Thursday, August 11, 2011
David Weinberg: "Beyond the Arts Lab"
During the summer of 1967 links with American experimental companies began to spark real change in the British theatrical landscape by introducing new and revolutionary theatre practices. During the summer of 1967 the Open Theatre under the direction of Joseph Chaikin performed America Hurrah at the Royal Court Theatre. America Hurrah: Three Views of the U.S.A. was a trilogy by Jean-Claude van Itallie. America Hurrah! demonstrated how American life is conditioned by ritualistic conventions. After highly successful engagements organized in collaboration with the Traverse Theatre, the La Mama Troupe directed by Tom O’Horgan performed Futz at the Mercury Theatre in Notting Hill and then Tom Paine at the Vaudeville Theatre in London’s West End. The summer of 1967 would later be referred to as the ‘American Summer’. (Ansorge 1975:22)
Inspired by the work of the American experimental companies in London during the summer of 1967 Jim Haynes started the Arts Lab during September 1968 in an abandoned warehouse at the top of Drury Lane. The warehouse was converted into a variety of spaces for art exhibitions, theatre performances, music and cinema. This multi-media laboratory or centre of fertilisation only lasted for fifteen months but in that time introduced a new generation of writers, directors and actors who would go on to produce work of national and international significance. In less than ten years there were over 240 multi-media community based arts labs scattered throughout Great Britain. Important groups which emerged from the Arts Lab included Freehold, Portable Theatre, Pip Simmons Group and the People Show. Many commentators have identified the Arts Lab as the very birthplace of the alternative theatre movement in Britain. I will trace the evolution of the groups and individuals associated with the Arts Lab since 1980.
1 comment:
Thank you very much for your paper. I’m not in this group, but I read your paper and found your work a joyful read and in an area of research that I have been recently invested. I also saw on Jim Haynes’ blog that he interviewed with you not long ago. I am very interested in hearing about this experience at the conference as I have wanted to visit him for one of his Sunday meals for quite some time now.
But to your paper. Thank you for the survey of Arts Lab inspired centres. My work has been on the Bath Arts Workshop and Natural Theatre Company (1970) which arose as a direct inspiration out of Haynes’ Lab. So I’ve been interested in which entities still operate and to what extent they may still represent/reflect their Arts Lab origins/legacies. Your list was very helpful, as I’m only familiar with a few. Also, I appreciated how, near the beginning, you acknowledged the larger historical context (with the help of Elek) and that other centres were developing. I believe Bill and Wendy Harpe’s Blackie community arts centre (now Black-E) in Liverpool (1967) would fall under this.
On a different point of interest, I’ve become uncertain when I see the The People Show being attributed as a product of the Arts Lab (which seems quite common in the historical cannon). After all, they formed in 1966 (and by some accounts 1965) and were performing at Better Books and other places before Haynes had opened the lab. This is a historiographical point I have taken up in my work (elsewhere) about the categorization of the ‘Drury Lane Groups’ (coined by Peter Ansorge).
Since your paper seems to acknowledge the larger context (and in some ways resists the totalising gravity of the Arts Lab and 1968 as period markers), I was wondering whether in your interviews with Haynes, if he reflected a similar historical sensitivity to practitioners, companies and centres that preceded or co-occurred with the Arts Lab ?
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