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Theatrical Pageants in the Second World War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Steve Nicholson
Steve Nicholson
Affiliation:
Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies, University of Huddersfield.
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Extract

During the 1920s and 30s, several left-wing theatre movements developed in Britain, committed to creating a political discourse in venues and forms unknown within the existing cultural mainstream. Such organizations as The Workers′ Theatre Movement, Unity Theatre and Theatre of Action were all–to a greater or lesser extent–resolutely oppositional to the Establishment and outside the jurisdiction of the Lord Chamberlain's powers of censorship. In the early 40s the situation changed, as individuals and theatrical forms previously associated with the Left were adopted by the Establishment, most notably through ENSA and the BBC.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1993 , pp. 186 - 196
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1993

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References

Notes

1. Performances in private clubs, the street, or other non-theatrical venues were, of course, free from the Lord Chamberlain's control–though not from other legal restraints.

2. See Calder, Angus, The People's War: Britain 1939–45, London, 1969.Google Scholar

3. Home Intelligence Report from March 1942.

4. Quotations from the unpublished text of The Spectre that Haunts Europe, in the Lord Chamberlain's Collection of Unlicensed Plays.

5. See op cit., n. 1.

6. See McLaine, Ian, Ministry of Morale: Home Front Morale and the Ministry of Information in World War II, London, 1979.Google Scholar

7. Cited in Addison, Paul, The Road to 1945, London, 1977.Google Scholar

8. Cited in McLaine, , op cit., n. 5.Google Scholar

9. It is interesting to speculate on what exactly Eden had in mind when he used the term ‘abroad’.

10. All references and all quotations from the text published in Our Time, Vol. II no. 4, 07 1942.Google Scholar

11. All quotations are taken from the unpublished script in the Lord Chamberlain's Collection of Licensed Plays.

12. ‘Reader's Report’ dated 27/6/43, signed by H. C. Game.

13. All documents relating to this production, including all the letters and notes quoted and the script itself come from the unpublished Cabinet Papers Foreign Office File 371–1943: Soviet Union File No. 186. Reference 36973.

14. The Times, 22 02 1943.Google Scholar

15. All quotations and descriptions by Basil Dean are taken from his book The Theatre at War, 1956, pp. 304–10.Google Scholar

16. Op cit., n. 13.

17. ibid.

18. Op cit., n. 12.