Reverberations across Small-Scale British Theatre: Politics, Aesthetics and Forms
250
Reverberations across Small-Scale British Theatre: Politics, Aesthetics and Forms
250Hardcover
-
SHIP THIS ITEMIn stock. Ships in 3-7 days. Typically arrives in 3 weeks.PICK UP IN STORE
Your local store may have stock of this item.
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783202973 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Intellect, Limited |
| Publication date: | 02/15/2014 |
| Pages: | 250 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.70(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Reverberations Across Small-Scale British Theatre
Politics, Aesthetics and Forms
By Patrick Duggan, Victor Ukaegbu
Intellect Ltd
Copyright © 2013 Patrick Duggan and Victor UkaegbuAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78320-297-3
CHAPTER 1
Foco Novo: The Icarus of British Small-Scale Touring Theatre
Graham Saunders
In histories of British Fringe touring companies specialising in new writing, two names dominate: Portable and Joint Stock. Long after disbandment both have acquired almost mythic status. Portable were the buccaneering young idealists in a van, taking vivid and anarchic shows such as Howard Brenton's Christie in Love (1968) and Snoo Wilson's Pig Night (1971) to new audiences, often in non-theatre venues, while Philip Roberts considers William Gaskill and Max Stafford-Clark's Joint Stock 'the most important Fringe group of the seventies' (Roberts and Stafford-Clark 2007: xvi). Yet Foco Novo, which was in existence for almost the same time as Joint Stock, also staged the work of new writers as well as specially commissioned versions of modern European dramatists including Brecht, Büchner and Genet. Its history is defined by radical shifts in artistic policy – from overtly socialist theatre including Nine Days and Saltley Gates (1976) to promoting black drama – and interspersed throughout with large-scale productions of European classics. Foco Novo represented both the opportunities and later the increasing tensions of small-scale touring theatre in Britain during the 1970s and 1980s.
Foco Novo was the vision of its co-founder Roland Rees. Howard Brenton has called him the 'unsung hero of contemporary theatre' (Brenton 1995: 34), and Rees remained Foco Novo's artistic director throughout its lifetime. The company was established by Rees and David Aukin in 1972. Its first two productions Foco Novo (1972), by the American playwright Bernard Pomerance (and the title from which the company subsequently took its name), and Bertolt Brecht's Drums in the Night (1973) established its subsequent artistic policy: new writing and specially commissioned adaptations of modern European classics.
However, Foco Novo's inauguration as a dedicated touring company did not come about until 1975 with another production of Brecht – this time Bernard Pomerance's adaptation of A Man's a Man. In the interim had been Jamaican born playwright Alfred Fagon's Death of a Black Man (1975), and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Cock Artist (1974). However, these London productions did not tour. Its identity as a small-scale British touring company specialising in mounting large-scale productions of Brecht also underwent a distinctive change of direction that same year. After A Man's a Man, Foco Novo produced The Arthur Horner Show by Phil Woods. The eponymous title referred to the miner and political activist from the 1930s and 1940s, and its tour departed from an established fringe theatre circuit to play at miner's clubs and welfare halls. Foco Novo had now mercurially switched to a style of British socialist drama practised by contemporaries such as 7.84, Red Ladder and North West Spanner.
Foco Novo's new found identity coincided with their move from the Arts Council's designation of Project Grant status, which funded one-off shows for the relative stability of annual revenue. With additional financial support from the unions who also helped publicise the shows, one can see the attractions for entering this new artistic phase. The first outcome of this phase was Jon Chadwick and John Hoyland's Nine Days and Saltley Gates (1976), two linked documentary-style plays that explored key moments in British socialist history. Nine Days was written to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1926 General Strike, and while seen as defeat for the Labour Movement, its companion piece Saltley Gates recalled the action of pickets at the West Midlands Saltley coke depot during the 1972 miner's strike that was widely credited in bringing down the Heath government. Nine Days and Saltley Gates was followed in 1977 by Tighten Your Belts, a play based on Labour government spending cuts to public services.
During this phase Foco Novo had a certain credibility as a socialist theatre group and even achieved the notoriety that companies such as 7.84 and North West Spanner periodically attracted when Scottish Tory MP Nicholas Fairburn questioned in the press Foco Novo receiving Arts Council funding for political propaganda (Rees 1992: 90). However, their direct involvement in the politics of the Labour movement also led to a split on Foco Novo's Board over its artistic direction. Members such as Bernard Pomerance wanted to see a more pluralistic approach whereby other forms of work could be produced, while others such as John Chadwick rejected this policy (Rees 1992: 90).
The question of touring to a single constituency also became an issue. Chadwick and Hoyland argued that '"art" shows' would not be well received in miner's clubs and that 'Labour Movement audiences required Labour Movement shows' (Rees 1992: 90). Conversely, others on the Board thought it unlikely that theatre audiences would enthusiastically embrace plays such as Tighten Your Belts. Notes from meetings taken by Clive Tempest, Foco Novo's Arts Council drama officer, reveal what he calls 'the fundamental clash within the artistic direction' (ACGB 1977c), with one faction wanting to become a socialist collective while another wished to pursue a broader artistic direction. In a memo Tempest concluded:
Foco Novo is a curious hybrid. All of its problems stem from the unholy alliance between its two parts ... Hire and fire your actors/Have a permanent company. The 'artistic director'/The 'collective'. High standard metropolitan work/Work aimed at club or Trade Union Council audiences.
(ACGB 1977b)
The playwright Nigel Gearing, whose play Snap! was later produced by Foco Novo in 1981, summarised this predicament best when he commented that while the company 'had a strong political bent ... it was never interested in agit-prop, or on the other hand, social realism' (Rees 1992: 95). Rees had also come to the conclusion that Foco Novo's identity as a socialist company had resulted in an 'insularity [that] was circumscribing the work I wished to do' (Rees 1992: 94). Rees won the day, and plans for a documentary-style project about the ongoing Grunwick dispute in North London were abandoned.
The change in artistic policy came after Tighten Your Belts in Foco Novo's next production for its 1978 season. Originally entitled Deformed (changed during its tour to The Elephant Man), Bernard Pomerance's play based on the life of John Merrick, a one-time freak-show exhibit in the nineteenth century, remains Foco Novo's best-known work. Yet its success paradoxically served to exacerbate frustrations over constraints imposed by the small-scale touring circuit. The playwright Howard Brenton has commented that institutions such as the National Theatre enable 'big formal plays of Shakespearian size' whereas in Fringe touring 'You just can't write a play that describes social action with under ten actors. With fifteen you can describe whole countries, whole classes, centuries' (Itzin 1980: 187). Foco Novo, which regularly employed casts of ten, shared this outlook, and by the late 1970s increasingly began to resent what they saw as confinement by the Arts Council to its small-scale touring circuit. Although it played to small audiences on its national tour, The Elephant Man played to capacity houses on its final London dates at the Hampstead Theatre (with most critics noting the extraordinary central performance by David Schofield). Subsequently the play enjoyed a long run on Broadway and later a new revival at the National Theatre, directed by Rees in 1980.
The change in direction can be seen in the programme notes to The Elephant Man. Under its statement of artistic policy, while a commitment remains to finding new audiences and taking performances to 'Trades Halls, Community Halls, and Theatres', gone are the earlier rallying calls about Foco Novo being 'one of the theatre groups best known and most experienced within the Labour movement' (Foco Novo c. 1976). In its place was a more aesthetics-led approach that spoke of wanting to 'highlight issues in a graphic and theatrical form about Britain in the '70s' (Foco Novo 1977). Following the success of The Elephant Man policy also moved towards approaching dramatists 'to write particularly for the company's requirements and on subjects and themes mutually interesting' (Foco Novo 1978). The full extent of this change of direction can be discerned in the choice of plays for the following 1978 season. These included C. P. Taylor's Withdrawal Symptoms, which explored physical and emotional dependency as well as class through its central character of a middle-class drug addict, and two plays by unknown writers – Colin Mortimer's The Free Fall (which used documentary sources in a story about the activities of a religious cult operating in Britain) and Tunde Ikoli's On the Out. Ikoli's play also marked the beginning of another significant strand to Foco Novo's artistic policy that would continue throughout the 1980s – namely championing black British drama.
The international success of The Elephant Man emboldened Foco Novo. Ever since the early productions of Brecht its identity as a small-scale touring company hid wider ambitions. The Elephant Man now gave Foco Novo the opportunity to pressure the Arts Council into funding their move from small-scale to middle-scale touring. Early on with Drums in the Night the Arts Council had considered Foco Novo for inclusion into their middle-scale touring circuit based on venues of between 300 and 800 seats (ACGB 1973). However, the company's radical shift of identity after 1975, from large-scale productions of Brecht to tours of miners' community centres and trades union halls, crucially seems to have persuaded the Arts Council that Foco Novo had deliberately opted to remain a small-scale touring company. From this point onwards the Arts Council's mindset would prove very difficult to change.
Perceptions of inflexibility by the Arts Council towards its clients had been a long-standing source of grievance by touring companies who, having established themselves on the Fringe circuit and built up a loyal following, wanted to expand. Howard Brenton, who produced work for both Portable and later Foco Novo, argues that by the 1980s the whole policy of small-scale touring on the Arts Council's circuit (or 'grid') was looking increasingly outdated. This loose network of colleges, universities, arts centres and studio theatres inside repertory theatres convinced Brenton that the Arts Council was 'living off a version of alternative theatre that we knew was long dead' (Rees 1992: 219). In a somewhat ironic reversal, Brenton was to return to small-scale touring when he collaborated with Foco Novo on several projects during the 1980s after his play The Romans in Britain (1980) – a venture that had promised to be the culmination of his journey from the Fringe to the National Theatre's Oliver stage – collapsed after an attempted prosecution for obscenity.
Foco Novo's resentment can be seen clearly in publicity materials for its 1977–78 season in which they openly state that 'many of the plays the Company would like to present are being taken out of their reach' and has resulted in the necessity of developing two strands of artistic policy – 'small scale productions relying on documented research by writers on specific issues' – alongside 'a continuation of the original policy of the Company to present plays requiring a cast which can capture a real social cross-section' (Foco Novo c. 1978). The declaration is clear: small-scale touring is seen as a necessity imposed by the Arts Council whereas the company's main interests are in large-scale productions.
However, by June 1979 with the first royalties appearing from the Broadway and American tour of The Elephant Man, Foco Novo was now, temporarily at least, able to ignore the Arts Council. By mounting a large-scale production of their own, a compelling case could be made that would persuade the Arts Council to fund the company at a level commensurate with a middle-scale touring company.
It had been a long-held ambition of Rees to produce an early play by Bernard Pomerance called Quantrill in Lawrence (ACGB 1973). Set in the American Civil War about a gang of criminals (including Jesse James and his brother) known as the Quantrill Raiders, its Shakespearian-sized cast and historical setting had long put it beyond the company's resources. Now, thanks to The Elephant Man, Quantrill in Lawrence was presented in 1980 as an additional show to Foco Novo's work that season. The play employed a cast of 14 and the considerable sum for the time of £2000 was spent on design. However, while Quantrill in Lawrence demonstrated that Foco Novo could successfully mount large-scale productions, significantly it did not tour. Although approaches were made to Nottingham Playhouse and Birmingham Repertory Theatre to mount a co-production, the £8500 required from the partner theatre would prove too costly (ACGB 1979).
A great deal was staked on the success of Quantrill in Lawrence. Foco Novo's administrator Valerie Mainz took the unusual step of writing directly to the Arts Council's drama director requesting that all members of the drama panel attend performances as the company 'are under no illusions about being able to present a production on the scale of Quantrill again', but hope to show 'the potential and scope of our company given adequate funding' (Foco Novo 1980a). As well as being presented as incontrovertible evidence for their suitability to move into middle-scale touring, the premiere that year also coincided with a major funding review of all the Arts Council's theatre clients.
In truth the Arts Council had been unable to summon much enthusiasm for Quantrill in Lawrence even before it premiered. Jonathan Lamede, Foco Novo's drama officer at the time had commented in an internal memo, 'this play has been an obsession with Roland [Rees] for a couple of years now, I think we must let them get on with it and get it out of their systems' (ACGB 1980a). Dubbed 'a Jacobean western' (ACGB 1980g) in one Arts Council Show Report, reviews were largely negative and audiences poor. While all seven members of the drama panel echoed these criticisms, many also agreed that Quantrill in Lawrence had been 'a failure, but an interesting failure' (ACGB 1980c), and persuaded the Arts Council in its review of the company that a compromise should be reached. While rejecting funding at a level that would allow transition from small- to middle-scale touring, permission was granted for existing annual funds to pilot one middle-scale tour for its next season (ACGB 1980h).
Foco Novo's choice in their tenth anniversary year saw a return to their origins with Brecht's Edward II. Despite remonstrations from the Arts Council's Touring Officer Ruth Marks and their own drama officer 'about the scant interest in Brecht in the middle-scale' (ACGB 1982a), Rees was determined to go ahead. However, Quantrill in Lawrence's four-week residency at London's Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) had sent out worrying messages to the Arts Council over Foco Novo's commitment to touring. Two weeks before the production previewed, its Financial Director Anthony Field had written expressing concern that this 'expensive production will be seen only in London and will not tour at all, despite your Company's policy to operate as a touring company' (ACGB 1980d). A question over whether London had been prioritised over the regions was also raised at Foco Novo's Review Panel in October (ACGB 1980i).
The tour of Edward II to Theatr Clwyd, Basildon, Croydon and London received mixed reviews. While there was praise for aspects of the production, with Michael Billington declaring 'it is heartening to see Foco Novo entering the big league', Billington, and others, also felt that an early play by Brecht was a poor choice (Billington et al. 1982). Attendance was also disappointing despite letters to Rees from Theatr Clwyd and the Towngate Theatre praising the production and wanting to see the company return. As one manager pointed out, 'Brecht is not easy to market even to Theatr Clwyd audiences' (Foco Novo 1982a).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Reverberations Across Small-Scale British Theatre by Patrick Duggan, Victor Ukaegbu. Copyright © 2013 Patrick Duggan and Victor Ukaegbu. Excerpted by permission of Intellect Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
AcknowledgementsSetting the Scene: Introducing Reverberations
Patrick Duggan and Victor Ukaegbu
Chapter 1: Foco Novo: The Icarus of British Small-Scale Touring Theatre
Graham Saunders
Chapter 2: Insider Knowledge: The Evolution of Belfast’s Tinderbox Theatre Company
David Grant
Chapter 3: Volcano: A Post-Punk Physical Theatre
Gareth Somers
Chapter 4: Tiata Fahodzi: Second-Generation Africans in British Theatre
Ekua Ekumah
Chapter 5: Keeping It Together: Talawa Theatre Company, Britishness, Aesthetics of Scale and Mainstreaming the Black-British Experience
Kene Igweonu
Chapter 6: Agitation and Entertainment: Rod Dixon and Red Ladder Theatre Company
Tony Gardner
Chapter 7: Intercultural to Cross-Cultural Theatre: Tara Arts and the Development of British Asian Theatre
Victor Ukaegbu
Chapter 8: Kind Acts: Lone Twin Theatre
Eirini Kartsaki
Chapter 9: Political Theatre ‘without Finger-Wagging’: On the Paper Birds and Integrative Aesthetics
Patrick Duggan
Chapter 10: ‘Angels and Modern Myth’: Grid Iron and the New Scottish Theatre
Trish Reid
Chapter 11: Acts of Poiesis: salamanda tandem
Mick Wallis and Isabel Jones
Coda
Franc Chamberlain
Notes on Contributors
Index