Theatre in modern British culture

Abstract

A dramatised society: diversity and participation 'We have never as a society acted so much or watched so many others acting', said Raymond Williams in his inaugural lecture as Professor of Drama at Cambridge University. This was true enough in 1974, and now, in the early twenty-first century, Williams' concept of a 'dramatised' society is even more apparent. In making his generalisation, Williams was including all forms of drama, not only those that take place in theatres but also performances in film and television studios. He was also concerned, however, in attempting to define the place of live performance in an age of mechanical (and now, we should add, digital) reproduction. Throughout the twentieth century, developments in film, television, video recording and digital imagery have uttered repeated challenges to live theatre to justify its once-unique position in society as a site of performance, and there is certainly a sense in which the technological and digital media are the commercial and cultural rivals of live theatre rather than colleagues. Any attempt to create a clear binary opposition between live and recorded or digital performance is further complicated by the fact that from the point of view of the practising professional there is actually a great deal of overlap and continuity between the two: the careers of most successful British actors and directors (and, to a lesser extent, designers and technicians) traverse the live and recorded media. Contemporary British theatre does not simply stand in opposition to other forms but is part of a network of performance practices that include the mediatised, the digitised, the recorded and the broadcast.