Dreaming Again: Deconstructing the Categories of Alternative British Theatre

Thirty years have passed since Sandy Craig and Catherine Itzen published their books on the British alternative theatre of the 1970s. In Dreams and Deconstructions, Craig defined the alternative and provided ways of grouping the sector’s most common approaches to theatre making. In celebration and critique of those initial taxonomies of alternative theatre, and in the wake of a new round of cuts in arts funding in the UK, this working group will re-evaluate British alternative theatre since 1980. The vast shifts in how alternative theatres position themselves and function in the overall British theatre economy since 1980 should require a revision to the fundamental conceptual categories used about alternative theatre. We seek to contribute to documentary projects already underway by encouraging analysis shaped by consideration of companies and artists which have not previously been documented or which are under-documented in comparison to groups like Joint Stock, Complicite, Cheek by Jowl, or the Edinburgh Fringe as an umbrella institution. What may be ignored, or over- or under-emphasized, in studies of alternative theatre if changes in aesthetics, training, and the cultural signification of political activism since 1980 are not properly contextualized? What can or should be articulated differently, with 30 years of perspective?

For this working group, we are looking for papers that address any of the following questions:

·         How has what is “other” about alternative theatre changed since the 1970s?

·         How has the ebb and flow of government subsidy and changes in the geography and naming of venues over the past 30 years redefined categories of the alternative?

·         How has theatre historiography employed an “economy of documentation” with regard to saving and recording alternative work?

·         What has been the effect of alternative practitioners taking up positions in West End or national theatres or teaching at drama schools on the conceptualization and historiographical consideration of alternative theatre as a category?

·         What is the cost and/or benefit to positioning a company or artist as “alternative” today?

·         What has been the impact of devolution on how we understand alternative theatre in Britain?

A primary goal of this working group will be to explore and elaborate new categories that more accurately represent how the alternative has shifted its focus and location since 1980. To do this, we will break participants up into small groups, each of which will receive a set of formative questions. Initial interrogations and conversations will take place prior to the conference via email. At the conference, each small group will meet and continue these conversations. We will then re-arrange the participants into different groups and pose additional questions. Finally, the entire group will meet together. Because we know that how we conceptualize things conditions what we able to know or say about them, attention will focus on how shaking up patterns in how case studies are grouped allows new connections to emerge.