Abstract
The chapter examines the emergence of a community-based theatre organisation on Dartmoor in response to post-war practices of conservation management of the National Park area located in the South-West of England. Noting the tension between the governmental construction of the Dartmoor landscape as ‘nature’ conserved for national prosperity and alternative (locally lived) understandings of the landscape as anthropic, Schaefer examines how a community-based theatre attends to Dartmoor as, primarily, a cultural and ecological landscape. The chapter locates the practices of MED Theatre, an inter-generational, educational and developmental theatre organisation on Dartmoor, in relation to other, relevant (influencing) models of collective creation: rural-touring community theatre (Kershaw in Theatre Quarterly 8: 65–91, 1978) and the community play (Jellicoe in Community Plays: How to Put Them On. Methuen, London, 1987). Drawing on a dynamic notion of community extrapolated from analysis of community arts (including community theatre) practice, the argument is made that MED Theatre’s work actively resists, or exceeds, socio-spatial containment by national park conservation management and instrumental cultural policy discourse. The chapter considers how recovery of the concepts of dynamic community and cultural democracy might re-animate fundamental political arguments for a democratic public policy in the UK.
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Notes
- 1.
Community theatre was a part of the alternative theatre movement that emerged in the UK in the 1960s (see Kershaw 1991, 1992). Much of that ‘popular oppositional’ practice is now included within what is referred to as applied theatre and performance. In the USA, the term more commonly used is community-based theatre or community performance to differentiate it from amateur practice known as ‘community theatre’. In Australia, where I hail from, the term community arts or community cultural development includes community theatre, which is probably why I work across what are perhaps more separate fields of practice in the UK (see Jeffers and Moriarty 2017, 23).
- 2.
The Shelton Trust was a national umbrella organisation for community artists formed in the 1980s after a re-structure of the Association for Community Artists devolved its operations to the regional level. As well as organising national conferences, the Shelton Trust published a regular magazine, Another Standard. The ‘Culture and Democracy Manifesto’ appeared in Another Standard in 1986 and was collectively authored by Trust members, including Owen Kelly (see Jeffers and Moriarty, 37).
- 3.
For more information on Dartmoor National Park (including maps), see the Authority webpage: http://www.dartmoor.gov.uk/index.
- 4.
See Schaefer et al. (2017) for a broader discussion of rurality and cultural participation.
- 5.
Anthropologist, Kate Crehan, noted in Community Art: An Anthropological Perspective (2011) that academics have not studied the history of community arts, leaving main accounts of the practice to practitioners (p. 80). Happily, that situation is changing. Crehan’s text on seminal community arts organisation, Free Form, was quickly followed by a chapter on select community arts practices within Claire Bishop’s Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (2012), Eugene van Erven’s Community Art Power: Essays from ICAF (2013a) and Community Arts Dialogues (2013b), Rimi Khan’s Art in Community: The Provisional Citizen (2015) and, recently, Jeffers and Moriarty’s Culture, Democracy and the Right to Make Art (2017) and François Matarasso’s A Restless Art: How Participation Won and Why It Matters (2019) (see https://arestlessart.com/).
- 6.
In 1987, the Community Arts Board was reformed as the Community Cultural Development (CCD) Committee. See McEwen (2008) for an extended discussion of CCD’s close links with government policy.
- 7.
Merli’s critique is in two parts: one problematises Matarasso’s lack of research methodology and the other is a moral/ethical critique related to the purported use of arts and culture to remediate the effects of social exclusion. It is this latter issue that I address here. For his own response, see Matarasso (2003).
- 8.
Images of the original production are available here: http://www.medtheatre.themoon.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Article-Badgers-and-the-Scottish-Referendum.pdf.
- 9.
The popularity of the CTT community play model exceeded the bounds of the South-West of England. Kerhsaw notes that it even became possible to speak of an international community play movement (1992, 186). Claque Theatre (artistic director, Jon Oram) continues the CTT tradition of the community play. The community play is experiencing something of a practical and critical revival. See, for instance, Salford Community Theatre’s Love on the Dole and https://communitytheatreplaywright.wordpress.com/.
- 10.
In addition to Beeson as Artistic Director, the company employs an Education team (Abby Stobart and Helen Gilbert), Company Development Officer (Gillian Webster) and an Artistic and Administrative Assistant (Suvi Rehell).
- 11.
Rising Lights (5–7 years); Bright Lights (8–10 years); Bright Nights (10–12 years); and Wild Nights Young Company (13–19 years).
- 12.
Cete refers to the group name for badgers. Badgers live in a sett. Their scientific (Latin) name is meles meles.
- 13.
A fungus-like infection that can kill trees and shrubs, Phytophthora, presents a considerable threat to natural ecosystems and forest-based industries, see: http://www.dartmoor.gov.uk/lookingafter/laf-naturalenv/laf-treeswoodlands/laf_pram16710.
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Schaefer, K. (2019). Enacting Community on Dartmoor: MED Theatre’s Badgerland: A Dartmoor Comedy (2015) and the Spatial Praxis of Community Performance Within a Conservation Zone. In: Belfiore, E., Gibson, L. (eds) Histories of Cultural Participation, Values and Governance. New Directions in Cultural Policy Research. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55027-9_5
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