For many decades past, the theatre has been relegated to the cultural backseat by other more ‘relevant\’ forms of cultural expression. In the Western world, cinema has long been the ascendant art form of the masses. However, in at least one respect, theatre has had a more pertinent effect on British culture. That arena is political relevancy. The noughties saw a slew of films that seemed to directly criticize the inadequacies of American and British involvement in Iraq, among them Lions for Lambs, The Hurt Locker, and In the Valley of Elah. Apart from garnering a modest number of awards from the film establishment, these films achieved little in awakening public consciousness to the injustices of Western involvement in Iraq. If they set out to provoke public outrage or consternation, they failed where journalistic endeavour had already triumphed.
Theatre is one of the spaces in which we most readily (and most effectively, some might argue) challenge the status quo. From Aristophanes\’ critique of the Peloponnesian War in Lysistra to Joseph Hare\’s 2004 play Stuff Happens, playwrights from the distant past to the present have used current affairs as building blocks for drama – and theatre has proven itself capable of changing society for the better. In 1910, the Home Secretary Winston Churchill changed the law regarding solitary confinement in prisons due to the overwhelming public discontent roused by John Galsworthy aptly-named play Justice. Galsworthy\’s play, a melodramatic tale of the effects of solitary confinement upon a lovelorn fraudster, changed the tide of public opinion against a needlessly draconian punishment. Elsewhere, theatre has changed contemporary life in a less spectacular manner. The relentless national soul-searching and taboo-busting of the past five decades of post-Look Back in Anger British theatre has seen powerful articulations of discontent and protest. British verbatim theatre particularly, among them Philip Ralph\’s Deepcut which brought a gross military injustice into the public eye, has paved the way for theatre as political space.
The stage seems uniquely placed as a forum for communities to come together and connect over issues that have affected their lives. Any healthy democracy must cultivate a space for peaceful dissent and I would argue that in modern Britain one of the spaces that this is most powerfully demonstrated is on stage. In a recent interview, the South African playwright Athol Fugard berated modern playwrights for failing to tackle contemporary injustices. Yet, British playwrights seem to be impressively tackling these injustices on the stage. State-of-the-nation drama has had a long and rich history in Britain and the British appetite for self-enquiry and mockery has not waned (as one might see from Rebecca Tatlow\’s recent article on Theatre Uncut).
Even seemingly inocuous drama such as Laura Wade\’s Posh can have political ramifications. Posh followed the antics of a group of Oxford students in the ‘Riot Club\’ – a thinly veiled allusion to the Bullingdon Club. The play caused controversy in its decision to play at the height of the recent electoral campaign (polling day fell in the middle of the play\’s Royal Court run). Wade\’s play called to attention the privilege and entitlement that the likes of David Cameron and George Osborne had been part of and in running simultaneously with an election perhaps highlighted the apparent inconsistency of electing to the most powerful office in the country men who had partaken in a society notorious for its brand of mayhem and money.
Quentin Letts of the Daily Mail called the play \’a political attack\’. Whilst this might be an overstatement on the part of Mr. Letts, it demonstrates a play\’s continuing power to unsettle the establishment. More deeply concerned with the symbiosis between spectator and spectacle than any other cultural medium, theatre has the power to move public opinion like no other art form. The visceral intimacy that can be achieved between stage and audience is unique in its potential to shift attitudes and change opinion. And therein lies the power and the relevancy of the British stage.
