'Humani Nil Alienum': A Post-War History of Theatre at the University of Leeds (original) (raw)

Punishing the Outsider: Theatre Workshop and the Arts Council

Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2014

Numerous analyses have documented the Arts Council's refusal to provide Theatre Workshop with an adequate subsidy, which, among other things, forced the company to abandon its revolutionary training programme. However, few have examined the reasons for its behaviour. This article calls for a re-evaluation of the Council's treatment of the company by analysing it through the lens of Bourdieusian sociology. It argues that the Council withheld money as a way of punishing the group for its countercultural practices and for developing a method of training actors that attacked the conventions of the British theatre in the 1940s and 1950s. Furthermore, this article cross-references the Arts Council's files with records of MI5's systematic surveillance of the company for the first time to identify the political motivations that also contributed to this behaviour. In both instances, it reveals a concentrated effort against Littlewood and her training programme that led ultimately to the exclusion of Theatre Workshop from the British theatre.

A manifesto to decentre theatre and performance studies

Studies in Theatre and Performance, 2021

With the climate of Brexit, xenophobia and white supremacy on the rise, health and safety of Black and Global Majority people under threat during the spread of Covid in the UK and elsewhere, a discussion of colonialism, migration, borders, and equality – in the classrooms and outside – is more pertinent than ever. Situating the ongoing Decolonise the University movement as part of broader social justice struggles to address the political, social, and economic crises we find ourselves in today, I propose a few ways of decentering Theatre and Performance Studies in the form of a manifesto. What follows is a meditation on precarity, critical pedagogy, Black study, feminist survival, ethical research praxis, and the violence of caste, colourism, and racialisations. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14682761.2021.1881730?scroll=top&needAccess=true