Theatre Workshop

To mark the AHRC British Library and University of Sheffield Theatre Archive Project's latest event, 'Hidden Theatre?': Theatre Workshop - Recollections of British Theatre from 1945 to 1968 on Tuesday 9th October 2007, we are asking for people to leave posts on the statement below. Free tickets are available from the British Library.

'The Royal Court Theatre had proved far more influential than the work of Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop.' Discuss.

Comments

[stephen wischhusen]

What a fascinating evening this was. Sadly I had to leave early to get to my rural home. It was quite clear from what I did see that Theatre Workshop has been somewhat under-rated in unfairly i the shadow of the Royal Court and "Look Back in Anger".
For some eight years I ran out of my own pocket, the Lyceum Theatre in Crewe, then (in the 1950;s) known as the New Theatre. The council was ambivalent although they owned the theatre.
I discovered through the conference evening that working class Crewe was ambivalent in the 50's too. The council turned down Theatre Workshop's request to lease the theatre and sent them packing !
That continued in to the 1960's too when if searching for digs one was foolish to say one was playing the theatre, the digs were often refused !

[dominic shellard]

It was a privilege to hear the comments of Julia Jones, Harry Green, Pearl Turner and Murray Melvin. I would encourage everybody with an interest in Theatre Workshop to listen to the podcast of the evening when it is available on the Project website. I was particularly intrigued to learn that TW turned down the Royal Court as a permanent venue before the ESC took up residency. How different theatre history might have been if they had moved to Sloane Square...

[sally brown]

These are my recollections of a brilliant evenening:

Very interesting, entertaining and often moving `horse's mouth' talks - gave audience a real sense of the trials and triumphs of the Theatre Workshop

An old lady sitting next to me said it was one of the best & most
enjoyable evenings she she had ever had

Huge, cheerful buzz afterwards as people dispersed, all talking eagerly about what they had heard & learnt. I overheard one theatrical-looking lady say to another something along the lines of `But you always had
trouble with your bloomers, didn't you, dear?'

[heather lonsdale]

I really liked the following:

*Murray Melvin's fantastic interview, particularly the hilarious anecdote about the trip to Paris!
*The presentation by Payam, the MA student from Sheffield, who gave a truly heart-warming (and very funny) presentation about interviewing Ron Gray.
*Kate Harris's panel discussion, which featured amongst other things a discussion of the sketches that Harry Green made of TW activities between 1950 and 1954

[deborah phillips]

That was SUCH a good evening

[john tuck]

In the spirit of recollections of the evening:

a) I went straight to Google and looked up Pearl Goodman. I must buy 'More Pearls and A String of Pearls'.

b) `Nothing compares with opening night at Barnsley at Christmas'. A
great comment/headline by Julia Jones.

c) A conversation at the interval about The Grand Theatre, Blackpool - where I had seen Ken Dodd (5 hours) last week.

A fourth one - I get a lot of job satisfaction out of seeing your
students/young people doing and presenting their research in such a positive and lively way.

John Tuck, Head of British Collections, British Library

[dominic shellard]

Interested to read that Crewe Council were consistently myopic, Stephen. Did the Arts Council support the New Theatre in any way?

[Tom Dymond]

It was a great evening. My highlights were Harry Greene and his images, they were really striking. I also found the MA presentations thought-provoking, particularly Helen Temple's ideas on interviewers having an 'agenda' and how this influences what is said and what is asked. Hearing Jean Newlove speak about Laban was also illuminating and conveyed a real sense of the Theatre workshop style.

[Kate Harris]

It was a real pleasure to listen to Pearl Goodman, Harry Greene, Julia Jones and Murray Melvin talk about their recollections of Theatre Workshop. They are all brilliant raconteurs and a number of people came up to me afterwards and said that they should go on tour!

On a personal level I enjoyed re-meeting interviewees who I have spent many a happy hour talking to in the past. The three student presentations offered a fantastic reflection of the importance of the friendships that have developed between many interviewers and interviewees.
It was wonderful to see so many people at the event who have contributed their memories to the project over the past five years.

[stephen wischhusen]

Dominic: in reply to your query. In the 1950's, having waved goodbye to yet another management willing to have a go (I think this was W. Armitage Owen's Machester Repertory Company - definately nothing to do with Miss Horniman !-) the council decided to do things itself via a trust. The Theatre was renamed The Lyceum (the name it should have had in 1911. In fact it did have it - high on the frontage, but because it was a new build the name New stuck, pretty much as with the New/Albery/Coward in London) and a council funded company produced, with I think ACGB funding as well, but in time the latter ceased, and to help make ends meet the Theatre decided to tour some of its productions. Money was short, and true to form, the Council pulled the plug while the Company was on tour. The Theatre was dark again (c1980-81) when Barrie Stacey and then I tried to keep it going.
Th eproblem was that the theatre had become a political football, tory council's wanting to close it, labour wanting to keep it open, and the Crewe and Nantwich council became hung, with its future decided often by one vote. It was eventually taken out of the political football pitch, but whereas I was expected to run 6 months live for a handout of £30,000, the council now give itself over £260,000 to run one live week a month plus one nighters. Aha!There is more if you want it !I think you are soon to interview Mervyn Gould who toured to Crewe in the 1960's - hear what he says !!

[stephen wischhusen]

I should add that whereas in the 1960s and 70s one could say that Crewe was railway dominated and backward looking, a wind of change was apparent during the late 80's and early nineties. Many new developements brought major firms to the town including Barclays Bank, Gallagher and more and to encourage a larger work-force from outside the council must have decided that amenities needed to be improved hence taking the theatre back in 1991.
I had told the council, in preparing to leave, that the theatre need more of an identity. It was at this time that Century Theatre had changed its name to English Touring Company. I suggested the Council offered the theatre to them, to make it a base from which it could tour. This happened. But ETC only played each of its productions at Crewe for half a week before touring, so although it was the production date, ETC did not risk playing a whole week there.
Development money was needed to enable a progressive programme to be developed, but we are not in those times anymore and eventually the English Touring Company found that Crewe was not centrally placed enough and gave up their joint venture and I dont think they visit it at all now.
Of course there had been the 1947 Act which enabled local authorities to raise a 6d (now 2.5p rate) to fund civic theatres, but I do not know if that was used at Crewe and indeed the number of boroughs which did avail themselves of the provisions of the Act was never large.
In an idel world every town should have a cinema, theatre and library, but that only became reality in communist controlled eastern europe(!)

[maurice stewart]

If there are any future interviews with what Murray (Melvin) called ‘The Golden Oldies’(= people who were actually involved in the early
days of The Workshop), a very valuable point in Workshop history perhaps remains unrecorded. Anybody left alive who has clear recollection of the
production of “URANIUM 235” when it was brought to the West End and
virtually ignored ... should be asked about Joan’s curtain speech on the last night of that disastrously unsuccessful run.

In general, the Sheffield historical re-evaluation of Littlewood’s strengths and weaknesses, and moves to gather more background material is hugely valuable for the future. However, for Theatre Workshop to be under the umbrella title of ‘hidden’ theatre in the light of it’s having been one of the most profitable and high-profile theatrical enterprises in British Theatre in the mid-Twentieth Century is, to say the least,
questionable.

[Alec Patton]

I was particularly struck by Pearl Goodman's remark that TW sometimes 'left a town without paying', tantalisingly leaving unanswered the question of WHAT was left unpaid-just their digs, or was there more as well? After the event, somebody remarked that perhaps they moved into Stratford East in part because there were so many towns they couldn't go back to.

Are there any plans for Harry Green's wonderful sketches to be published? Perhaps a 'TW Notebooks' publication encompassing Green and Littlewood's notebooks? (Or are Littlewood's books all locked away in Texas with forbidding copyright fees?)

[Jamie Andrews]

Really stimulating evening, allowing time and space for different narratives to unfold, building up over the evening to a precious meld of recollections and stories.

More soon on the podcast, which will be available from http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/whatson/downloads.

Very heartening for the Project to see the interplay between the generations: the evident value for both parties –interviewer and interviewee- in the transmission and recording of knowledge.

Personally, tickled to learn that when TW hustled off to Paris for the performance at the Drama Festival, they played at the Théâtre Hébertot, whose legendary owner/manager opened his theatre in the 17e to a pleasingly eclectic group ranging from Action Française nationalists through Camus, Gide, to Sartre, Pinter and, so I just learnt, Theatre Workshop.

[angela bachini]

Here are my three highlights from Tuesday's event:

Murray Melvin's highly entertaining, informative and sometimes moving interview.

Hearing recollections of Theatre Workshop that were obviously still controversial so many years after the events.

The strong turnout for the event, and the enthusiasm of the audience, which showed the high level of public and academic interest in the event, and in the project as a whole.

[dominic shellard]

In response to Alec's query, we hope that a good deal of Harry Greene's sketches, as well as Harry's Project interview, will appear in the Project monograph, 'The Golden Generation: New light on British Theatre 1945-68', to be published by British Library Publications on 8 May 2008. This is the first day of the Project conference, which runs over 2 days, and there will be a launch of the book at 5pm in the BL Conference Centre, to which all are invited. Details of how to register for the conference - which will include even more time for authtentic recollections - will appear on the Project website soon.

[Lada Price]

A truly wonderful and informative evening! We are still receiving calls and emails from people saying how much they enjoyed being there. I hope that the Theatre Archives Project's next event will also be a great success.

[Eleanor Thornton]

I came to this event having studied the work of Ewan MacColl and I was almost expecting 'the other side of the story' but I'm extremely glad that that wasn't the case. I thought the panel discussion was excellent and the reminiscences of the members of Theatre Workshop were very illuminating, particularly about the politics and the dynamics of the company. I enjoyed hearing the talks by the interviewers and thought they each contributed something different to the understanding of the Theatre Archive Project. Murray Melvin was entertaining but I felt that at the end the reminiscences from audience members could have been cut a bit shorter to allow for more questions. Overall an excellent event which was well balanced and very informative.