Theatre In Britain Research Articles

Dystopian/Utopian Theatre in Britain after 2000 and Its Political Spaces, Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung / Centre for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF), University of Bielefeld, March 11–13, 2021

Dystopian/Utopian Theatre in Britain after 2000 and Its Political Spaces, Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung / Centre for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF), University of Bielefeld, March 11–13, 2021

Abdul, G., A., & Sehar, S. (2015). Conflict management and organizational performance: A case study of Askari Bank Ltd. Research Journal of Finance and Accounting. 6(11), 201. Adhiambo, R., & Simatwa, M. (2011). Assessment of conflict management and resolution in public secondary schools in Kenya: A case study of Nyakach District. International Research Journal 2(4), 1074-1088. Adomi, E., & Anie,

The Constitution of Kenya specifically recognizes the freedom of association to form and belong to trade unions. However, despite the adoption of the Labour Relations Act, union practice is still hampered by excessive restrictions. The EPZ companies are labor intensive requiring a large amount of labor to produce its goods or service and thus, the welfare of the employees play a key role in their functions. This study sought to determine the effect of trade union practices on employees’ welfare at export processing zones industries in Athi River, Kenya. The specific objectives sought to determine the effect of collective bargaining agreements, industrial action, dispute resolution and trade union representation on employees’ welfare at export processing zones industries in Athi River, Kenya. The study employed a descriptive research design. Primary data was collected by means of a structured questionnaire. The target population of the study was employees in EPZ companies in Athi River, Kenya with large employees enrolled in active trade unions. The unit of observation was the employees in the trade unions. The findings indicated that collective bargaining agreements had a positive and significant coefficient with employees’ welfare at the EPZ industries. Industrial action had a positive but non-significant effect with employees’ welfare at Export Processing Zones industries. Dispute resolution had a positive and significant coefficient with employees’ welfare at the EPZ industries. Trade union representation had a positive and significant coefficient with employees’ welfare at the EPZ industries. The study recommended that trade union should avoid the path of confrontation but continue dialogue through the collective bargaining process and demands should be realistic in nature with what is obtainable in the related industry. An existence of a formal two way communication between management and trade unions will ensure that right message is properly understood and on time too. Keywords: Collective Bargaining Agreements, Industrial Action, Dispute Resolution, Trade Union Representation, Employees Welfare & Export Processing Zones

Alternative Theatre in Britain in the Late 70s and in the 80s

In the 1960s and 1970s in Britain there was a growing number of small theatre groups with many different origins and affiliations and were all gathered under one heading as "underground theatre" by the London listings magazine Time Out, though they called themselves by other titles such as fringe /alternative /experimental or community theatre. These groups and their cultural production were in some way opposed to the dominant social and cultural values of the mainstream. " The election of a neo-liberal government in 1979, promoting monetarism and market forces, caused increasing economic pressure on these groups which were almost all struggling financially. This article examines what made these theatre companies different, not just in terms of content but also in the economies of these groups. What were their incomes and expenditures?. How did they survive? The paper addresses several of the key questions raised in the call for papers, the most crucial concerning the relation between those who were opposed to the mainstream but depended on mainstream institutions for the means to survive. The information is drawn mainly from an unpublished thesis.

Marsh , Cynthia Translated and Visiting Russian Theatre in Britain 1945–2015: A ‘Russia of the Theatrical Mind’? (review)

REVIEWS 751 period is still not well documented. Translating Great Russian Literature does much to shed light on this transitional moment in Anglo-Russian literary relations. Faculty of English Language and Literature Rebecca Beasley University of Oxford Marsh, Cynthia. Translated and Visiting Russian Theatre in Britain 1945–2015: A ‘Russia of the Theatrical Mind’? Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2020. xvi + 392 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Appendices. Bibliography. Index. £74.99;£54.99 (paperback); £59.99 (e-book). The germ of this ambitious project originated, according to its author, in ‘my own reading in translation studies, from translating plays and from directing, watching and teaching them’ (p. 255). The following review is of the e-book. The book itself seems attractively produced and illustrated. The extent of the project’s nature can be gauged from the fact that, in a work of nearly 400 pages, approximately 100 are devoted to lists of productions, the overwhelming majority of which are of Chekhov. In addition, a further seventy pages consist almost solely of endnotes to each of the book’s eight sections, leaving a little over 200 or so for the work’s main topic. It opens with a prologue (section one) and concludes with an epilogue (section eight). Section two sets out the theoretical basis of the study wherein concepts of collision, hybridization and acculturation are deployed in a discussion of ways in which translation and performance of Russian/Soviet plays in Britain have been affected, for good or ill, by either well-informed, partial or wayward comprehension of either the Russian language, the country’s landscape and its associations, its idiosyncratic social norms, or a combination of all three. The third and fourth sections focus mainly on Gogol´, Turgenev and Ostrovskii, while sections five and six cover Gor´kii, the Soviet, and post-Soviet repertoire. Section seven considers the staging of Russian prose works from Gogol´ onwards. Although, at first glance, there would seem to be a preoccupation with theory, the main emphasis of the study falls on the actual productions themselves, which are reconstructed through citation of critical commentary, hence the plethora of footnotes. Herein lies part of the problem. Due to the sheer number culled from a multitude of sources, quotations tend to be reduced to either single words or phrases, with the result that no vision or intellectual conception of any specific production emerges with real clarity. Information overload and speculative rumination become substitutes for selective, incisive analysis. SEER, 99, 4, OCTOBER 2021 752 Dramatists of the nineteenth century occupy the bulk of the discussion. It therefore comes as something of a surprise when, in a section devoted to Chekhov, we are invited to look elsewhere for treatment of the production and reception of his plays. It is precisely at this point that a reader would welcome theory being put into practice by way of a discriminating and evaluative treatment of, for example, one or two productions and translations that the author considers exemplary, or which otherwise leave much to be desired for whatever reason(s). It also seems characteristic of Professor Marsh’s approach that very few significant individual British actors, directors or designers are accorded their rightful importance in the scheme of things. Given her comparative neglect of Chekhov productions, it is unsurprising but nevertheless regrettable that an entire galaxy of native stars is eclipsed by lesser luminaries, with even Olivier finding himself reduced to celluloid (his film of Tri sestry). As for the visitors and their offerings, those neglected or ignored include the Sovremennik’s artistic director, Galina Volchek, as well as MKhAT’s Oleg Efremov and the actor Innokenti Smoktunovskii. Tovstonogov’s Idiot and his Kholstomer evade scrutiny as does his Diadia Vania. Dodin’s King Lear and Diadia Vania, as well as his splendid ‘lakeside’ Platonov and ‘pondside’ Vishnevyi sad are glossed over, while Liubimov’s recreation in Leicester of his Vysotskii/ Borovskii-inspired Hamlet, later seen in London, is overlooked. Missing from any reference to the Edinburgh Festival repertoire are the Efros production of Mesiats v derevne as well as Moscow South West Theatre’s Hamlet. Liubimov’s Taganka production of Pushkin’s Boris Godunov is mentioned but disregarded. Further blind spots occlude the...

“Part of What We Thought and Felt”: Antifascism, Antisemitism and Jewish Connections with the New Theatre

For much of the twentieth century, the six branches of the New Theatre in Australia presented left-wing theatre within a culture that was largely resistant to their ideas. Their orientation was explicitly pro-working class, their support base including the Communist Party and left-wing trade unions. Like radical theatres in other nations, including the Unity Theatre in Britain, the New Theatre had strong connections to Jewish culture and theatre enterprises, and featured Jewish writers, actors, values and themes. Left-wing, anti-fascist scripts written by Jews in Australia as well as Britain and the USA were often staged. This article discusses the New Theatre’s concerns with antisemitism and Jewish politics focussing on selected plays by Laurence Collinson, David Martin and Oriel Gray. These plays provide us with an ideal prism through which to analyse Jewish left-wing and anti-fascist ideas as they were refracted through a transnational left-wing theatre movement.

(Post)colonial friendships and Empire 2.0: A Brexit reading of Victoria & Abdul

ABSTRACT A 2018 report published by the British think tank Demos claims that, in Britain, “nostalgic rhetoric clearly played a significant role in the Referendum campaign, in particular, emphasising particular tropes around the Second World War, empire and the ‘re-instation’ of British sovereignty”. Indeed, these tropes feature heavily in popular culture, with several films and TV series centred on Britain’s imperial past. Taking on board Nadine El-Enany’s suggestion that “Brexit is not only an expression of nostalgia for empire, but it is also the fruit of empire”, this article discusses the role of imperial fantasies in the debate over Britain’s membership of the European Union and draws a connection between these fantasies and recent re-presentations of Britain’s imperial past on screen. Focusing in particular on Stephen Frears’s Victoria & Abdul (2017), it argues that the film offers a sanitized version of the empire, which contributes to the reproduction of nostalgic imperial fantasies in post-European Britain.

Producers’ playground: the British Film Producers Association and international film festivals in the post-war period

ABSTRACT The article explores how the process of film selection was conducted on the national level in Britain in order to shed light on the notion of ‘programming along national lines’ from the perspective of countries participating in international film events such as the Cannes film festival. In Britain, such participation was seen as an opportunity by both film producers and the government to present British films on the international stage, away from the American and the colonial ones. The intense and often confused debates as to whether the UK should participate in international film festivals at all and which films should be selected reflected the dynamics of British film industry. Seen from the perspective of these debates Britain’s participation in the international film festivals becomes a significant episode in the industry’s history. The struggles surrounding the representation of Britain on the international film festival circuit reveal yet another trend within the history of the British film industry, in particular its production sector – namely, which of these modestly budgeted indigenous films could best represent Britain at international film festivals and to what end exactly.

Political Theatre in the Age of Brexit: The State of Nation in Monologues

Abstract On the British stage, political theatre, which emerged in the twentieth century, has been linked with the problems of the working class as initiated in the 1920s until the early 1960s. With the end of the official censorship of theatre in 1968, political theatre in Britain experienced a period in which socialist works marked the stage. Nevertheless, the 1990s challenged the association of political theatre with the conditions of the working class. Considering the current political and social events in Britain and around the world, it is appropriate to underline that political theatre is not only in a constant flux, but its definition has been once again challenged. In this regard, Brexit can be considered as one of the most significant movements to influence the understanding of political theatre in the twenty-first century. Consequently, this study aims to analyse Brexit Shorts: Dramas from a Divided Nation (2017), a co-production by the Guardian and Headlong Theatre Company and discuss their contribution to the changing definition of political theatre. Brexit Shorts will be further explored regarding their influence on the popularity of monologues as a mode of performance.

Channelling Intergenerational Desire in Catherine Johnson’s Mamma Mia!

In this article, David Chandler challenges the often dismissive interpretation of Catherine Johnson’s hugely successful Mamma Mia! (1999) as a sunny, upbeat, lightweight musical. Johnson’s earlier dramatic work was of a more serious cast, and returned repeatedly to scenes of damaging, often exploitative, intergenerational desire. This interest continues in Mamma Mia! though commercial imperatives meant it had to be suppressed and displaced. As Sophie, the heroine, secretly meets the three middle-aged men who could be her father, but who have no idea she may be their daughter, the danger that they may be sexually attracted to her – one of them quickly labels her a ‘minx’ – becomes a subter ranean force shaping the fates of most of the central protagonists and the final surprise irresolution of the paternity plot. Intergenerational relationships blossom in Mamma Mia!, but they are treated differently from the relationships between couples of similar ages. David Chandler is a professor in the English Department at Doshisha Univ er sity, Kyoto. His background is in literary Romanticism, but since 2008 he has also pub lished widely on the history of musical theatre in Britain. He is a director of Retrospect Opera.

Britain in the Melbourne Punch

This article explores the representation of Britain and the British by cartoonists in the Melbourne Punch. Just as in the London Punch, representative figures, together with caricatures of politicians and notables, were deployed in constant dialogue with the events of the day. Where Melbourne-based cartoonists used such characters critically, they did not position themselves as distinct or separate from a British identity, but integrated readers into a British world dependent upon networks of print culture and a shared sense of humour. The very form and function of the magazine (as well as its contents) therefore illuminate a proud sense of Britishness.

Colonial memories and transnational mobilizations: Asia’s colonial veterans and their struggle for British citizenship, c. 1980–2015

This article focuses on campaigns by former colonial soldiers from Nepal and Hong Kong and their struggles for British citizenship over the last three decades. When analysing these mobilizations, we combine approaches from social movement research with insights from cultural memory studies. We use the concept of ‘relational fields’ to determine how these former colonial soldiers systematically utilized the past as a political framing device and thus revealed themselves to be not outsiders to the political system but equal players therein. We argue that their actions are best understood as a series of connected postcolonial civil rights campaigns that often reinforce rather than reverse romanticized and positivist representations of Britain’s imperial past. While in some instances colonial veterans were able to mount meaningful political interventions, our analysis shows that the veterans’ eventual acceptance into British society could only come at the price of their continued stereotyped depiction as colonial subjects.

Policy accommodation versus electoral turnover: policy representation in Britain, 1945–2015

AbstractDoes public policy in the United Kingdom respond to changes in public preferences? If so, is this the result of the government changing its policy to reflect preferences (“policy accommodation”) or the result of governments that pursue unpopular policies being replaced at elections by governments more in line with the public (“electoral turnover”)? We explore these questions by estimating annual aggregate public preferences (“the policy mood”) using responses to 287 questions administered 2,087 times and annual policy using budgetary data (“nonmilitary government expenditure”) for the whole of the postwar period. We find that mood moves in the opposite direction to policy and variations in mood are associated with variations in annual vote intentions. Policy is responsive to party control but not directly responsive to mood. Shifts in mood eventually lead to a change in government and thus policy, but this process may be very slow if the public has doubts about the competence of the opposition.

Working Title Films and Universal: The Integration of a British Production Company into a Hollywood Studio

Working Title Films is arguably the most successful and well-known production company in Britain today. For over 30 years, it has produced a diverse range of critically and commercially successful British films including romantic comedies such as Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) and Bridget Jones's Diary (2001), family films like Bean (1997) and Nanny McPhee (2005) and dramas including Atonement (2007) and The Theory of Everything (2014). For the majority of its history, however, Working Title has been defined in business terms by its status as a subsidiary of one of two multinational media conglomerates, PolyGram (1992–8) and Universal (1998–present). The transition between the two began when PolyGram, and its film studio, PolyGram Filmed Entertainment (PFE), was sold to Seagram, the parent company of Universal. This article examines Working Title's integration into Universal and the evolving media ecology which shaped the processes of development, green-lighting, production, marketing and distribution at play within and between both companies between 1998 and 2006. In these respects, Working Title's transition between parent companies is a narrative of both continuity and change. Significantly, three key stages of gatekeeping remained common to both the PFE and Universal eras: development, green-lighting and distribution. The institutional perimeters within which these points of decision-making occurred, however, changed considerably. The article concludes by considering the impact of such structures and processes on the films which Working Title produced, particularly their various representations of Britain and ‘Britishness’.

High Rejection, Low Selection: Ethnic Penalties, Candidate Selection, and Minority Group Representation in Britain

High Rejection, Low Selection: Ethnic Penalties, Candidate Selection, and Minority Group Representation in Britain

The Immobility of Power in British Political Theatre after 2000: Absurdist Dystopias

AbstractThe paper focuses on the twenty-first-century resurgence of political concerns in British theatre, in the traditional (post-1950s) sense of criticising the unequal distribution of power in society. A key approach combines the seemingly incompatible genre characteristics of dystopia and the Theatre of the Absurd to foreground immobility, and two representative cases of such absurdist dystopias are studied in detail: Mark Ravenhill'sMobility is denied in a number of respects in these works: In contrast to earlier political theatre in Britain, the unjust hierarchies are not portrayed as changeable, and audiences are pointedly not supposed to be ‘moved’ by any clear-cut messages either. Moreover, the system representatives and their domestic relationships are shown to become increasingly static through the corrupting force of power, both literally and metaphorically. On the whole, these curiously abstract representations result in claustrophobic scenes, which can have profound indirect effects on the spectators. As the plays also allude to the developments in political discourse from New Labour onwards, the pervasive immobility on stage can at the same time be read as obliquely mocking the recurrent insistence on ‘change’ in the rhetoric of all major parties in Britain.

British Theatre and Performance 1900-1950 by Rebecca D'Monté

British Theatre and Performance 1900-1950 by Rebecca D'Monté Brian E. G. Cook British Theatre and Performance 1900-1950. By Rebecca D'Monté. Bloomsbury Methuen, 2015. Cloth $88.00, Paper $29.95. 352 pages. Rebecca D'Monté's British Theatre and Performance 1900-1950 joins Claire Warden's British Avant Garde Theatre (2012) and other recent books in dismantling any lingering universalisms about early-twentieth-century theatre in Britain. D'Monté's book does this through its breadth: As a single-volume work, it is both encyclopedic and vast. She writes in the introduction that she wishes to continue the work done by other historians and critics, "as well as further considering the fluidity between the professional and non-professional, and the commercial and the avant-garde" (2). In the book's wake, West End-centered arguments about the decadence or the unique upper-class focus of British theatre in this period are diminished. However, the book's vastness is both a strength and a weakness, for in order to cover so much information, D'Monté does not go into tremendous depth on any one subject. The book is largely documentary, with a fine balancing of the known and lesser-known events and productions from the period, presented in a web of interconnected people, events, and performances from all over Britain. The first four chapters focus on theatre of the Edwardian, First World War, Interwar, and Second World War periods in turn. Each chapter is divided into sections exploring various aspects of theatre and performance, including popular genres of each era and explorations of how the theatre was portraying social issues like suffrage, poverty, shifting values, and broader historical and cultural events. Throughout, D'Monté often focuses on written drama, effectively charting the work of both male and female playwrights; many of the latter's plays remained unpublished and/or unproduced until years later. D'Monté also goes into greater detail about theatre in the war years (1914-18, 1939-45) than other writers, both in London and beyond, successfully broadening the available scholarship. The book also features three chapters by other scholars: Claire Cochrane contributes a new, extremely useful examination of the development of the director in British theatre, and Penny Farfan compellingly records portrayals of gender and sexuality on stage, including the transgressive performances of Maud Allan. Notably, both chapters offer brief, but welcome details of the career of director Edith Craig, whose work has largely been obscured by that of her mother, Ellen Terry, and her brother, Edward Gordon Craig. The final chapter is Steve Nicholson's remarkable survey of the various portrayals of Nazism on British stages between 1933-39, many of which were impacted by government vacillation as policies ranged from appeasement to declaration of war. The book also contains a useful chronology section for 1900-1950, which lists large historical events alongside notable theatrical events. Periodically, the encyclopedic nature of the book means that not every event or person mentioned can be fully contextualized. In several places, the discussion could have been easily clarified with brief minor clauses describing names or facts with more clarity to assist the reader in apprehending the point being made. For instance, in many places D'Monté drops names whose works are unfamiliar: "while the working classes were deemed to be in need of the morally edifying plays of the [End Page 129] West End, transfers could sometimes go in the opposite direction as well, as with the plays of Arthur Shirley and Benjamin Landeck" (13). A follow-up sentence on these artists' works would aid the reader's understanding the context of that statement. Similarly, sometimes events are mentioned which are not widely known, and D'Monté does not contextualize them: "The Treaty of Versailles in 1919 had boosted Britain's global power, but events such as the Jallianwala Bagh massacre (also known as the Amritsar massacre), which took place in the same year, dented faith in the notion of colonization" (96). Again, a quick clarifying sentence defining the massacre would beef up the explanation that D'Monté is making. The book does contain at least two significant factual errors. D'Monté writes of the Labour Party...

Music theatre in Britain, 1960-1975

Music theatre in Britain, 1960-1975

In the name of the Other? Refugee theatre and the value of “illegal” life in Britain

Drawing on refugee theatre performances by companies such as ice&fire, this article explores the politics of Testimonial Refugee Theatre in Britain and how illegal life is performed in contemporary verbatim theatre productions. Within the realm of narratives of flight, political drama holds an important position as a genre, because of its ability to create intimate immediacy. In theatre halls and post-performance gatherings, audiences can feel ready to inquire about politics. The variety of theatre productions dealing with refugee issues is enormous and refugee theatre adds new dimensions to discussions concerning Britain as a post-racial society. Contemporary refugee theatre in general, and its two major subgenres Container Plays and Testimonial Refugee Plays in particular, function as dramatic buffer zones which signal post-racial dimensions while re-inscribing alienation into the cultural and social make-up of British society. The plays discussed include Kay Adshead’s The Bogus Woman, Sonja Linden’s I Have Before Me a Remarkable Document Given to Me by a Young Lady from Rwanda, Clare Bayley’s The Container and Sylvie Hoffmann and Aimé Kongolo’s White Goods. Influential international productions such as Théâtre du Soleil’s Le Dernier Caravanserail (Odyssées) directed by Ariane Mnouchkine and Christoph Schlingensief’s container performance spectacle Big Brother, Foreigners Out! (Ausländer Raus! 2000) serve as background screens against which the arguments unfold.

The contribution of maps to appreciating physical landscape: examples from Derbyshire's Peak District

Abstract It is only in the last 100 years or so that most of Britain has been covered by accurate, published, topographic and geological maps. Although travellers’ guides were available from the late seventeenth century, they lacked adequate maps. Whilst fairly accurate maps of the major roads were published in the early seventeenth century as strip maps, topographic maps were not generally available until the nineteenth century. Cartographers, usually when preparing county maps, struggled with the representation of Britain's varied topography. In the nineteenth century, medium-scale (1-inch-to-the-mile) topographic maps initially developed through the agency of the prizes offered by the Royal Society of Arts but primarily due to the Ordnance Survey. Geological maps benefitted from improved base maps – those of John Cary and the Ordnance Survey. This paper especially explores and illustrates the development of maps and the role they played in the depiction and understanding of landscape and promotion of the major early geotourism region of the Peak District from 1780 to 1930.

Mongrel nation: animality and Empire in the novels of J.G. Farrell

The novels of J.G. Farrell (1935–79), reveal a writer preoccupied with the cultural representation of Britain in an era of post-imperial decline. Farrell's ‘Empire trilogy’ illustrates a national consciousness examining its chequered past through focus on Ireland in Troubles (1970), the Indian Rebellion of 1857 in The Siege of Krishnapur (1973) and the fall of Singapore in The Singapore Grip (1978). In doing so, Farrell's novels feature a notable proliferation of flora and fauna, particularly his use of dogs as representative of national character and the changeable state of British society under attack. This article argues that Farrell's novels explore the state of post-imperial Britain through a sustained focus on dogs and animality. In situations marked by degradation and decline, Farrell gradually collapses the boundaries of order and disorder, obedience and disobedience and man and beast, inviting comparisons between the animal instincts of the dogs that populate his novels and those of Britons fighting for survival.