Howard Brenton: Portable Theatre and the Fringe

Abstract

Of all the new playwrights, Howard Brenton is the one to have been most embraced by the subsidised theatre, and yet it is an embrace full of paradox. His work has been consistently successful at the box-office, but it has been greeted with a degree of critical abuse that has only intensified as it has become increasingly well known. His ambiguous acceptance by the theatrical establishment has allowed him to utilise the facilities of the large theatres in a move towards a reformulation of ‘epic theatre’, but he has never ceased to question the point of the exercise.

You don’t write to convert. More — to stir things up. For people to make what they wish of it. When it comes to agit-prop, I like the agit; the prop I’m very bad at. I’m not wise enough. Yet.

(Howard Brenton, in TQ, v, no. 17, 1975)