Reading the Old Left in the Ewan Maccoll and Joan Littlewood's
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Reading the Old Left in the Ewan MacColl and Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop and Beyond: in Joan Littlewood’s post-theatrical engagements in the 1960s. Fatine Bahar Karlidag A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2017 Reading Committee: Stefka Mihaylova, Chair Odai Johnson Scott Magelssen Barry Witham Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Drama ©Copyright 2017 Fatine Bahar Karlidag 2 University of Washington Abstract Reading the Old Left in the Ewan MacColl and Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop and Beyond: in Joan Littlewood’s post-theatrical engagements in the 1960s. Fatine Bahar Karlidag Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Dr. Stefka Mihaylova School of Drama Based on archival research, recent Joan Littlewood centenary events and contemporary scholarship on the Theatre Workshop of Joan Littlewood and Ewan MacColl, this dissertation proposes to take sides with the radical class politics of the Old Left, or Communism, to read the legacy of MacColl-Littlewood collaboration in theatre, and its continuing impacts on Littlewood’s post-theatrical work in the 1960s’ New Left. This is to demystify the ‘genius’ aura bestowed upon Joan Littlewood; to re-instate Ewan MacColl’s contribution to the legacy of this ground-breaking theatre famously known as that which revolutionized the West End; to retrofit Theatre Workshop as a sample ensemble of the larger frame of the radical left-wing interwar theatres while acknowledging the independent evolution of their work into 1950s, and to further complicate the thematically and textually oriented analytical narratives’ efforts to analyze Theatre Workshop productions. The project aims to contribute to recent discussions that recognize and object to the tendencies in scholarship and journalism to neutralize the communist 3 tenets that shaped this theatre and actively informed its evolving dynamics from agit-prop forms to their last show Oh What a Lovely War . It defends the vital necessity of re-adjusting the interpretive lens that regards the historical left-wing theatrical endeavors as radical failures in our growingly authoritarian times, much as Chantal Mouffe defends agonistics (taking adversarial positions) as opposed to apolitical attitudes or assuming antagonisms in the presence of radical positions of class or culture (or religion, race, ethnicity, and gender). Discussing the shortcomings of late decades’ response to the class politics from the historical, philosophical and theatrical angle, this research aims to bind the interwar leftwing theatrical legacies of the Workers’ Theatre Movement and the local traditions of British popular performance with the Theatre Workshop stage and Littlewood’s post-theatrical work to advocate for continuities and discusses the necessity of expanding the formalist, textually oriented discussions with cultural materialist paradigms that prioritize the performative stages of the leftwing theatres over any abstracting or literary discussions, and intends to foster the self-definitions and manifestos of the MacColl-Littlewood collaboration as interpretive tools in understanding their work as revolutionary, anti-Establishment and communist ensemble with a permanent dedication to resist inclusion in what Baz Kershaw calls the ‘theatre estate,’ and thus explore possible methods of interpretation that resist established cannons, inspired by Littlewood and MacColl’s foundational, leftwing resistance. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 7 1. Chapter One – The reception grounds for radical politics in theatre 26 1.1. Recent interpretations of the Theatre Workshop legacy and the Fun Palace revival 34 1.2. Criticism, scholarship and disciplinary positions 54 1.2.1. Comparing Oh What a Lovely War with Last Edition 69 1.3. Theatrical resistance, cultural aversions and critiques 78 1.3.1. Responding to the revolution 79 1.3.2. A waning cause: Labor activism and class-consciousness 82 1.3.3. Perspectives from the theatrical angle 88 1.3.4. Theoretical explorations of the cultural aversions 94 2. Chapter Two – A matter of continuities I – Popular background 101 2.1. Fuenteovejuna (The Sheepwell ) – Nineteenth-century’s favorite classic for the working class 103 2.2.Working class leisure and the left-wing theatres in the nineteenth century and the interwar period 110 2.3. Institutional contributions to interwar left-wing drama 134 3. Chapter Three – A matter of continuities II – Ideological background 145 3.1. The Russian Avant-garde and the origins of WTM 151 3.2. Littlewood and MacColl’s access to the Russian Avant-garde and the Continental trends 163 5 3.3. Adaptations as local response 170 4. Chapter Four – The factors behind the evolution of Theatre Workshop’s rambunctious stage 185 4.1. Actor training and ‘faith in a sense of truth’ 202 4.2. The street as a source of observation and identification 209 4.3. The nature of the Theatre Workshop realism 220 4.4. Theatre Workshop’s communism in practice 231 5. Chapter Five – Re-considering formalisms 244 5.1. Re-considering formalisms 245 5.2. De-auratization of the theatre for working-class audiences 259 Conclusion 272 Bibliography 281 6 Introduction When looking at the theatrical collaboration of Joan Littlewood and Ewan MacColl, who founded the famous radical British ensemble Theatre Workshop in 1945 as the third phase of their work, I have a specific aim to advocate a few arguments. First one is to contend with and at the same time contest Joan Littlewood’s legacy in Twentieth Century British theatre as a ‘genius’. My contesting this position constitutes the primary premise of this dissertation, with a working hypothesis that what made Littlewood’s theatre a work of genius was her formative years in theatrical collaboration with Ewan MacColl, with whom she graduated from the trends of the historical Workers’ Theatre Movement in England (WTM hereafter) in 1930s. This theatrical journey had strong ties with the WTM, and MacColl and Littlewood were extremely well poised ideologically, and personally, to support the workers’ cause and the class fights as a lasting tool of resisting Fascism and the social evils of the capitalist system of their times. This ideological stand had a premium impact on their theatre on both materialistic and artistic terms, but has come to be overlooked in the most recent study on Theatre Workshop by Nadine Holdsworth, Joan Littlewood’s Theatre (2011), which employs processes that treat Littlewood’s career as the ultimate focus in the Theatre Workshop legacy and downgrade some useful historical givens as lesser categories that inevitably neutralize the strong dose of radicalism and class politics that shaped her theatre. Robert Leach’s earlier work, Theatre Work-Shop: Joan Littlewood and the Making of Modern British Theatre (2006) surveys and acknowledges the historical foundations of Theatre Workshop and restores the importance of their roots from the interwar decades, but at times seizes to take the categorically formalistic arguments further than acknowledging the novelties introduced by Theatre Workshop to the British Theatre, leaving the nature of this success a mystery. 7 In 2014 Britain celebrated the Joan Littlewood Centenary and the theatre world praised her work on many occasions and a revival of her post-theatrical work, the Fun Palace Project was instigated, as well, to become an annual community event. Her legacy was recited all year round and her achievements were singled out as personal talents, leaving her founding-partner, Ewan MacColl little space of recognition. What I have come to observe as the journalistic, academic and artistic complicity that ignores the presence and function of the radical class politics as formative and continuing dynamics in her work offers the grounds for examination in this dissertation. My argument is that the theatrical ‘genius’ quality bestowed upon Littlewood today is an incomplete one and does not pay her lifelong achievements the respect they demand. I aim to contribute to the scholarship that recognizes her work as a brilliantly creative amalgam of the communist fervor that used theatre as a ‘weapon,’ together with popular entertainment strategies, and further highlight some features of her work that the current scholarship finds intriguing. Therefore, as Littlewood’s theatrical genius as a 20 th century woman director is gaining more attention, I find it important to clarify the originating factors of this success story, which lie hidden in the period from 1935 to 1952, from Littlewood and MacColl’s founding the Theatre Union to their settling in East London. I find the recent publications on Littlewood preoccupied with the post-settlement era and its successes. The ideological cause (her own and MacColl's WTM ideologies) that shaped her theatre is presented as such that hindered her strong directing talents, and that her talents in theatrical expression soared when they settled in 8 London and Ewan MacColl, the ideologue and the playwright of the partnership, quit his theatrical input 1. I believe such an observation that Littlewood’s partnership hindered her creative talents has to do with the fact that there is no established apparatus of evaluating the success or efficacy of a radical theatre, especially if it is a nomadic, dispossessed, revolutionary ensemble like the Theatre Workshop in its pre-settlement era. That period of 17 years (1935-1952) is not given much attention; it appears to me that it doesn't get the attention it deserves for a couple of reasons: First, the cultural turn has brought a diversity of representation in various artistic fields, which has given way to subcategories of political theatre to surface, like theatre of identity or theatre of multiculturalism commonly referred as theatres of culture in textbooks. 2 Second, in the academia, let alone theatre companies or press, the WTM is taken as a failed weapon and that the socialist or communist experiment is a - historically - failed one. Hence the write-off of the MacColl-Littlewood couple's pre-settlement era as a formative process in Littlewood's success.