Abstract
This chapter will examine some features of contemporary dramatic practice in the light of developments in contemporary literary theory. I do not, however, intend to examine the former from the standpoint of the interpretative practices of the. latter. I am, instead, interested in the two as related phenomena. My particular field of interest is dissent, and specifically the question of how dissident theorists and dramatists conceive of the relationship between text and audience. I wish to develop this in relation to, on the one hand, radical post-structuralist theory (which I take to be the major expression of recent critical dissent), and, on the other, work by three socialist dramatists Howard Barker, Howard Brenton and John McGrath. But I will begin by setting out my sense of the dominant direction of relevant theoretical arguments on the problem of how readers make meanings. I will then look at the dramatic practice of Barker and Brenton before, in the third section, turning to that of John McGrath.
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Notes
Edward Said, ‘Opponents, Audiences, Constituencies, and Community’, Critical Inquiry, 9 (1982), 1–26.
See, for instance, the essays collected in Jerome J. McGann, The Beauty of Inflections: Literary Investigations in Historical Method and Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985).
Frank Kermode, Essays on Fiction 1971–82 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983), pp. 5–8.
For a succinct account see Martin Jay, ‘ The Morals of Genealogy: Or is there a Post-Structuralist Ethics?’, Cambridge Review, 110 (1989), 70–74.
Roland Barthes, ‘From Work to Text’, trans. Stephen Heath, reprinted in Debating Texts: A Reader in Twentieth-Century Literary Theory and Method, ed. Rick Rylance (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1987), p. 119.
See Stanley Fish, Is There A Text In This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (London: Harvard University Press, 1982).
For the argument against Said see Fish, Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p. 212.
For a relevant analysis of cultural formations see Raymond Williams, Culture (London: Fontana, 1981), esp. Ch. 3.
Peter Hall’s Diaries: The Story of a Theatrical Battle ,ed. John Goodwin (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1983), p. 347. Entry for 18 April 1978.
Trevor Griffiths, ‘Countering Consent: An Interview with John Wyver’ in Ah! Mischief: The Writer and Television, ed. Frank Pike (London: Faber & Faber, 1982), p. 39.
John Bull, New British Political Dramatists (London: Methuen, 1984) is probably the standard work, though it interestingly pushes both Barker and John McGrath rather to the edges of its account.
For a more diverse, if less analytical, coverage see Catherine Itzin, Stages in the Revolution: Political Theatre in Britain Since 1968 (London: Methuen, 1980).
Howard Barker, ‘The Small Discovery of Dignity’, in New Theatre Voices of the Seventies, ed. Simon Trussler (London: Methuen, 1981), pp. 195, 193 and 187.
Howard Barker, ‘49 Asides for a Tragic Theatre’, Guardian 10 February 1986, p. 11.
For example, Herbert Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969)
Gabriel Cohn-Bendit and Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Obsolete Communism: The Left-Wing Alternative, trans. Arnold Pomerans (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969).
Howard Barker, The Last Supper: A New Testament (London: John Calder, 1988). The programme-text contained interleaved, unnumbered pages from which this quotation is taken.
Howard Brenton, ‘Showcase Spectacles’, 20/20, 20 May 1989, p. 26.
Peter Wollen, ‘Bitter Victory: The Situationist International’ in An Endless Passion… An Endless Banquet: The Situationist International — Selected Documents from 1957 to 1962 and Documents Tracing the Impact on British Culture from the 1960s to the 1980s, ed. Iwona Blazwick (London: ICA/Verso, 1989), pp. 9–16
See also Stewart Home, The Assault on Culture: Utopian Currents from Lettrism to Class War (London: Aporia Press, 1988)
Griel Marcus, Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century (London: Secker & Warburg, 1989).
Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, translator not named and no copyright claimed (no place: Rebel Press/Aim Publications, 1987), pp. 88–9.
For general accounts see Robert Hewison, Too Much: Art and Society in the Sixties 1960–75 (London: Methuen, 1986)
Jonathan Green, Days in the Life: Voices from the English Underground 1961–1971 (London: William Heinemann, 1988)
For drama see Peter Ansorge, Disrupting the Spectacle: Five Years of Experimental Fringe Theatre in Britain (London: Pitman, 1975).
Howard Brenton, Weapons of Happiness (London: Methuen, 1976), p. 76.
Howard Brenton, ‘Author’s Production Note’, Christie in Love and Other Plays (London: Methuen, 1970), p. 4.
Howard Brenton, ‘Taking Liberties’, Marxism Today, December 1988, p. 35.
John Sutherland, Offensive Literature: Decensorship in Britain 1960–1982 (London: Junction Books, 1982), pp. 180–90, is a useful account.
E. P. Thompson, The Poverty of Theory (London: Merlin, 1978)
Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977)
Raymond Williams, several essays in Problems in Materialism and Culture (London: Verso, 1980) and Writing in Society (London, Verso, n.d.)
Raphael Samuel (ed.), People’s History and Socialist Theory (London: Routledge, 1981).
John McGrath, A Good Night Out — Popular Theatre: Audience, Class and Form (London: Methuen, 1981), p. 5. Subsequent references to this work will be found in brackets following quotation.
John McGrath, interviewed by Tony Mitchell, ‘Popular Theatre and the Changing Perspective of the Eighties’, New Theatre Quarterly, 1 (1985), 396.
Eugène Van Erven, Radical People’s Theatre (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), p. 1.
John McGrath, The Cheviot, The Stag and the Black, Black Oil (London: Methuen, 1981);
John McGrath, The Game’s A Bogey: 7:84’s John MacLean Show (Edinburgh: EUSPB, 1975).
For a stimulating recent account see Alan Sinfield, Literature, Politics and Culture in Postwar Britain (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), esp. Chs 4 and 12.
See Trevor Griffiths, ‘Transforming the Hush of Capitalism’, in New Theatre Voices of the Seventies (see note 11 above), p. 132.
André van Gyseghem, ‘British Theatre in the Thirties: An Autobiographical Record’ in Culture and Crisis in Britain in the Thirties, ed. Jon Clark, Margot Heinemann, David Marolies and Carole Snee (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1979)
Jon Clark, ‘Agitprop and Unity Theatre: Socialist Theatre in the Thirties’, in Culture and Crisis in Britain in the Thirties, ed. Jon Clark, Margot Heinemann, David Marolies and Carole Snee (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1979)
Bert Hogenkamp, ‘The Worker’s Film Movement in Britain, 1929–39’ in Propaganda, Politics and Film 1918–45, ed. Nicholas Pronay and D. W. Spring (London: Methuen, 1982)
Raphael Samuel, Ewan MacColl and Stuart Cosgrove, Theatres of the Left 1880–1935: Worker’s Theatre Movements in Britain and America (London: Routledge, 1985)
Agit-Prop To Theatre Workshop: Political Playscripts 1930–50, ed. Howard Goorney and Ewan MacColl (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986)
Richard Stourac and Kathleen McCreery, Theatre as a Weapon: Worker’s Theatre in the Soviet Union, Germany and Britain 1917–1934 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986)
Colin Chambers, The Story of Unity Theatre (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1989).
See also Linda MacKenney, ‘The Strife of the Miner Genius’, Guardian, 18 June 1985, p. 9 on 7:84’s revival of the Scots miner-playwright Joe Corrie, and McGrath, ‘Popular Theatre’ (note 29 above), 390–91 on McGrath’s adaptation for the 1984–85 miner’s strike of Miles Malleson’s thirties play Six Men of Dorset.
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Rylance, R. (1992). Forms of Dissent in Contemporary Drama and Contemporary Theory. In: Page, A. (eds) The Death of the Playwright?. Insights. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21906-3_7
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