'The Maker and the Tool: Charles Parker, documentary performance, and the search for a popular culture

New Theatre Quarterly

Volumn 19, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 41-66

  Watt, David ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 63849112675     PISSN: 0266464X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0266464X02000052     Document Type: Article

References (54)

1. 'Verbatim Theatre: Oral History and Documentary Techniques', New Theatre Quarterly, III, No. 12 (1987), p. 319.
2. See, for example, Alan Sinfield, Literature, Politics and Culture in Postwar Britain (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), p. 265;
3. Catherine Itzin, Stages in the Revolution (London: Eyre Methuen, 1980), p. 109-12;
4. Stuart Laing, Representations of Working-Class Life (London: Macmillan, 1986), p. 102-7;
5. Baz Kershaw, The Politics of Performance (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 106.
6. Clive Barker, unpublished typescript, 'General Manager's Report and Recommendations to Management Committee of Centre 42', 26 August 1961, CPA 1/8/7/1, p. 2.
7. Cited in Ruth Hall, 'Wesker: What the Workers Want?', Topic, September 1962, p. 12.
8. New Statesman, July 1960, cited in Robert Hewison, Too Much: Art and Society in the Sixties (London: Methuen, 1986), p. 18.
9. See, for example, 'The Theory and Practice of Political Theatre', Theatre Quarterly, IX, No. 35 (1979);
10. A Good Night Out: Popular Theatre: Audience, Class, and Form (London: Methuen, 1981).
11. Parker, 'Trades Council Festivals', unpublished typescript of publicity material, 1962, CPA 2/90.
12. Geoffrey Reeves, 'The Biggest Aunt Sally of Them All', Encore, January/February 1963, p. 15.
13. Michael Kustow, 'Centre 42: What Did We Achieve?', Tribune, 11 January 1963, p. 7;
14. See, for example, Peter Ford, 'Centre 42 Goes West', Guardian, 12 November 1962: 'Observers at some events ⋯ might have wondered from the beards and duffel coats if it was not a trades union festival at all but, as one person put it, a get-together of left-wing intellectuals.'
15. Frank Coppieters, 'Arnold Wesker's Centre Fortytwo: a Cultural Revolution Betrayed', Theatre Quarterly, V, No. 18 (1975), p. 42.
16. E-mail to David Watt, 15 June 2002.
17. Interview with David Watt, 18 May 2000.
18. 'Memorandum in Support of an Application to the Treasury for Financial Assistance', signed by Lord Macmillan and Lord De La Warre, 6 March 1940. Cited in Robert Hutchinson, The Politics of the Arts Council (London: Sinclair Browne, 1982), p. 44.
19. See Dave Rogers, 'Banner Theatre', Theatre Ireland, No. 28, (1992), p 21;
20. Anna Seymour, 'Culture and Political Change: British Radical Theatre in Recent History', Theatre Research International, XXI, No. 1 (1996), p. 8-16;
21. Alan Filewod and David Watt, Workers Playtime: Theatre and the Labour Movement in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom 1970-1997 (Sydney: Currency Press, 2001), p. 83-127
22. 'The Pervasiveness of the Commonplace: the Historian and Amateur Theatre', Theatre Research International, XXVI, No. 3 (2001), p. 233-42.
23. Cheeseman, 'Introduction', The Knotty (London: Methuen, 1970), p. xi.
24. See Jim Lagden, 'Theatre in the Market Place', Theatre Quarterly, I, No. 1 (1970), p. 83.
25. John Lane and Peter Burton, New Directions: Ways of Advance for the Amateur Theatre (London: McGibbon and Kee, 1970), p. 22.
26. This sort of work was particularly associated with BBC Radio Manchester under Archie Harding in the 1930s. See Paddy Scannell, 'The Stuff of Radio: Developments in Radio Features and Documentary Before the War', in John Corner, ed., Documentary and the Mass Media (London: Edward Arnold, 1986), p. 1-26, for a full account.
27. See, for example, Dave Harker, Fakesong (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1985);
28. Georgina Boyes, The Imagined Village (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993). For accounts of the Second British Folk Revival,
29. see also Niall MacKinnon, The British Folk Scene (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1994); Mike Brocken, The British Folk Revival (web.ukonline.co.uk/mustrad/articles/broc-ndx.htm), 1998.
30. Parker, 'Dog in the Manger - and After', 8 January 1962, CPA1/8/8/3.
31. Initially in the posthumously published work by R. J. E. Tiddy, The Mummers' Play (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923)
32. and soon afterwards in E. K. Chambers, The English Folk Play (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933).
33. Both of these works were then republished in the late 1960s or early 1970s, and further interest is indicated by the publication of Alan Brody, The English Mummers and Their Plays (London: Routledge, 1971).
34. Glynne Wickham, 'Introduction: Trends in International Drama Research', in Eckehard Simon, ed., The Theatre of Medieval Europe: New Research in Early Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 5.
35. See John R. Elliott Jr., Playing God: Medieval Mysteries on the Modern Stage (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989).
36. The Medieval Theatre in the Round (London: Faber and Faber, 1957).
37. 'Dog in the Manger - and After', p. 2.
38. Parker, letter to D. G. G. Lawrence, Secretary to the Committee on Broadcasting, 25 November 1960, CPA 1/8/8/1.
39. Laterna Magika has recently been one of the subjects of Catherine Diamond's 'Prague Summer: Encounters with a Third Kind of Theatre', New Theatre Quarterly, XVII, No. 67 (2001), p. 230-4.
40. 'Dog in the Manger - and After', p. 4. It is difficult to establish what Parker might have known of the prewar 'Griersonian' documentary film tradition - see Elizabeth Sussex, The Rise and Fall of British Documentary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976) - or, in particular, the work of Humphrey Jennings in the 1940s - see Mary-Lou Jennings, ed., Humphrey Jennings: Film-Maker, Painter, Poet (London: British Film Institute, 1982) -
41. which his own work perhaps most resembles, but Jennings's work was certainly on the agenda at the time, following Lindsay Anderson's 'Only Connect: Some Aspects of the Work of Humphrey Jennings', in Sight and Sound (Spring 1954). Clearly, John Grierson's famous description of documentary film as 'the creative treatment of actuality' left its mark.
42. Parker, letter to D. G. G. Lawrence, 25 November 1960, CPA 1/8/8/1.
43. Parker, letter to W. Byng Kenrick, 16 December 1960, CPA 1/8/8/1.
44. Parker to Clive Barker, 2 September 1961, CPA 1/8/7/1.
45. 'Premises', CPA 1/8/8/3.
46. The Maker and the Tool, CPA 2/90/7 p. 1. All further citations from this text.
47. Letter to Sir Albert Bradbeer (Alderman), 17 January 1963, CPA 1/8/8/2.
48. 'W. H. B.', Birmingham Post, 24 October 1962.
49. Frank Stanley, Marxism Today, March 1963, p. 14-15.
50. Letter to Michael Henshaw, Secretary, Centre 42, 10 July 1963 (Birmingham Trade Council Festival Committee file, Birmingham Central Reference Library).
51. Memo to C. M. R., 24 January 1962, CPA 1/8/7/1.
52. Letter to Arnold Wesker, 30 April 1963, CPA 1/8/8/1.
53. Barker, interview with David Watt, 18 May 2000.
54. Letter from Wesker, 11 June 1965, CPA 2/90/23.