Off-Broadway/Off-West End E-Book

David Weinberg

• Herausgeber: ibidem
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 323

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

David Weinberg argues that American experimental theatre practice was one key factor in the development of an important phase in the history of the alternative theatre movement in Britain during the period 1956–1980. His analysis draws on key concepts and theories in the work of Elizabeth Burns (1972) and Baz Kershaw (1992, 1999). The main historical developments he covers are the activities of the experimental theatre groups associated with Jim Haynes, Charles Marowitz, Nancy Meckler, and Ed Berman, four expatriate American theatre practitioners living in Britain during the time period 1956–1980. In addition, he also examines important American-based groups—Living Theatre (1947), Open Theatre (1964), La MaMa (1960), and Bread and Puppet (1965) —which performed in Britain and which made an impact during the same period, as well as a wide range of indigenous British groups—Pip Simmons (1968), Foco Novo (1972–1989), Joint Stock (1974–1989)—, institutions—RSC (1961), Royal Court (1956)—, and individuals such as Max Stafford-Clark, Thelma Holt, John Arden, Ann Jellicoe, and the Portable playwrights (1968–1972) which in one way or another were influenced by American exemplars. Weinberg’s study is essential reading for everyone seeking a more comprehensive and dynamic understanding of the forces which shaped the alternative theatre movement in Britain.

Leseprobe

ibidem Press, Stuttgart

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Introduction and context

Altered Practices, Performance Efficacies, and Contemporary Literary Theory

Alternative Theatre and the Nature of Nationhood

National Contexts of International Influences

Methodology

Procedures

Chapter One: Introduction

Chapter Two: Background 1936–1956

Chapter Three: American Groups

Chapter Four: Jim Haynes

Chapter Five: Charles Marowitz

Chapter Six: Nancy Meckler

Chapter Seven: Ed Berman

Chapter Eight: Conclusion

Chapter Two: Background 1936–1956

Unity Theatre

Paul Robeson (1898–1976)

Clifford Odets (1906–1963)

Eugene O’Neill (1888–1953)

Tennessee Williams (1911–1983)

Arthur Miller (1915–2005)

New Watergate Theatre Club at the Comedy Theatre

Conclusion

Chapter Three: American Groups

Living Theatre

Open Theatre

La MaMa

Tom O’Horgan and his work with La MaMa

Triumph: Hair

Beth Porter and London La MaMa

Wherehouse La MaMa (1968–1972)

Bread and Puppet

Conclusion

Chapter Four: Jim Haynes

Traverse Theatre

Connections

International Times

Time Out

1967 and the founding of the Drury Lane Arts Lab

1968–1969

Conclusion

Chapter Five: Charles Marowitz

Early Years

London

In-Stage

Theatre of Cruelty

Controversy in Glasgow

London Traverse

Open Space

The Critic as Artist

RSC

Conclusion

Chapter Six: Nancy Meckler

Conclusion

Chapter Seven: Ed Berman

Education and Early Initiatives.

England and New Associations

Inter-Action and its Components

Father Christmas Union

Ed Berman, the “Black and White Power Plays” Season, Roland Rees and Foco Novo

Separation

The Ambience in Exile

Women’s Theatre

Old Age Theatre

Gay Theatre

1976

Conclusion

Chapter Eight: Conclusion

A History of Influence

Conclusion

Abbrevations

Bibliography

Archives

David Weinberg Interview Collection

Nancy Meckler Collection (London)

Richard Demarco Archive

Unfinished Histories

Journal & Newspaper Articles

Play Texts

Copyright

My sincere gratitude to Elizabeth Francis and Elsa De Jong who helped me to prepare the manuscript for publication.

Chapter One: Introduction and context

This book argues that American experimental theatre practice as it developed after World War II primarily in New York was one key factor in the development of an important phase in the history of the alternative theatre movement in Britain during the period 1956–1980. The data for this study has been collected through interviews, archival work, and a review of existing literature on post-war British theatre including the alternative theatre movement. The theoretical structure and modes of analysis build upon key concepts and theories in the work of Elizabeth Burns (1972) and Baz Kershaw (1992, 1999). The main historical developments or phenomena referred to are the activities of the experimental theatre groups associated with Jim Haynes, Charles Marowitz, Nancy Meckler, and Ed Berman, four expatriate American theatre practitioners living in Britain during the time period 1956–1980. In addition this study examines important American based groups, Living Theatre (1947), Open Theatre (1964), La MaMa (1960), and Bread and Puppet (1965), which performed in Britain and which made an impact during the same period. This book also addresses a wide range of indigenous British groups, Pip Simmons (1968), Foco Novo (1972–1989), Joint Stock (1974–1989), as well as institutions, RSC (1961), Royal Court (1956), and individuals such as Max Stafford-Clark, and in passing Thelma Holt, John Arden, and the Portable playwrights (1968–1972), which in one way or another were influenced by American exemplars. As Colin Chambers observes of developments following 1956,

Significant early manifestations of this [American] influence included the 1967 visit of Café La MaMa and the Open Theatre; the opening the following year of the Arts Lab, which spawned the People Show, Pip Simmons, and the Freehold; Portable Theatre, and Marowitz’s Open Space; Ed Berman's Inter-Action, and its Other Company (directed by Naftali Yavin), exploring new relationships between actor, director, and audience; the Traverse in Edinburgh, with its workshop offering a new involvement for writers; the different combinations of left-wing theatre—Unity, Centre 42, CAST, Red Ladder; women's theatre, black theatre, gay theatre, theatre-in-education, physical theatre, community theatre, lunchtime theatre, and so on. (Chambers 1980: 7–8)

This book examines the wider historiographical context as it examines the exchange of cultural and political ideology through theatre and performance as well as important cultural institutions. This study will contextualise American influence by addressing ideas that were revolutionising broader culture and draw a parallel between the practices and practitioners examined and theoretical movements which provided the intellectual force behind changes in theatrical strategies. The deconstruction of canonical texts, collectively authored theatre, and performance, and innovative approaches to text, language, and physicality will be discussed with reference to relevant cultural frameworks.

In presenting this study the lead-in material includes two chapters. The first chapter introduces a discussion of the core argument of the book and its implications and includes a map of the book, a brief methodology statement, and a description of the methods used throughout the project. The literature review has been integrated and is framed around the central research question. The core chapters of the book involve a combination of analytic and argumentative explanations derived from different components of the research. The final chapter then integrates conclusions drawn from the core chapters through analysis and discussion.

It is important to state clearly that this book does not claim that American experimental theatre and performance practices were the only influence on this important phase in the history of alternative theatre in Britain. There were other important theatrical influences including Brecht, as well as separately Ionesco, Genet, Beckett, (what Martin Esslin categorised as the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ in 1961). In his 1961 book Esslin suggests that theatre had a delayed reaction to movements which had changed other art forms earlier in the twentieth century such as abstract expressionism. American influence on the alternative theatre movement in Britain during this period should be considered as one aspect within a larger movement in British culture. There were also indigenous groups such as the Unity Theatres, Theatre Workshop with Joan Littlewood, and, in its early years Ewan McColl, and the network of groups described in Norman Marshall’s book The Other Theatre (1947). This study simply claims that American experimental theatre groups and performance practices as well as prevailing themes had an impact on changing and developing performance conventions and subject material within the British alternative theatre 1956–1980 which has not thus far been fully acknowledged or examined by scholars. Such an examination will contribute to a more comprehensive and dynamic understanding of the forces which shaped the alternative theatre movement in Britain.

Jim Haynes, Charles Marowitz, Nancy Meckler, and Ed Berman became key figures in an important new phase in the development of the alternative theatre movement in Britain. The groups and people associated with these four individuals would serve to delineate the antithetical purpose of the alternative theatre movement and establish an engagement between this sector and the commercial theatre establishment which could be argued had dialectical characteristics. A synthesis of alternative and mainstream characteristics has emerged and influenced the British theatre as a whole into a more comprehensive level of engagement with British society. In this a somewhat more representative and comprehensive number of communities and voices find representation. One could go to the most commercial West End Theatre in the present day and identify characteristics, such as an increased emphasis on physicality and non-verbal expression, colour blind casting, or the irreverent deconstruction and decentring of canonical texts, and trace these characteristics back to the influence of the alternative theatre movement. A number of the interviewees for this study explicitly made the point that, as in several other societies, there is a tendency in Britain for mainstream theatre to draw direct influence from the alternative theatre.

Altered Practices, Performance Efficacies, and Contemporary Literary Theory

In a conventional proscenium arch actor/audience scenario the audience is a part of an active/passive relationship. In conventional narrative-text-character based theatre the reception of the performance will be optically and auditorily focused and selective with regard to the incidents and their narrative significance. The audience member will sit in a designated position which orientates in a certain direction. The seat is fixed to the floor and the lights are extinguished except for a specific area where the performance activity is located. The audience is expected to acquiesce in a level of subordination and passivity. Ultimately alternative theatre, as its label implies, seeks varieties of alternatives to such a rigid format.

This study has identified certain markers of American alternative theatre practice which have dramatically altered the expectations of conventional theatre in the UK as well as the US to this day. Those characteristics include a subversion of conventional narrative, the exploration of non-traditional time, experimentation with location and space, an emphasis on a diversity of voices, and new approaches to the physicalisation of performance. Alternative British theatre productions during the study period, and after, have adopted, variously, a ‘Pass the hat’ economy, experimentation with audience and stage configuration and relationship (Total Space), artistic experimentation with form and content, Post-Brechtian forms of political engagement, non-traditional venues and audiences (lunchtime theatre, buses), non-narrative and language based (physical theatre), use of American ‘Method’ techniques, anti-class based form and content, and the use of obscene language and nudity. In addition British alternative theatre included experimentation with language (physicalisation and obscenity), experimentation with form (performance art and one-acts), and a breaking down of traditional hierarchies in terms of the economics and process of production as well as the actor/audience relationship. Further it has explored issues of identity as expressed in theatre in ways which problematise and challenge perception of national identity in terms of any single overarching or homogenising categorisation.

Such changes in practice derived from pressures of the moment, including complex relationships among and between theatre practitioners, complex intellectual and artistic influences upon those practitioners, and changes in production possibilities. Marowitz, for example, read Artaud at a critical moment in his artistic development, responding to Artaud’s principles in specific theatre contexts. The specific reading histories of Haynes, Meckler, and Berman are less clear, but it is important to recognise that all four of the practitioners studied in this book, like performers in the theatres they founded, were all subject to movements culturally available to them at the time. Changes in theatre practice studied here paralleled major discoveries and shifts in literary theory before and during the period 1956–1980. Alternative theatre practices model certain ideas articulated by post-formalist, structuralist, Marxist, deconstructionist, and post-colonialist theorists. All of these theories had ideological implications. Though systematic analysis of these phenomena have been beyond the scope of this book, and my research shows that the practitioners presented here did not ‘read’ literary theory systematically, it is useful to identify certain theoretical movements or arguments prevalent in the intellectual and academic culture of the time.

Marxist ideologies were present and publicly available during the early twentieth century in Britain and America. The call to reassess existing economic conditions in relation to the cultural superstructures they engendered and sustained, as well as the Marxist call to change the world, were clearly present at the level of contestation and assumption in the foundation of Women’s, Gay, Black, and Age-related theatres during the period studied here. Such ideas had become ’natural’ as a form of discourse, to some extent, for many of the playwrights and practitioners studied here.

Formalist claims were also clearly available in Britain, given the work of IA Richards and others in forming a text-focused drive to interpretation. Alternative theatre, it could be claimed, contested text-based theatre, countering in practice the claims formalist theorist in the Anglo-American tradition made. Alternative theatre deconstructed the text as primary to dramatic performance and relinquished fixed text in favour of collective creation of language. It could be said that alternative theatre 1956–1980 offered a critique of text-based analysis even as it advocated collective action intended to ‘change the world’, both concepts with antecedents in Marxist theory. Similarly, audience participation and broken barriers between actor and audience could be claimed to represent resistance to ‘class’ and resistance to existing cultural institutions by a formerly ‘passive’ set of spectators, the audience.

The practice of ‘laying bare’ and the use of unusual devices in theatrical performance and technique has roots in Brecht but also in continental formalism. The contingencies of production and performance valued by alternative American theatre and transmitted to British alternative theatre could be claimed to parallel notions of relativity, and the deconstruction of text as primary might be aligned with contemporaneous ideas of decentred text. Undermining assumptions about who an audience could be and what it did could lead to redefinitions of race, gender, and identity as subjects for theatre. Finally, collective construction of plays can be said to reveal an awareness of Roland Barthes’ assertions about the ’death of the author’. The potential reference to Barthes is certainly appropriate to the study period, however the analyst has to be careful. For Barthes ‘death of the author’ included the idea that everything is ‘always already written’ and that writers recombine what others have thought and written before. Clearly that is not the case with alternative theatre which innovated, sometimes outrageously.

These possible parallels would form a valuable study in future but were beyond the scope of this book as planned and written.

Alternative Theatre and the Nature of Nationhood

‘I had no idea that England was broke. I will go over there and make a couple of talks and take over the British Empire.’ (Clarke 2008: 47)

These words were spoken by the American President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a private conversation with his Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau in August 1944 while preparing for the Quebec Conference, held the following month and attended by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King. While Roosevelt may have intended his comments on some level to be ironic and to remain private, nonetheless they remain revealing. Between 1942 and 1945, three million Americans passed through Great Britain. It was the largest ever encounter between Americans and the British people in history. At one point before the D-Day invasion Americans made up six percent of the resident population of Great Britain (Reynolds 1995: 431–433).

As late as the 1920s Britain had controlled a quarter of the world’s territory and a quarter of its total population. However, primarily as a consequence of changes necessitated by World War II the British Empire was to a large extent dismantled. These changes can be formally dated from the Quebec Conference in September 1944 when the war time allies began to plan for a post-war scenario. For the British this would culminate in the loss of India and Palestine in 1947. The Commonwealth as it exists today was formulated in 1949 as a free association of equal and independent countries, in effect to replace the Empire, though the process of decolonisation took two more decades to be fulfilled (Clarke 2008: 505).

By the end of World War II the joint Gross Domestic Product of Europe had fallen by about twenty-five percent while the Gross National Product of the United States rose during the war years by over fifty percent in real terms (Clarke 2008: xiv). Britain was saddled with enormous war debt while America had avoided any damage to its mainland. Later during the 1950s America made up six percent of the world’s population but was responsible for fifty percent of global manufacturing and industry. There was, post-war, a shift of political and economic power and cultural influence to the United States. Britain survived the war but the cost would ultimately lead to the loss of empire (Clarke 2008: 508–512). Britain’s war debts were not fully repaid to the United States and Canada until the year 2006. The Cold War solidified the current arrangement of US military bases scattered throughout the United Kingdom.

Besides the fact that the Americans Jim Haynes and Charles Marowitz were living and working in Britain from 1956 onward another reason for marking the beginning of the main focus of this study from 1956 was that it could be argued that there was an important generational shift taking place within British theatre itself as well as within British culture and society more generally. Austerity in Britain officially ended in 1956 but paradoxically as some measure of prosperity began to return, colonial attachments continued to disintegrate. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, this disintegration was arguably accelerated by dirty wars in Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus, and Aden in addition to the 1956 Suez crisis.

Young men who had all, unless medically unfit or on grounds of conscience, to complete up to two years of National Service in the armed forces were beginning to rebel against the social and cultural constraints their parents took for granted, while young people of both sexes were beginning to question the values of a wartime generation. Meanwhile, as part of this process of generational rebellion, on both sides of the Atlantic, a Rock n Roll generation was emerging whose music was influenced by American country and rhythm and blues music, both themselves emerging from cultures which ran counter to the hegemonic White Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture which up till this period dominated American (and British) society.

During the 1950s General Eisenhower, who embodied in many ways older attitudes, was elected to the US presidency twice and former soldiers who were now in their thirties applied the discipline and group ethos that was engrained during the War into civilian activities. Meanwhile the younger generation who had greater educational opportunities as well as fewer financial restrictions and arguably, as a consequence, a greater emphasis on individual fulfilment emerged as a characteristic of the new ‘Baby Boom’ generation which by the late 1950s was entering its teenage years. Teenagers began to assert their own identities and it was in part because of these contrasts and contributing factors that a generational clash grew on both sides of the Atlantic, in which many American influences, including what may be described as an emerging youth culture, played an influential role. In 1956, in Britain, for example more than eighty local councils banned screenings of the hit musical film Rock Around the Clock amid widespread fears it would foment teenage delinquency.

Political turbulence in the 1960s encouraged women to re-examine their status in American and British society. Initially their claims were generally ignored, not only by the establishment, but also by male-dominated hegemonic political organisations which constituted the ‘Nation’. In the 1970s the women’s movement provided a new discourse on gender and sexuality that interrogated the patriarchal norms in society. The contraceptive pill arrived in Britain in 1961 but it was not widely available for women outside of marriage until 1974. In 1963 in the United States Gloria Steinem, a freelance journalist, became a Playboy Bunny on an undercover assignment for Show magazine. She exposed low pay, sexual harassment, and racism. In 1966 the National Organisation for Women was created in the United States.

In Britain, women were made dependent economically as they were paid substantially less money and also needed a signature from their father or husband to gain credit. In 1968 women working at the Ford plant in Dagenham went on strike for equal pay. The Dagenham, England, strike led to the Equal Pay Act in 1970 which was followed in 1975 by the Sex Discrimination Act. In 1970 women organised a highly theatrical protest at the annual Miss World contest held in London that year. Importantly, the women’s theatre groups which emerged out of Ed Berman’s season of feminist plays gave a theatrical outlet and voice to this movement in Britain and furthermore many of the other theatre groups which were a part of the identity based theatre of the 1970s in Britain started with seasons produced by Ed Berman.

In 1960 British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan addressed the South African Parliament in Cape Town and stated, ‘The wind of change is blowing through this continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact’ (Younge 2013: 12). Over the next three years Togo, Mali, Senegal, Zaire, Somalia, Benin, Niger, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Chad, Central African Republic, Congo, Gabon, Nigeria, Mauritania, Sierra Leone, and Tanganyika all became independent, as did colonies in other parts of the world, like Jamaica. Successful anti-colonial movements in Africa and Asia also encouraged ethnic pride and stimulated separate cultural nationalist movements amongst African American, Chicano, and Native American populations.

Such groups used the theatre to write their histories in the face of historic misrepresentation, calling attention to the suffering that they had endured and the struggles in which they were engaged. They showed that the dominant discourse in America had served the purposes of certain privileged groups and had disenfranchised others. In the late 1960s many identity based groups produced work within and for their own communities. Example of this included the Black Revolutionary Theatre, Teatro Campesino, and the Vietnam Veterans against the War, significant groups that called for urgent social and political change and took their message to the American people. The Teatro Campesino created work that initially responded to the 1965 strike in California by the United Farmworkers and performed on a flatbed truck in the fields. The Vietnam Veterans Against the War mounted ‘search and destroy’ enactments in the streets and country roads of the American heartland to persuade the American public to abandon the war in Vietnam and recognise their responsibility for the actions that were being committed overseas in their name. The Black Revolutionary Theatre had cultural centres in Harlem and Newark, New Jersey, where they produced drama, often in the streets that reflected the Black Power movement and Black Nationalism. This work was introduced to the British theatrical landscape in 1970–1971 with Ed Berman’s Black and White Power Season of plays which then inspired Black British theatre groups and playwrights to launch their own projects.

Even before then, American events and theatre practices had had an influence on mainstream British theatre. The American involvement in Vietnam began on a covert basis in 1954 and lasted until the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. During this period there were several protest marches in Britain, many of which involved a certain level of theatricality and included such groups as Bread and Puppet. Peter Brook’s production of the anti-Vietnam war play US at the Aldwych Theatre took place in 1966. During the rehearsal process for US Brook and the RSC consulted with both Susan Sontag and Joseph Chaikin (Chambers 2004: 155). The Off Off Broadway movement also had a direct influence on the founding of the Other Place and Warehouse spaces at the Royal Shakespeare Company (Chambers 1980).

More generally during the period 1956 to 1980 the group as opposed to the individual became the focus of organisations associated with what came to be known as alternative society. This trend was also reflected in the structure of alternative theatre organisations that emerged during this time period. It was demonstrated in their working process and also in the performance pieces which they produced. Instead of the method of the traditional theatre in which a playwright writes a script in isolation and then other artists produce it, a new method of working sought to create a method whereby the group itself developed the performance piece from an initial concept all the way to a public performance (Shank 1972: 4). This method of working which is often referred to as ‘devised’ work is now commonly taught in specifically designed courses in British drama schools and is also common practice in British alternative theatre. The system of theatre censorship in Britain and taxation combined with a lack of public subsidy led to a situation where theatrical output was somewhat restricted. American work, meanwhile, was not created with the intention of satisfying these conditions and over time had a role in changing the prevailing environment in Britain.

National Contexts of International Influences

In the sense that it was a theatre of ideas and social action and not strictly tied to the profit principle, the alternative theatre movement in Britain can be traced back to the 1890s and the British premiere productions of A Doll’s House and Ghosts by Ibsen and the founding of the Independent Theatre Society by Jack Thomas Grein in 1891 (Davies 1987: 36). The establishment of the Independent Theatre Society was indicative of a Europe-wide trend against the commercial theatre establishment, and the stated aim of the Independent Theatre Society was, ‘to give special performances of plays which have a literary and artistic rather than a commercial value’ (Davies 1987: 36). The Independent Theatre Society lasted for six years and produced twenty-eight plays during this period. It was replaced in 1899 by The Stage Society. Following subsequent phases in the development of the British alternative theatre movement, such as the Unity theatre movement that began in the 1930s, an important new phase came to grow and flourish during the 1950s and 1960s, characterised by certain variables mainly in the areas of means of production, artistic innovation, and political activism. Alternative theatre and performance represented an attempt to reshape the perception of the nature of the nation and its theatre.

In the years after World War II an economic boom in the United States eventually created economic conditions during the 1950s which led to a need for an alternative to Broadway in order to cultivate experimentation, discover new voices, and test untried material which in the pre-war period would have been possible on Broadway (Aronson 2000: 4). By 1951 New York was the richest city in the world and an inflationary boom during the 1950s drove the costs of production on Broadway to unprecedented heights while at the same time Broadway’s audiences were being lost to the cinema and to television (Bottoms 2004: 19). The increasingly severe economic imperatives of commercial Broadway Theatre meant that conventional producers were unwilling or unable to risk money on unfamiliar names and unconventional material so that full scale productions produced on Broadway of plays by unknown playwrights became very difficult.

In this context the Off Broadway sector emerged in Greenwich Village. Greenwich Village was also the place where the ‘counter culture’ started as a rebellion against 1950s conformity. On the Road by Jack Kerouac was written in 1951 (published 1957) and figures such as William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Thelonious Monk, and Jackson Pollock, to name a few were revolutionising literature, music, and the visual arts. There were important distinctions between Off Broadway and Off Off Broadway but there was also a certain continuity. During the late 1950s and early 1960s Off Broadway theatres also became increasingly commercial and as a consequence young theatre artists and writers began to form (and perform) in tiny cafes and non-theatre spaces such as church basements, lofts, and living rooms. Most of these spaces were also located in Greenwich Village or in the East Village and became associated with the label Off Off Broadway.

The emergence of these non-theatre spaces coincided with the blossoming of the downtown arts scene. Poets, dancers, painters, musicians, and filmmakers were simultaneously experimenting with anti-narrative based art forms and means of collective creation in comparable ways. Julian Beck, the co-founder of the ground-breaking Living Theatre, for example, was himself an abstract expressionist painter of some renown. Together with his wife Judith Malina they saw the purpose of the Living Theatre was to introduce the new movements expressed in experimental dance, music, painting, and poetry into live theatre (Bottoms 2004: 25). There was a breaking of traditional art form boundaries in the earlier part of the century as exemplified by the artists involved with Gertrude Stein in Paris but the theatre itself experienced a delayed reaction to these changes (Esslin 1961).

When considering the overall influence of American experimental theatre and performance practices emerging from post-war New York on the British theatrical landscape from 1956 to 1980 the introduction of experimentation of this kind into contemporary theatre practice in line with developments in contemporaneous art, dance, music, and poetry is of primary significance. For example, the mixed media interventions known as ‘Happenings’ were part of a fundamental layer in the development of alternative theatre during the 1960s. In 1911 Boccioni used part of a wooden window frame in a piece of futurist sculpture, and ever since 1911 or 1912 when Braque or Picasso, depending on which source one follows, glued a piece of real material to a canvas and originated collage, actual elements have been incorporated into painting. The picture moved out into the real space of the room. As an environment the painting then took over the room and finally as a sort of, environment with action, became the alternative theatre form known as ‘Happenings’ based at the Reuben Gallery in New York (Kirby 1965: 22).

Many commentators describe the alternative theatre movement in Britain as emerging from an international ‘counter culture’ during the 1960s (Ansorge 1975, Itzin 1980, Kershaw 1992). This study attempts to avoid the hyperbole often associated with talk of an international ‘counter culture’ and clarifies through close examination the particular national origin of prevailing themes and practices. Many of the revolutionary practices which were introduced through the Arts Lab on Drury Lane and the Traverse by the American experimental theatre practitioners detailed in this study can be traced to Greenwich Village and the East Village in New York City and the Off Off Broadway movement which began to take shape during the 1950s and included such groups and venues as the Living Theatre, Open Theatre, La MaMa Troupe, Bread and Puppet, Cafe Cino, Theatre Genesis, and the Judson Poets’ Theatre. There certainly were contemporaneous examples of European experimentalism in the theatre such as Grotowski, Fo, Lecoq, Muller, Barba, Kantor, and Brook. This study recognises their importance as substantial and will later reflect in particular on the place of Brook within the argument, but this book is concerned with an area of influence which up till now has received less attention than these European experimentalists although perhaps in some way has been more influential on general theatre practice.

There were also prevailing American political and social crises which were of primary significance during this period in the alternative theatre in Britain including the war in Vietnam and the Civil Rights movement, even to the exclusion of contemporaneous British social and political developments such as growing tension in Northern Ireland and the status of ethnic minorities and immigrant communities (Ansorge 1975: 22–37). ‘Cultural’ and ‘ideological’ transactions took place and were brought about through the rupturing of established norms and contexts which were facilitated by the anti-hierarchical use of space, interdisciplinary content, and inclusive modes of audience assemblage and participatory performance practices (Aronson 2000: 7).

On 21 December 1968 in an article entitled ‘The “Arts Lab Explosion”’Irving Wardle wrote in The Times that he was pessimistic about the future of experimental theatre in England. The reason he gave was that he thought that experimental work was merely an extension of American underground theatre. He believed that experimental performance was entirely alien to England whereas America had a tradition of acting ensembles such as the Living Theatre and the Open Theatre. He claimed that England had nothing except the music-hall tradition to rely upon for improvisational techniques. Although Wardle’s statement is Anglo-centric and he did not mention the work of Terence Gray, Joan Littlewood, and Ewan MacColl or the work of the Unity Theatres in London and Glasgow during the post-war period this sentiment was echoed by both Peter Brook and Charles Marowitz at different times. Originally they were actually considering basing the Royal Shakespeare Company Experimental Group in Paris because they both felt it would be a more fertile environment for experimental theatre. The improvisational techniques Wardle was referring to were indicative of post-Brechtian practice such as those of the Living Theatre as well as American derivatives of Stanislavski and, although there was experimental work included in the Edinburgh Festival programmes during the 1950s, there was no permanent year-round base for this category of performance before the establishment of the Traverse Theatre club in January 1963.

Starting in January 1963 with the opening of the Traverse and later the Drury Lane Arts Lab in August 1967 the experimental theatre practices which would later pervade the alternative theatre movement in Britain found seedbeds in which to flourish. However the Traverse and Arts Lab were by no means the only places where American experimental theatre practices intersected with the advent of this important new phase in the history of the alternative theatre movement in Britain. Experimental theatre almost by definition was limited to tiny and unrepresentative audiences. Nonetheless I argue that experimental theatre had a special place in the mix of interlinking subcultures which by the end of the 1970s had transformed the British theatrical landscape and that it had identifiable effects on subsequent social and cultural developments. The theatres, clubs, restaurants, pubs, and festivals in which the experimental work took place were important physical locations around which a particular subculture itself overlapped with several other subcultures (Marwick 1998: 341).

For us the “spirit of the times” means off-off-Broadway, Grotowski, and the Becks, more than anything we can claim as our own. Anyone who knew the East Village scene five years ago will find nothing new in the British underground’s cartoon-strip treatments of American myth, Civil Rights reworkings of Greek tragedy, and celebrations of group-audience togetherness at the expense of coherence and skill. To that extent, the British avant-garde is more institutionalised than the most hidebound rep. And its dependence on foreign example is apparent in the fact that its three originating impresarios were all American. Charles Marowitz, Jim Haynes, and Ed Berman (in order of arrival) each added a separate American strain to the British subculture. (Wardle 1971: 178)

This British subculture was originally known as underground theatre and later alternative theatre, experimental theatre, and fringe theatre (Marwick 1998: 355). For the sake of coherence this book refers to these groups altogether under the heading of alternative theatre. Peter Schumann, the founder of Bread and Puppet Theatre, declared in the early 1960s that ‘The audience which doesn't go to the theatre is always the best audience.’ (Brecht: 1988, 609) Similarly the young David Hare of the British Portable Theatre insisted in the early 1970s that, ‘Our aggressiveness is immensely conscious. I suppose it stems from a basic contempt for people who go to the theatre.’ (Davies 1987: 170)

Broadly speaking, the defining characteristic of ‘alternative’ theatre is that it is not designed to satisfy the profit principle and is on some level intended as an alternative to the commercial theatre establishment and status quo. However ‘alternative’ theatre also suggests certain changes in the configuration of the theatre or performance venue itself such as theatre in the open or in the round without a traditional proscenium arch dividing actors from audience. ‘Traverse’ is actually a derivation of ‘Transverse’ and it is worth noting that Stephen Joseph, who earned a degree at the University of Iowa, returned to Britain from the United States in 1955 and then, after developing his ideas first on tour and then at Stoke-on-Trent, started his theatre in the round in Scarborough because of his experience of experimentation with this stage configuration in the American theatre. In the UK it was after the Traverse Theatre club opened in January 1963 that the plethora of smaller studio theatres with modified stage configurations began to proliferate.

The most extreme experimental plays required a nonconventional setting but it was also possible for experimental plays to be put on in a traditional theatre as well. An interesting case in point is the Royal Court Theatre, a traditional theatre on a smaller scale some distance from London's West End. It was the site for many productions important to the general history of the alternative theatre in Britain including the days when it was still the Court Theatre and producing the works of Shaw and later in the 1950s producing Osborne's Look Back in Anger and the plays of Samuel Beckett. In the 1960s the Royal Court also opened the Theatre Upstairs which was a club theatre with a flexible audience and stage configuration. By concentrating on a range of theatres outside of the established metropolitan and commercial circuits we can trace the proliferation of experimental practices. It should be noted that sometimes plays from the most alternative of backgrounds ultimately ended up in the most established of theatre spaces.

During the 1960s several new American writers of promise had plays presented in London including Mart Crowley, Jules Feiffer, Jack Gelber, Arthur Kopit, Patty Chayefsky, Gore Vidal, and most notably Edward Albee. Gore Vidal’s The Visit to a Small Planet was produced in London in 1960. Jack Gelber’s brutally candid view of drug addicts in The Connection performed by the Living Theatre in 1961 had a run at the Duke of York's Theatre. In 1965 the Arts Theatre produced Jules Feiffer’s Crawling Arnold for a brief run and the RSC presented Little Murders in 1967 and God Bless in 1968. Arthur Kopit's most important theatrical venture in London occurred in 1968 when the Royal Shakespeare Company presented the world premiere of Indians which ran in repertory for thirty-four performances. Paddy Chayefsky’s The Latent Heterosexual was staged at the Aldwych Theatre in 1968 by the RSC. Crowley’s study of New York homosexuals The Boys in the Band was produced in 1969 and ran for 396 performances at the Wyndham’s Theatre.

Edward Albee was unlike most of the other playwrights in this group from the 1960s and was able to repeat his commercial success in London. His first Broadway play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf opened at the Globe Theatre in London in 1964 and won acclaim from the critics and ran for 489 performances. Albee's other Broadway works however were presented in repertory. The RSC produced A Delicate Balance in 1969, Tiny Alice in 1970, and All Over in 1972. Three of Albee's shorter works which established his reputation before he began to have productions on Broadway also had performances in smaller more experimental London Theatres. In 1960 the Arts Theatre produced The Zoo Story with This Property is Condemned, a one-act play by Tennessee Williams. The Zoo Story was revived in 1965 and appeared with Moliere’s George Dandin at the Theatre Royal Stratford East. The Royal Court presented The American Dream and The Death of Bessie Smith on a double bill in 1961 for 423 performances. From the middle of the 1960s onward a new group of American playwrights like Edward Albee had works presented in Off Broadway theatres and these plays began to be produced in clubs and lunchtime venues and other small theatres in London. Plays by Ed Bullins, Michael McClure, and Jean Claude Van Itallie appeared in London during the 1960s. During the 1970s Terrence McNally and Sam Shepard also stand out among this group of new experimental writers.

Intriguingly the alternative theatre of the 1960s and 1970s was profoundly influenced by the Americans with the interesting twist that American alternative theatre initially received far more acclaim in Europe than it did in the United States (Crespy 2003: 86–87). What was taking place during the 1960s and 1970s was a loose constellation of activities whose objectives at times were very different but, although there was never a singular unifying premise or manifesto, there was a shared antipathy to the conformity and commercialism of mainstream society and mainstream theatre. Creating a context in which theatre artists could truly be free to express themselves meant abandoning any adherence to the profit principle. When assessing the practices of these groups in material terms it is of great significance that many of them endeavoured not to charge money for tickets. In the first major