Notes on a theatre commons: Common Wealth’s The Deal Versus the People (2015)

ABSTRACT

The Deal Versus the People was a theatrical response created by people in Bradford (UK) to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). A controversial trade deal between the European Union and United States being negotiated at the time of the production, TTIP threatened to deepen trade liberalisation, with potentially negative impacts for communities on both sides of the Atlantic. In this article, I examine the ways The Deal Versus the People critically engaged with TTIP, and the neoliberal economic paradigm that it is an expression of, by mobilising a ‘commons’ across the theatrical and social landscapes of its production.

KEYWORDS:

• Commons
• Common Wealth theatre
• social theatre
• virtuosity
• Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership

Acknowledgements

The argument in this article was developed with reference to two texts that are uncited in this version. These are: Jackson, S. 2011. Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics. London: Routledge; and Dillon, E. M. 2014. New World Drama: The Performative Commons in the Atlantic World, 1649–1849. Durham: Duke University Press.

Notes on contributor

Jenny Hughes is Senior Lecturer in Drama at the University of Manchester. She researches the relationships between theatre and poverty, activist theatres and aspects of applied theatre.

Notes

1. In the week before submitting this article for publication, Donald Trump became US President Elect. His campaign featured a reiterated commitment to replace existing trade agreements with an isolationist approach that would, in his view, better protect the interests of US industry. The election of Trump, alongside the British public's vote to leave the EU in June 2016 (known as ‘Brexit’), probably signals the end of TTIP. These moves are underpinned by, in my view, dangerous forms of right-wing populist politics triggered, at least in part, by the negative impact of economic globalisation on working people in the US and UK. Whatever the prognosis for TTIP, it seems highly likely that trade arrangements developed by the Trump administration and UK's post-Brexit government will reproduce the risks and threats of TTIP, and further entrench current extremes of economic inequality and precarity.

2. For more information go to www.commonwealththeatre.co.uk [Accessed May 2, 2016].

3. This article arises from time spent as a researcher with the company whilst making the production. I am grateful for the opportunity to participate and the propose-full registers of the writing here reflect my attempt to make a contribution to the commons from which this work draws.

4. This discussion is developed, drawing on the concept of theatre as a ‘social factory’, in the editorial to this special issue.

5. See notstupid.co.uk [Accessed May 2, 2016].

Additional information

Funding

The research for this article was supported by an Arts and Humanities Research Council Early Career Fellowship, ‘Poor Theatres: a critical exploration of theatre, performance and economic precarity’ [Grant Ref: AH/L004054/1]. For more information, please go to www.manchester.ac.uk/poortheatres