‘Being part of something much bigger than self': the community play as a model of implicit and explicit political theatre practice.

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the community play, as conceived by Ann Jellicoe, as a form of political theatre-making. Examining two community play productions: Drummer Hodge (2014) and Love on the Dole (2016), I explore how the form’s theatrical conventions combine with the play’s content to generate political action. Discussing how the community play has been under-theorised in applied theatre literature, I argue that the form can bring together the more celebratory aspects of community that are present in applied theatre discourses, with explicit political motivations to create political practice in the context of twenty-first century austerity.

KEYWORDS:

• Community play
• Ann Jellicoe
• political theatre
• community theatre
• protest

Notes on contributor

Sarah Weston is a Lecturer in Theatre and Performance at the University of Bolton. She undertook her doctoral thesis in the School of Media and Communication at the University of Leeds, exploring voice, performance and political engagement with young women. She is a theatre practitioner and set up the company Salford Community Theatre in 2015, writing and co-directing their production of Love on the Dole (2016), and their second production The Salford Docker (2019).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.