ABSTRACT
Brighton People’s Theatre and Slung Low are at the forefront of the contemporary people’s theatre movement in the United Kingdom. I examine these companies and the broader utility of a people’s theatre, historically concerned with working class representation and/or performances of civic unity, in the context of economic austerity and inequality. I assert that ideologies and practices of people’s theatres have the capacity to generate networks of solidarity and realise resilience as a mode of care and resistance. I explore how these practices directly intervene in urban governance reaffirming the potential of community-led economic, cultural, and social practices of resilience.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 I would like to thank Jenny Hughes for her generous support in helping me think through some of the ideas around ‘the people’ presented here. I am also grateful for the thoughtful responses from peer reviewers and editors who have helped shape the discussion in this article.
2 I explore the particular artistic forms of people’s theatre’s in England in ‘Peopling the Theatre in a Time of Crisis’, in Performing Crisis in Contemporary British Theatre, ed. by Claire Wallace and Clara Escoda (forthcoming with Bloomsbury).
3 To read more about Amani People’s Theatre see: Valentina Baú (Citation2018) ‘Participatory Communication, Theatre and Peace: Performance as a Tool for Change at the End of Conflict’, Communicatio, 44.1, 34–54.
4 Tidswell was one of the club’s members who participated in Brett Chapman’s documentary film, Standing in the Rain, about Slung Low’s move to the Holbeck.
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Notes on contributors
Sarah Bartley
Sarah Bartley is a Lecturer Theatre and Performance at the University of Reading. She is a Research Assistant on the AHRC Funded project ‘Clean Break: Women, Theatre, Organisation and the Criminal Justice System’ and recently published her monograph Performing Welfare: Applied Theatre, Unemployment, and Economies of Participation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).