Ewan Maccoll

Obituary

Ewan MacColl

EWAN MACCOLL, who died on 22 October order to capture experience or to express your 1989, was a man of many talents, and all of us thoughts and feelings through them. who are committed to the propagation of an The same attitude informed the use of the oppositional culture and to popular performance body and the human voice. The singer or actor owe him a great deal. In the early 'thirties he should consider their physical facilities as an began his work with the Red Megaphones of instrument through which a 'tune' was played. Salford, an agit-prop street theatre. Through his Performance was not an egotistic exhibition, involvement in radio documentaries which were but rather an anonymous enabling of the voices being pioneered in Manchester at that time, he and experiences of past tradition to be artic- met Joan Littlewood, and together they as- ulated afresh. The body was an instrument sembled a number of companies, culminating in which must be understood, trained, and tuned the formation of Theatre Workshop after the to as near perfection as possible to enable this end of the Second World War. to happen. In the 'fifties, Ewan MacColl split from There seemed no obstacle which he con- Theatre Workshop and concentrated his en- sidered insurmountable: everything was a ergies on song-writing and singing. His the- matter of understanding what was needed, atrical experience, his understanding of the learning the skill, and then doing it. This documentary form, and his love and study of combination of infinite vision and range of the ballad tradition and its close relationship to reference with the laconic, undemonstrative the vernacular language came together in his style in which he expressed it did not always work on the 'radio ballads' with Charles Parker endear him to people, and working with him and Peggy Seeger - sound collages which not was both a daunting and exhilarating ex- only revolutionized the radio documentary perience. feature but which heavily influenced the theatre Fortunately, in the last years of his life he set documentaries which followed. down his experience of the Red Megaphones in In the mid- and late-'sixties, his work stayed the book Left Theatres. But his work with mainly in the area of the folk-song revival, but Theatre Workshop as a dramatist remains to be he found time, with Seeger and Parker, to run a critically assessed. With Peggy Seeger, he has series of satirical, political revues at Christmas- left us a treasury of folk tales, humour, and time in the Merlin's Cave pub in north London. social history collected on tape from the In this work he was again ahead of the field, and Stewarts of Blairgowrie. His songs and the in the forefront of oppositional popular culture. recordings of his singing remain to delight us. Behind MacColl's work was a formidable We in New Theatre Quarterly have many scholarship and a commitment to what he reasons to regret his passing. We have lost a described as the 'craftsmanship' approach. His friend and a mentor. Many years ago we grasp of the techniques of popular performance recorded a long interview with him, for the old - and in particular the use of language through- Theatre Quarterly, on the early days of Theatre out all ages - was devastating to the dilettante, Workshop, of which a first instalment appeared as was his ability seemingly to reduce the in TQ9 (1973). The unpublished transcript of creative act to the level of practical technique. the second tape begins with a typical MacColl The tape-recorder and the microphone, he thus laconic bombshell: insisted, were instruments, not simply technical tools: you had to know how to use them in By this time we'd met Chico [Marx] frequently and

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Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.35.234, on 28 Sep 2021 at 07:45:53, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266464X00004462 we used to have long talks about the commedia process by which a writer might study the dell'arte with him.... Chico used to come fairly formulation of sentences and phrases, the use of frequently and play at the Prince of Wales, and then metaphors, similes, and other figures of speech, he'd come over to Felixstowe, if we were playing in the society around him or her. Without there, and spend the Sunday talking discounting the development of craftmanship and the particular viewpoint of the writer, this At the end of the interview, as time was process of study and reflection would make the running out, Ewan strayed into an area not on creation of drama, and consequently theatre, the agenda. Drawing on the work he had done communal. on actuality for the radio ballads, he began to By the time the tape runs out, he seemed lay out a theory of theatrical language, relating close to formulating a theoretical analysis of the the structure of the vernacular to Laban's use of language in the great popular periods of movement studies and the effects of social the theatre, and pointing the way towards change upon the drama. restoring that dimension to a theatre like ours, doomed in an atomized society to search for What most writers that 1 have read in the last three some form or content with which to attract and or four years do, is to start from a pre-conceived politicize the mass popular audience, whether in notion of what language is, of how men and women the wider or narrower sense of 'politicize'. We express ideas and how they express emotion. This tried on a number of occasions to persuade him concept they usually arrive at during the very to elaborate on these ideas, but he was either ill earliest period of their decision to become a writer, or he chose to spend the times between illness around seventeen or eighteen. They start off with a on his own work or singing. single concept of what language is, and that lasts Ewan MacColl never lost his belief in the them through their life. Very rarely do they say, power of communal action to effect political 'Does this concept bear any relation to the truth?' change. He gave time, energy, and talent Generally speaking it doesn't. What they have opted unstintingly to supporting the cause of the for is a private code, and if you can get a small, or oppressed. This was the nourishing source of even a large, group of people to understand your his art, and, by extension, all art for him. A great code, then you become a practising literary gent. talent and a wealth of experience and under- You become a writer. But the fact is that language, standing has been taken from us: but he has left and concepts of language, are constantly changing, us clues and signposts to the directions we with each new generation might take to continue the work. On the tape he went on to suggest an interactive CLIVE BARKER

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