‘
Observer 14 July 1963: n.p.

W.J. Weatherby. "Up the WOrkers." The Times 29 July
1961: n.p.

"£10,000 For Arts Centre." The Times 9 Sept. 1964:
n.p.

”Center 42 Asks for £600,000." The Times 17 July 1964:
n.p.

 

 

"Cash Plea." The Times 28 June 1969: n.p.

"Plays for Pawn." The Times 28 July 1969: n.p.

 

"Guest Play at Royal Court." The Times 15 July 1958:
n.p.

 

Harold Hobson. "Wesker’s Ideas and Ideals." The
Sunday Times 12 June 1960: n.p.

 

"Arnold Wesker Winds Up His Trilogy." The Times 5 Apr.
1960: n.p.

 

"On Stage" Rev. The Wesker Trilogy. The Times 25 Nov.
1960: n.p.

 

"Roots Stands Up to Broadcasting." The Times 1 Mar.
1960: n.p.

 

"N.Y. Critics Divided on Wesker Play." The Times Mar.
1961: n.p.

 

"Inarticulate Lives: Conflict in the Countryside." The

33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

38.

39.

40.

41.

42.

43.

44.

45.

48.

249

Times 26 May 1959: n.p.

"Play with New and Good Idea." The Times 1 July 1959:
n.p.

 

"Third Performance of The Kitchen. The Times 18 Nov.
1959: n.p.

 

"Symbolism Too Vague: Mr. Wesker’s First Play RevivedJ‘
Rev. The Kitchen. The Times 28 June 1961: n.p.

Rev. The Kitchen. The Sunday Times 2 July 1961:
n.p.

Rev. Chips With Everything. The Sunday Times 6 May
1962: n.p. r ’

 

”Mateship Against Authority as Seen by Mr. Weskerfl'The
Times 23 Apr. 1962: n.p.

"Music for Wesker Text.” The Times 21 Nov. 1962: n.p.

 

”Two Operatic Settings of a Libretto by Wesker." The
Times 27 Aug. 1962: n.p.

”Wesker Work Shows its Uncertainty." The Times 9 Dec.
1963: n.p.

 

”Love Without the Social Pressures." The Times 11 Sept.
1965: n.p.

Untitled article. The Times 26 Sept. 1967: n.p.

 

"Belgians Present New Play by Arnold Wesker." The
Times 10 Nov. 1965: n.p.

"Split Between Vision and Reality." The Times 20 May
1960: n.p.

"Arnold Wesker on the Age of Trivia." The Times
8 July 1962: n.p.

 

Centre 42 Annual Report, 1961-62. London: Centre 42.

Centre 42 Unpublished Minutes and Proceedings: From 1960 to

1970.

Chambers, Colin. ”The World of Arnold Wesker." Morning

Star 15 Jan. 1977: 4.

 

250

Clark, Jon. "Agitprop and Unity Theatre: Socialist Theatre
in the Thirties." Culture and Crisis 22 the Thirties.
Eds. Jon Clark, Margot Heineman, David Margolies,
Carole Snee. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1979:
219-239.

Coppieters, Frank. “Arnold Wesker“s Centre Fortytwo: A
Cultural Revolution Betrayed." Theatre Quarterly
18 (1975):37-51.

Craig, David. "Have Story, Need Quantel!" Time Out
April, 1977:18-19.

---,ed. Marxists gm Literature: Am Anthology. Middlesex:
Penguin, 1975.

Craig, Sandy, ed. Dreams and Deconstructions: Alternative
Theatre 12 Britain. Ambergate: Amber Lane, 1980.

Eagleton, Terence. Marxism and Literature Criticism.
Berkeley: U of California P, 1976.

---. Criticism and Ideology: A Study £2 Marxist Literary
Theory. London: Verso, 1978.

Edgar, David. "Ten Years of Political Theatres" Theatre
Quarterly 32 (l979):25-33.

Egbert, Donald Drew. Social Radicalism and the Arts:
Western Europe. New York: Alford A. Knopf, 1970.

 

Elsom, John, ed. Post-War British Theatre Criticism.
Revised Edition, 1979. London: Routledge andIKegan
Paul.

Erven, van Eugene. ”7:84 in 1985: Fourteen Years of
Radical Popular Theatre in Great Britainfl' 222
Minnesota Review 27 (Fall 1986): 103-117.

Findlater, Richard. The Unholy Trade. London: Gollancz,
1952.

Garforth, John. "Arnold Wesker’s Mission." Encore Nov.
1958:38-43.

Glory 2E the Garden: The Development RE the Arts mm
England, 2 Strategy For the Decade. Published by the
Arts Council of Great Britain, 1984.

Green, AJL "Popular Drama and the Mummers’ Playfl'
Performance and Politics im Popular Drama. Ed. David

 

251

Bradby, et a1. Cambridge: CUP, 1980: 139-166.

Griffiths, Malcolm. "Playwriting for the Seventies: Old
Theatres, New Audiences, and the Politics of a
Revolution." Theatre Quarterly 24 (1976-77):35-78.

Gyseghem, Andre van. "British Theatre in the Thirties: An
Autobiographical Record.“ Culture and Crisis in the
Thirties. Eds. Jon Clark, Margot Heineman, David
Margolies, and Carole Snee. London: Lawrence and
Wishart, 1979: 209-218.

Hall, Stuart. "Beyond Naturalism Pure." Encore (Nov.-
Dec. 1961):12-l9.

Hayman, Ronald. "The Fringe." The Set- Up: An Anatom g_f_
the English Theatre Today. LondOn: Eyre Methuen,
19773: 206- -291.

Itzin, Catherine. "Alternative Theatre in the Mainstream."
Theatre Qu_a__rterly 19 (1975): 3-11. With an answer
from Simon Trussler, "Alternative Theatre--For What?"
11- 14.

 

\
---. "McGrath Ten Years After: Out-dated Didacticism." Rev.

Trees 32 the Wind. Tribune 1 Feb. 1980: 7.

---. Stages in the Revolution: Political Theatre in Britain
Since 1968. London: Eyre Methuen, 1980.

Klotz, Gunther. "Changing Functions and Forms of Modern
British Drama." Hungarian Studies £2 English Dec.
1979: 61-75. '

Lahr, John. Prick Qp Your Ears: the Biography 9: Joe
Orton. London: Penguin, 1978

Lassalle, Ferdinand. Franz von Sickingen, eine Historische
TragOdie. Berlin: Franz Duncker (W. Besser Verlags-
handlun9)p 1859.

Lee, Jennie. Letter. "Wesker’s Centre Fortytwofl'
Encounter. Aug., 1962: 95-96.

Leeming, Genda. "Arnold Wesker." Theatrefacts #14, 4.2
(1977). London: Theatre Quarterly Publications.

---. Wesker gm File. London: Methuen: 1935-

---. Wesker the Playwright. London: Methuen, 1983.

252

Lovell, Terry. Pictures of Reality: Aesthetics, Politics,
Pleasure. London: British Film Institute, 1980.

 

Luce, Richard. Address. CoRAA Conference. Newcastle 8
July 1987.

Lukacs, Georgy. The Meaning of Contemporary Realism.
Trans. John and Necke Mander. London: Merlin Press,

 

 

 

1963.
---. "The Sociology of Modern DramaJ' Tkans. Lee
Baxandall. Tulane Drama Review 9.4 (l965):146-l70.

In ....A-
in

---. Studies in European Realism: A Sociological Survey of

Writin s of Balzac, Stendhaly Zola Tolstoyy Gork:y
and Otfiers. London: Hillway, 1950.

 

 

 

MacLennan, Elizabeth. Letter to the author. 20 July 1987.
---. Letter to the author 22 May 1988.

Mander, JOhn. The Writer and Commitment. London: Secker
and Warburg, 1961.

Marx, Karl and Fredrick Engels. Literature and Art:
Selections From Their Writings. New York:
International, 1947.

 

McGrath, John. Stage Plays:

---. The Albanach. Performed. Edinburgh Festival, 1985.

 

---. TheB and 9the Bathwater. Performed. Edinburgh
fifiv ml

---. Bakke’s Night 2E Fame. London: Davis-Poynter, 1973.

---. Blood Red Roses. In Two Plays for the Eighties.
Aberdeen: Aberdeen People’s Press, 1981.

---. Boom. New Edinburgh Review, (Aug. 1975): 11-30.

 

---. The Cheviot, the Stag, and the Black, Black Oil.
Skye:West Highland Publishing Co., 1974.

---. Events While Guarding the Borfors Gun. London:
Methuen, 1966.

---. Fish mm the Sea. London: Pluto Press, 1977.

253

The Game’s 2 Bogey. Edinburgh University Student
Publications Board (Distributed by Pluto), 1974.

 

Joe’s Drum. Aberdeen: Aberdeen People’s Press, 1979.

Little Red Hen. London: Pluto Press, 1977.

 

Random Happenings $3 the Hebrides: gm the Social

 

 

Democrat and the Stormy Sea. London: Davis-Poynter,
1972.

Six Men 9: Dorset. Performed. Shaw Theatre, London,
1984.

 

.3

Swings and Roundabouts. In Two Plays for the

 

 

Eighties. Aberdeen: Aberdeen People’s Press, 1981.

Trees ;m_the Wind. Performed. Cranston Street Hall,
Edinburgh, 1971, and on tour at Northcott Theatre,
London, 1980.

Trembling Giant. Performed. Royal Court Theatre,
London, 1977.

 

Yobbo Nowt. London: Pluto Press, 1978.

 

Articles and Letters:

---. "Better a Bad Night in Bootle." Theatre Qparterly

19 (1975):39-54.

"Friends and Enemies.” Rev. of The Friends by Arnold
Wesker. Black Dwarf 12 June 1970: 15. I

 

"Theory and Practive of Political Theatre." Theatre

Quarterly 35 (1979): 43-54.

---. A Good Night Out: Popular Theatre: Audiencey Class and

 

Form. London: Methuen, 1981.
Letter to Arnold Wesker. 6 July 1970.

”No Politics Please, We’re British." The Guardian 5
Oct. 1984:19.

"Reasons for Not Terminating the Active Life of 7:84
Theatre Company of England." Unpublished appeal to
the Arts Council of Great Britain, 31 May 1984.

254

---. "The State of Alternative Theatre Today." Unpublished
proceedings of the Judith E. Wilson Conference,
Session #4: The Future of the Alternative Theatre,
n.d.

---. "TV Drama: The Case Against Naturalisnu" Sight and
Sound 46 (1977):100-5.

---. "The Year of the Cheviot." Plays and Players Feb.
1974: 24-30. The Cheviot, the Stag, and the Black,
Black Oil. Skye: West Highland Publishing Co”.1974.

 

Interviews:

---. Interview. With Clive Barker. Unpublished. January,
1974.

---. Interview. "Have Story Need...Quantel!" With Sandy
Craig. Time Out 31 (1980): 18-19.

---. Interview. Personal interview. 31 July 1986 and
l AugUSt 1986.

---. Interview. ”Theatre for the People: an Interview with
John McGrath of the 7:84 Theatre Companyu" With
Eugene van Erven. The Minnesota Review. 27 (Fall
1986):117-122.

---. Interview. With Ramona Gibbs. Plays and Players
Nov. 1972: xiii-xv.

---. Interview. With Tony Mitchell. "Popular Theatre and
the Changing Perspective of the Eighties." Neg
Theatre Quarterly 4.14 (l985):390-399.

---. Interview. With Colin Mortimer. Unpublished. Part
1: 27 Mar. 1980. Part 2: 12 May 1980.

---. Interview. With Colin Mortimer. Unpublished. 13
Sept. 1982.

---.Interview. ”Power to the Imagination: Conversations
with John McGrath about Theatre and the State."
Scottish International. Oct. 1971:10-15.

Mackenney, Linda. Introduction. Am Time pf Strife. 7:84
Scotland Production, 1985.

 

Morton, A.L. A People’s History pf England. London:
Lawrence and Wishart, 1984.

 

255

Nightingale, Benedict.Personal interview.21 April 1988.

Osborne, John. Look Back im Ange . 1957. Middlesex:
Penguin, 1982.

 

O’Toole, Fintan. "Man of 7:1984."

Page, Malcolm. ”John McGrath Checklist." New Theatre
Quarterly 4 (l985):400-416.

 

Priestley, JJL ”Are We a Dramatic People?" Theatre
Outlook. London: Nicholson and Watson, 1947:15-32.

"Public Patronage of the Arts: Introduction.” Planning 31.
492 (Nov. 1965):315-330.

Reid, Douglas, A. "Popular Theatre in Victoria Birmingham."
Performance and Politics £2 Popular Drama. Ed.
DaVidIBradby, et. 51. Cambridge: CUP, 1980:65-89.

 

Robertson, Geoffrey. An Account 2: Censorship Laws and
Their Enforcement—Em England and Wales. London:
Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1979.

Samuel! Raphael, Ewan MacColl, and Stuart Cosgrove.
Theatre of £22 Left 1880-1935: Workers’ Theatre
Movement-Em Britain and America. London: Routledge
& Kegan Paul, 1985.

---. "Workers’ Theatre 1926-36." Performance and Politics
£2 Popglar Drama. Cambridge: CUP, 1980:213-230.

 

Sartre, Jean-Paul. What Am Literature? Trans. Bernard
Frechtman. Gloucester, Mass: Peter Smith, 1978.

Taylor, John Russell. Anger and After: A Guide pg the New
British Drama. Middlesex: Penguin, 1962.

---. "Ten Years of the English Stage Company." Tulane
Drama Review 2.2 (l966):120-l31.

Trewin, John Courtnay. Drama £2 Britain, 1951-1964.
London: Published for the British Council by Longmans,
Green 8 Co., 1965.

Tynan, Kenneth. Rev. of Chicken Soup with Barley. Rev.
of 17m Talking About Jerusalem. Rev. of’Roots. A
View gf the English Stage. London: Dayis Poynter,
1975.

256

Wesker, Arnold. Stage Plays:

---. Volume I: Chicken Soup with Barley, 1959; Roots, 1959;

I/m Talking About Jerusalem, 1960 (Dates when plays
were first published). Middlesex: Penguin, 1981.

Volume II: The Kitchen, 1960; The Four Seasons, 1966;
Their Very Own and Golden City, 1966. Middlesex:
Penguin, 1981. if

Volume III: Chips With Everything, 1962;The Friends,
1970; The Old Ones, 1972; Love Letters pm Blue Paper,
1978. Middlesex: Penguin, 1981.

 

 

 

 

Volume IV: The Journalists, 1974; The Wedding Feast,
1977; The Merchant, 1977. Middlesex: Penguin, 1981.

 

 

 

Annie Wobbler: A Play im Three Parts for one Actress.
Unpublished. Performed at various venues including at
Birmingham Repertory Th. Studio, 5 July 1983 and a
late night reading by Arnold Wesker at the Phoenix
Arts, Leicester, 2 May 1985.

 

Caritas: A Play i2 Two Acts. London: Jonathan Cape,

Four Portraits--of Mothers: A Set g£_Vignettes in One
Act for em Actress. Stand. Winter l987-88:6-177

The Journalists: A Triptych. London: Jonathan Cape,
1979.

Menace. Play for BBC Television. 8 Dec. 1963. Six
Sundays EB January. London: Jonathan Cape:65-98.

The Merchant (1977). With commentary and notes by‘
Glenda Leeming. London: Methuen, 1977.

The Nottingham Captain: A Moral for Narrator, Voices,
and Orchestra. Six Sundaysim_January. London:
Jonathan Cape, 1974: 42-60.

 

One More Ride gm the Merry-Go-Roung. Performed at
Phoenix Arts, Leicester, 25 Apr.-25 May 1985.

 

Whatever Happened pg Betty Lemon: A One-Act Play for
One Woman. PerfOrmed at vafious venues’including
Jewish Repertory Theatre, New York City, February 1988.
Unpublished edition dated 19 May 1986.

 

Yard Sale: A One-woman Play mm One Act and Eight

 

 

 

257

Parts. Performed at various venues including
the Jewish Repertory Theatre, New York City, February
1988. Unpublished edition dated June 1986.

Articles:

“Art--Therapy or Experience?" Views #4 Spring 1964.

"Debts to the Court.” A; the Royal Court: Twenty-five
Years pf the English Stege Company. Ed. Richard
Findlater. Ambergate: Amber Lane Press, 1981:76-82.

Distinctions. London: Jonathan Cape, 1985.

Fears 2E Fragmentation. London: Jonathan Cape, 1970.
"Let Battle Commence" (November, 1958). The Encore
Reader: A Chronicle of the New Drama. Ed by Charles

Marowitz? Tom Milne,—Owen Hale. London:Methuen, 1965:
98-103.

 

 

---.Journey into Jougnaliem. London: Readers and Writers

Cooperative, 1977. The Journalists, 1979.

Labour and the Arts:II. London: Gemini, 1960.

. and Bill Holdsworth. The Modern Playwrighpy gm :9

 

Mother, i§_i£_Worth it? London: Gemini, 1960.
"Resolution 42." New Statesman 7 Apr. 1961:581.

"Vision! Vision! Mr. Woodcock." New Statesman 30
Jul. 1960:153.

 

Interviews:

Interview. ”Arnold Wesker.” Theatre 2E Work: Play-
wrights and Productions mm_Modern British Theatre.

 

 

Charles Marowitz and Simon Trussler. New York: Hill
and Wang, 1967:78-95.

Interview. "Arnold Wesker." With Giles Gordon. Trans-
atlantic Review 21 (Summer 1966):15-25.

Interview. "Arnold Wesker: Question & Answer." With
Jill Pomerance. New Theatre Magazine 1.3 (l960):5-8.

 

Interview. "Arnold Wesker." With Walter Wager. The
Playwrights Speak. Ed. Walter Wager. New York:
Delacorte Press, 1967:269-290.

 

258

Interviewu ”His Very Own and Golden City: An Interview
with Arnold Wesker." With Simon Trussler. Tmleme
Drama Review 11.2 (1966):l92-201. Later published as

"Arnold Weskerfl' Theatre 2E Work: Playwrights and
Productions i2 Modern British Theatre. New York: Hill
8 Wang, 1967:78-95.

 

Interview. "In Conversation with Christopher Bigsby."
Literature Study Aids, The British Council, 4 Mar.
1976.

Interview. "Interview with Arnold Wesker." With Rainer
Taeni. Die Neueren Sprachen 8.70 (Aug. 1970):
410-418.

IE” ‘L‘a—‘E

Personal interview. 2 May 1985 and 8 Aug. 1986.

Interview. "A Sense of What Should Follow." With
Catherine Itzin, Glenda Leeming, and Simon Trussler.
Theatre Quarterly 28 (1977):5-24.

Interview. "The System and the Writer." New Theatre
Magazine 2.11 (Feb. l97l):8-ll.

 

Interview. "Waiting for Wesker." With Abraham
Rothberg. Antioch Review 23 (Winter 1964-65):
493-505.

 

Interview. "Who Wants to be a Cog in a Machine." With
Peter Avis. Morning Star 20 Jul. l971:2.

Letters:

---. Letter to John McGrath. 18 June 1970.

Letter to John McGrath. 4 October 1970.

---. Open Letter to T.C. Worsley. "Prole Playwright."

New Statesman 28 Feb. 1959:293.

 

Willett, John, ed. and trans. Brecht on Theatre: The

 

Development pf em Aesthetic. New—YOrk: Hill and
Wang, 1964.

 

 

Williams, Raymond. Foreword. A Good Night Out: Popular

 

Theatre: Audience, Class, and Form. By John McGrath.
London: Methuen, 1981: vii-xi.

---. Keywords: A Vocabulary 9E Culture and Society. New

 

 

 

York: Oxfofd UP, 1976.

259

---. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1977.

---. Problems in Materialism and Culture: Selected Essays.

London: VEESO, 1980.

---. ”The Writer: Commitment and Alignment." Marxism Today

 

June 1980:22-25.

Wright, Thomas. Some Habits and Customs of the Workipg

Classes my a )Journeyman Engineer. New York: A..M.

 

Worsley, T. C. Rev. ofA ATaste gf Honey. New Statesman
21 Sept. 1959: 254.

GENERAL REFERENCES

Adorno, T.W. "Commitment." New Left Review 1974:87-88.

 

Allen, Douglas. "Glasgow Workers Theatre Group and the
Methodology of Theatre Studies." Theatre Quarterly
9.36 (1980):45-54. .

 

Adereth, Max. "Sartre and Wesker.” Comment July-Aug. 1964.

Anderson, Michael. ”This, That and the Other: The
Critic and the Alternative Theatre.” 24.4
(December l981):445-457.

Ansorge, Peter. Disrupting the Spectacle: Five Years 9:

Experimental and Fringe Theatre Ln Britain. London:
Pitman House, 1975.

Arden, John. 29 Present the Pretence: Essays on the
Theatre and its Public. London: Eyre Methfien, 1977.

Arvon, Henri. Marxist Esthetics. Trans. Helen R. Lane.
Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1973.

Bakewell, Joan. "Death Threat to a Company." The

“19.

260

Listener 20 Sept. 1984:15-17.
Barker, Clive. Articles:
---. ”The Politicisation of the British Theatre.“ Englisch

Amerikanische Studien Zeitschrift ffir Unterrichp,
Wissenschaft und Politik Juni 1980:267-278.

 

---. Theatre Games: A New Approach pg Drama Training.
London: Methuen, 1977.

 

---. ”Theory, Practice, and Analytic Methods." Editorial.
Theatre Qparterly 36 (1980):3.

 

Letters:

---. Letter to Arnold Wesker. 6 May 1969.

---. Letter to Arnold Wesker. 27 Sept. 1969.

---. Letter to Arnold Wesker. 28 Dec. 1970.
Barnett, Anthony. "Raymond Williams and Marxism: A

Rejoiner to Terry Eagleton." New Left Review 99
(1976):46-65.

 

Baumol, W.J. and W.G. Bowen. "A Survey of American and
British Audiences for the Performing Arts (1966)."
The Economics 9§,Ege Arts. Ed. Mark Blaug. London:
M. Robertson, 1976:148-170.

Beacham, Richard. "Political Theatre in Britain: The 7:84
Company.” Theatre 10 (Spring 1979): 49-53.

Benjamin, Walter. Understanding Brecht. Trans. Anna
Bostock. London: New Left Books, 1973.

Berger, John. Ways 2; Seeing. London: British
Broadcasting Corp., 1972. Pelican (USA), 1977.

Bigsby, C.W.E. Arnold Wesker. Tape. British Council
Literature Study Aids, 1977.

---. "The Language of Crisis in British Theatre: The Drama
of Cultural Pathology." Contemporary English Drama.
Assoc. Ed. C.W.E. Bigsby. Stratford-Upon-Avon Studies
19. New York: Homes & Meir, 1981:11-51.

---. "The Politics of Anxiety." Modern Drama 24(Dec.
1981):393-403.

 

261
Billington, Michael. "Wesker Bounces Back." Guardian 19
Jan. 1977: 8.

---. "When Did You Last See Your Arnold Wesker?"
Guardian 13 May 1974: 12.

---. "The Wrath of John McGrath." Guardian 1 Apr. 1986:12.

Blau, Herbert. "Littlewood and Planchon in an Affluent
Society." Encore 24 Mar.-Apr. 1960:7-14.

Bold, Alan. "The Impact of 7:84." Modern Scottish
Literature. London: Longmans, 1983:307-310.

Bond, Edward. "Introduction.” Bingo: Scenes 9_f_ Money and
Death. London:Eyre Methuen, l974:vi-xv.

---. "A Note on Dramatic Method." The Bundle gm
New Narrow Road pg the Deep North. London: Eyre
Methuen, 1978:vii-xxi.

---. "Introduction." The Fool: Scenes of Bread
and‘Love. London: Eyre Methuen, I976:Vi-xvi.

 

Bottomore, Tom, et. al., eds. A Dictionary o_f Marxist
Thought. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1983.

 

Bradbury, Malcolm. The Social Context of Modern English
Literature. New York: Schocken, 1971.

 

 

Bradby, David, Louis James and Bernard Sharratt, eds.
Performance and Politics i2 Popular Drama. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1980.

 

 

---. and John McCormick. People’s Theatre. London: Croom
Helm, 1978.

 

Brecht, Bertolt. "Against Georg Lukacs." trans. Hans-
Magnus Enzensberger. New Left Review 84 (1974):
39-74.

 

---. "On Experimental Theatre." Theatre $2 the Twentieth
Century. Ed. Robert W. Corrigan. New YOrk: Grove
ress, 1963.

 

---. Brecht gm Theatre. Ed. and trans. John Willett.
London: Hill and Wang, 1964.

Brenton, Howard. Interview by Catherine Itzin and Simon
Trussler. "Petrol Bombs Through the Proscenium Arch."

 

262

17 Theatre Quarterly (Mar-May l975):4-20.

Britain, Ian. Fabianism and Culture: A Study lg British
Socialism and the Arts 1884-1918. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1982.

 

 

British Drama and Theatre from the Mid-fifties pg the Mid-
eventies. Conference papers. Rostock, DDR: Wilhelm
Pieck Universitgt, 1979.

Brown, John Russell. "Arnold Wesker: Theatrical
Demonstration." Theatre Language: A Study 2; Arden,
Osborne, Pinter and Wesker. London: The Penguin
Press,’l972.

1““ [a

Brustein, Robert. The Third Theatre. London: Atlantic
Monthly Press, 1970. New York: Knopf, 1969.

 

.—

Buchanan, George. ”Drama and the Social ImaginationJ‘
Encore 25 May-June 1960:26-30.

Bull, John. New British Political Dramatists: Aeward
Brentopy David Harey Trevor Griffiths and David Edgar.
Macmillan Modern Dramatists. London: Macmillan, 1984.

Burns, Rbb. "Understanding Benjamin." :Red Letters 7
(1978):l6-33.

Caudwell, Christopher. Illusion and Reality. New York:
International Publishers, 1973.

Catty, Jon. ”Counting the Cost of New Productions." Drama
146 (Winter l982):15-17.

Chambers, Colin. ”The World of Arnold Wesker." Morning
Star 15 Jan. l977:4.

Cherns, Penny and Paddy Broughton. "John McGrath’s Trees
in the Wind at the Northcott Theatre, ExeterJ'
Theatre Qgerterly l9 (Sept.-Nov. l975):89-100.

 

Cohen, Mark. "The Impossible Hero.” Jewish Quarterly,
(Winter 1960-61). ’

Cornforth, Maurice, ed. Rebels and Their Causes: Essaye

mm.Honor gf_A.L. Morton. London: Lawrence & Wishart,
978.

 

Cornwell, Lucia. Rev. Bitter Apples. Plays and Players
2.27 (Nov. l979):28.

 

263

Craig, David. "Centre 42 and the ’Movementfl" Marxism
Today June, 1963:186-8.

Dennis, Nigel. ”What Though the Field be Lost?" Encounter
Aug. 1962:43.

 

Dexter, JOhn. "Chips and Devotion." Plays and Players
Dec. 1962.

 

---. "Working with ArnoldJ‘ Pflays and Players April,
1962.

 

Eagleton, Terence. "The Subject of Literature." Cultural
Critigue 2 (Winter l985-86):95-104.

---. Walter Benjemipy gm Toward 2 Revolutionary Criticism. ‘
London: New Left Review7Verso, 1981.

 

 

Edgar, David. ”Towards a Theatre of Dynamic
Ambiguities." Theatre Quarterly 34 (1979):3-23

Ehrmann, Jacques, ed. Literature and Revolution. Boston,
1967.

 

 

Evans, John. Theatre Outside London. London: Macmillan,
1971.

Evans, Gareth Lloyd. Rev. of Chips With Everything. Drama
141 (1981):37.

 

Feuer, Lewis S. "Marxian Tragedians." Encounter. Nov.
1962:23-32.

 

---. "Plays and Politics." Twentieth Century 168 (1966):
235-42.

 

Frow, John. Marxism and Literary History. Cambridge:
Harvard UP, 1986.

Gilbert, Stephen. Rev. The Adventures pg Frank by John
McGrath. Radio 1-7 Nov. 1980:9-11.

 

Gillman, Peter. "Enter Stage Left: the North Wind of
Change." Rev. The Cheviot, the Stag, and the Black,
Black Oil. Radio Times 30 May 1974:10, 11.

Gindin, James. Postwar British Fiction: New Accents and
Attitudes. Berkeley: U of California P, 1962.

Glicksberg, Charles I. The Literature 9; Commitment.
Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 1976.

 

264

Goldmann, Lucien. Method lm the Sociology g: Literature.
Trans. and ed. William Boelhower. Oxford: Ba51
Blackwell, 1981.

 

Gooch, Steve. "The Surveyor and the Construction
Engineer." Theatre Quarterly 36 (l980):25-27.

---. Interview. "Problems of Political Theatre." Hard
Times 12 Januar 1980:16-20.

 

Goodlad, JJLR. A Sociology gm Popular Drama. Totowa,
N.J:Rowman and fittleiield, .

Goorney, Howard. "Littlewood in Rehearsal." Tulane Drama
Review 2 (Winter 1966):102-3.

 

Gostwick, Martin. "Victims of Victorian Attitudes and
Values." Rev. Victorian Values, a 7:84 Scotland
Production. Morfiing Star 17 Mar. 1986.

 

 

Gramsci, Antonio. Selections From Cultural Writings. Eds.
David Forgacs and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith. Trans.
William Boelhower. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1985.

Gray, Nigel. The Silent Majprity: A Study 2: the Working
Class i2 Post-War British Fiction. London: Vision,
1973.

 

Haigh, Anthony. “A Politic for Arnold Wesker." Modern
Literature Conference. East Lansing, 14 Oct. 1983.

Hammond, Jonathan. "A Potted History of the Fringe."
Theatre Quarterly 3.12 (1973):37-46.

Harwood, Ronald, ed. A Night mm the Theatre. London:
Methuen, 1982.

 

Hay, Malcolm. "Reassessing the Seventies." Theatre

Quarterly 36 (l980):8-9.

Hayman, Ronald. Am Anatomy of the English Theatre Today.
London: Eyre Methuen, 1973.

 

---. Arnold Wesker. London: Heinemann, 1970. American

 

Edition. New York:Ungar, 1973.

---. British Theatre Since 1955:A Reassessment.Oxford:
Oxford UP, 1979.

 

Hellner, Sibylle, ed. "Politische Theatergruppen in GJL--
ein Uberblick." Hard Times 5 (Okt 1978):3-5.

 

 

265

Hinchcliffe, Arnold P. British Theatre 1950-1979. Totowa,
New Jersey: Roman and Littlefieii, 1974.

Hobson, Harold. Rev. of Caritas. Drama 143 (l982):38.

---, ed. The Use g; Drama: Acting ge‘g Social and
Educational Force. London: Methuen, 1972.

 

---. "Fringe Theatre." Theatre Quarterly 30 (l978):24-35. 1

Horst, Hdhne. "Political Analysis, Theatrical Form, and
Popular Language in the Plays of Charles Wood, Henry
Livings, and John McGrathJ' Zeitschrift ffir Anglistik
und Amerikanistik (4-26 Januar 1977):332-350. British
Drama im_pme Age and ZQE: Rostock:Wilhe1m Pieck U,
17/18 Sept. 1976:73I4.

 

 

 

Hoskins, George. Letter to Arnold Wesker. 11 Sept. 1970.

---. Letter to Arnold Wesker (Budget for Centre 42). 20 Mar.
1969.

Hozier, Anthony, ed. Augusto Boal: Documents 2£.EEE
Theatre g: the Oppressed. Trans. Robert Cannon,
Imogen Forster, Anthony Hozier and Simon Medaney.
London:Red Letters, 1985.

 

 

Hunt, Albert. “Only Soft-Centred Left: Odets and Social
Theatre." Encore 31 (May-June l961):5-12.

---. "Roots in Norfolk." Encore May-June 1960:30-31.

Itzin, Catherine. "A Sense of Dread and IsolationJ'
Tribune 13 Oct. l978:9.

---. "Uncompromising Class-war Commentary." Rev. Soft, gm
3 Girl. Tribune 30 May l975:9.

Jameson, Fredric. Marxism and Form: Twentieth Century
Dialectical Theories g; Literature. Princeton:
Princeton UP, 1971.

 

 

---. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as E Socially

Symbolic Act: Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1981.

Jones, D.A.N. "A Critic Looks Back Over Ten Years." The
Listener 29 (1967).

---. "Prison Reform." The Listener 8 Feb. 1968:189-90.

266

Jones, Gareth Stedman. "Marxism of the Early Lukacs." New
Left Review 70 (l971):27-64.

Jones, Mervyn. "Arnold Wesker’s Epic." Encore Sept.-Oct.
1960:6-10.

Kavanagh, James H. "Marxist Literary Criticism and
Theory.” Choice Oct. 1981:203-213.

---. "To the Same Defect: Toward a Critique of the
Ideology of the Aesthetic." Literature and Ideology,
ed. Harry R. Garvin. Bucknell UP, 1982.

Kerensky, Oleg. The New British Drama: Playwrights Since
Osborne and Pinter. London Hamish Hamilton, 1977.

 

Khan, Naseem. Rev. of Annie Wobbler. Drama 150 (1983):
34.

---. "The Fringe." Drama 149 (l983):8-1l.

Kitchin, Laurence. Drama lm the Sixties: Form and
Interpretation. London: Faber and Faber, 1966.

---. “Drama with a Message: Arnold Wesker." Modern
British Dramatists: A Collection of Critical Essays.
Ed. John Russell Brown. Englewood_Cliffs, New Jersey:
Prentice-Hall, 1968:71-82.

 

 

---. "Theatre in the Raw." Mid-Century Drama. London:
Faber, 1962:98-114.

Klaus, H. Gustav, ed. The Socialist Novel lm Britain:
Toward the Recovery 9;.3 Tradition. Sussex: The
Harvester Press, 1982.

 

 

 

Klotz, Gunther. "Alternatives in Recent British Drama."
Zeitschrift ffir Anglistik und Amerikanistik. 25
(1977):152-1612

---. "Internationalism and Present British Drama." British
Drama and Theatre from pme Mid-fifties £2.E22 Mid-
seventies. Rostock, GDR: Wilhelm Pieck Universitat,
1978:21-31. Zeitschrift ffir Anglistik und
Amerikanistik 27 (1979):35-42.

 

 

 

 

Laing, Dave. The Marxist Theory g£_Art. Sussex: The
Harvester Press,i1978.

 

Lang, Berel and Forrest Williams, eds. Marxism and Art:
Writings £3 Aesthetics and Criticism. New York: David

 

 

267

McKay, 1972.

Laurenson, Diana T. and Alan Swingewood. The Sociology g:
Literature. New York: Schocken, 1972.

 

 

Leech, Clifford. ”Two Romantics: Arnold Wesker and Harold
Pinter." Contemporary Theatre. Stratford-Upon-
Avon Studies 4. Eds. John Russell Brown and Bernard
Harris. London: Edward Arnold, 1962:11-32.

Leech, Michael. "John Dexter." Plays and Players Oct.
1972:31-33.

 

---. ”The Life and Times of Arnold WeskerJ' Pdays and
Players October l972:xvi.

 

Leeming, Glenda. Arnold Wesker. Writers and Their Works
Series. Longman fOr the British Council, 1972.

---. WArticulacy and Awareness: The Modulation of Familiar
Themes in Wesker’s Plays of the 703.” Contemporary
English Drama. Stratford-Upon-Avon Studies 19. Assoc.
Ed. C.W.E. Bigsby. New York: Homes & Meir, 1981:65-77.

 

---, and Simon Trussler. The Plays of Arnold Wesker: Am
Assessment. London: Gollancz, I971.

Lewis, Nigel. "Play Rights." Guardian 18 June 1974:12.

Lindemann, Valeska. Arnold Wesker als Gesellschafts-
kritiker. Diss. U Marburg-Lahn, 1972. Erlangung
der Doktorwurde des Fachbereichs 10. Marburg: Erich
Mauersberger, 1972.

 

Lindsay, Jack. "Abstract Art." Marxism Today June 1963:
189-192.

Lindsay, Mackie. "Scot’s Gist." The Guardian 15 (1974):

 

Lucas, John, ed. Literature and Politics $2 the Nineteenth
Century. London:Methuen, 1971.

 

Lukacs, Georg. Deutsche Realisten des 19. Jahrhunderts.
Berlin:Aufbau Verlag, 1952.

---. Essays gm Realism. Ed. Rodney Livingstone. Trans.
David Fernbach. Cambridge, Mass.:MIT Press, 1981.

---. History and Class Consciousness. Trans. Rodney
Livingstone. London: Merlin Press, 1971.

 

268

---. ”Lukacs on his Life and Work." Interview. New Left
Review 68 (1971):48-58.

---. "On Walter Benjamin." Trans. Rodney Livingstone. New
Left Review 110 (l978):83-92.

---. Writer and Critic and Other Essays. Ed. and trans.
Arthur D. Kahn. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1970.

Lunn, Eugene. Marxism and Modernism: Am Historical Study
g; Lukacs, Brecht, Benjamin, and Adorno. Berkeley:
U of*Ca1ifornia P, 1982.

 

Marland, Michael, ed. Arnold Wesker. Times Author Series
#1. London: Times Educational Services, 1970.

Marowitz, Charles, ed. The Encore Reader: A Chronicle 9:
the New Drama. London: Methuen, 1965.

 

 

 

McGrath, John. Articles.

--—. "Arthur Miller," Isis. (Oxford) 6 May
1959:20-21.

---. "Bloody Men." Rev. of Macbeth. New Statesman 25
Aug. 1967:238-9.

 

---. ”Brendan Behan." Isis 29 Apr. 1959:12-13.

---. "The Brigadier and the Scorpionfi" Isis 3 June
1959:14-15.

---. "Clap, Clap, Clap." Rev. of Zi er-Za er by Peter
Terson. New Statesman 1 Sept. 1967:266-7.

---. ”Clive Goodson 1932-1977.” Obituary. History
Workshop #5 (1978):234-237.

 

 

---. "Clouding the Vision of the Possible." The Scotsman
27 Nov. 1976:Weekend Section 1.

 

---. "Elizabeth MacLennan." Isis 13 May 1959:n.p.

---. ”Glasnost’s Miles Better." Unpublished paper presented
at a meeting called by Norman Buchan. August 1987.

---. "In Conclusion." Isis 13 May 1959:18-20.

---. "John McGrath Comments." Contemporary Dramatists. Ed.
James Vinson. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1977:534.

 

269

---. "John Osborne." lgle 13 May 1959:16-17.

---. "Les Birds." lglg 10 June 1959:16-17.

---. "Living Dangerously.” The Guardian 16 Oct. 1981:11.
---. ”Murkey Depths." New Statesman 8 Sept. 1967:298-9.

---. "The New Socialist 7:84 Conference." New Socialist
5 Oct. 1984:44-5.

---. "Paddy Cheyevsky." Isis 27 May 1959:20-21.

---. ”Preface." Who Owns Scotland? John McEwan.
Edinburgh University Student Publication, 1979.

---. Rev. A View From the Brink by David Campton. Encore
25 May-June 1960:40-41.

---. "Scotland: Up Against It." The Red Paper gm Scotland.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Student Publications
Board, 1981:134-40. '

---. "Some Other Mechanisnu ’Poetic’ and ’Dramatic’
Structure in Some Plays." Encore 26 July-Aug. 1960:20-
‘ 26.

---: ”TV Drama: The Case Against Naturalisnu" Sight and
Sound 46 (Spring 1977):

Interviews:

---. Interview. "Behind the Fringe." With Oscar Moore.
Playe and Players April 1983:12-13.

---. Interview. "Breaking Free of the Troubled English
Giant." With Catherine Itzin. Tribune 30 Dec.
1977:12.

---. Interview. "Comedy with Chips." With Stephen Gilbert.
Radio Times 1-7 November 1980: 9,11.

 

---. Interview. ”New Directions." With Ramona Gibbs. Plays
and Players Nov. l972:xii-xiv.

---. Interview. “7:84 Six Years On." With Ann McFerran.
Time Out 8-14 Apr. 1977:11,12. Letter in response.
Time Out 29 Apr.-5 May l977:3.

---. Interview. With David Watt. Unpublished. l3

 

270

Sept. 1982.

Meissner, Eberhard. "Belt & Braces." Hard Times 9/10
(Juli l979):23-24.

 

Milne, Tom. ”A Quick Guide to Planchon." Encore 27 Sept.-
Oct. 1960:36-9.

Moffat, Alistaire. "7:84 Theatre Company." The Edinburgh
’Fringe. Edinburgh: Johnson and Bacon, 1978:88-90.

 

Morgan, Margeryu "Arnold Wesker: The Celebratory InstinctJ'
Essa s on Contemporary British Drama. Eds. Hedwig
Boch and—Albert Wertheim. Munich: Max Hueber Verlag,
1981:31-45.

Morris, Willianu Political Writings g£_Wi11iam Morris.

Ed. A.L. Morton. New York: International Publishers,
1973.

Nairn, Tom. The Break-up g; Britain: Crisis and Neo-
Nationalism. London: New Left Books, 1977.

 

Nelson, Sarah. "The Strange Decline of Political Theatre:

The Work of the 7:84 Theatre Company." ‘Weekend Scotsman
9 Sept. l980:9.

 

Nicoll, Allardyce. "Somewhat in a New Dimension." Contem-
porary Theatre. Stratford-Upon-Avon Studies #4. Eds.
Jo n Russell Brown and Bernard Harris. London: Edward
Arnold, 1962:85-86.

Nightingale, Benedict. "Arnold Wesker." 50 Modern British
Plays. London: Heinemann, 1982:310-329.

 

---. "The Blind Side of Evil." Rev. of Fish in the

Sea by John McGrath. New Statesman 21 Fe .
1975: 251.

 

---. "Camden Messiah." Rev. of Fears 2E Fragmentation by
Arnold Wesker. New Statesman 17 July 1970:60.

 

---. "Interpretations." Rev. of Bakke’s Nighm 2E Fame by
John McGrath. New Statesman 13 Oct. 1972:822.

---. "Justified Sinners." Rev. of Out g; Our Heads by
John McGrath. New Statesman 22 April 1977:541.

---. "King of the Cash Register." Rev. of The Old Ones by
Arnold Wesker. New Statesman 18 Aug. 1972:233.

271

---. ”Running Dogs.” Rev. of Trembling Giant by
John McGrath. New Statesman 6 Jan. 1978:24-25.

---. "Wesker Among the Lilliputians." New Statesman 29 May
1970:25-26.

---. "Wesker in the Wilderness." ‘New Statesman 29 May'
1970:780.

 

Nunn, Trevor, Emrys James et a1. "Wesker: An Author in
Search of Retribution." The Sundaerimes 6 Sept.
1981:n.p.

O’Connor, Garry. "Production Casebook No.2: Arnold
Weskser’s The Friends.” Theatre Quarterly 1.2
(1971):78-92.

Oliver, Cordelia. "Rape of a Nation." Rev. The Cheviot,
the Sta the Black, Black Oil. The Guardian
24 Nov. 973:10

Page, Malcolm. "Whatever Happened to Arnold Wesker?: His
Recent Plays." Modern Drama 11 (l968):317-325.

Parkinson, G.H.R., ed. Georg Lukacs: The Man, His Work,
and His Ideas. New York: Random House, 19702

 

 

Piscator, Erwin. The Political Theatre: A History 1914-
' 1924. Trans. Hugh Morrison. New York: Avon, 1963.

Planchon, Roger. "Taking on the TNP: Theatre as Social and
Artistic Adventure.” Theatre Quarterly 25 (Spring
1977):29-33.

Political Developments on the British Stage Ln the Sixties
and Seventies. Conference papers. Rostock, GDR:
Wilhelm Pieck University, 1977.

 

Reeves, Geoffrey. ”The Biggest Aunt Sally of Them All.
Encore Jan.-Feb. 1963:9-19.

Report of the TUC Working Party on the Arts. London: A
TUC —Consultative Document, 1976.

Ribalow, Harold U. Arnold Wesker. New York: Twayne, 1965.

Ritchie, Rob. "Not Quite a Revolution: The Royal Court and
New Writing." Drama 155 Jan.-Mar. 1985:23-24.

Ruehl, Barbara. "Centre 42." Marxism Today April, 1963:
124-6 0

 

272

Ruhle, Jurgen. Literature and Revolution. Trans. and ed.
Jean Steinberg. New York: Praeger, 1969.

Russell, John. "The Hugh Red Banner: 7:84 Theatre Company
Scotland’s Recent Tour to the USSR." Drama Summer 1983:
17-19.

Schliephake, Bernd. "Politisches Theater in Schottlandfl'
Hard Times 5 (Okt. 1978):15-16.

 

Schechner, Richard. “Actuals: Primitive Ritual and
Performance Theory." The Rarer Action. Rutgers UP,
1971:49-66.

Shaw, Bernard. "Preface" to Pygmaliony A Professor of
Phonetics, "Preface" to Major Barbara. Selected—
Plays gfi Bernard Shaw. New York:Dodd, Mead, 1948.

 

 

 

 

.Solomon, Maynard, Marxism and Art: Essays Classic and
Contemporary. New York: Knopf, 1973.

 

Stanley, Frank. "Centre 42." Marxism Today. March 1963:
77-80.

Styan, JzL. "New Realism in Britain: 1956 to the
Present." .Modern Drama in Theory and Practice.
Vol. I. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981:156-161.

Taylor, John Russell. "Arnold Weskeru" The Angry Theatre:
New British Drama. New York: Hill and Wang, 1962:147-
70.

---. "Art and Commerce: The New Drama in the West End
Marketplace." Contemporary English Drama. Stratford-
Upon-Avon Studies #19. Assoc. Ed. C.W.E. Bigsby. New
York: Holmes & Meir:l77-188.

---. The Second Wave. London, 1971.

 

Thomas, Elizabeth. "Wesker’s Centre 42 Gets Out on the
Road." Tribune 7 Sept. 1962:n.p.

Thomas, Nigel. "Trevor and Bill." The Leveller: The New
Radical Examiner 1.1 (Nov. 1976):12-13.

Thomsen, Christian W. "Three Socialist Playwrights: John
McGrath, Caryl Churchill, Trevor Griffithsfl'Contemp-
orary English Drama. Stratford-Upon-Avon Studies #19.
Assoc. Ed. C.W.E. Bigsby. New York:Holmes & Meir,
1981:157-175.

 

273

Thompson, E. P. The Making Lf the English Working Class.
New York: Vintage, 1986.

 

Trussler, Simon. "Theatre in a Cold Climate." Editorial.
Theatre Quarterly 36 (1980):3-5.

---. "Alternative Theatre--For What?" Theatre anrterly
19 (l975):11-14.

 

Tynan, Kenneth. "A Social Commitment." Encounter 19.2
(2 Aug. 1962):58-60.

Vaughn, Tom. "Dorset Martyrs Hit the Stage." Rev. Six Men
pg Dorset. Morning Star 18 July 1984:n.p.

Wallis, Brian, ed. Art After Modernism: Rethinking
Representation. New York: The New Museum of Contempory
Art, 1984.

 

---. ”The End of the Season." Rev. of A Man Has Two
Fathers. The Observer 15 June 1958:15.

 

 

Wandor, Michelene. "Sexual Politics and the Strategy of
Socialist Theatre." Theatre Quarterly 36 (1980):
29-30.

Wardle, Irving. ”London’s Subsidized Companies." Tulane
Drama Review. 11 (Winter, 1966):105-120.

 

Watson, Ian. Song and Democratic Culture Ln Britain: AJ
Approach to Popular Culture Ln Social Movements.
London: Croom Helm, 1983.

 

 

Weightman, John. "Heroes of Our Time." Rev. of Their Very
Own and Golden City by Arnold Wesker. Encounter
(Aug. 1966): 45- 47.

 

 

Weise, Wolf-Dietrich. Die Neuen englischen Dramatiker ip
ihrem Verhaltnis zu Brecht Unter Besonderer
Berucksichtung von —Wesker, Osborne, und Arden.

Bad Hamburg: Verlag Gehlen, 1969:70-115—

 

 

 

 

 

Weiss, Peter. ”The Material and the Models:Notes Towards a

Definition of Documentary Theatre." Theatre Quarterly
1 (l971):41-43.

Wellworthy, George E. "Arnold Wesker: Awake and Lively in
Whitechapel." The Theatre 9; Protest and Paradox.
New York: New York UP, 1964:271-282.

 

274

Wershba, Joseph. "A Cultural Rebel." New York Post
28 Oct. 1963:

 

Wesker, Arnold. Stage Plays.
The Wesker Trilogy. Middlesex: Penguin, 1964.

Articles.

---. "Art is Not Enough." Twentieth Century (Feb
1961):190-194.

 

---. ”Butterflies with Everything." Guardian 9 Aug.
1972:8.

---. "A Crucial Question." Rev. of The Crossing Point by
Gerda Charles. Jewish Quarterly (Autumn 60):43.

 

-"~u "Excerpts from a New York Journal)’ in.Rona1d Hayman,
ed. A Night 33 the Theatre. London: 1982:164-181.

---. ”False Gods: An Open Letter to Peter Brook." Flourish
1965:2-3.

---. "From a Writer’s Notebook." Plays and Players 2.6
(Apr.-June 1972):8-13.

---. "Going the Half Hog." Rev. of Change for the Angel by
Bernard Kops. Encore May-June, 1960:36.

 

---. "The House." Encounter Nov. 1966:3-9.

---. Last Letter to Aunt Sara.’I The Garment Worker
Oct. 1971:n.p.

 

---. The Playwright’s Boycott Against Apartheid." Contrast
29 (l972):n.p.

---. "To React--To Respond." Encore 6.3 (1959):n-P-

--_a "Two Lost Generations?" Definitions: A Quarterly
Journal 9; Film Criticism. I (l960):40-41.

 

--—. ”Wesker on 42." Observer 7 July 1963:19.
Letters.
---. Letter to Clive Barker. 30 March 1969.

---. Letter to Clive Barker. 2 May 1969.

275

---. Letter to Clive Barker. 7 May 1969.

---. Letter to Clive Barker. 1 Jan. 1971.

---. Letter to Ellis Birk. 24 Aug. 1970.

Interviews:

Interview. "Arnold Wesker." ‘With Margaret Drabble.
The New Review 1.2 (Feb. 1975):25-30.

 

Interviewu "Arnold Wesker and John Dexter;"‘With
Ronald Hayman. Transatlantic Review 48 (l973-74):
89-99.

Interview. "Centre 42." Encore May-June 1962:39-44.

Interview. ;p the Psychiatrist’s Chair. With Anthony
Clare. London: Chatto & Windus, 1984:47-61.

Interview. Untitled. With John Russell Taylor. The
Times 12 Dec. 1963:n.p.

Interview. WA Sense of Dread and Isolation." With
Catherine Itzin. Tribune 13 Oct. 1978:9.

Willett, John. The Theatre of Bertolt Brecht: A Study

From Eight Aspects. LandonzMethuen, 1959:—

 

The Country and the City. Paladin, 1975.

 

 

Culture and Society, 1780-1950. Middlesex:Penguin,
1958.

Drama Lg Performance. Middlesex:Penguin, 1968.

 

"Literature in Societyu” Contemporary Approaches pg
English Studies. Ed. by Hilda Schiff. London:Heinemann
Educational for the English Association. New York:
Barnes and Noble 1977: 24-37.

The Long Revolution: AA Analysis pg the Democratic,
Industrial, and Cultural Changes Transforming Our
Society. New York:Columbia U P, 1961.

 

 

"New English Drama.” The Twentieth Century, 142, 1011
(1961):169-80 Modern English Dramatists. Englewood
Cliffs, New Jerseszrentice-Hall, 1968:26-37.

 

Politics and Letters. LondonzNew Left Books, 1979.
Verso Edition, 1981.

 

276

---. ”Problems of the Coming Period." New Left Review. 140
1983):7-18.

 

---. "Realism and Non-Naturalism 1." Edinburgh '
International Television Festival 1977 - Official
Programme:n.p.

---. "The Role of the Mass Media: A Discussion." Wedge
1 Summer 1977:33-38.

---. "Social Environment and Theatrical Environment:The
Case of English Naturalisnn" Problems Lg Materialism
Egg Culture: Selected Essays. London:Verson,
1980:125-147.

---. The Sociology g£_Culture. New York:Schocken Books,
1982.

 

---.Writing ER Society. London:Verso, 1983.

Wilson, Edmund. To Einland Station: A Study $2 the Writing
and Acting 5? History. New York:Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 1972:

 

 

 

Woodfield, James. English Theatre ip Transition 1889 Z
1914. London:Croom Helm, 1984.

 

Worth, Katherine. Revolution £2 Modern English Drama.
London:G. Bell, 1972.

Wulbern, Julian H. Brecht and Ionesco: Commitment i_n
Context. Bloomington:University of Illindis, 1971.