Interview with Nadine Holdsworth: Part 6
Nadine Holdsworth is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Warwick. Her research has two distinct, but sometimes interconnected strands in Twentieth Century popular theatre practitioners and theatre and national identities in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. She has worked particularly on Joan Littlewood and has written Joan Littlewood for the Routledge Performance Practitioners Series in 2006 and Joan Littlewood’s Theatre with Cambridge University Press in 2011.
email: n.holdsworth@warwick.ac.uk
Connections to the GCSE, AS and A level specifications
- Social, cultural, political and historical context
- Use of theatrical conventions
- The relationship between actor and audience in theory and practice
- Innovations
- Key collaborations with other artists
- Methods of creating, developing, rehearsing and performing
- Theatrical style
- Significant moments in the development of theory and practice
PC: How do the classic text productions fit with the continuous loop idea? Why not continue the agitprop, devised style as it were?
NH: Littlewood was a great lover of theatre in all its guises, particularly popular theatre traditions. She saw the renaissance period, Shakespeare and his contemporaries as part of a popular theatre tradition, which was about getting the groundlings in as well as the aristocracies. Creating theatre that did give back to the people the stories of their day and their immediate history. I think she wanted that epic scale of work. But it was also about moving to London and needing to do work that would get some attention, that would attract people. So those Shakespeare pieces, the Renaissance classics were being done alongside the commissions of local writers about the local railways. So it wasn’t one or the other, they were working simultaneously. The Shakespeare was about that interest in politics really. What the politics of the time were and how that could have contemporary relevance. So if you do Macbeth how can that story, about the relentless pursuit of power at all costs connect with a modern audience? What contemporary parallels might be made?
PC: Were those connections to contemporary politics explicit in the design of the classical productions or was it simply alluded to?
NH: Not necessarily explicit. In terms of the programmes there were often connections made to what was going on in the contemporary world. Those connections were made but not necessarily explicitly like doing contemporary dress sort of productions (see theatre-workshop-programmes here).
PC: Was there anything else that attracted her to those classical plays?
NH: Yes, strong female characters. She often did pieces that had strong women in them. She did The Duchess Of Malfi which was rarely done, she did a production which was called the Dutch Courtesan which hadn’t been done for hundreds of years I think and that made quite a big splash.
PC: How did the conventions of the classic texts (direct address, chorus etc.) influence how she approached new plays (new writing and devised)?
NH: In A Taste of Honey you can see how she was starting to play with those conventions. When A Taste of Honey was sent into Theatre Workshop it was a classic social realist piece of theatre, in the Look Back In Anger (John Osborne) mould. It came fairly soon afterwards. And through the process of rehearsal you get this evolution of the play into something which contains direct address to the audience, which contains a Music Hall back and forth comedy, banter between characters. You get the introduction of a jazz band on the stage and characters that danced on and off the stage in between scenes rather than just staying in character in a traditional sense. Littlewood was really moving towards wanting to break down the barriers between the stage and the auditorium and talk directly to the audience. That became an increasing part of the theatre work that she was producing from Brendan Behan’s The Quare Fellow in 1956 onwards.
Summary
- Littlewood saw the renaissance period, Shakespeare and his contemporaries as part of a popular theatre tradition, which was about getting the groundlings in as well as the aristocracies. But it was also needing to do work that would get some attention.
- Littlewood was interested in the politics of Shakespeare’s time and how that could have contemporary relevance.
- The classical plays had strong female character, which was important for Littlewood.
- Littlewood wanted to break down the barriers between the stage and the auditorium and talk directly to the audience.
- A Taste of Honey evolves, during rehearsals, to include non-realistic conventions – direct address, jazz band on stage etc.
