Community, Class, and Control: a View of Community Plays

Abstract

‘Community’ has, suggests Graham Woodruff, a friendly ring: yet it is also a weasel word, lending a stamp of often spurious togetherness to bodies politic or theatric. Thus, the use of ‘community’ in the geographical sense is often drained of any true meaning, where it is not a cover for the avoidance of contentious political issues. ‘Communities of interest’ had some success in speaking theatrically in the 'seventies, but now, Woodruff claims, the political situation is such that ‘community theatre’ can and should seek to express the common interests of the increasingly beleaguered working class, offering a way of extending the dramatizations attempted outwards from parochial to wider political concerns. Graham Woodruff was Head of the Drama Department at the University of Birmingham before becoming director of Telford Community Arts, on whose work he draws for the following article.