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E-book After the Miners’ Strike : A39 and Cornish Political Theatre versus Thatcher’s Britain: Volume 1

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Penilaian

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This is the first volume of the story of a tiny theatre company in a distant part of the UK that operated like a political cell; or alternatively, of a political cell that operated as a theatre company.A39 Theatre Group came into being because of the great Miners’ Strike of 1984–85. It embraced the label ‘agitprop’ as a badge of honour. A39 was motivated entirely by ideology and operated within a methodology and aesthetics conditioned by the countercultural movements of the 1960s–80s. Its reference points were identified as those that could best facilitate participation in the political struggle. The members of A39 wanted to fight for their class against the government of Margaret Thatcher. That this fight took the form of theatre at all was simply because that was where the members’ common experience lay, and because theatre was the medium they believed could best resist the Thatcherite forces of hegemonic capitalism.The theatre practice that resulted was immediate, often comedic and, conducted with little access to funding other than that generated by income, was through both commitment and necessity widely accessible. Image and aesthetics meant that significant aspects of the practice could comfortably operate in spaces usually entirely dominated by loud music or, on the other hand, by the most abrasive of performance poets.This book will locate the theatre practice in the context of the political, cultural, and artistic circumstances that could be seen as its parameters, and of the circumstances that brought it into being. The Miners’ Strike was defeated, which allowed Britain in the longer term to become the country it is today: one of widening social divisions and economic disparities with permanent unaddressed crises in public issues such as health and housing. It might be described as a society that hates itself, with its various parts each either despising or resenting (or both) the others for reasons it denies its subjects, for ideological reasons, the tools to understand. It was the Thatcher era that birthed this monster, enacting a huge change in the outlook of Britain that, with the aid of the Reagan regime in the USA, managed to export then globalise itself. It marked the transition from the expectation and political demand that lives and circumstances should improve, that technology would render the future better than the present, that lives would be longer, that there would be less hunger, and that people would be healthier and happier, to a vision of decline, disengagement, and ever-worsening poverty and hopelessness in which governments and mass media overtly exploit racism and division to maintain a steady state of power.Part of that huge change has been the end of the countercultural artistic practices and communities that formed an aspect of A39’s birth context, as they did for other political theatre practices such as Joint Stock, Red Ladder, Banner, as well as 7:84—founded by John McGrath whose book A Good Night Out is cited here.1 So the study of A39 also provides an insight into an era of fundamental interaction between the arts and the political New Left that was taken for granted at the time but is now a novelty, though subsequent generations of ‘satirical’ comedians (an area in which A39 came also to operate) continue to wear its accoutrements without accepting or even understanding any of its aims or responsibilities.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

792 FAR a

Penerbit

London : Open Book Publishers., 2023

Deskripsi Fisik

284 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9781800649149

Klasifikasi

792

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

-

Subjek

Stage Presentation, Theater

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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