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Listening to The Dresden Dolls conjurs up images of old Theatre billboards, stages, crumbling walls and identities and artifice. The inlay to their latest album 'Yes, Virginia' showcases wonderful pictures of abandoned theatre spaces. This spawned a 3-day period of wondering about the state of political theatre and it's popularity.

My earliest introduction to political theatre was via Alex Haley and Arthur Miller. Subsequently I developed a passion for The Crucible and an avid interest in 50s America. The Crucible is applicable to any era, although we associate it with McCarthy. It is of particular relevance now as our society moves into racial profiling. Alex Haley would be led to believe that we have in fact travelled backwards in time.



The Crucible is a riveting piece of theatre and, depending on the directional slant of the director, directly poses questions about American society and in fact any society. But how direct can a theatrical piece be? Are audiences politically motivated?


Bertolt Brecht is the epitomy of 'political theatre', and his 'alienation effect' an integral part of the modern theatrical canon. In simplistic terms: as a director he wanted to draw the audience's attention to the artificiality of the play (by addressing the audience directly, by moving scenery, by making mistakes and blunders on purpose) and thus making a 'stage' for his own political (communist) views. I was hardly prepared for "Der Gute Mench Von Sezuan" (The Good Person of Sezuan) with it's central prostitute protagonist split into two (male and female) as an A-level student of German. Now, after having read more of his work, I realise just how contemporary he is, and how daring. Theatre falls in and out of love with Brecht, but a touch of his alienation is needed in plays more than ever now as our society becomes more and more complacent and tabloid based.


This article on British Political Theatre gives us a good overview of just what kind of plays have actually been written and shown with a political agenda. Brassneck, will always remind me of 'The Wedding Present''s fantastic album Bizarro, but if you look here, you will see that it was also a play disparaging of England in the 70s.

An article perhaps directly applicable to what is happening in England right now, is this script of an interview with Hanif Kureishi. He talks about coming back to his play 'Borderline' 20 years on, noting just how little things have changed and how we need more than ever to address social issues in visual and performing arts. Food for thought


Shakespeare is the most revised playwright in history, this shows how universal his plays are. Villainy in the hands of monarchies and governments is hardly a new concept, just look at the back catalogue. Using humour, theatricality, alienation or familiarization, characters with whom we can identify, the joy of the theatre need not be compromised by political content. Instead, let us realise the need for less 'Mama Mia' and more 'Brassneck'. Theatre is not and should not be for an elitist audience. Where are the cheap seats? Where is the sawdust and the look of recognition and fire in our eyes? Confrontational theatre is our anti-venom, the tabloid press our poison. Education is not only exposure to something, but learning that it has many sides; and finding which side you choose to adhere to, or which one you find has been wrongly understood.

All this sparked by The Dresden Dolls!!

BUT......As a postscript, my notion of an idealistic audience (thinking, active, open to discussion and antagonism) is rather problematic in the 'real' world. See below:

The epic theatre functions as ideology critique, while the didactic theatre confronts this exposed ideological pattern with new forms of praxis. The precondition for experiments with the didactic theatre is however that the masses have a revolutionary class consciousness and the desire to become active themselves. If this precondition is absent the didactic theatre becomes functionally irrelevant and has to be substituted by the epic theatre, which would help in building up a revolutionary class consciousness


This post first appeared on Satin,Tat And The Art Of The True Indie Moment, please read the originial post: here

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