Punishing the outsiders: Theatre Workshop and the Arts Council

Abstract

Numerous analyses have documented the Arts Council's refusal to provide Theatre Workshop with an adequate subsidy, which, among other things, forced the company to abandon its revolutionary training programme. However, few have examined the reasons for its behaviour. This article calls for a re-evaluation of the Council's treatment of the company by analysing it through the lens of Bourdieusian sociology. It argues that the Council withheld money as a way of punishing the group for its countercultural practices and for developing a method of training actors that attacked the conventions of the British theatre in the 1940s and 1950s. Furthermore, this article cross-references the Arts Council's files with records of MI5's systematic surveillance of the company for the first time to identify the political motivations that also contributed to this behaviour. In both instances, it reveals a concentrated effort against Littlewood and her training programme that led ultimately to the exclusion of Theatre Workshop from the British theatre.