EDWARD LITTLE
Published as part of the Intellect Press Theatre Studies Series, Popular Theatre in Political Culture bills itself as "the first comparative study on the history and practice of popular theatre in Britain, Canada and overseas" (cover notes). In keeping with popular theatre's concern to include multiple voices and perspectives, the authors include essays by, interviews with, and reflections from contemporary popular theatre makers. Their intention is "to communicate the variety, richness, and excitement of popular theatre in a wide range of contexts" and to shape the book in such a way that the authentic voices of contributing practitioners work as "unmediated interventions, as rocks breaking the smoother surface" of the more measured discourse provided by the co-authors (2). The approach is effective and provides readers with comparative insight into the theory and practice of British and Canadian work as experienced by Geraldine Ling, Darrel Wildcat and Jane Heather, Julie Salverson, Joe Cloutier and Alexina Dalgetty, Bridget Escolme, Kadi Purru, Don Bouzek, Iain Smith and Gillian Twaite, Lisa Sokil, Deborah Hurford, David Diamond, Mary Swan, Sheila Preston, Chantal Wagschal, and Tessa Mendel.
The book presents an effective historical and critical examination of popular theatre. Prentki and Selman include a comprehensive discussion of terminology, trace the development of various types of community theatre from the 1970s to the present day, and provide succinct discussions of various influences including Brecht, Boal, and movements such as the Workers' Theatre, Drama and Theatre in Education, and Theatre for Development. The book's final chapter examines issues such as funding, impact assessment, networking, and community partnerships.
Prentki and Selman's discussion of Brechtian influences, popular education, and theories of community development are particularly strong. Their analysis of the development of popular theatre makes an important contribution to Canadian theatre history with its inclusion of material pertaining to Ross Kidd, the establishment of the Canadian Popular Theatre Alliance, and the impact of the biannual Popular Theatre Festivals held between 1981 and 1991.
The book's six chapters outline a methodology for conceptualizing, planning, and evaluating popular theatre projects. Throughout the book, Prentki and Selman engage with practical and ideological distinctions between popular and mainstream approaches, and key concerns such as considerations of popular theatre as art form, as a process of self-empowerment, and as an instrument of cultural intervention. In identifying multiple ways of looking at popular theatre, the authors articulate the ideological and methodological assumptions informing both the book and popular theatre practice:
At its most basic, community based theatre work and perhaps all theatre work, if we are to claim that theatre is about engagement with an audience, needs to be looked at in terms of: its intentions; the context within which the work is being pursued; the process that is undertaken; the relationship of the creators to the material and to the community which is most involved; the form(s) used; and the nature of the audience. (22)
The book goes far beyond simply defining, describing, or advocating popular theatre. As Prentki and Selman admit, "this book settles nothing and proves nothing; instead it offers provocations to practitioners, students, and academics. The book is intended for anyone with an interest in changing their world" (2). Popular Theatre in Political Culture challenges practitioners in particular to take a hard look at both their intentions and at the values inherent in their various techniques and practices. In support of this self-reflective approach, the book provides an insightful analysis in several key areas: the multiple factors affecting artistic self-interest and survival; community partnerships, participation, and ownership; and the pressures affecting the balance between artistic accomplishment and social efficacy.
The authors also clearly situate their own analysis within political culture. The book's final chapters merit quoting at length:
Popular theatre at its most effective is firmly embedded within a popular culture which articulates a demand for dialogue between the centre and the margins; a demand that local knowledge and local wisdom be respected and acted upon by organisations which claim to represent the opinions of ordinary people. Ultimately popular theatre must migrate out of the ghettos of "fringe", "alternative" and 'small-scale' and announce itself as the new mainstream. The paradigm shift is much more than a matter of language. The issues that popular theatre addresses are no longer marginal. They are, rather, the means by which human society survives and changes. The conventional way of describing theatre in terms of a mainstream/alternative binary has outlived any usefulness it might once have possessed. It belongs to the conceptual frameworks of colonialism which views the world as composed of a few centres and many margins [...]. Popular theatre works to facilitate independence, to assist communities in a process of building a capacity for autonomous self-development. Participatory and democratic, its principles are at odds with those of globalisation. It provides a means by which those whose indigenous culture is threatened by outside intervention can, through the agency of fiction, create a space in which to articulate that culture and to examine the social bases of communities on terms of their own devising. Slowly, painfully it is beginning to be understood that local knowledge, like rare species of insects and plants, contains the wisdom born of long adaptation to specific circumstances. In destroying it, the globalisers may well eliminate those qualities in human existence necessary for survival [ ...]. Far from enjoying a post-colonial period of world development, the present time is witnessing the most extreme, far-reaching manifestation of colonialism yet devised. In the interests of financial gain, a tiny group of people is now working to colonise all the peoples of the earth: not with armies but with ideologies. It is not their lands that are being colonised but their minds, for the weapon of the coloniser is culture and the images and myths that go towards creating the desires by which people become the slaves of others' dreams. This is the enormity of the task confronting the popular theatre movement. (199-200)