CLIVE BARKER AND HIS LEGACY

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CLIVE BARKER AND HIS LEGACY

THEATRE WORKSHOP AND

THEATRE GAMES

Edited by Paul Fryer and Nesta Jones

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 METHUEN DRAMA
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In loving memory of Simon Trussler, our colleague and friend, who
contributed so much to our understanding and enjoyment of theatre.

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CONTENTS

Notes on contributors ix
Acknowledgements xiv

1 Introduction: Clive’s legacy Nesta Jones and Paul Fryer 1

2 Clive Barker: a biographical memory Simon Trussler 13

3 Clive Barker: my Einstein Murray Melvin 23

4 Clive Barker and alternative theatre Susan Croft 27

5 Clive Barker as tribal Scribe: Memory, Embodied Knowledge

and the power of Anecdotes Nadine Holdsworth 51

6 ‘A New Team’: Clive Barker and Shelagh Delaney’s

The Lion in Love Aleks Sierz 67

7 Theatre gains: remembering Clive Ceri Pitches 87

8 Clive Barker and movement Dick McCaw 95

9 On supplanting oligarchy: Clive Barker’s defiant

anti-authoritarianism Chris Baldwin 111

10 Hacking the archives: the 2012 Olympic legacy, Fun

Palaces and game theatre Joseph Dunne-Howrie 127

11 An Evening with Clive Barker: an edited transcript of

a unique event edited by Paul Fryer 149

12 Nine lives and counting Chrissie Poulter 171

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Contents

Appendix I: Authorial bibliography and professional credits

compiled by Nesta Jones 195
Appendix II: Teaching and training compiled by Nesta Jones 203
Index 209

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CONTRIBUTORS

Chris Baldwin is a performance director, curator and writer. He is the

artistic director and co-founder of CCD Productions. He is known widely
for Teatro de Creación (TdC) and citizen-centred dramaturgy (CCD) –
approaches to making large-scale performance designed for a place, about
that place and made in deep collaboration with the people of that place. He
is presently Artistic Director of big events for Kaunas2022 (European Capital
of Culture, Lithuania), was Creative Director of Galway2020 (European
Capital of Culture, Ireland) and previously Curator of Interdisciplinary
Performance for Wrocław2016 (European Capital of Culture, Poland). He
directed two large-scale performances as part of the 2012 London Olympics.
He also acts as an advisor to cities and rural spaces wishing to develop their
cultural policies – in particular within a European context (European
Capitals of Culture). He was Cultural Coordinator for Piran4Istria2025
(Slovenia) in its recent shortlisted bid for the ECoC title. His articles, books
and plays are published in various languages and his new book on citizen-
centred dramaturgy is due out in 2021. He regularly teaches and speaks at
universities across Europe. His PhD was awarded by the University of Kent.
Chris is also a permaculture designer.
Susan Croft is a writer, curator, archive advisor and Director of Unfinished
Histories, the oral and archival history project on alternative theatre in
Britain: www.unfinishedhistories.com. She also runs SuffrageArts, exploring
the suffrage movement through art and theatre in exhibitions, events and
workshops; and in 2020 set up the blog Her Inside: Women in the Lockdown
to gather creative responses, historical and contemporary, to women’s
experience of social isolation and lockdown. Founder Director of New
Playwrights Trust, she went on to work in teaching performance studies at
Nottingham Trent University and leading live art/performance research at
Manchester Metropolitan University before becoming Senior Curator
(Contemporary Performance) at the V&A Theatre Museum from 1998 to
2005. She was Clive Barker Research Fellow at Rose Bruford College of
Theatre and Performance from 2008 to 2018. Her publications include: She
Also Wrote Plays: An International Guide to Women Playwrights (2001),

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Contributors

Black and Asian Performance at the Theatre Museum: A Users’ Guide (2004),
How the Vote Was Won: Art, Theatre and Women’s Suffrage (with V. I.
Cockroft, 2010) and the anthologies Votes for Women and Other Plays
(2009), Classic Plays by Women (2010) and Thousands of Noras: Short Plays
by Women 1875–1920 (with Sherry Engle, 2015). She has curated major
exhibitions at the V&A on Edward Gordon Craig and Tanya Moiseiwitsch;
Paul Robeson; Architects of Fantasy / Forkbeard Fantasy; and the Redgraves
and their history on the public stage. As a freelance curator she has created
acclaimed exhibitions on women’s suffrage, on Black theatre in Britain and
numerous exhibitions and displays on aspects of alternative theatre history.
Joseph Dunne-Howrie is a module year coordinator at Rose Bruford
College of Theatre and Performance. His research interests include the
politics of digital culture, internet-based dramaturgies, participatory and
immersive theatre, performance documentation, archives, and performative
writing. He has previously taught at the University of East London,
Mountview Academy and City, University of London. He has published
articles and book reviews in Performance Research, International Journal of
Performance Arts and Digital Media and Stanislavski Studies. He writes about
theatre and higher education on his blog josephdunnehowrie.com and on
Twitter @MemoryDetritus.
Paul Fryer is an academic, researcher, author and editor. Originally trained
as an actor at the Guildhall School, he holds an MA from the University of
London and a PhD from the University of Manchester. He is a visiting
professor at the Universities of Leeds, East London and London South Bank.
He has published ten books, the most recent of which is a new English-
language edition of Viktor Simov: Stanislavsky’s Designer (2020); previous
books include Lina Cavalieri (2004), The Opera Singer and The Silent Film
(2005) and A Chronology of Opera Performances at The Mariinsky Theatre in
St Petersburg (2009). He has also contributed articles and chapters to
publications for Routledge, l’Âge d’Homme, Columbia University Press,
Cambridge Scholars and Indiana University Press. He has given guest
lectures at universities in the USA, Canada, the Czech Republic, Slovakia
and Malta, and presented film screenings in London, New York, Los Angeles,
Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington DC, Boston, San Francisco and St
Petersburg (Russia). He was a regular presenter for the Library of Congress
Film Division and for Buxton Festival, and for Seattle Opera and Canadian
Opera in Toronto. Paul is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Stanislavski Studies,
and Series Editor of Stanislavsky And . . . . He is the founder and co-director

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 Contributors

of The Stanislavsky Research Centre, and the co-convenor of The S Word

research project.
Nadine Holdsworth is Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at the
University of Warwick. She has research interests in theatre and national
identities, popular theatre practitioners, arts and homelessness, and amateur
creativity and cultural participation. She is the author of English Theatre and
Social Abjection: A Divided Nation (2020), Joan Littlewood’s Theatre (2011),
Theatre & Nation (2010), Joan Littlewood (2006, second edition 2017) and
co-author of The Ecologies of Amateur Theatre (2018). She edited Theatre and
National Identity: Reimagining Conceptions of Nation (2014) and co-edited A
Concise Companion to British and Irish Drama (2008) and an issue of
Contemporary Theatre Review on ‘Theatre, Performance and the Amateur
Turn’ (2017).
Nesta Jones is Professor Emerita of Rose Bruford College of Theatre and
Performance, where she was formerly Head of Graduate Studies and
Director of Research. She has long associations with several other institutions
of higher education, including: Goldsmiths, University of London where
she was Reader in Theatre Arts and Head of Drama for many years;
Trinity College, University of Dublin, as a researcher, external assessor and
lecturer; the founding and development of The Lir, Ireland’s National
Academy of Dramatic Art; and New York University in London where she
lectures and is a Distinguished Research Fellow. She has published on
playwrights Brian Friel, Sean O’Casey, J. M. Synge, David Mamet and Tanika
Gupta; directors Cicely Berry and Ken Russell; historical and contemporary
performance and production processes; and educational drama. She was a
founder of and project co-ordinator for CONCEPTS (Consortium for the
Co-ordination of European Performance and Theatre Studies), a member of
the Council of Europe’s Forum of Cultural Networks; has organized theatre
practice-related transnational events and symposia supported by the British
Council, the Soros Foundation, the European Commission, the Goethe
Institute and the European Cultural Foundation; has contributed numerous
papers to and participated in panels at national and international conferences;
and has directed productions, conducted professional workshops and
chaired expert seminars in the UK, Ireland, mainland Europe (East and
West), the Middle East and North America. She is on the editorial board of
Stanislavski Studies and is a contributing editor for New Theatre Quarterly;
and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Fellow of the Royal
Society of Arts.

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Contributors

Dick McCaw was co-founder of the Actors Touring Company in 1978, and
of the Medieval Players in 1981. Between 1993 and 2001 he was Director of
the International Workshop Festival for whom he curated nine festivals
featuring major figures in the performing arts. Since 2004 Dick McCaw has
been Senior Lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London. He has
edited and introduced two books: With an Eye for Movement (on Warren
Lamb’s development of Rudolph Laban’s movement theories; 2006) and The
Laban Sourcebook (2011) which was translated into Hebrew in 2018. He has
written three books: Bakhtin and Theatre (2016), with a Portuguese
translation being published in Brazil in 2021; The Actor’s Body: A Guide
(2018) and Rethinking the Actor’s Body: Dialogues with Neuroscience (2020).
He is currently working on Laban in Perspectives, drawn from interviews
about and unpublished writings by Rudolf Laban. He was a founding editor
of the Training Grounds pages of Theatre, Dance and Performance Training
for whom he wrote a number of articles. He has written a number of articles
and chapters on the subjects of actor training, movement training, and
neuroscience and performer training. He qualified as a Feldenkrais
practitioner in 2007, and became an Instructor of Wu Family Tai Chi Chuan
in 2016.
Ceri Pitches (Edwards) was taught by Clive Barker as a Theatre Studies
undergraduate at the University of Warwick (1988–91). She had a twelve-
year career as a secondary school Head of Department and Drama and
English teacher, as well as a period managing the schools’ learning
programme at the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, before
returning to full-time study for a PhD at the University of Leeds. Her
research into the performed heritage of the Science Museum Group
Explainer role was conducted in collaboration with some of the museums in
the Science Museum Group and led to her interest in the relationship
between academic research and its real-world applications. She received her
PhD in 2017 and now works with researchers in the Schools of Music,
English, and Performance and Cultural Industries at the University of Leeds,
finding ways to maximize the real-world impact of their work, foster
collaborations with local, national and global industrial partners, and
develop approaches to research that respond to contemporary challenges.
Chrissie Poulter was born and is now retired in Yorkshire. She joined a
youth drama group at age fifteen and spent her summers in street theatre
projects and ‘dramascapes’ led by Carry Gorney’s Interplay, child of ED
Berman’s Inter-Action and their open-air theatre games. Clive Barker let her

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 Contributors

in to ‘do Drama’ at Birmingham University in the 1970s and she went back
there a few years later to teach what had been his classes. A life-long
practitioner of drama workshops, theatre-making and training, she has
worked in neighbourhoods, projects and universities in the UK and Ireland,
inter-nationally and inter-locally. She has been a lecturer at Birmingham
University, Leeds Trinity University, Accrington & Rossendale College and,
for thirty years, at Trinity College Dublin. As an arts policy-maker, she was
Drama Officer and later Assistant Director (Arts) with Yorkshire Arts
Association in the 1980s, a member of the Northern Ireland Arts Council in
the 1990s and of the Board of IETM (international network for contemporary
performing arts) in the early 2000s. As a theatre-maker (deviser, director
and writer) she has made work in Ireland (North and South), France, Greece,
Poland, the Basque Country, Italy and England. She is the author of Playing
the Game (1987), a book of drama games and how to play them – written
first for local adults leading drama workshops in Belfast neighbourhoods. In
2018 the second edition was published, revised to include a more sensitive/
sensitized approach in light of experience over the years and an ever-
developing awareness of how challenging and inaccessible any form of
groupwork can be for some people. For over a decade now she has described
her focus as ‘guardianship in groupwork’ and has been teaching, writing and
speaking about this whenever and wherever she gets the chance.
Aleks Sierz FRSA is a journalist, broadcaster, lecturer and theatre critic. His
seminal study, In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today (2001), defined a
new generation of playwrights and their work. His subsequent books include
The Theatre of Martin Crimp (2006, second edition 2013), John Osborne’s
Look Back in Anger (2008), Rewriting the Nation: British Theatre Today
(2011) and Modern British Playwriting: The 1990s (2012). He has also co-
authored, with Lia Ghilardi, The Time Traveller’s Guide to British Theatre:
The First Four Hundred Years (2015). His latest book is Good Nights Out: A
History of Popular British Theatre Since the Second World War (2021).

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The editors would like to gratefully acknowledge the invaluable assistance

that they have received in the compilation and preparation of this book. Our
thanks go to Murray Melvin, who worked with Clive at the Theatre Royal
Stratford East, for his help, support and encouragement from the very
beginning of this project; to Dr Susan Croft and the Unfinished Histories
Project, Helen Melody, Lead Curator, Contemporary Literary and Creative
Archives at the British Library and Frank Trew, Librarian at Rose Bruford
College of Theatre and Performance, for assistance sourcing photographs
for the book; to Nigel Hook for his assistance digitizing and preparing
images; and special thanks to Anna and Nick Trussler for their kind
permission to use their father Simon’s unfinished memoir in this collection.

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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION: CLIVE’S LEGACY
Nesta Jones and Paul Fryer

This book is not a biography of Clive Barker, although inevitably it contains

much biographical information. Rather, it is an attempt to explore his
continuing legacy through a series of responses to the many and varied
aspects of his work: his early and highly formative years with Joan
Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop; a varied career as an actor and director/
deviser/creator in both the established environments of repertory/regional
theatre and the West End, and the highly creative (political) world of the
‘alternative’ theatre of the 1960s and 1970s; the development of his own
approach to performance which led to the publication of his seminal book
Theatre Games, and beyond; an academic career in the UK university and
training sectors; a range of highly influential writing including his early
association with Theatre Quarterly (TQ ), and his joint editorship of New
Theatre Quarterly (NTQ ).
This is only a partial list because to describe Clive as a man of eclectic
interests is something of an understatement. Could ‘polymath’ be an
appropriate word, or perhaps in its best and most positive sense, ‘the
consummate generalist’? It seemed that Clive could engage in a meaningful
conversation on just about any topic, and would have something worthwhile
to contribute on any subject, because he shared so many interests – able to
talk just as enthusiastically on Shakespeare and Brecht as he would on
Madonna or Morecambe and Wise.
That broadness of interest is reflected in the range of chapters included in
this collection. Each of the authors has a very direct connection to Clive,
either personally, having worked with him or been taught by him at some
stage of his career, or has been fundamentally influenced by his work.
Few people knew Clive better than the late Simon Trussler, his colleague
at New Theatre Quarterly, who provided us with a biographical ‘memory’ of
Clive, which sadly remained unfinished at the time of Simon’s own death
in 2019. Murray Melvin joined Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop at the
Theatre Royal Stratford East as an assistant stage manager in 1957, and
appeared on stage with Clive in The Hostage and Oh What a Lovely War.

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Clive Barker and His Legacy

Susan Croft identifies Clive as ‘a man for the alternative approach’, utilizing
not only her own invaluable project, Unfinished Histories, but also her
experience of Clive’s own archive, gained as Clive Barker Research Fellow at
Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance. Nadine Holdsworth first
encountered Clive when he interviewed her for a place to study on his
theatre programme at the University of Warwick. She explores his experiences
with Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop. Aleks Sierz, distinguished theatre critic
and specialist in contemporary British theatre, explores Barker’s first
opportunity to flex his muscles as a professional director, of Shelagh
Delaney’s ill-fated second play, The Lion in Love (1960). Ceri Pitches
remembers Clive from their first meeting in 1988, when she became his
student at Warwick. She provides a snapshot of Barker the university teacher,
‘enigmatic and esoteric’, ‘puzzling and often provocative’. Dick McCaw, who
authored the introduction to the second edition of Theatre Games (2010)
and collaborated with Clive on the International Workshop Festival, focuses
on the importance of movement in Barker’s work. Chris Baldwin, who
chaired the ‘Evening with Clive Barker’ event in 2003 (see Chapter 11)
explores Barker’s ‘defiant anti-authoritarianism’, tracing his influence
through the development of Teatro de Creación, and several large-scale
European projects. Joseph Dunne-Howrie has interrogated the archives in
order to assess ‘Barker’s legacy in the future tense’, examining the influence
of the notion of Fun Palaces and Game Theatre upon the legacy of the 2012
London Olympics. Chrissie Poulter’s first encounter with Clive, when she
became one of his students at Birmingham University in 1973, established a
close, influential and long-lasting link which she explores here via a series of
‘Letters to Clive’. She revisits Barker’s writings via Theatre Games, and other
sources, testing our understanding of these ideas in a contemporary context.
One of the challenges in compiling this book was to find a phrase which
would sum up the different aspects of Clive’s life, career and influence. In
choosing a title, we finally settled upon two parts of his career which seem,
in some ways, to encapsulate origins and outcomes: his early work with Joan
Littlewood’s legendary Theatre Workshop with whom Clive worked from
1955, and the publication of the seminal book for which he is now best
known, Theatre Games: A New Approach to Drama Training, first published
by Eyre Methuen in 1977.
After Clive died in 2005, the journal with which he was so closely
associated as co-editor with Simon Trussler, New Theatre Quarterly,
published an edition to celebrate his ‘life, work and legacy’ – only the second
time that the journal had published an issue devoted to a single person.

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 Introduction: Clive’s Legacy

Many distinguished contributors offered personal insights and analyses of

his work, but perhaps the most revealing of all comes in the form of an
article entitled, ‘A Brief History of Clive Barker’, written by the man himself.
This article provides the link to the first part of this book’s title: ‘All of my
life has been a search for a community – and in saying this I do not mean to
devalue the importance to me of my children and grandchildren. This search
has thrown me into two tribes. The first was Theatre Workshop’.1 At the end
of his training at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, he was introduced to
Littlewood’s work by the designer John Blezard. He contacted John Bury
to ask for work and came to London, where he ‘met Joan Littlewood and
became an actor’2 (although, in reality, he described his new job as ‘stage
manager and bit-part actor’3). He made his debut in the Lope de Vega play,
Fuente Ovejuna.
Clive claims: ‘The other tribe is the group of practitioners and scholars
who centre on Eugenio Barba and Odin Teatret. With them I feel at home.’4
Barba describes Clive’s emergence from Theatre Workshop ‘as an actor and
director, expert in theatre games, an intellectual and a university teacher,
with one foot in the library and the other on the stage. He had devoured his
master, didn’t always have her before his eyes as a warning and a constraint.
He bore her in his guts.’5 Barba and Barker met in 1980 in London during
Odin Teatret’s first visit to the UK, based at the Cardiff Theatre Laboratory.
Barba recalled that Clive travelled to Wales ‘several times . . . not only to see
our performances, but also to observe barters and anonymous working
situations in faraway villages. He was the only one who displaced himself in
an effort to grasp our theatre better, without limiting his knowledge of it to
the impressions of just one performance’.6 Barba valued their collaboration
of many years enabled through Clive’s base at Theatre Quarterly and New
Theatre Quarterly, and his at Odin Teatret and ISTA, the International
School of Theatre Anthropology, ‘but above all with a glass in our hands,
walking, travelling by car, speaking on the phone, making brief and intense
sorties among possible theatres during his visits to Holstebro and his
hospitality in Warwick.’7
The actor Brian Murphy joined the Theatre Workshop company at the
same time as Clive in 1955, and later made the point that they were ‘often
clinging together for support in [their] efforts to understand the method,
vagaries and waywardness of the genius of Joan Littlewood’.8 They first
appeared together in The Sheep Well (Fuente Ovejuna) in September 1955,
and later in Ewan McColl’s adaptation of The Good Soldier Schweik (1956)
and the musical Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be (1959). In 1958 Clive

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Clive Barker and His Legacy

originated the role of the Volunteer in the celebrated production of Brendan

Behan’s The Hostage which transferred from the Theatre Royal Stratford East
in 1959 to Wyndham’s Theatre in the West End. Wyndham’s was also the
home for the transfer of Littlewood’s legendary production Oh What a
Lovely War in 1960, in which Clive also appeared and which ‘provided an
opportunity to sum up what I had learned as well as being a very stimulating
experience.’9
Many of Clive’s carefully considered thoughts about working with
Littlewood were included in The Theatre Workshop Story by Howard Goorney,
who thanked him ‘for his wise counsel’ and for introducing him to the
publisher, Eyre Methuen; and later as a chapter on Littlewood’s approach and
techniques in Actor Training, edited by Alison Hodge.10 A more subjective
response, however, is articulated in Clive’s NTQ tribute article, ‘Closing Joan’s
Book: Some Personal Footnotes’. Here, although he claimed that ‘life with
Theatre Workshop was never comfortable’ and despite his critical commentary
on Littlewood’s contradictory character, he nevertheless acknowledged her
perceptiveness and understanding with regard to his own development:

But of one thing I am sure: that through her I was able to access the
history and experience of the European theatre of the late years of the
nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth. Through Joan
I met Stanislavsky, Meyerhold, Copeau, Laban, Jouvet, the
Constructivists, the Expressionists, the Futurists, the Bauhaus, not to
mention Chinese theatre – and Brecht, however much Joan protested
she was detached from him.
I owe her a great deal for provoking me . . . I don’t remember Joan
teaching me anything. I learned on the job. This must have been her
judgement of my character – that I learn best what I work out myself.
What I learned was from odd remarks, mostly off the cuff, during
rehearsals – which I used to attend assiduously, even when I wasn’t
called. I taught myself to direct by watching her work . . . I am nothing
but grateful, and consider myself rarely fortunate that she had the
patience and generosity to let me watch her work and access her
genius.11

Noting Clive’s move into the world of teaching, Murphy also recalled that
‘Clive and I considered becoming a double-act, Chuch and Doodles. The
world of comedy will never know what it missed. But hundreds of students
will remember an inspired mentor.’12

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 Introduction: Clive’s Legacy

Soon after leaving Theatre Workshop, Clive directed The Lion in Love by
Shelagh Delaney at the Royal Court Theatre as well as productions of plays
by Mrozek, Gorky and Brecht at regional theatres and festivals. He was
appointed acting coach at the Bühnen der Stadt, Cologne, West Germany in
1974 where he also directed the German premieres of Lay By, multi-authored
by several of the UK’s most successful young playwrights, and the American
play, You Can’t Take It With You.13 His time as Associate Director at the
Northcott Theatre, Exeter, included a production in 1975 of Home by David
Storey, followed by Der Jasager and Mahagonny by Brecht and Weill at the
Edinburgh Festival. In 1976 he took on the challenge of producing Leonard
Bernstein’s Mass, performed at both Coventry Theatre and the Royal Albert
Hall, London; and in the 1980s he directed Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus in
Weimar, GDR, and the rarely staged Oroonoko by Thomas Southerne in
Bogotá, Colombia.14
In 1961 he was asked to ‘reproduce’ a production of The Hostage for the
Lyric Theatre Hammersmith. On purchasing a copy of the script he realized
‘that it bore no relationship to any performance we had given’. When he
brought this to the attention of the publishers, Methuen, he was commissioned
to ‘make a clear and accurate text’. Littlewood approved of his revisions,
particularly to the raid, a scene where ‘she had never had any clear idea of
what is happening in it’. The published script and Theatre Workshop’s
production was based on a translation of Behan’s original Irish play An Giall.

The Hostage is not so loosely based on the original. The crafty cow
[Littlewood] encouraged us to improvise and then fed lines from An
Giall. I rang [Howard] Goorney . . . and put certain lines to him. ‘Who
wrote this?’ ‘I did,’ he said. But he didn’t. It was all in the original. I have
been asked in the past, ‘Who wrote The Hostage?’ and I always answer,
‘I did,’ which to some extent is true.15

In a more conventional commission Clive co-translated Brecht’s The Days of

the Commune for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 1977 production at the
Aldwych Theatre, published by Eyre Methuen in 1978.16
Eugenio Barba was intrigued by Clive’s concern for ‘known and
anonymous groups whose work he followed in England, sympathetic to
their struggle for a theatre freed from literary bonds’. Clive grappled with
notions of the fringe and alternative theatre, which he attempted to explore
in articles for publications,17 but he was also practically engaged through his
involvement with Inter-Action and Almost Free Theatre, both founded by

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Clive Barker and His Legacy

ED Berman who observed of his colleague, ‘He had everything needed to get
to the very top – except a killer punch’.18 Clive’s other important professional
relationship during the 1960s and 1970s was with playwright Arnold Wesker
and his initiative, Centre 42, initially conceived as a touring festival to bring
art and culture to working-class towns throughout the UK, but eventually
located permanently at the Roundhouse in Camden, London. Clive was a
member of the Board of Directors from its inception in 1961 until its
dissolution in 1970. Later in a Wesker Casebook, Clive contributed a chapter,
‘Vision and Reality: Their Very Own and Golden City and Centre 42’,
incorporating the title of Wesker’s play, a fictionalization of his struggles to
realize the project.19 He also performed for both organizations, creating the
title role in Bernard Kops’s Enter Solly Gold for Centre 42 in 1962, and
Inspector Foot in Tom Stoppard’s After Magritte for Ambiance, Almost Free
Theatre’s lunch-hour club, in 1970. Clive considered these two small-scale
projects infinitely more worthwhile than the disaster-prone West End
musical Twang!!, which he still included in his CV but with four exclamation
marks in the title.20
Clive’s championing of inclusive theatre was exemplified by his support
for the Albatross Arts Project and Geese Theatre, working within criminal
justice and social welfare settings; and Open Theatre, a non-verbal physical
theatre company which collaborates with young people with learning
disabilities. He was also on the Board of Trustees of East 15 Acting School,
founded by Margaret Bury to carry the Theatre Workshop approach into the
training of actors; and contributed to UNESCO seminars on theatre and
community, writing reports for the organization on popular theatre and
street theatre in Britain.
Eugenio Barba also noted Clive’s interest in theatre across Europe, South
America and Asia:

He astonished me by his curiosity and open-mindedness, as if Britain

were the island of his exile and not a world where theatre people did
not let themselves be distracted by what happens elsewhere. He was
substantially different from his colleagues. It is said that islands are not
isolated. Clive was a true interpreter of an island’s culture: always on
the point of departing, attracted by what lies over the sea, what
separates and unites.21

Clive was an intrepid traveller and Barba’s observation is evidenced by the

extraordinary number of papers and lectures he delivered at international

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 Introduction: Clive’s Legacy

conferences, the publications he contributed to, the workshops he conducted,

and the committees and boards he served on for arts organizations and
educational institutions in diverse countries across three continents.
Typically, in 1977, he spoke at a Kolloquium in a divided Berlin and wrote
for Rostock University’s publications; was a regular contributor to
Shakespeare Jahrbuch, published in Weimar; and in 1981 he was appointed
British Council Exchange Fellow at Humboldt University – all in the former
German Democratic Republic. From 1990 Clive taught at universities in
South Africa; contributed to conferences and publications in Morocco; and
conducted workshops at academies in Bangladesh and India. In South
America, Clive taught at the Institute of Dramatic Arts, Havana, and
contributed to the Cuban performing arts journal, Tablas. However, it was in
Colombia from the early 1980s that he was significantly influential in the
education of young people, through institutional engagements in Medellín,
Cali and, particularly, Bogotá, of which he spoke with great warmth and
affection.
In 1966 Clive was appointed Lecturer in Theatre Practice by the
Department of Drama and Theatre Arts at the University of Birmingham
where he stayed until 1974, after which he wrote a comprehensive account of
his experience for a TQ article, ‘The Dilemma of the Professional in
University Drama’. He considered his appointment ‘a brave one since my
qualifications were all from the theatre and in no way in line with normal
academic qualifications . . . But to the Drama Department . . . this diversity
was a positive asset – whilst for me the department offered the opportunity
. . . of affording time and facilities for the further study of all aspects of the
history and practice of theatre’. In addition to developing theatre practice in
the curriculum, the only other requirement was that he should publish a
book in the first three years. But Clive found that the ‘sheer body of work in
that time prevented this, and I wasn’t ready to write it. In the event the
requirement was shelved, although I felt that throughout my time at
Birmingham that I ought to do it to justify my existence.’ The article
concludes:

I still believe passionately that a close involvement of the worlds of

scholarship and professional theatre practice can only be to the benefit
of both, and that everything should be done to bring about this in
whatever ways are possible, or can be made possible. Certainly, I would
be sorry if I thought I was going to lose contact with the world of
scholarship for long. I have learned to speak both languages, so I can

7
Clive Barker and His Legacy

offer my services as an interpreter: but for me at present the way leads

back to the stage door.22

Clive, of course, wrote the book, Theatre Games, and only a year later in 1975
was appointed to the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies at the
University of Warwick where he stayed until 1996, as a senior lecturer and
chair of the department; and here, in addition to university commitments,
he was able to pursue allied professional activities. Clive’s legacy is assured at
the university by the Annual Clive Barker Award, designed to support
students to create a performance piece for an appropriate public platform.
Clive’s influence and impact in the UK education and training sectors
continued well into the later stages of his career, during which he gave
numerous guest lectures and ran numerous workshops, at a wide range of
organizations and institutions such as the University of Rome, the Centre for
Performance Research, Aberystwyth, and the University of Tehran; served as
an external examiner at HEIs including Goldsmiths, University of London,
and the Welsh College of Music and Drama; and sat on several boards:

Figure 1 Clive teaching at the London Studio Centre, 1996. Copyright Simon
Richardson.

8
 Introduction: Clive’s Legacy

Directing and Acting Boards of the National Council for Drama Training,
the Board of Trustees of East 15 Acting School, and the Academic Board of
the London Centre for Islamic Studies. Moreover, he continued to write
articles in this area for NTQ , including ‘Games in Education and Theatre’, on
the function of play and the dangers of institutionalization, and ‘What
Training – for What Theatre’, on the aesthetics and economics of the academy
and the conservatoire.23
Clive’s intermittent association with Rose Bruford College of Theatre and
Performance (RBC) was formalized in 1997 when he was appointed a
Visiting Professor involved in teaching and workshop contributions to
symposia on actor/director training.24 In 2000 Clive and Simon Trussler
were appointed Senior Research Fellows; and in late 2004 both were
appointed Professors of RBC. Clive slowly assembled and transported his
extensive personal archive to the College where it is housed in the Special
Collections & Archives adjacent to The Clive Barker Library, which was
named in a ceremony by Eugenio Barba in 2005.25
In October 2003, colleagues at RBC organized a weekend event, ‘Theatre
Games – A Celebration of the Work of Clive Barker’. This proved to be a
lively and informative occasion involving an evening encounter in The Rose
Theatre (see Chapter 11); a series of workshops led by practitioners who had
been influenced by Clive’s work variously as teacher, director, and author of
Theatre Games; and a plenary, followed by informal discussions in the bar.26
Clive acknowledged his gratitude to Eugenio Barba for introducing him
to ‘the image of the Master as a gate rather than an authority’, and how Barba
had constructed ‘a family tree for himself, in which Meyerhold and
Stanislavsky are his grandfathers and Grotowski is his cousin.’ Clive reflected:

I know where I come from, and if I had to put a name to them, Piscator
and Copeau are my grandfathers, Stanislavsky is my uncle: these
people have opened gates for me leading to such influences as Delsarte
and other movement pioneers. Copeau has had an enormous influence
on me, as have his colleagues, such as Jouvet and Dullin, and, of course,
my hero, Jean-Louis Barrault.
. . . But then I think what influence can I be? I don’t have a school.
Nobody ‘follows’ me. Recently Rose Bruford College . . . laid on a
weekend to celebrate my work. Nine artists turned up, whom I had
either taught or who had taken things from my work in developing
their own, to run workshops with students. Their work was very
impressive and I was flattered. In this sense I hope I have been a gate.27

9
Clive Barker and His Legacy

Notes

1. Barker, 2007, 295.

2. Ibid., 298.
3. Ibid., 299.
4. Ibid., 295.
5. Barba, 293.
6. Ibid., 293.
7. Ibid., 293.
8. Murphy, 24.
9. Barker, 2007, 301.
10. Goorney, xii; Barker, 2010, 130–43.
11. Barker, 2003, 101, 102, 104, 107.
12. Murphy, 24.
13. Lay By, a collaborative script by Howard Brenton, Brian Clark, Trevor Griffiths,
David Hare, Stephen Poliakoff, Hugh Stoddart, Snoo Wilson, first staged by Portable
Theatre, directed by Snoo Wilson, at the Edinburgh Festival, 1971; You Can’t Take It
With You by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, premiered at the Booth Theatre,
NYC, 1936; Pulitzer Prize for Drama, 1937; adapted for the screen, 1938.
14. Barker’s production of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe (c. 1590) was
performed at the Deutsches Nationaltheater, Weimar, GDR, in 1983; and Oroonoko
by Thomas Southerne (1696) at the Teatro Colón, Bogotá, Colombia, in 1986.
15. Barker recalled this experience in an email conversation with June Favre during
her research for a PhD on Joan Littlewood and the Theatre Workshop’s
production of Behan’s The Hostage. Favre included some of these exchanges in
her article, ‘Did Clive Barker Write The Hostage?’, 2007.
16. Brecht, 1978; used for the RSC production directed by Howard Davies at the
Aldwych Theatre, London, 1977/8, where the ensemble included Cherie Lunghi,
Ian McDiarmid, Ian McKellen and Ruby Wax.
17. These included: ‘From Fringe to Alternative’, H. Hohne (ed.), Political
Development on the British Stage in the Sixties and Seventies, Rostock: Rostock
University, 1977, 60–85; ‘Alternative Theatre/Political Theatre’, G. Holderness
(ed.), The Politics of Theatre and Drama, London: Macmillan, 1991, 18–43.
18. Barker, 2007, 301.
19. Barker, 1998, 89–98.
20. Twang!! by Lionel Bart (book, music, lyrics) and Harvey Orkin and Bert
Shevelove (book), Shaftesbury Theatre, 1965; originally directed by Joan
Littlewood who left the production before it opened; after a tumultuous
rehearsal period it eventually opened to unfavourable reviews and ran for only
43 performances to half-empty houses.

10
 Introduction: Clive’s Legacy

21. Barba, 293.

22. Barker, 1974–5, 67.
23. Barker, 1989, 227–35; Barker, 1995, 99–108.
24. Actor/Director Training – Brecht, Symposium, Keynote: Manfred Wekwerth,
Berliner Ensemble, The Rose Theatre, Rose Bruford College of Theatre and
Performance, 2000.
25. A celebration of the life of Clive Barker and the naming of The Clive Barker
Library by Eugenio Barba, followed by a presentation, ‘The Flying Carpet’ by
Julia Varley, Odin Teatret, Friday 21 October 2005.
26. The workshop leaders were Chris Baldwin (who also hosted ‘An Evening with
Clive Barker’), Frankie Cosgrove, Didi Hopkins, Chris Johnston, Dick McCaw
(who also chaired the plenary), June Mitchell, Chrissie Poulter, Steve Tiller and
David Zoob.
27. Barker, 2007, 301–2.

Bibliography

Barba, E., ‘Clive Barker: Man of Counterpoint’, New Theatre Quarterly, 23:4,
November 2007.
Barker, C., ‘The Dilemma of the Professional in University Drama’, Theatre
Quarterly, 4:16, November 1974–January 1975.
Barker, C., ‘Games in Education and Theatre’, New Theatre Quarterly, 5:19, 1989.
Barker, C., ‘What Training – for What Theatre?’, New Theatre Quarterly, 11:42, 1995.
Barker, C., ‘Vision and Reality: Their Very Own and Golden City and Centre 42’, in
R. W. Dornan (ed.), Arnold Wesker: A Casebook, New York: Garland Publishing
Inc., 1998.
Barker, C., ‘Closing Joan’s Book: Some Personal Footnotes’, New Theatre Quarterly,
19:2, May 2003.
Barker, C., ‘A Brief History of Clive Barker’, New Theatre Quarterly, 23:4, November
2007.
Barker, C., ‘Joan Littlewood’, in A. Hodge (ed.), Actor Training, 2nd edn, London:
Routledge, 2010. (First edition published as Twentieth Century Actor Training,
1999.)
Brecht, B., Days of the Commune, trans. C. Barker with Arno K. Reinfrank, London:
Eyre Methuen, 1978.
Favre, J., ‘Did Clive Barker write The Hostage?’, New Theatre Quarterly, 23:4,
November 2007.
Goorney, H., The Theatre Workshop Story, London: Eyre Methuen, 1981.
Murphy, B., ‘Clive Barker’, The Stage, 12 May 2005.

11
12
CHAPTER 2
CLIVE BARKER: A BIOGRAPHICAL
MEMORY
Simon Trussler

Simon Trussler (1942–2019), a distinguished and influential writer, researcher,

editor, teacher and typesetter, was one of Clive Barker’s closest friends and
collaborators, their relationship lasting for more than forty years. When we
began to plan this collection, we made an early decision that Simon would be
the obvious person to write a foreword. He agreed. But sadly, he died in late
2019. Some months before his death, Simon sent us an incomplete draft of his
planned contribution to the book and we have included it here, as he wrote it.
This ‘biographical memory’ provides a most vivid, personal recollection of a
friendship and professional relationship which has provided, particularly via
their work on New Theatre Quarterly (NTQ), an invaluable contribution to
theatre scholarship.

The first time I met Clive Barker, in latish 1962, was over a pint – in the
crowded but comradely little bar of Unity Theatre, long fallen victim to fire
(probably primed by its treacherous lighting board). Our last meeting –
early in 2005, shortly before his death – was in the spacious foyer of the
National’s Lyttelton Theatre, which became the regular venue for our get-
togethers as editors of New Theatre Quarterly. That was over a pint, too.
Our introduction was through a mutual friend, after a performance at
Unity of Brecht’s The Visions of Simone Machard. I wanted to persuade Clive to
write for the little theatre magazine Prompt, begun while I was an undergraduate
at University College London. That same evening, I also met through Clive the
theatre’s veteran manager, Heinz Bernard – the director of Simone Machard –
who also agreed to contribute. Prompt was a precarious venture which
struggled on for I think a dozen issues – by contrast with NTQ , which became
a respected academic journal published by Cambridge University Press, and as
I write has just reached its one hundred and fortieth issue.
For the first twenty years until his death, Clive was my fellow editor.

*
13
Clive Barker and His Legacy

Clive had made his debut as director at the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury,
with Michael Gilbert’s thriller A Clean Kill. This was two years before I first
came across his work – his production of Shelagh Delaney’s second play, The
Lion in Love, from a five-bob seat in the precipitous upper circle of the Royal
Court, where it had transferred from the Belgrade, Coventry, early in 1962.
A little later that year, Clive directed the revival at the Lyric Hammersmith
of Brendan Behan’s The Hostage, having played the Volunteer in the original
production at Stratford East. I saw that twice – the second time having
persuaded a few friends from home that this was the best way of rounding
off their day in town. We sang ‘The Bells of Hell Go Ting-a-ling-a-ling’ on the
tube afterwards with the same gusto as on a previous visit we had giggled
over imitations of Alan Bennett’s sermon in Beyond the Fringe.
Clive was then nearing the end of the formative phase of his career with
Theatre Workshop, though in 1964 he joined the cast of Oh What a Lovely
War when it transferred to Wyndham’s Theatre. This production also marked
the end of Workshop’s glory days, depleted as the company had become by
just such bloodletting to the West End. In the following year he was also in
Twang!!, the disastrous Lionel Bart musical from which Joan Littlewood quit
as director before the opening, and which cost Bart his personal fortune.
Insofar as there was ever a ‘Workshop method’, which Joan denied, it was
based not only in technique but in research. As Clive recalled: ‘Through Joan
I met Stanislavsky, Meyerhold, Copeau, Laban, Jouvet, the Constructivists,
the Expressionists, the Futurists, the Bauhaus, not to mention Chinese
theatre – and Brecht, however much Joan protested that she was detached
from him.’ And when Littlewood went off in a doomed attempt to create her
Fun Palace in the East End, she intended it not only as a ‘laboratory of fun’
but also ‘a university of the streets’. So, while Clive became a respected
academic in two university drama departments, it was as a ‘scholar clown’,
without even a formal first degree, let alone the doctorate that would be the
usual expectation today.

*
Clive was born in Middlesbrough in 1931 – so, like many of those who
helped to remould British theatre in the 1950s, he was a young man in the
post-war years, when the reforming Labour government created the welfare
state. Clive’s first job was with the Ministry of Pensions and National
Insurance during the preparatory period before the enactment of the
National Health Service in 1948. His task was visiting ‘cases’ about whose
needs a decision had to be made. ‘What I discovered from these visits,’ he

14
 Clive Barker: A Biographical Memory

wrote, ‘was that although I belonged in the working class there were levels of
poverty well below mine. I gained something of an education in how people
lived and had been living for a long time in Britain.’ He recalled one shell-
shocked veteran of the First World War ‘who was living with his wife on two
shillings and sixpence a week . . . He gave me a recipe for getting rid of acne
spots.’
Then came the two years of compulsory national service. He was on a
troop ship in June 1950 when the Korean War broke out: ‘Half of us got off
at Singapore, the other half sailed on to Korea.’ For the nineteen months he
spent in Malaya he found himself ‘suddenly dumped into a multi-ethnic,
multi-cultural and multi-religious society. I was surrounded by Hindus,
Sikhs, Muslims, Chinese, and given the equivalent of a university education
in how the world lived’.
On his return to Middlesbrough he felt cast adrift from old friendships,
and it was to join one of his few remaining buddies that he left for Bristol –
where he ‘opened Plays and Players, which had just started publishing, and
there was an advertisement for applications to the acting and stage
management courses at the Bristol Old Vic School’. He was interviewed by
Nat Brenner, who later told Clive that when he’d opened the door he had
thought, ‘Good God, it’s a man!’ and accepted him straight away. ‘So much
for vocation.’
Before the term began, he worked ‘knocking the brick lining out of a
blast furnace and labouring for the bricklayers replacing it. After that . . . as
a bread-slicer in a bakery’. He remembered ‘the short period I was in the
works . . . as being the closest I ever felt to my father. We were in the same
world for once’.
His time at Bristol was spent largely in stage management both for the
Bristol Old Vic and the university’s Drama Studio, though he also directed a
few times – his first production being John Whiting’s one-off masterpiece
Saint’s Day. Just before this a friend ‘said to me that he had just met a group
who he thought would be the ideal company for me: “They all wear sandals
and beards and have dirty feet.” This was odd because I didn’t have a beard
and never owned a pair of sandals and my feet, I thought, were scrupulously
clean. I wrote to this company, Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop, asked
for an interview to work in stage management.’
As he later summed up in Theatre Games, ‘in the manner of anyone who
goes there to do any job other than acting, I became an actor’. In The Good
Soldier Schweik he made his first appearance in the West End when the
production transferred to the Duke of York’s in March 1956 – just six weeks

15
Clive Barker and His Legacy

before Look Back in Anger opened at the Royal Court, and six months before
the visit of the Berliner Ensemble. Murray Melvin and Brian Murphy are
best qualified to speak of the Workshop years that followed, but Joan
Littlewood’s influence pervaded his later life – this despite his recollection
after Joan’s death in 2002 that Shelagh Delaney, who cared for Joan after her
partner Gerry Raffles’s death, ‘came to Brian Murphy and myself and asked:
“However did you put up with this woman for so long?” The best we could
come up with was: “Masochism.” ’ Working with her ‘was never comfortable
and often deeply miserable. The reason we stayed was that the work was
good. Even if we often didn’t understand how it came to be so good. The best
there was.’

Of the ‘two tribes’ into which, Clive said, life had thrown him, ‘the first was
Theatre Workshop . . . The other tribe is the collection of practitioners and
scholars who centre on Eugenio Barba and Odin Teatret. With them I feel at
home.’ It was Eugenio Barba who fittingly described Clive as a ‘man of
counterpoint’, in whose thinking ‘different melodic lines intertwine and
collaborate without melting together, each developing its own difference’.
Although, unlike the other contributors to this volume, I am not qualified
to comment on the nature and importance of the ‘different melodic lines’ in
Clive’s practical work in live theatre, my acquaintance with his later life, and
the time when the connection with Odin came into play, will probably have
been longest and most continuous – not least in persuading him to put his
ideas into print. Starting with that article for Prompt.

As it happened it was Heinz Bernard’s piece – on directing Brecht – that we

put into the first issue, reserving Clive on Centre 42 for the second, themed
issue on popular theatre. Centre 42 was inspired by the resolution of the
Trades Union Congress from which the organization took its name. It aimed
to counter ‘the break-up of the old working-class communities, for good and
for bad, in the rebuilding of housing estates and the increased centralization
of the artistic work in London’. As festivals organizer for 42, Clive oversaw
hugely successful but under-financed festivals in a number of regional
centres.
However, when the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm was gifted to the
organization in 1962, Clive came to disagree with Arnold Wesker who, as 42

16
 Clive Barker: A Biographical Memory

administrator, envisaged the Roundhouse as a fixed base from which work

could be sent out, whereas Clive wanted to continue the decentralized policy,
‘developing the network of provincial contacts we had set up to the point
where they could be independent and literally create their own cultural
activities’. Despite their amicable disagreement which led to Clive’s departure,
he insisted, ‘For me it was a very happy time.’
In the end there was no money to pursue either course, and the venue
became instead a venue for ‘underground’ music and pop concerts, and for
theatre events ranging from a visit from the Living Theatre to Oh! Calcutta!
– which, whatever their importance in a wider theatrical context, were
scarcely in the original spirit of the movement.
For the fifth issue of Prompt, in 1964, Clive contributed, with Charles
Marowitz and Roland Muldoon, to a feature called ‘New Theatres, New
Ideas’. In a piece entitled ‘A Theatre for Social Reform’, he described his plans
for a theatre in the East End for which he had been seeking funding. He went
into some detail:

Initially I would split the year into three parts:

From September to the end of January, a full professional company
would present a repertory of three or four plays.
From February to May the theatre would be shared between amateur
companies and visits from other companies when available. There
would be recitals and concerts and film shows. The films would be
selected for quality, and to demonstrate aspects of our own policy at
work in other media and by other people.
In June, July and August the theatre would be given over to informal
concerts, jazz sessions, poetry readings, dances, and to summer
educational sessions. These would be an attempt to make use of the
school holidays to teach young people informally and excitingly about
the theatre and the other arts.
Acting classes and discussions would continue all the year round.
There would be one room in the building, probably a coffee bar, where
people could meet informally just to talk. A news sheet would be
published giving . . . a chance for local writers to see their work in
print. There would also be a project to record the oral culture of the
area and the living and passing history of the society, using tape
recorders and possibly film.

17
Clive Barker and His Legacy

Less schematically, this might have been a blueprint for many of the regional
venues and arts centres which soon began to spring up. But Clive’s plans had
fallen victim to the reorganization of the London boroughs in 1963, and
after the edifice complex had taken over the Roundhouse Clive had returned
to Workshop for the West End transfer of Oh What a Lovely War. At the time
he and fellow warrior Brian Murphy were hatching a plan to write a history
of Theatre Workshop, and I was recruited to impose a little editorial discipline
on the project.
Giles Gordon at Gollancz bought the idea, but Joan Littlewood sadly did
not. However, she only issued a definitive veto after many hours had been
spent talking it all through, and we had begun to interview the major figures
– the most memorable outcome of which was a rambling but riveting
interview with Joan’s former husband, the folk singer Ewan MacColl, of
which the first instalment appeared in the original Theatre Quarterly (TQ ),
the new journal which Roger Hudson, Cathy Itzin and I had persuaded
Methuen to underwrite for a trial period of three years from 1971.

*
In the first issue, in collaboration with the then youthful Time Out, we
published a ‘Guide to Underground Theatre’ – ‘underground’ being the term
then in vogue for what became ‘alternative’ theatre, or simply the ‘fringe’, after
the annual spree of unofficial offerings at the Edinburgh Festival. Most
groups in that guide have long disappeared, leaving little trace, but some
survived to leave their mark on the theatre scene. Among these were the
People Show, the Freehold, Portable Theatre – which kick-started the careers
of Howard Brenton, David Hare and Snoo Wilson – and Pip Simmons, about
whom Clive wrote in TQ 35 (1979).
But the group with which Clive became most closely involved was
Interaction, ED Berman’s umbrella organization described in our ‘Guide’ as
his ‘master plan for revitalising the community through the use of theatre’ –
an aim of course also close to Clive’s heart. His work in alternative theatre is
outside the province of this chapter, but I cannot resist noting his appearance,
along with Stephen Moore and Prunella Scales, in Tom Stoppard’s surreal
After Magritte, at one of Berman’s more visible enterprises, the Ambiance
Theatre in Queensway.
Nor is this the place to summarize the successes and failures of the decade
of Theatre Quarterly’s existence, which came under our own auspices when
the accountants ruled against Methuen continuing support. When first
Roger and then Cathy departed, leaving me as sole editor, I asked Clive to

18
 Clive Barker: A Biographical Memory

join me, by which time he had already made several important contributions
– as important to his own interests and pursuits as for their intrinsic value.
In the fourth issue, in 1971, came ‘The Chartists, Theatre, Reform, and
Research’, an article seminal at a time when – as the organizers of a symposium
in the previous year, to which Clive contributed, remarked – ‘It is still fairly
respectable to know nothing about nineteenth-century theatre.’ His plea for a
serious approach to popular theatre of the period was fully answered, not
least by the appearance of the journal Nineteenth-Century Theatre Research;
and to TQ 34 (1979) he contributed his own ‘The Audiences of the Britannia
Theatre, Hoxton’, investigating the composition of frequenters of one East
End theatre. Later, he was to lend his voice to the study of another neglected
period in British theatre, when he co-edited with Maggie B. Gale British
Theatre Between the Wars, 1918–1939 (Cambridge, 2001).

*
More important in respect of Clive’s own thinking at the time was ‘The
Dilemma of the Professional in University Drama’ in TQ 16 (1974). The article
began: ‘Seven years ago I moved from the professional theatre to work in
Birmingham University’s Drama Department. I am now leaving there to work
full-time again in the theatre.’ What he does not mention was that the move to
Birmingham might not have been possible without the active encouragement
– and maybe some string-pulling, in view of Clive’s lack of a formal academic
qualification – of John Russell Brown, Head of Drama and Theatre Arts at
Birmingham from 1964 to 1971, who was to remain a lifelong friend.
In 1951 Brown had been one of the first Fellows of the Shakespeare Institute
under the directorship of its founder, Allardyce Nicoll, an earlier advocate of
collaboration between academic and live theatre. Such a collaboration was
reflected in Brown’s own career: in 1971 he moved from Birmingham to
become Professor of English at the recently established University of Sussex,
then, around the time of Clive’s move back into professional theatre, Brown
combined his university role with that of associate director and literary
manager during Peter Hall’s tenure of the National Theatre.
I don’t think that Brown’s departure from Birmingham influenced Clive’s
own decision to leave. It is certainly not among the factors he outlines in ‘The
Dilemma of the Professional’. Originally, he had hoped that his wide range
of experience – spread between acting, stage management, directing and
training – would prove an advantage: his ‘constant switching from one line
to another ensured continuous employment’ in the theatre, ‘but worked
against the normal practice . . . of raising one’s salary and fees’ in continuous

19
Clive Barker and His Legacy

and progressive stages. He hoped his varied skills would be advantageous in

a university department; but he found that practice and research, so far from
forming complementary aspects of a single discipline, were often in
contention for resources and, sometimes, for students.
In his first three years at Birmingham, ‘the major task outside teaching
was overseeing and equipping the drama studio’, and ‘little integration of the
study and practical work was attempted’. There was an insistence that the
course was non-vocational, but he found it ‘a blind contradiction’ to say that
‘one is not training actors, but that one is in a position of understanding
directly what is involved in acting. It requires almost the same amount of
work.’ As to departmental productions, while he was ‘very much in favour of
scholars putting ideas into practice, this too often led to an academic ‘trying
to “test” advanced ideas in what should be a basic practical training situation.
The demands of the two are irreconcilable.’
However, there was one other major task he undertook during the early
years. This was:

the planning that was to have been the basis of a research centre to
study the relationship between the theatre and the community . . . in
response to the UNESCO Seminar on Theatre and Community in
1967, of which I was a member. The plans I drew up were to include an
information centre on all aspects of the European theatre in general,
and the British theatre in particular, which would serve anyone working
in the theatre, scholarship, or cultural administration . . . It would have
acted as an advisory and research centre into cultural policies and
administration. In the end we were left with a sheaf of letters from all
organisations in the field giving their whole-hearted support and not a
penny to set it up. It was useful to me, and the information and
experience gained has been fed into a number of theatre and community
arts projects and has enabled me to make a considerable contribution
to the Working Party for a British Theatre Institute, which now gives a
real hope of something on these lines coming about. I could not have
done the basic work outside a university. If and when the British Theatre
Institute is established there is still a lot more information and
experience to be fed into the project. In the meantime, I know a lot
more than I did when I first came to Birmingham.

The ‘British Theatre Institute’ (BTI) refers to a pipe dream being puffed by
Theatre Quarterly to create an equivalent to the British Film Institute for the

20
 Clive Barker: A Biographical Memory

theatre. A working party of the theatrical great and good met regularly, hosted
at the British Drama League under Martin Esslin’s chairmanship. Almost
every influential theatre organization was represented, from Equity to the
Society for Theatre Research, and these contacts no doubt helped our appeal,
which for a while seemed to be on the verge of realization. Edward Heath’s
Minister for the Arts, Sir David Eccles, even proposed that a BTI might be
housed along with the British Theatre Museum in Somerset House, left vacant
when the central Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages commuted to Kew.
Our hopes were raised further when Harold Wilson, returning to power
in 1974, chose as his new Arts Minister Hugh Jenkins, who had been a
member of our working party. But little came of it all and, after Martin Esslin
left as chairman, the BTI fell victim to the battling vested interests that we
had been trying to keep sweet (mainly by keeping them apart).
For Clive, it was at least a useful learning experience, notably when TQ
went on to campaign, with greater success, for the re-creation of a British
Centre of the International Theatre Institute (ITI), from which our
membership had lapsed. Yet another committee was duly formed, under the
benign chairmanship of Arnold Wesker, with Clive as vice-chairman, to
work towards that end – its realization unfortunately coinciding with the
demise of the original Theatre Quarterly, which was among the victims of
the first round of Thatcherite Arts Council cuts, combined with the effects of
that early monetarist mantra, the ‘strong pound’, which had a devastating
effect upon our income from American subscriptions.

*
The theatre to which Clive had returned after leaving Birmingham was the
Northcott in Exeter, which had opened in 1967, and was where in 1975 Clive
became Associate Director after the appointment of his friend Geoffrey
Reeves as Artistic Director. By the time Richard Digby Day took over in
1978, Clive had resumed his academic career as Senior Lecturer in Theatre
Studies at the University of Warwick. In the previous year he had published
the book for which he is now most widely remembered – Theatre Games. To
this major work and the practices associated with it several other contributors
to this volume will be giving the full attention it requires.
Filling the gap that editing had left in my life, for three years I edited the
bilingual journal of the ITI, Théâtre International. Through Nesta Jones I
took up a part-time appointment at Goldsmiths College, and through one of
TQ ’s stalwart advisory editors, John Harrop, had a stint as Visiting Professor
at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

21
Clive Barker and His Legacy

*
After the demise of Theatre Quarterly and with Clive establishing his role at
Warwick, our lives drifted apart for a while, though we found ourselves
commiserating in the early eighties when we were both undergoing a marital
break-up and divorce. Then there came a phone call from Clive, and an
entirely unexpected resurrection. He had been talking with Sarah Stanton,
drama editor at Cambridge University Press, who had invited him to restore
TQ to life. Loyally, Clive had accepted, subject to my becoming co-editor.
And so began New Theatre Quarterly.
As a team I would be contributing the practical know-how of putting a
journal together, while he would be the main progenitor of the ideas and
contacts that would ensure high-quality content. Not that these compartments
were ever really separate, but they underlay the permanence of what became
an almost symbiotic partnership from the first issue of the journal in 1985
until Clive’s death twenty years later.
That first issue included a contribution by a writer who had been an
important mentor and friend to me, Jan Kott, and one by Eugenio Barba,
from that other ‘tribe’ into which, along with Theatre Workshop, Clive felt his
life had thrown him. In an editorial there was a suggestion from me that the
journal no longer needed to assert the ‘importance of new work as such’, but
its aims now lay ‘in persuading practitioners that their work was worthy of
record’, and academics that ‘they should be looking for the vocabulary and
experimenting with the means whereby such a record could be provided’.
In the same editorial I also referred to an article James Arnott, first
Professor of Drama at Glasgow University, had written for the final issue of
the old TQ : ‘an outline history of theatre scholarship which was an instructive
reminder of the youthfulness of the discipline with which we are concerned’.
Sadly, Jim Arnott, a good personal friend and supporter of the magazine, had
died in 1982, and in an obituary in this same issue Clive wrote that Jim had
‘embodied a broad-minded tolerance and generosity of time and energy
based on commitment to the co-operative advance and well-being of the
theatre and of scholarship’.
This comment was in an article entitled ‘Old Friends’ – its other subject
being Alan Schneider, an advisory editor of the old TQ , who had been
instrumental in introducing Beckett to American audiences. Clive recalled
meeting Schneider after an interval of three years, ‘at a time when I had gone
back to stage managing in television. I tried to put on an air more
sophisticated and world-weary than I knew how to carry off. “So you gave
up, eh?” he said.’ But of course, he hadn’t.

22
CHAPTER 3
CLIVE BARKER: MY EINSTEIN
Murray Melvin

1958. Theatre Royal Stratford East.

Early in the year Theatre Workshop had presented Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste
of Honey in which Joan had cast me as the young boy, Geoffrey. At the end of
the run came the summer break but I was a student on a year-long grant, so
I was kept on as maintenance dogsbody, painter and decorator. I was the first
student on a grant that the Workshop had acquired, and I quickly found that
the curriculum for a student at the Workshop was very different to your
normal drama training establishment.
September came and with it the arrival of a new company to start
rehearsals for the next production, which was to be Brendan Behan’s The
Hostage. So, my tea-making duties went from five members of cast in Honey
to the sixteen that Joan loved to have around her.
Among the new members, or new to me, was Clive Barker, who having
gone through my Laban efforts earlier I thought unusual for a member of
the Workshop: short, heavy, earthbound and direct, no hint of lightness
except perhaps in his speech rhythms.
In our daily movement classes or improvisations, it was always Clive who
would stop and ask Joan ‘Why?’, ‘What was the purpose?’, and Joan very
patiently, at the start, would stop and explain. That is until near opening night
when tensions were brewing from all sides, but again Clive would stop and
hold up proceedings for his ‘Why?’s and ‘What for?’s. It was after a couple of
stops at a crucial moment that Joan shouted, ‘For Christ sake Clive, shut up
and just do it.’ Wry smiles from the company and a slightly hurt look from
Clive.
It wasn’t until years later when Clive’s book Theatre Games was published
that we all understood the reason for those interruptions.
I was amused when I first read in the book a section from Chapter 2, ‘The
Mind’. Clive writes: ‘Every director dreads the “intellectual” actor, the one
who works it all out, who consciously thinks about what he is doing and
directs his work accordingly.’1 Now I wonder where he got that from!

23
Clive Barker and His Legacy

There was a trick which Joan Littlewood pulled on many an occasion

with a new ensemble. Meeting on stage first thing in the morning or
returning to a rehearsal after a tea break, ‘Now’, she would say, ‘clear the stage
and come back on with exactly the same conversations and movements.’ We
would and it would always end in a shambles. Finished off with a throwaway
line of triumph from Littlewood: ‘I keep telling you, you cannot repeat a
scene every night, without a Stanislavsky fresh Lever.’
I remember Clive worriting that one for a very long time.
Casting in Joan’s contemporary play productions was normally left until
the last moment. The emphasis was always on the play rather than the
individual. During the course of the rehearsal period we would all play most
parts, male or female, in order to discover the internals of a character. Slowly,
people were slotted into certain parts as rehearsals progressed. Clive was cast
early in The Hostage as the Volunteer, his natural efforts being used to great
effect. I was the last to be slotted in as Leslie, the Hostage.

Figure 2 Cast of The Hostage (Brendan Behan). Clive standing front and centre
wearing glasses and a black cap. Photographer unknown. Photo from the Theatre
Royal Stratford East Archive at The British Library, reproduced with permission
from the theatre.

24
 Clive Barker: My Einstein

In the second act of the play there is a speech by the Caretaker of the
Lodging House, Pat, played by Howard Goorney. In answer to a story from
Leslie ‘that he was being taken to Dublin because the Intelligence Men
wanted to see him’, Howard’s reply was, ‘Intelligence! Holy Jesus. Wait till you
meet ’em. (Looking at Clive.) This fellow here’s an Einstein compared to ’em’.2
It got a huge laugh when we came to the performances.
We referred to Clive as Einstein for the rest of the rehearsal of the play,
although the line was not strictly in the then script. Not that scripts ever
constrained a Workshop player. We were governed mostly by Stanislavsky’s
magic ‘what if ’.
The title stuck. Years later whenever I saw him or he called, he was always
Einstein, which had us both laughing.
I cannot imagine any actor on reading Theatre Games, who has
been through the Stanislavsky and Laban training, coming to Clive’s
conclusion – ‘The actor as social scientist’ – and not feeling a tinge of pride
and gratitude that there were those who did and do understand.

Thank you, Clive.

He went far too soon and is still sorely missed.

Notes

1. Barker, 21.
2. Behan, 90.

Bibliography

Barker, C., Theatre Games, London: Methuen Drama, 2010.

Behan, B., The Hostage, London: Methuen Drama, 2014.

25
26
CHAPTER 4
CLIVE BARKER AND ALTERNATIVE
THEATRE
Susan Croft

I embarked on this chapter after several years in the role of Clive Barker
Research Fellow at Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance
(RBC). This was a role that focused on both beginning to explore his archive
and the larger project of building the collections there, gathering additional
archives that complemented the material he had amassed and working to
‘activate the archive’ and make it accessible to inspire new generations. My
earlier role as Curator of Contemporary Performance at the V&A Theatre
Museum had confronted me with the role of the archivist as supposedly
objective, applying dispassionate criteria to materials received. This led me
to challenge the passive framing of collecting as a neutral activity. It already
operated from numerous inherent assumptions about value and significance,
while reflecting a field in which mainstream theatre would necessarily be
over-represented, as it had the resources to document itself. As such, it would
disproportionately attract scholarly research and attention that reflected the
class, gender and racial concerns of the dominant culture. Less well-funded
areas of performance were generally less well-represented in the archive or,
where they did exist, less well-catalogued and harder to find.
My personal agenda within the Museum, reflecting my cultural formation
in the arts and politics of the 1980s, was to ensure that another theatre was
reflected in the collections and made visible in events, publications and
exhibitions:1 the alternative theatre movement that had arisen primarily
from the late 1960s onwards. Moreover, in response to this absence of vital
documentation, in 2006 I set up the project Unfinished Histories, with
Jessica Higgs, specifically to record the oral history and preserve the archive
of the movement and make it accessible. We included political, community
and feminist theatre, Black, Asian and other minority ethnic work, lesbian
and gay companies, street theatre, Disability arts, new writing, experimental
work, performance art and theatre-in-education2 – in effect the whole
eruption of different approaches, working and organizational methods,
personnel and perspectives that had emerged to challenge mainstream

27
Clive Barker and His Legacy

theatre practice. In encountering Clive Barker’s archive, I recognized a fellow

traveller, further up the road, who had not only accumulated the record of
his own eclectic practice over the years, but actively assembled and
documented the archive of numerous historically neglected areas of theatre,
especially popular performance and activist political work.
Clive Barker was a man for the alternative approach. When his archive
was delivered to and installed at RBC, the College organized an event which
was, in effect, a theatre game where host Chris Baldwin and the audience
picked one at random from various covered boxes and Barker used its
contents to improvise his reflections on the relevant topic – from Morecambe
and Wise to People’s Theatre in Zambia. Greetings from those who could not
attend included Simon Callow, who started his career with Inter-Action’s
Homosexual Acts, the first gay theatre season in the UK; Eugenio Barba,
founder of Odin Teatret and leading light of the Laboratory Theatre
movement; George Eugeniou of Theatro Technis, a theatre project founded
to serve the Greek Cypriot community in Camden, just across the road from
where Unity, the workers’ theatre, had been; and Michael Kustow, critic and
director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) from 1967 to 1970.
These individuals represented a small spread of some of the broad areas of
activism and experiment encompassed by the alternative theatre movement,
between which Barker helped supply the connective tissue.
Barker’s archive itself is organized like a game: once again there is a
random principle operating – the boxes are each numbered and grouped
around an internal theme, but they are not labelled, and the theme emerges
after the fact from exploring the contents – or possibly from the lists of
contents created by the original cataloguer. One theme might crop up across
boxes 6, 47, 89, 123, 124 and 191. There is no specific relationship of proximity,
taxonomy, chronology. Appropriate for the doyen of theatre games, here we
have the theatre archive game, leaving the researcher to map their own
connections and discover serendipities, an alternative order in defiance of
mainstream archival practice. But one which underlines the breadth and
interconnectivity of Barker’s interests.
In this dis/order you will rarely find the alternative theatre movement
labelled as such. It is in itself hard to codify and quantify, resistant to
definition, a movement with questioning of convention and existing
approaches at its heart, that really only became defined in the mid-1970s by
Catherine Itzin, co-editor with Simon Trussler and Roger Hudson of Theatre
Quarterly (TQ ), to which Clive Barker began contributing with its fourth
issue in October 1971, and of which he would in spring 1978 become

28
 Clive Barker and Alternative Theatre

Associate Editor. The taxonomy is necessary in that the editors are seeking
to create a definition broad enough to encompass the huge explosion of new
non-mainstream work and enable companies to self-describe as alternative,
in a series of ‘Guides’ that begin with issue 1 of TQ in Jan–Mar 1971, which
included a ‘Guide to Underground Theatre’, compiled by Time Out magazine,
listing thirty-two companies. Itzin went on to edit for TQ Publications the
Alternative Theatre Handbook 1975–6, a 74-page pamphlet, subtitled ‘a
descriptive guide to “theatre” companies who perform primarily in non-
theatre places for non-theatre audiences’, followed by a series of alternative
theatre directories, each grown to the size of 250 pages or more, with
companies self-defining by choosing to include themselves. Itzin’s definition
became central to Unfinished Histories along with a rough and necessarily
somewhat artificial delineation in time of 1968–88.
Barker might well have argued with our relatively narrow timeframe. Box
177 in his archive has been labelled ‘Alternative Theatre’, seemingly by the
cataloguer. Its contents are not obvious from their listing but consist of
multiple unfinished drafts of a book by Barker on British alternative theatre,
datable in part by the technologies of their reproduction: typewritten with
hand corrections and carbons, the early word processor era of dot matrix
draft and daisy wheel printer, to the eventual sophistication of the Mac font
in which two colleagues, Professor Susan Bassnett and Maggie Gale,3 gave
feedback on the unfinished project to provide a candid assessment of just
what might be done with it: was it publishable? could it be finished? Their
response is just what might be guessed: while acknowledging the staggering
amount of information Barker has to impart and its enormous interest, they
talk about problems of balance, structure and audience, and they suggest
there are inappropriate value judgements and personal prejudices that
imbalance his account, suggesting he should give less space to Bill Martin, a
personal friend but complete unknown, and more to Charles Marowitz, an
internationally recognized figure.
Barker’s planned book does struggle to define the boundaries of his
subject. When does the alternative theatre movement begin? When does it
end? How is it differently demarcated in Britain from internationally?
However, a project rooted in investigating the alternative will necessarily
valorize lesser-known figures: their very commitment to Itzin’s ‘non-theatre
places for non-theatre audiences’ will mean that their work has gained less
critical recognition and documentation.4 Not to do so reinscribes their
marginalization and, as Barker no doubt recognized, recreates the situation
facing future historians, like himself in relation to his research on the

29
Clive Barker and His Legacy

workers’ theatre movement of the 1930s. This was one of having to assemble
the record and the archive from the ground up, in the absence of
contemporary historiography that recorded its importance at the time,
particularly with theatre that is politically focused on responding to the now,
rather than ensuring its own longevity.5 A letter to Sarah Mahaffy at
Macmillan Publishers in 1983 apologizes for his inability to complete the
book project, which had clearly been underway for some years, in part due
to illness, but also because of its huge breadth and his need to connect the
history of the alternative theatre that for some began in 1966 or 19686 with
the context of its emergence and the earlier experiences of ‘the Brook
generation and my generation . . . the experiences of the war, the nascent
welfare state, the extension of education, the new social mobility, the
changing attitudes to sex’.7
The need to explain his terms and state exactly how the movement saw
itself, or could be seen, as alternative becomes a determining factor. He notes
the moment where the term ‘fringe’ lost currency in favour of ‘alternative’,
connecting it to an interview with John McGrath of 7:84 in late 1975 where
he objected to his work ‘being on the fringe of anything’.8 Equally hard is
demarcating when it ended. Already in 1983 Barker identifies that ‘it is very
difficult in 1983 to talk of an “Alternative Theatre”. By now there is only
theatre and a constant inter-change of personnel has blurred the definitions
of what is establishment theatre and what is not’.9 But in a later manuscript
this phenomenon is located in the early 1990s. He emphasizes the differences
from, rather than the similarities to, both the European and the American
alternative theatre scenes, seeing the latter as more based on directors and
theorists such as Richard Schechner, Richard Foreman, Robert Wilson,
Charles Ludlam, Julian Beck and Judith Malina and breaking away from
the traditional conventions of performance. Meanwhile for Barker the
playwrights (Brenton, Hare et al.) dominated the British scene alongside its
‘almost obsessional concern with social reform’.10 Yet, as Bassnett writes in
her critique of the planned book, ‘from the data you provide . . . I could
construct a case to argue that the British alternative theatre scene was
dominated by Americans in its early years’.11
Barker’s struggle to complete the book, then, was at least in part one of
defining the boundaries of an entity or project, documenting an alternative
theatre which, for him, implicitly needed to be seen historically as one of
connection rather than rupture. This assertion of connection can be linked
to both his own experience and research, such as the work on people’s theatre
in nineteenth-century Britain that he drew on for the article ‘The Chartists,

30
 Clive Barker and Alternative Theatre

Theatre, Reform, and Research’12 in TQ ; or on the workers’ theatre of the

1930s, including Red Megaphones, out of which grew Theatre Workshop led
by Joan Littlewood, of which he was a key member in the late 1950s and
early 1960s. It connected also to the work of Charles Parker, the visionary
radio producer whose radio ballads provided a vital record of working-class
oral traditions and folk songs, with whom Barker worked in the early 1960s
on programmes such as the play Strike! in 1965,13 and The Story of the Teeside
Cyclists.14 Barker also worked on the initiative Centre 42, set up by Arnold
Wesker in 1961, in response to Resolution 42 of the 1960 Trade Union
Congress, declaring the importance of the arts to the trade union community.
For this Barker travelled the country to Wellingborough, Leicester, Bristol,
Birmingham and Nottingham, liaising with activists and volunteers on
suitable spaces and participant groups to mount festivals locally, writing
vivid reports of his findings, but encountering the frustration generated by
the lack of adequate resources: rehearsal space, workshops, a permanent
ensemble to catalyse the long-term change which the project aimed for.
Its numerous interconnections meant that Barker may have struggled to
complete the history of the alternative theatre movement, perhaps a
necessarily unfinished project encompassing also, as it did for him, the
future alternatives that might emerge, even though in 1991 he questioned its
efficacy and whether it continued to exist:

Alternative Theatre, which was at that time in its early years, had
political significance across the spectrum of its performance styles.
Simply by existing it posed critical alternatives to the dominant culture
of the time, that of the Establishment to which it defined itself as
alternative. At the start of the 1990s it would be difficult to make that
argument and, disillusioned by what has happened in the intervening
years, some writers who would have promulgated the earlier argument
would probably now support an opposing view. The Alternative
Theatre has lost direction and political significance.15

Despite these doubts of its continuing significance, he remained deeply

engaged in numerous areas of the movement and ‘was on the board of the
prison theatre group Geese and, more recently, even as he grew ill, gave
unstinting support to the learning disability company Shysters’,16 touring
with them, and running workshops, as well as supporting innovative
companies, working in the community and museums, like Carran Waterfield’s
Triangle Theatre.17

31
Clive Barker and His Legacy

Whatever its beginnings and arguable end, Barker’s influence on the

growth of the movement from the late 1960s onwards is massive and
undeniable. It was communicated in many forms, through: teaching and his
influence on students and their future career paths; fellow professionals,
both in his personal encounters and in an extensive correspondence with
others in the movement, and his direct involvement in companies and arts
organizations, either as board member or as mentor; his writing, editing and
documentation of key companies and developments in the movement,
especially in his position at TQ ; his international influence, directing and
networking; and the publication of Theatre Games, which rapidly became a
key text for numerous company-devising processes, workshops and actor
training programmes, a subject dealt with elsewhere in this collection.
When in 1974 Barker described his career before his appointment at
Birmingham University, referring to his work with Parker, Littlewood and
Wesker, it: ‘had developed along a number of lines. I had acted, directed and
written scripts which were performed . . . taught at drama schools . . . and
done all the multifarious back-stage technical jobs along the way. I had also
written a number of articles and papers on various aspects of theatre and
cultural policy’.18 Given the multifariousness of his work and highly
peripatetic career before Birmingham, he expresses a sense of frustration
and disillusionment with the university as a working context, while
developing a critique of academia and the problems he encountered as a
theatre professional working within that area. As a mover and shaker,
connector of individuals, animator of spaces, he found himself instead
confined by existing expectations, course regulations and structures, most
particularly the lack of opportunity for students to develop adequate
performance skills. In the article he wrote for TQ in 1974, ‘The Dilemma of
the Professional in University Drama’, as part of a contribution to ‘the debate
within university Drama Departments as to the viability of practical work’,
he details his isolation within the department and his struggles to integrate
practical actor training elements such as movement and voice within the
course, the inability to make this operate with any continuity with academic
course demands, and the tensions around the desire of students to direct in
the students’ union productions, rather than concentrating their practical
work within the more developmental context of the Drama Department.
There he was trying to establish an ensemble, based around his ‘work on
meetings, encounters and relationships’19 as part of an investigation of ‘the
common experiences of the lives of men20 throughout history – in particular,
the rites of passage from one stage of living to another’. The tensions between

32
 Clive Barker and Alternative Theatre

the demands and pressures of academia, including the pressure prematurely

to publish a book for which he was not yet ready, led to his leaving in 1973
to join the Northcott Theatre, Exeter.21
Nonetheless, Barker had a powerful influence on a number of students
through his politics and commitment to a socially engaged theatre. For
Patrick Barlow and some of his student cohort he was ‘really a bit of an
inspiration’.22 It was Barker who encouraged a group of students including
Tim Curry, Barry Kyle, Geoff Hoyle and Judy Loe to pile into Barlow’s Mini
in 1968 and head down the M1 to meet the inspirational black-bearded
American ED Berman23 in a small shopfront opposite the Roundhouse, to
hear his burgeoning plans for the growth of Inter-Action. Only Barlow and
Hoyle stuck with it but they, along with fellow Birmingham graduate Jim
Hiley, became key founder members of the organization, taking a step which
was formative within their own work in alternative theatre. For Tony Coult,
a student in the year below, Barker’s ‘transmission of ideas about Play, both
for adults and young people, was influential and remains so’.24 For Coult they
led the way to his discovery of Interplay, a closely related project, set up in
Leeds by Berman’s collaborator Carry Gorney and some Leeds University
students, and subsequently to the Perspectives company in Peterborough,
creating theatre-in-education and work in the community.
If Barker’s impact on male students was often inspirational, the experience
of many female Birmingham students was problematic and the working
environment he created was often experienced as unsafe, bordering on
bullying.25 Annie Tyson found him highly judgemental and intimidating:
‘He really did think we were a bunch of middle-class wankers. He was pretty
dismissive of all of us’.26 For Jane Wymark: ‘It was all about intense finding
yourself, and somewhat confrontational criticism of whatever you did’, and
‘Clive didn’t keep that divide clear enough, so a lot of criticism felt very
personal’.27 Victoria Wood was his student and Barker was very judgemental
about her weight, resisting casting her until forced to by course requirements
that she should play a main role.28 Barker by contrast felt that ‘his
unthreatening personality . . . drew Victoria to him. “You’re dealing with
someone who’s safe, who’s not going to put you down, who’s not going to
hurt you or harm you or attack you, so you stand next to that person” ’,29
stating that this trust in him led her to allow him to read a play she had
written: ‘ “The two of us were going to perform it, but never got round to
it” ’.30 It is a picture further underlined by Jude Kelly, later Director of
London’s Southbank Centre and of the WOW (Women of the World)
festival. If Wood was belittled for her size, Kelly was mocked for her aspiration

33
Clive Barker and His Legacy

to be a director: ‘Clive told me that there had only been three women
directors: Buzz Goodbody who’d killed herself, Joan Littlewood who’d retired
and Joan Knight who was lesbian, and which would I like to be?’31 Most
galling was his response to her initiative in leaving the movement classes to
form her own group of women from the department: ‘I knew if I provoked
you I’d bring out the best in you’,32 effectively claiming credit for her initiative.
The context of woeful sexual politics, of which Barker in this era was part,
reflected a male-dominated and often misogynist culture, which many
women found equally prevalent in left-wing politics and political theatre
groups elsewhere. ‘In that period of time . . . you can wield a very mighty rod
based on name-dropping and the idea that you are politically more correct
than other people . . . and it was a time where, in terms of women, you were
allowed to treat them as you wanted to. It was definitely a male place and
women had to find their way through all this’, says Kelly.33 For her the
language did not yet exist for women to critique this situation. It began to
emerge across the alternative theatre movement as women in theatre began
to confront their experiences of marginalization and belittling, and apply the
questions raised by the Women’s Liberation Movement in their own field,
becoming part of the ferment of change that led to both the emergence of
feminist voices in theatre and the arts more generally: directors like Kelly,
writer/performers like Wood or Fidelis Morgan,34 teachers like Tyson.
It was a period of challenge where dominant, usually male voices were
confronted with the demands of group members for a voice in decision-
making and the questioning of traditional structures. When Patrick Barlow
eventually began to contemplate leaving the notional cooperative of Inter-
Action, it was the result of seeing talented individuals emerging through the
work and struggling with ED Berman’s artistic leadership: ‘things like the
increase of ED wanting to dominate the company, that it was not a democratic
company’ and notably ‘He was very unsettled by women challenging him
about sexism’,35 an experience which was echoed across the movement.
Interviews for Unfinished Histories consistently identify women
practitioners breaking away from the gender politics of male-dominated
theatre companies to voice their own experiences: in physical theatre Sadista
Sisters started when Jude Alderson and Teresa d’Abreu broke from Steven
Berkoff ’s London Theatre Company; in political theatre, Eileen Pollock, Eve
Bland and Noreen Kershaw formed Bloomers out of their frustration with
the lack of female roles in Belt and Braces; Hesitate and Demonstrate and
That’s Not It made work that reacted to the male-dominated performance
art world with a more ‘female’ aesthetic;36 while The Magdalena Project

34
 Clive Barker and Alternative Theatre

developed as a response of women within the theatre laboratories

internationally, wishing to explore their own experience.37 At Interplay, for
Tony Coult, the influence of second-wave feminism on the women of the
company forced the men to take on feminist ideas and perspectives.38 Given
this pressure for and realization of change that became irresistible across the
sector, it remains notable that one of the recommendations that Bassnett and
Gale make for improving Barker’s unfinished alternative theatre book is:
‘What is also badly needed is something on gender, probably an entire
chapter.’39
The Inter-Action that Barlow, Hoyle and Hiley joined was an organization
with which Barker already had his own existing close connection as a
member of the board, helping oversee the organization’s numerous
innovative creative initiatives and community-based projects. Early in the
life of the project, using his status as lecturer at Birmingham, Barker wrote
at length to Arts Council officer Denis Andrews, urging him to fund the
project, which he described as ‘not only the most imaginative theatre project
I have seen in recent years, but one of the most practical’.40 Inter-Action
staged the first lunchtime theatre season, in conjunction with Theatrescope,
in the Ambiance club basement at No. 1 Queensway. Barker participated as
a performer in the premiere of Tom Stoppard’s After Magritte, which opened
as part of Inter-Action’s Ambiance-in-Exile41 lunchtime theatre season in
April 1970 at Guyanese actor Norman Beaton’s Green Banana Club in Frith
Street, Soho, their interim home, directed by Geoffrey Reeves, whom Barker
had introduced to ED Berman.42
The season then moved to the ICA, where they staged Britain’s first Black
Theatre season, opening 31 July 1970, before setting up more permanently at
the Almost Free Theatre in Rupert Street, W1. There they initiated the first
Women’s Theatre season in 1974, leading to the formation of the Women’s
Theatre Group, and later Monstrous Regiment, and in 1975 the first Gay
Theatre season, Homosexual Acts, which saw the founding of Gay Sweatshop.
The initial Inter-Action members slept on the desks in the shop front on
Chalk Farm Road where, in response to Wesker’s sign outside the Roundhouse
which he was still trying to transform into Centre 42, saying ‘We need
£190,000 for A, B and C’, Berman aiming to transform his space had put up
a notice in the Inter-Action workspace windows opposite: ‘We do not need
£190,000 . . . yet’. The implication was that for Inter-Action the work would
start using whatever resources were available, which it did: with the members
working as a cooperative, sharing meals often made from donated food and,
after Berman had negotiated an agreement with Camden Council, living in

35
Clive Barker and His Legacy

Figure 3 After Magritte (Tom Stoppard). Ambiance Theatre Club/Inter-Action, Clive

playing Foot (right), with Stephen Moore, Prunella Scales and Josephine Tewson
(1970). Photographer unknown. Reproduced by courtesy of Unfinished Histories.

semi-derelict housing at peppercorn rent, while earning £7 a week – an

arrangement which would regularly bring them into conflict with Equity.43 It
was art as improvisation, part of an alternative counter-cultural lifestyle, and
Barker, who though an ardent political activist had had his own frustrations
working on the Centre 42 festivals and their protracted negotiations with
local trade union representatives over access to space, clearly had sympathies
and allegiances on both sides of the street.
The Inter-Action powerhouse rapidly moved to larger premises in a
nearby old factory and eventually in 1977 to the Talacre Centre, the first
bespoke community arts centre to be built. Designed by Cedric Price, Joan
Littlewood’s collaborator on the Fun Palaces project, it was the closest
architectural realization of their vision of a space where participants could:
‘Choose what you want to do – or watch someone else doing it. Learn how
to handle tools, paint, babies, machinery, or just listen to your favourite tune.
Dance, talk or be lifted up to where you can see how other people make
things work’.44 Inter-Action’s vision offered multiple arts projects such as the
street and children’s theatre company Dogg’s Troupe, including Hoyle, Hiley,

36
 Clive Barker and Alternative Theatre

Barlow and others; OATS, the old age theatre society; a free school; the Fun
Art Bus, a converted double-decker, complete with a tiny theatre upstairs,
which stopped at regular bus stops to pick up its audience for a free show; a
Community Media Van, touring housing estates and offering access to
recording equipment; street-based actions like the Father Xmas Union’s
Red-Leg Labour strike outside Selfridges, which led to a mass arrest of
Father Christmases; the first City Farm in Britain; and later the Weekend
Arts College (now WacArts).45
Underpinning all the initiatives was the Inter-Action Games Method.
While there was a clear overlap with Barker’s interest in the potential of
games to free the actor, the approach developed by Berman drew on
children’s games as a means to free the creativity of individuals and groups,
from psychiatrists to people with disabilities. A further key member of the
early Inter-Action was Berman’s core collaborator, Israeli director Naftali
Yavin: ‘ED was working on games as a way of confronting and analysing
social problems. I was developing these ideas on theatrical lines while he was
developing them on social lines.’46 Yavin’s experimental work was based on
Inter-Action’s TOC (The Other Company) whose concern ‘with a theatre of
actions rather than literary text . . . began to breathe life back into the theatre’,
according to Barker,47 citing Yavin’s productions of Games After Liverpool,
The Pit, and the plays of Peter Handke. All these in some way engaged with
game-playing in productions exploring power relationships, physicalized
through performer/audience dynamics, from James Saunders’s piece made
of short segments designed to be performed in a non-specified order, to the
devised piece The Pit. This was based round ‘a number of sort of master–
slave type, psychoanalytical games, and the relationships [that] were played
by the two men and two women inside’,48 while Handke’s Offending the
Audience49 drew on a Brechtian approach to force the audience to question
the nature of theatre.
Barker and Berman seem to have met for the first time around 1967 when
Berman was living in Notting Dale and developing plans for projects with
young people, like Beowulf and the Dragon, staged on a houseboat on the
Grand Union Canal. It was an early example of a Dramascape, a play-based
project that started with a procession through the streets, gathering up
children as it went. One of these led to the construction of a giant Gulliver
under the Westway near Ladbroke Grove, while in Leeds they became a
staple of the work of Interplay. Maggie Anwell, another student of Barker’s,
had joined them from Birmingham University, and in 1971 Tony Coult, after
a summer working with Inter-Action, followed her up to Leeds. There, their

37
Clive Barker and His Legacy

work drew on additional influences from locally based artists and

practitioners, including Welfare State and Albert Hunt, to create what were
hybrid pieces of street theatre/site-specific performance: ‘to tell a story,
perhaps to create a problem that needs solving over the next two weeks, out
of that comes the building of the play-site, usually a big structure, spinning
off all kinds of arts and crafts and mini drama projects, based on the drama
that’s done on the first day’s processional work and then it all comes together
on the last day, which traditionally . . . usually involved a bonfire.’50 For Coult,
Barker offered a ‘bridge between the “aggressive romanticism” (Long’s
phrase) of Centre 42, based in folk art and the documentary history dramatic
tradition, and the Play-centred social entrepreneurism of Berman’s Inter-
Action, whose focus was largely on children and young people’;51 and Barker
was a key ‘artistic stirrer’,52 along with Hunt, Berman, Jenny Harris, co-
founder of Brighton Combination,53 and others in changing the terms of the
debate, both in respect to theatre practice and to cultural policy:

What was common ground between them was firstly a shared concern
with the related ideas of Play and Game, generally expressed through
arts and education projects, and secondly a relationship with the Arts
Council of Great Britain as Panel members, advisers, and occasional
antagonist-beneficiaries. This new set of ideas and practices involved a
deliberate, or at least an accepted, blurring of the lines between the
adult and the child, occasioned by the increased understanding of Play
as an element of both artistic creation and social interaction. This new
cultural conjunction affected the Arts Council of Great Britain’s
policies towards the funding of young people’s theatre at an increasingly
effective level. It is the idea of Play and Game that, through the agency
of these and others, began to transform the Arts Council from within.54

This is a moment when:

the boundaries become very porous as between Community Theatre,

Experimental Theatre, Alternative Theatre, and Young People’s Theatre
(themselves fluid coinages often generated by journalism that change
according to historical context.) This is a function not just of the
pragmatic struggles for funding these areas, but of the highly
exploratory nature of a range of work in this period that sought both
to re-locate an idea of Play in adult work, and to recognize significance
and status in Play-full work for young people.55

38
 Clive Barker and Alternative Theatre

Alongside his direct involvement in theatre organizations and companies

and his influence on new developments through arts policy and the impact
of the students he trained, Barker was material from early on in networking
and creating showings of experimental new work. The poster in the Clive
Barker archive for a Guerrilla Theatre event at Birmingham University in
June 1969 features a performance by the Brighton Combination, the arts lab
founded in 1968 by Noel Greig, Ruth Marks and Jenny Harris; a show by
Albert Hunt’s Bradford Art College Theatre Company; and a talk by Berman,
Hiley and Barker himself about Inter-Action. He introduced international
models of practice to Britain, bringing an Arts Council touring exhibition
on Brecht and Piscator to the Birmingham campus in 1971; and Odin
Teatret, the influential laboratory theatre led by Eugenio Barba, to Coventry
in 1994 as The Odin Experience in a relationship with the Belgrade Theatre,
further cemented by a collaborative project two years later,56 shortly after his
retirement from University of Warwick, amongst many others.
Carran Waterfield met Barker in 1992 through the newly formed
Coventry Theatre Network, that also included Talking Birds, Theatre
Absolute, Bare Essentials Youth Theatre and others, with all of whom he
developed relationships. For Waterfield, he was both someone able to critique
the work and a key broker of relationships, ‘managing to straddle all
the different agendas that were at play,57 with the Arts Council, with other
funders or with the Belgrade Theatre. He enabled her to see the work she was
developing with Triangle within a historical lineage that drew on Odin,
where she had done physical theatre workshops with Roberta Carreri, but
also on her background in theatre-in-education and her excavations of her
relationship to her home city and its history and her family stories. He also
encouraged critical engagement with the work, ensuring New Theatre
Quarterly (NTQ ) published on her practice and achievement.58
In the pre-Birmingham era in particular, there is similarly a sense of
Barker racing about the country, knitting together new networks, sowing
initiatives with suggestions of useful reading matter, awareness of
forerunners, possible approaches, games to explore, figures to draw on,
supporting funding applications, mentoring individuals, encouraging work,
both informally through meetings, viewing work and talking in the pub
afterwards and late into the night, and formally as a member of boards,
informing artistic development. For Albert Hunt, author of Hopes for Great
Happenings: Alternatives in Education and Theatre, ‘he [Clive Barker] just
influenced my life totally’.59 For Hunt, Joan Littlewood was God,60 making
Barker, who had worked with her, effectively a key disciple. In 1954 Hunt had

39
Clive Barker and His Legacy

just taken on running a youth drama group in Swaffham and was struggling
to know where to start when Barker turned up and simply told him to ‘play
games’. Drawing on his wife Dorothy’s ‘Girl Guides’ games book, Hunt
rapidly found that all at once ‘the group worked . . . they were all talking
about games they’d known as kids and for weeks we just played games . . . the
opposite result from what I’d expected.’61 These led into their first piece of
theatre, playing games from childhood, inventing new ones. Moving to
Shrewsbury, Hunt went on to stage Ars Longa, Vita Brevis, a piece based on
children’s games and by John Arden and Margaretta D’Arcy, whom he had
also met through Encore.62 The piece had been developed with local children
in Kirkbymoorside63 before being staged in 1964 as part of the RSC’s Theatre
of Cruelty season at LAMDA, initiated by Peter Brook, with whom Hunt
would later work on US , along with Geoffrey Reeves. Arden became a second
God for Hunt, who wrote one of the earliest studies of Arden’s work and was
involved in the innovative festival that Arden and D’Arcy set up at
Kirkbymoorside in 1963, a genuinely popular, if rather ‘dotty’,64 local festival
based on ‘broadly libertarian anarchistic artistic views’.65
Barker is part of the connective tissue in many of these relationships, and
of the creative ferment in exploring the theatrical possibilities both of games
and improvisation and their potential as a language to open up new forms
and enable the creation of genuinely popular radical community-based
theatre. The Clive Barker of the 1950s and early 1960s is constantly on the
move, building networks of people ‘interested in developing theatre in
schools and organisations and youth clubs all around the country and was
looking for people who were doing it’,66 sometimes bringing them together
for festivals. Hunt would go on to establish himself at Bradford College
of Art teaching Complementary Studies and bringing in an array of
groundbreaking tutors to explore new educational approaches.67 With a
curriculum that enabled experiment, a supportive management and the
ability to structure studies so students could work intensively in two-week
blocks, Hunt was able to create projects like the legendary 1967 restaging of
the Russian revolution in the streets of Bradford with a cast of 300 students,
an event described by Cathy Itzin as ‘the largest-scale piece of street theatre
produced in Britain in the sixties or seventies – an event which encapsulated
the imaginative possibilities of political theatre and which set a precedent
for the following decade.’68 Hunt subsequently set up the Bradford Art
College Theatre Group, with Chris Vine, which staged happenings and
groundbreaking shows like The Destruction of Dresden or A Carnival for St.
Valentine’s Eve, The Passion of Adolf Hitler, John Bull’s Cuban Missile Crisis

40
 Clive Barker and Alternative Theatre

that evolved from games, improvisations and experiments, leading towards

a script. For Hunt ‘Clive Barker was a very neglected, hugely influential
person.’69
Barker, like the Unfinished Histories project, would seem to have grappled
with the issue of the probably inevitable amnesia around hugely influential
figures who, because of their decision to work in non-mainstream, alternative
practice, have remained critically neglected.70 He clearly wanted to recognize
the work of Bill Martin, part of a post-war generation of drama teachers who
saw the radical possibilities of drama teaching to change lives and society,
whose work with Contemporary Theatre included acclaimed productions at
Oval House, supported by its director Peter Oliver (another massively
influential and under-documented figure). Martin established a touring
youth theatre company out of the success of his drama work with boys from
Chace secondary school in Enfield, aiming to ‘forge a company working
within a style on a repertory of plays which had relevance to a wide social
spectrum, outside the institutionalized theatre . . . The other was a series of
drama activities involving people in the community using relevant material.’71
He exchanged extensive correspondence with Barker,72 who gave Martin
and the company moral and practical support as well as backing his endless
struggle to find financial provision for the work. Tellingly, central to the
company working process were improvisational sessions, ‘free-for-alls which
many found liberating and enjoyable . . . at the root of our work was a
concept of play.’73
If Barker had intended to document overlooked work like that of Martin
in the planned book, through his position as Associate Editor to the equally
committed Simon Trussler on TQ and later on NTQ , and by his own
contributions to it and other publications, he did give recognition to a number
of key companies and initiatives. In an issue in 197874 his editorial emphasizes
the need to build bridges between the academic world and the world of
theatre practice, ensuring the former is informed by the ‘contextual knowledge
of what is happening now’ and by documentation of the recent past such as
the upsurge of late 1960s student theatre. When he joined TQ it was published
in its own right with a cover price of 80p in 1971, rising to £2.50 by 1977 and
then £3, making it accessible to theatre companies and practitioners, a practice
enabling those bridges.75 This was also echoed in the discourse of the journal
– one of practicality and accessibility as well as critical discussion, reflected in
its publication of listings, guides and resources on a given playwright’s work,
not least the first alternative theatre guides. His own articles include both
pieces on popular theatre historically, such as the Britannia Theatre, and on

41
Clive Barker and His Legacy

the innovative Pip Simmons Theatre Group, explored in the context of the
arts labs and other venues who commissioned them.
Articles documenting alternative theatre commissioned during Barker’s
initial involvement speak to his commitment to the field, including items on
the community art of Medium Fair, by Baz Kershaw; Peter Holland on
Brecht, Bond, Gaskill and political theatre; agit-prop in the 1930s in France;
along with further international perspectives on refugee theatre in Tanzania,
and theatre in India and in Peking. The first number with Barker’s
involvement, issue 29, includes a piece on Rough Theatre,76 while the third
one, issue 32, includes his book reviews of Bradby and McCormick’s People’s
Theatre and of John Lane’s Arts Centres: Every Town Should Have One. In
issue 33 he and Simon Trussler interview David Edgar, alongside reports on
theatre in South Africa, a national playwriting conference, and TOOT, The
Other Oxfordshire Theatre. The extensive correspondence in his archive
with an array of individuals and companies around other possible TQ
contributions; the breadth of his theatregoing, evidenced in his massive
collection of programmes; and the extent of his engagement in representing
the work through conference papers, reports, reviews, festival commentaries,
investigations and unfinished articles, bear witness to a man deeply engaged
with a theatre of change.

Notes

1. This was reflected especially in my curating exhibitions such as Architects of

Fantasy: Contemporary Puppetry, Animations and Automata (1999) and Let Paul
Robeson Sing! (2001), in editing publications like Black and Asian Performance
at the Theatre Museum: A User’s Guide (2003) and in diversifying the offer of the
National Video Archive of Performance, in terms of its representation of gender,
race, Dis/ability and experiment, as well as initiating the acquisition of archives
such as those of Sphinx/Women’s Theatre Group, Lumiere and Son, Tricycle
Theatre, Black Mime Theatre, Cheek by Jowl and Alfred Fagon, among others.
2. See www.unfinishedhistories.com. Starting from recording oral histories with a
range of individuals active in the movement, the project emphasized the need to
make this work visible through an extensive interpretative website, which has
subsequently grown to include company pages documenting the output and
practice of around seventy companies, offering in many cases the only detailed
account of their work. This work is supplemented by talks, readings, exhibitions
and publications, aimed at sharing the work with new audiences. The website is
archived with the British Library’s UK Web Archive (https://www.bl.uk/
collection-guides/uk-web-archive) and the physical archive built by the project
is at Bishopsgate Institute.

42
 Clive Barker and Alternative Theatre

3. Anonymous, but since identified through email correspondence as Professor

Susan Bassnett and Maggie Gale.
4. Similarly, one of the impulses behind Unfinished Histories was to broaden
understanding of both the sheer enormity of the movement –listing 700+
companies founded between 1968 and 1988 – and its significance, and to
document the work and thinking of the numerous groups and individuals who
had been critically neglected.
5. Some of this material was published in Raphael Samuel, Ewan MacColl and
Stuart Cosgrove, Theatres of the Left, 1880–1935: Workers’ Theatre Movements in
Britain and America, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985, some without
Barker’s permission (see Chapter 11, ‘An evening with Clive Barker’).
6. Barker, who was already thirty-five in 1966, explores both dates, the former as
the founding date of The People Show and CAST (Cartoon Archetypal Slogan
Theatre), the latter because of the ‘feeling of common cause with those young
people who fought the police in the streets of Paris, Rome and Berlin in 1968,
who demonstrated against the Vietnam War in the US’, going on to cite protests
against the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the invasion of Czechoslovakia and the
Chicago Democratic Convention; the perspective he quotes is that of the
editorial in Gambit issue 26/27, 1975.
7. Letter to Sarah Mahaffy, 8 November 1983, RBC/CB Archive box 177, p1.
8. MS of Barker’s Alternative Theatre book, version 1, p1, dated from internal
evidence late 1990/early 1991, RBC/CB Archive box 177.
9. RBC/CB Archive box 177.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid. A popular narrative refers to ED Berman, Charles Marowitz and Jim
Haynes as the three Americans who changed theatre in Britain and created the
alternative theatre movement (see for example interview by Susan Croft with
Sheila Allen, March 2008). Less recognized but also significant are African
American Rufus Collins and American women like Nancy Meckler, Beth Porter,
Nancy Diuguid and Cathy Itzin (see Croft, 2013, 10).
12. In TQ Vol 1 No. 4, October–December 1971.
13. It should have been broadcast by the BBC West Midlands Home Service. Parker
acted as consultant on actuality sound for the production, which was originally
to be staged as a piece of documentary theatre on the General Strike of 1926,
but it was cancelled before production. Barker had scripted it from interviews.
See catalogue at https://www.cpatrust.org.uk/ and copies of the script in RBC/
CB Archive box 74.
14. This programme by Clive Barker was broadcast on 28 August 1963.
15. Barker in Holderness, 1991, 18.
16. Obituary by Baz Kershaw, The Guardian, 19 April 2005.
17. A long-term member of the board, Barker was closely enmeshed in the
company’s work, especially in the early 2000s when they created their popular

43
Clive Barker and His Legacy

show Nina and Frederick, and helped them develop into a bigger company
(interview by Susan Croft with Carran Waterfield on Zoom, 22 December 2020).
18. Barker, 1974–5, 55.
19. Barker, 1974–5, 61.
20. Sic. Barker, 1974–5, 61. For Jude Kelly it was clear that men meant men, not also
women: ‘The thing I began to realize is that the things that women were dealing
with, including low pay and all the rest of it, they just weren’t the concerns of . . .
you know the plays that Clive wanted us to study and care about: they were all
about men, and inasmuch as I think . . . over the years I’ve mentored lots of men,
lots of male writers – the rites of passage of men, and the assumption that this is
the rites of passage of humanness, and also the kind of love affair with people like
Brendan Behan, the love affair with the dissolute, and proposing that as a kind of
life style, Dylan Thomas, that women should support: it’s ludicrous, a ludicrous
construct, where women, young women of 18, or as I was, 19, are somehow
supposed to accept that world view and be part of its adoration.’ Kelly, 2020.
21. Then under the artistic directorship of Jane Howell.
22. Oral History interview by Susan Croft with Patrick Barlow, Unfinished Histories,
22 March 2012. See http://www.unfinishedhistories.com/interviews/
interviewees-a-e/patrick-barlow/.
23. ED Berman capitalizes his first name as it derives from his initials: he is Edward
David Berman.
24. Coult, 2014, 9.
25. Interview by Susan Croft with Jude Kelly, 13 July 2020 on Zoom.
26. Interview by Susan Croft with Annie Tyson, 1 July 2020 on Zoom.
27. Quoted in Rees, 53.
28. Brandwood, 69. According to Jasper Rees: ‘Barker belonged to that generation of
male directors who allowed their hands to wander and had a reputation for
taking women into his office for private study after hours . . . Some years later
when Victoria joined a keep-fit class she described the exercises as easy for
anyone who has had their groin felt by C. Barker’, Letter from Wood to Robert
Howie, 19 April 1978, quoted in Rees, 53.
29. Brandwood, 70.
30. Ibid.
31. Interview by Susan Croft with Jude Kelly, 13 July 2020 on Zoom.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid.
34. Morgan, who was in Wood’s year at Birmingham, became an actress and went
onto edit The Female Wits, the first anthology of Restoration women playwrights
to emerge from the feminist rediscovery of women’s history as playwrights in
Britain.

44
 Clive Barker and Alternative Theatre

35. Berman’s model worked on the basis of encouraging successful projects to break
away and become independent or disseminating them for others to follow.
Berman was insistent on maintaining artistic control over what plays were
chosen while they remained part of Inter-Action. Oral History interview by
Susan Croft with ED Berman, 4 December 2010, http://www.
unfinishedhistories.com/interviews/interviewees-a-e/ed-berman/.
36. Oral History interviews by Susan Croft with: Eileen Pollock, June 2007; Jude
Alderson, March 2007; Geraldine Pilgrim, 5 June 2013 and 1 August 2013;
Natasha Morgan, 18 July 2007. See Unfinished Histories: www.
unfinishedhistories.com.
37. This grew from the festival of women in theatre, Magdalena ’86, set up by Jill
Greenhalgh and Cardiff Lab Theatre, along with Julia Varley from Odin Teatret,
into an international network, hosting workshops, festivals and performance
projects, and producing conferences and publications such as The Open Page.
See Bassnett, 1989 and Fry, 2007.
38. Interview and Topic list, Oral History interview by Susan Croft with Tony Coult,
Unfinished Histories, April 2009, http://www.unfinishedhistories.com/
interviews/interviewees-a-e/tony-coult/tony-coult-topics-list/.
39. See note 2, page 2 of unpublished report, RBC/CB Archive box 177.
40. Archive at V&A Theatre Collections ACGB 34/99.
41. When the proprietor of the Ambiance club Junior Telfer went out of business,
Berman kept the name and took the lunchtime theatre project elsewhere as the
Ambiance-in-Exile, possibly playing Oval House as well as the Green Banana
and ICA.
42. Lee, 198.
43. Oral History interview by Susan Croft with ED Berman, Unfinished Histories,
13 February 2011.
44. Quoted from Littlewood and Price’s original blueprint on 100 Tiny Fun Palaces,
21 November 2020, https://funpalaces.co.uk/about-fun-palaces/where-does-the-
idea-come-from/. See Mathews for a full exploration of Littlewood and Price’s
vision, including the design of the Talacre Centre.
45. For an outline of the company structure see http://www.unfinishedhistories.
com/history/companies/inter-action/. For a project of its influence and
magnitude Inter-Action remains woefully under-documented, but see also
Berman in Curtis and Sanderson, 2004. There is documentation of many of
these Inter-Action projects in Barker’s archive.
46. Kift, 8.
47. Barker, 1973, 34.
48. Oral History interview by Susan Croft with Hilary Westlake, Unfinished
Histories, 7 April 2008, http://www.unfinishedhistories.com/interviews/
interviewees-r-z-3/hilary-westlake/.

45
Clive Barker and His Legacy

49. Its first British performance was by TOC at the Almost Free Theatre in 1972.
50. Oral History interview by Susan Croft with Tony Coult, April 2009, http://www.
unfinishedhistories.com/interviews/interviewees-a-e/tony-coult.
51. Coult, 2014, 38. In heading his chapter ‘Aggressive Romanticism: The Cultural
Project of Centre 42’ (175–214), Long quotes Arnold Wesker (1970, 118) and his
‘more spectacular and utopian’ intentions for the project of changing ‘the whole
cultural climate of this “dead behind the eyes” society’ (Wesker, 1960, 67). Coult’s
thesis is based on a detailed study of the archives of the Arts Council of Great
Britain at the V&A Theatre Collections, in relation to policy on young people
and the arts.
52. Coult, 2014, 113.
53. Harris later ran The Combination at the Albany in Deptford, before playing a
vital role in directing the NT’s Education department as its Head from 1990 to
2007.
54. Coult, 2014, 109.
55. Ibid., 12.
56. 26 May–15 June 1996.
57. Interview by Susan Croft with Carran Waterfield on Zoom, 22 December 2020.
58. See Trowsdale, 231–47.
59. Oral History interview by Susan Croft with Albert Hunt, Unfinished Histories,
24 July 2009, http://www.unfinishedhistories.com/interviews/interviewees-f-k/
albert-hunt/.
60. Ibid.
61. Ibid.
62. Encore Theatre Magazine, co-founded by radical American critic, director and
playwright Charles Marowitz, was published between 1954 and 1965 and
became the influential forum for discussion of the renaissance of English
drama at the Royal Court, the Berliner Ensemble, Theatre Workshop and many
more.
63. Its genesis is discussed in detail in Leach, 114–18.
64. The dottiness of the work connects to a strong vein in much British alternative
performance, celebrating home-grown eccentricity, mined through the bizarre
enactments of John Bull Puncture Repair Kit, the weird rituals of Natural
Theatre or Forkbeard Fantasy, the street performances of Hesitate and
Demonstrate or the pranks and ‘environ-mentals’ of The Phantom Captain, inter
alia (see https://www.unfinishedhistories.com/history/companies/).
65. Arden, quoted in Itzin, 27.
66. Oral History interview by Susan Croft with Albert Hunt, Unfinished Histories,
24 July 2009, http://www.unfinishedhistories.com/interviews/interviewees-f-k/
albert-hunt/.

46
 Clive Barker and Alternative Theatre

67. John Fox, then a Librarian at the College, ran a project based on large-scale
puppets and went on with Sue Gill and Boris Howarth to form Welfare State
International: http://www.unfinishedhistories.com/history/companies/
welfare-state-international/.
68. Itzin, 65.
69. Oral History interview by Susan Croft with Albert Hunt, Unfinished Histories,
24 July 2009, http://www.unfinishedhistories.com/interviews/interviewees-f-k/
albert-hunt/.
70. Even Berman, easily the most cited influence across Unfinished Histories’ nearly
one hundred interviews, has received minimal acknowledgement in recent theatre
history and criticism, in part no doubt because he, though he disseminated
numerous models of community arts practice through the Inter-Action InPrint
arm, has thus far not published in depth on his Games Method.
71. William Martin, 1972, quoted on Unfinished Histories Contemporary Theatre
web page – http://www.unfinishedhistories.com/contemporary-theatre/. Thanks
to the excellent efforts of David Cleall, working with Sheila Martin,
Contemporary Theatre and Bill Martin have gained some degree of recognition
through the creation of these pages. http://www.unfinishedhistories.com/
history/individuals-2/bill-martin/.
72. RBC/CB Archive box 179.
73. Quoted on Unfinished Histories Contemporary Theatre page, http://www.
unfinishedhistories.com/contemporary-theatre/
74. Barker, 1978, 3.
75. By contrast NTQ is published by Cambridge University Press, clearly aimed at
an academic market, with no cover price given, and is now largely inaccessible
in its online versions to anyone outside the academy.
76. For information on Rough Theatre see http://www.unfinishedhistories.com/
history/companies/rough-theatre/.

Bibliography

Barker, C., ‘A Theatre for Social Reform’, Prompt Magazine 5, 1964, 24–6 (part of a
symposium with Charles Marowitz and Roland Muldoon).
Barker, C., ‘Northern Manoeuvres’, Gambit, 23:6, 1973, 33–40.
Barker, C., ‘The Dilemma of the Professional in University Drama’, Theatre
Quarterly, 4:16, November 1974–January 1975, 55–68.
Barker, C., ‘New Paths for Performance Research’, Theatre Quarterly, 8:30, Summer
1978, 3–7.
Barker, C., ‘Alternative Theatre / Political Theatre’, in G. Holderness (ed.), The Politics
of Theatre and Drama, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1991, 18–43.

47
Clive Barker and His Legacy

Barlow, P., Unfinished Histories interview with Susan Croft, 22 March 2012.
Barlow, P., interview with Susan Croft and Tony Coult, 5 June 2020 on Zoom.
Bassnett, S., Magdalena: International Women’s Experimental Theatre, Oxford: Berg
Publishers, 1989.
Berman, ED, ‘ “It takes a lot of work to break through; being second is easy”:
Inter- Action’, in H. Curtis and M. Sanderson (eds), The Unsung Sixties: Memoirs
of Social Innovation, London: Whiting and Birch, 2004.
Berman, ED, Unfinished Histories interview with Susan Croft, 4 December 2010
and 13 February 2011.
Brandwood, N., Victoria Wood: The Biography, London: Virgin Books, 2016
(originally published 2002).
Coult, T., Unfinished Histories interview with Susan Croft, April 2009.
Coult, T., ‘Constructive Work to Do’: The Challenge of the Young to the Arts Council
of Great Britain 1945–1994 (PhD Department of Film, Theatre & Television,
University of Reading, 2014).
Coult, T., interview with Susan Croft, 13 May 2020 on Zoom.
Croft, S., Re-Staging Revolutions: Alternative Theatre in Lambeth and Camden
1968–88, Unfinished Histories/Rose Bruford College, 2013.
Curtis, H. and Sanderson, M. (eds), The Unsung Sixties: Memoirs of Social
Innovation, London: Whiting and Birch, 2004.
Fry, C., The Way of Magdalena, Holstebro: The Open Page Publications, 2007.
Holderness, G (ed.), The Politics of Theatre and Drama, London: Palgrave
Macmillan, 1991.
Hunt, A., Hopes for Great Happenings: Alternatives in Education and Theatre,
London: Eyre Methuen, 1976.
Itzin, C., Stages in the Revolution: Political Theatre in Britain Since 1968, London:
Eyre Methuen, 1980.
Kelly, Jude, interview with Susan Croft, 13 July 2020 on Zoom.
Kift, R., ‘Through the Eye of a Camel: Two Interviews with Naftali Yavin’, Gambit,
23:6, 1973, 8–18.
Leach, R., Partners of the Imagination: The Lives, Art and Struggle of John Arden and
Margaretta D’Arcy, Beaworthy: Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2012.
Lee, H., Tom Stoppard, London: Faber & Faber, 2020.
Long, P., Only in the Common People: The Aesthetics of Class, Newcastle: Cambridge
Scholars Publishing, 2008.
Martin, W., ‘Theatre as Social Education’, Theatre Quarterly, 2:8, October–December
1972.
Mathews, S., From Agit-Prop to Free Space: The Architecture of Cedric Price, London:
Black Dog Publishing, 2007.
Morgan, F. (ed.), The Female Wits: Women Playwrights of the Restoration, London:
Virago Press, 1981.
Rees, J., Let’s Do It: The Authorised Biography of Victoria Wood, London: Trapeze,
2020.
Trowsdale, J., ‘Identity – Even if it is a Fantasy’: The Work of Carran Waterfield’, New
Theatre Quarterly, 13:51, August 1997.

48
 Clive Barker and Alternative Theatre

Tyson, A., interview with Susan Croft, 1 July 2020 on Zoom.

Waterfield, C., interview with Susan Croft, 22 December 2020 on Zoom.
Wesker, A., ‘Trade Unions and the Arts’, New Left Review, 5, September–October
1960.
Wesker, A., Fears of Fragmentation, London: Jonathan Cape, 1970. www.
unfinishedhistories.com

Abbreviations

ACGB 34 – Arts Council of Great Britain archive, V&A Theatre

Collections
RBC/CB – Clive Barker Archive at Rose Bruford College Special
Collections
TQ – Theatre Quarterly
UH – Unfinished Histories

49
50
CHAPTER 5
CLIVE BARKER AS TRIBAL SCRIBE:
MEMORY, EMBODIED KNOWLEDGE
AND THE POWER OF ANECDOTES
Nadine Holdsworth

Introduction

As someone who has researched and written about Joan Littlewood and
Theatre Workshop for a little over twenty years, I am profoundly aware of
the ramifications of Peggy Phelan’s famous assertion that the ontology of
performance is disappearance. I was born in 1969 and never saw any original
Theatre Workshop productions as they were performed and there are no
visual recordings available either. Instead, in order to access what I can of
Littlewood’s creative processes and how these translated into production,
I have had to piece together what Rebecca Schneider refers to as the
‘performance remains’. This endeavour has found me sitting in several
archives poring over items such as notebooks, programmes, design materials,
letters and production photographs. These moments in the archive have
been seductive and have lured me into feeling closer to the work I have been
keen to think and write about. Yet, Schneider presents an important challenge
when she writes: ‘If we consider performance as a process of disappearance,
of an ephemerality read as vanishment (versus material remains), are we
limiting ourselves to an understanding of performance predetermined by
our cultural habituation to the logic of the archive?’1
Alternatively, Schneider calls on researchers to access different ways of
knowing and modes of recuperating performance remains, particularly that
which is ‘housed in a body’.2 As such, Schneider elevates the importance of
memory, recollection and ways of transmitting these via such routes as oral
history, which, according to Della Pollock, ‘translates subjectively
remembered events into embodied memory acts, moving memory into re-
remembering’.3 For Daniela Salazar this kind of first-person testimony of
creative process, performance or the reactions of an audience, facilitates
access to that which cannot be recreated.4 Significantly, this approach offers
something markedly different from that housed by archival logic. ‘In

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Clive Barker and His Legacy

performance as memory, the pristine sameness of an “original”, so valued by

the archive, is rendered impossible – or, if you will, mythic’.5 It is mythic
because it is selective, idiosyncratic, partial and incomplete; it is reliant on
who is doing the telling as well as the assumed listener or reader. In this
sense, oral history might be best understood as a performance in itself. This
brings into play not only what is told in terms of information, but also how
it is told, where and for what reason. Certainly, the enactment of remembered
stories is contextually specific – there is a difference between sharing an
anecdote down the pub and committing it to published text.
In this chapter I am concerned with the memories housed in the body of
Clive Barker about his time working as a stage manager and actor with Joan
Littlewood and Theatre Workshop. Whereas Littlewood refused to set down
her method of working, her distinct ways of bringing a performance to
fruition, a number of those who worked with her, including Clive, have made
inroads into filling that gap, that void in the theatrical record. Clive has
acknowledged that ‘most of what took place is in the memories of those of us
who worked with her’ and my research and many others have been reliant on
how that experience of creative process has been variously translated into
embodied memory acts and written documents.6 By offering insights into his
time with Littlewood and Theatre Workshop, Clive emphasized how his
participation in this shadowy world was crucial in what he was able to tell. In
this regard, I am interested in thinking through how Clive might be understood
in relation to Jacky Bratton’s conception of the ‘tribal scribe’, ‘an historian who
has been personally involved in the story he tells’.7 In Bratton’s formulation
there is something important about gaining ‘a perspective that is usefully close
to the ground’.8 Writing about the Victorian critic Clement Scott, she identifies
how the scribal might be understood as both a method and a style:

Setting out to record his own times, he gives us a personal annal much
interrupted with excursions into favourite topics, and interspersed
with letters and extracts from and about others, especially actors, that
show his credentials as an historian by his possession of records and
personal links with the people about whom he writes, who know him
and are happy to help him in his history.9

Hence, the scribal approach produces the kind of historical knowledge that
exists beyond the orthodoxy of formal archival practices because the
information is embedded in a close affective relation to the events and
practice being recounted.

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 Clive Barker: Tribal Scribe

In particular, in what follows I explore the various ways that Clive’s highly
personal embodied knowledge of what it meant to make theatre with Theatre
Workshop was performed and communicated via conversations and writing
that relied heavily on anecdote. In this endeavour I am indebted to Bratton,
who has embraced anecdote as a rich tradition that substantiates and
embellishes more linear or narrative forms of knowledge formation. She
argues that ‘[t]he anecdote is not the same as “a story” because it claims to be
true, about real people, it occupies the same functional space as fiction, in that
it is intended to entertain, but its instructive dimension is more overt’.10 As
such, Bratton illuminates the significance of information that exists beyond
the merely factual and showcases how the different registers of theatrical
memoir, storytelling and anecdote offer alternative modes of evidence that
should be highly sought after by the historian, who is able to appreciate them
in their own right and to enmesh these modes within a complex network of
sources. As she observes, ‘such a record is a particular kind of primary source
for subsequent histories’ because it is open, unguarded and reflective.11

Clive Barker and me

Sifting through old documents in preparation for writing this, I came across
a draft of a paper on Joan Littlewood and Theatre Workshop that Clive
Barker sent me not long before he died. At the top of the first typed page is a
handwritten note: ‘My last piece. Over to you.’ It’s an extraordinary gesture of
baton-passing that acknowledges his work, his authorship, his last words on
the topic, but also that there is more to say, different perspectives to mine.
This hastily scribbled note serves as a marker of the generosity that had
come to characterize my relationship with Clive. I was going to say that our
connection began in 1995 when I sent an article about 7:84 England to New
Theatre Quarterly, but that’s not strictly true. Oddly enough, Clive had
interviewed me in the mid-1980s when I applied for a place to study theatre
at the University of Warwick where he worked from 1976 to 1993. I
remember the occasion very clearly, not least because whilst he indicated
that I would be offered a place, he advised me to go somewhere else where I
would have more opportunity to pursue practice. I took his advice, benefitting
from his counsel then, as I was to do many times over the subsequent years.
From 1995 until his death Clive became an informal mentor to me. We
exchanged letters, met up for pub lunches, our conversations peppered with
laughter and delightful diversions into his loves aside from theatre – his

53
Clive Barker and His Legacy

children, cricket, detective novels and pork pies. My last letter to Clive
included a photo of my son who was born two months before Clive died in
March 2005; he thanked me with a postcard that has an image of the Marx
Brothers on it. I still have that postcard pinned up in my office.
My relationship with Clive was rooted in shared personal interests, but it
also pivoted around his professional expertise and connections. In the
acknowledgements to my book Joan Littlewood’s Theatre I state my gratitude to
Clive for doing ‘a great deal to ease my path as a researcher’.12 This easing took
many forms. He gave great feedback on early pieces of writing when I was fresh
out of my PhD. He pushed me to be a better writer, to dig deeper, be bolder, to
always be mindful of the contemporary moment and relevance. Responding to
that first 7:84 England piece, he wrote ‘[t]he world it presumes as its raison d’être
has disappeared. And Blair is not Kinnock, which is a terrible thing to say, but
is nevertheless true’.13 When I was trying to gain access to the Theatre Workshop
archive carefully managed and guarded by Murray Melvin at the Theatre Royal
Stratford East, Clive wrote a letter vouching for me, which opened that door. I
had a nod of approval from a Theatre Workshop ‘insider’ and that was hugely
important. However, perhaps most importantly, I benefitted enormously from
our conversations when Clive shared insights, memories and anecdotes about
his time working with Joan Littlewood and her company. Through his repertoire
of anecdotes that captured indicative moments of working practice, attitudes
and turns of phrase, I was invited closer into the orbit of that mid-twentieth-
century world and that was invaluable.

I was there and so were you: establishing the

Theatre Workshop community

Clive was upfront about what it meant for him personally to be part of
building and being a participant in a theatrical community. In his piece ‘A
Brief History of Clive Barker’ he writes that ‘[a]ll my life has been a search
for a community . . . [t]his search has thrown me into two tribes. The first
was Theatre Workshop’, and subsequently he insists that ‘the dream of theatre
being a community, a family, dies hard’.14 In all his writings Clive is careful to
establish himself as a Theatre Workshop insider, one of the ‘slags’, ‘who were
called on to do everything and anything: bit parts, background, counterpoint,
texture, improvisations – you name it, we did it’.15 Bratton writes about how
the tribal scribe is adept at establishing themselves as part of a theatrical
community and how this, in turn, is part and parcel of securing that very

54
 Clive Barker: Tribal Scribe

community. As she explains, ‘Thus the recounting of anecdotes, which are

the building blocks of theatrical memoir and biography, may be understood
not simply as the vehicle of more or less dubious or provable facts, but as a
process of identity-formation that extends beyond individuals to the group
or community to which they belong.’16
The actor recalling moments of rehearsal, an interaction with fellow
professionals and what it means to perform in productions, is an active part
of ‘making the shared culture of the community’.17 Clive’s work is peppered
with references to his co-workers including Brian Murphy, Jean Newlove,
Shirley Dynevor, Richard Harris and James Booth. So, whilst the information
shared is through the lens that Clive constructs, it is always implied that it is
simultaneously about the group.
Also, putting anecdotes in the public domain offers up an invitation for
other participants to reciprocate and tell their version of events. It is
important to be clear that Clive’s contribution is not isolated and, indeed, is
in dialogue with the work of others that helps to confirm and authenticate
his recollections. In this regard it is useful to consider Della Pollock’s
introduction to Kelly Oliver’s insistence ‘that history cannot be held privately.
No one person “owns” a story. Any one story is embedded in layers of
remembering and storying’.18 Clive’s words and writings are part of an
intricate patchwork of contributions from many other Theatre Workshop
participants who have also had a vested interest in telling their bit of the
picture, their experience, encounter with and attachment to this same yet
different history as it relies on their field of vision and the particular moment
in which that vision was both enacted and remembered. ‘Performance –
whether we are talking about the everyday act of telling a story or the staged
reiteration of stories – is an especially charged, contingent, reflexive space of
encountering the complex web of our respective histories.’19
Moreover, Clive was not precious about closely guarding his role as an
interpreter of Littlewood’s creative process – far from it. In a letter to
Littlewood written in the aftermath of the death of Gerry Raffles, when she
was struggling to clarify what direction her life and work would take, Clive
urges her to consider writing the history of Theatre Workshop’s contribution
to the theatre landscape. At the time Clive had recently submitted his
manuscript for Theatre Games (1977) which he acknowledges ‘owes an
indescribable debt to you’, and in encouraging her to set down her ideas he
insists, ‘I can’t think of any book that would be more valuable to have’,
prompting him to offer his services as an amanuensis should she be tempted
to pursue the idea.20 Indeed, Clive urged Littlewood on more than one

55
Clive Barker and His Legacy

occasion to transcribe her approach to theatre so as to meaningfully capture

her method, her singular vision, in such a way that could be useful for future
theatre-makers. Interestingly, whilst Littlewood never took up this invitation,
Howard Goorney did, and The Theatre Workshop Story appeared in 1981. In
his preface Goorney thanks Clive for his ‘wise counsel’ and an introduction
to Eyre Methuen, which had published Theatre Games and in turn The
Theatre Workshop Story.21 As this indicates, Clive appreciated that there were
different perspectives and stories to tell from within the Theatre Workshop
community, to enrich the historical record about the immense contribution
made by this daring and highly influential company.

A culture and practice of rehearsal and performance:

notes from the ground

Clive’s work is particularly attuned to the nuances and complexities of the

rehearsal room. Writing about another celebrated director, Peter Brook, he
suggests that for all that his writings have been ‘inspiring for the reader’ they
do not ‘always give a clear inkling as to how Brook works in rehearsal’; for
this, he insists, ‘it is probably more valuable to refer to the testimony and
anecdotes of his actors’.22 In his conversations and writings Clive did just that
by detailing moments in rehearsal with Littlewood that he directly
experienced as an actor, or events that he observed in the rehearsal room
with others. His on-the-groundness is crucial in authenticating the veracity
of his telling even though, as explored above, this relies on what he chooses
to remember and recount as an indicative moment in the field of rehearsal.
As he put it, ‘[w]hat anyone sees and how they interpret it depends on
what attitudes they bring to the work and what resources they have to
contextualise it’.23
Clive arrived at the Theatre Royal Stratford East in 1955 following his
training as a stage manager at Bristol Old Vic. He’d written to Littlewood
following the advice of the designer John Blezard who thought the company
would be up his street. Once at the theatre he became one of many who
joined to do one thing, in his case stage manage, and became an actor too. As
he says, it was a company joke that if you wanted to join the Theatre
Workshop you should get a job as a cleaner or in the bar and wait for
Littlewood to put you on the stage, which is revealing about her antipathy
towards professionally trained actors.24 He debuted as the stage manager for
and took a small part as a messenger in Fuente Ovejuna by Lope de Vega and

56
 Clive Barker: Tribal Scribe

followed this up with a role as a military policeman in The Good Soldier

Schweik. Having left Theatre Workshop to pursue other work, his return to
play the Volunteer in The Hostage in 1958 provides a sobering lesson in the
importance of chance encounters. Littlewood had phoned Brian Murphy to
see if he was available, but because Clive was in the room when the call came
in, he was also offered a part. This re-introduction to the company was
followed by roles in other productions including Fings Ain’t Wot They Used
T’Be, The Dutch Courtesan and Oh What a Lovely War in subsequent years.
Interestingly, these productions involved many old-school Theatre
Workshop actors, including Howard Goorney and Avis Bunnage, but also a
new generation that incorporated the likes of Yootha Joyce, Stephen Cato
and Dudley Sutton. In fact, Clive is clear in situating himself as part of a key
transitional moment in the company’s trajectory when its culture and
practice began to shift considerably. The company had recently made the
transfer from an itinerant touring company predominately located in the
north of England to a static building base in London. This move had also
prompted a controversial change in identity, from an ensemble that engaged
in collective decision-making to a more recognizable management structure
with Gerry Raffles at the helm determined to instil commercial imperatives.
Littlewood maintained a tight grip on the artistic direction and aesthetic
concerns of the company, but as Clive described it there was a delicate
balance to be struck between the aesthetic and the commercial.
Of particular interest to Clive was the fact that he joined Theatre
Workshop just as the previous emphasis on training a close-knit ensemble
was abating. Clive recalls of this pivotal moment that ‘[q]uite a few of the old
touring company had left and been replaced by newcomers like myself, we
were largely ignorant of the past and unacquainted with Joan’s way of
working’.25 Indeed, through his anecdotes from the rehearsal room, he
captures a moment of schism when the old-school Theatre Workshop modus
operandi of rigorous training was placed under pressure by the dissolution
of the ensemble. Clive learned a great deal from participating in Newlove’s
Laban-based training sessions and was eventually appointed to lead some of
the warm-up classes, although he recalls profound concerns about how little
he knew and feeling out of his depth. He responded to this feeling of lack by
introducing games from his childhood and he documents how ‘[p]eople
began moving, so something was being achieved, however rudimentary’.26
From these origins Clive began developing a culture of practice rooted in
the creative potential of games and exercises that became his forte as a
theatre-maker, workshop leader and educator.

57
Clive Barker and His Legacy

Gay McAuley describes the process of making in the rehearsal room as ‘the
time when the multiple material elements that will constitute a unique work
of art are progressively brought together’, but this is a period in the creative
process that is largely hidden from view.27 Hence, it is beneficial to theatre
scholarship to have Clive’s anecdotes from the front line to shine a light on
modes of working and the details of interactions that contributed to lauded
productions. Revealing that rehearsals for The Hostage entailed the actors
being regaled with stories and songs from a rumbustious Brendan Behan and
that when he left this continued with recordings of him ‘holding court and
developing a party atmosphere’ speaks volumes about the spirit with which
Littlewood was keen to infuse this production.28 Equally, he is not only able to
confirm that Littlewood brought background research and analysis to each
text, but also to reflect on how this was utilized and what impact it had on the
ground. What comes across with startling clarity is her commitment to play
and exploration with her actors through games and improvisation to find the
rhythm, tone and texture of a production. There is a sense of her inching
forwards by probing the text, character and action or through exhausting
repetition to find the most effective intonation for a single line. In Theatre
Games he describes this as her slamming all the wrong doors in the actors’
faces until they were forced to come up with ‘a fresh, imaginative, and authentic
response to the stimuli provided by the situation and by the other actors’.29
Invested in the multifaceted richness of the whole stage space and all the
actors within it, Clive particularly stresses Littlewood’s exploration of
counterpoint:

Actors were made aware of what they brought on stage with them.
Where the text made the given circumstances, the intention and the
emotional mood quite clear, actors were asked to complement, or even
contradict, this with other information. There was a constant use of
other actors to offer, through their attitudes and movement, alternative
views and interpretations of the main action. The stage became peopled
with characters, each with a distinct, coherent and continuous life of
their own, replete with values, hopes, ambitions, fears and judgements.30

In contrast to directors who work out their approach and blocking in

advance of the actors coming together, Clive positions Littlewood
collaboratively excavating all possibilities in rehearsal and changing her
mind until the last possible moment. As he writes, ‘to have the nerve to leave
things that late rests on the technical skill of the director to shape the

58
 Clive Barker: Tribal Scribe

production quickly – to nurse the production patiently as long as possible’.31

Moreover, whilst there is palpable respect for what Littlewood was able to
achieve through this mode of working, there is also recognition that this
process of deferral could be profoundly uncomfortable for actors less
accustomed to this unusual approach. Through Clive we also learn that one
of the consequences of this method of working was that the actor’s task of
learning lines was largely dispensed with as they were acquired collectively
during rehearsal, prompting the anecdote told to him by the actor Brian
Murphy: ‘he was thrown into a panic when he left Theatre Workshop and
went to work in repertory. He realised he would have to learn lines in
isolation, which he had never done before’.32
Clive’s anecdotes also recalled and put into the public domain the numerous
tactics Littlewood pursued to unsettle her actors, to destabilize any recourse to
dreaded cosiness or falling back on prior successes. He quotes her saying, ‘If
you go out to succeed you will never do it. You will always fail. If you go out to
fail you might be creative’.33 Clive offers a fascinating insight into how he
translated these words from Littlewood into an understanding of what they
meant not only for an actor, but the audience too, writing: ‘To go out and have
the confidence of failing means that the centre of gravity is lowered and the
flow of energy is gathered and focused. The audience is drawn into the action
and there is a relaxed flow of communication to and fro’.34 He recalls that there
was no dress rehearsal for An Italian Straw Hat; instead the company played
the show in reverse so that they ended ready to start the show, a break with
convention that speaks volumes of Littlewood’s desire to keep things in play, to
unsettle her actors so that they remained alert and attentive to the demands of
the whole show. He offers snapshots of how she would pit actor against actor if
she thought any complacency had crept into their interactions on stage. He
recollects the impact of her infamous notes for actors that kept on coming
during a run of a performance – a reminder that individual performances and
productions are never fixed objects for regurgitation, but live entities that have
to be kept on their toes. This was an approach crystallized in an anecdote about
being sent a postcard from ‘the South of France telling me she couldn’t hear
one of my lines in the performance before she left England’.35

Anecdote and myth-making

Importantly, whilst Clive was always hugely respectful of Littlewood’s

theatrical knowledge, skill and craft as a director, he presents no hagiography.

59
Clive Barker and His Legacy

Through Clive there is a glimpse of the flaws, the many flaws that stemmed
from her character and resulted in a raft of poor behaviour. Specifically,
Clive laments how Littlewood diminished the contributions made by others
and her treatment of those who left the Theatre Workshop fold, which
included her refusal to positively acknowledge their subsequent
achievements. As well as piercing the potentially romantic bubble that can
evolve around significant figures, in turn, this gives the reader a double
insight. Yes, there is a recounting of the rehearsal processes staged by
Littlewood, but also of how she made people feel, and that is an immensely
valuable insight to share. For instance, whilst there is no doubting Clive’s
appreciation of the quality of the work she produced, he admits that working
with her ‘was never comfortable and often deeply miserable’.36 Through
Clive’s documentation of their encounters and those he witnessed, the
outsider gets a sense of her irascibility, her discomfort with ease, a disposition
that urged her to provoke and court animosity. In an anecdote repeated in
conversation as well as across several of his written pieces, Clive recalls a
moment when he arrived for a rehearsal during the run-up to the staging of
The Hostage. He happened to be in a particularly cheery mood but upon
issuing a breezy ‘Morning, Joan’ was knocked back with a glare and a
withering assessment that ‘You’re nothing but a fucking broomstick with
fucking bananas for fucking fingers’.37 The response is ridiculous, humorous
even with the benefit of distance, but Clive is clear that this and many other
instances were about knocking people off their perch, about keeping them
on their toes and wary – a state of heightened unease that Littlewood
adamantly attributed to a more switched-on creative impulse. Clive’s
anecdotes also reveal a keen and wicked sense of humour that comes across
in the words that he attributes to Littlewood, but also in his willingness to
recall them for the delight they bring, even when depicting him in a less
than favourable light. My favourite of these entail Littlewood saying to
Clive that he ‘could do three things, menace, catatonic collapse . . . and
I’ve forgotten what the third was’.38 So, even anecdotes like these, which
seemingly have nothing to reveal about theatre-making, are illuminating of
a particular state of being that animated creative process. Moreover, as
Bratton suggests, such anecdotes have a crucial role to play in the making of
myth and legend.
The social circulation and scrutiny of the minutiae of Littlewood’s
language and behaviour enhances the mythical stature built up around her
as a larger-than-life figure and a creative genius. In New Readings in Theatre
History, Bratton quotes Jonathan Bate claiming that ‘the representative

60
 Clive Barker: Tribal Scribe

anecdote, like the horoscope, is precisely a form of which the purpose is to

distil someone’s characteristic disposition, their “genius” ’.39 As such, the facts
of what is being presented are not important; it is more about what is being
selected, represented and highlighted, which builds orthodoxies. For
example, Murray Melvin’s description of Littlewood as ‘our Galileo, she
opened up new worlds for us’ joins Victor Spinetti’s insistence that ‘she was
our university’, which is then augmented by Clive’s description of her as ‘my
master’ and his recollection of Shirley Teague saying that working with
Littlewood and Theatre Workshop means ‘we are marked by the sign forever,
never to be allowed to escape its stigmata: no matter what else we may do in
life’.40 The veracity of these comments is neither here nor there – the
important dimension is the notion of being eternally defined and influenced
by their interactions with one human being. As such, these comments, their
repetition and distribution are part of the myth-making around the force
and power of Littlewood’s impact. Following conversations with Clive and
reading his work, one is left in no doubt that she was an incredibly difficult
woman to be around. One anecdote recalls how the playwright Shelagh
Delaney, having looked after Littlewood for three months after the death of
Raffles, her long-term life partner, asked Clive and his fellow Theatre
Workshop actor, Brian Murphy, ‘[h]owever did you put up with this woman
for so long?’ to which they responded ‘masochism’.41
Yet the quality of the early work she produced and her larger-than-
lifeness prompted immense loyalty from those brought within her orbit.
Indeed, Clive was part of a group, alongside notable figures including Oscar
Lewenstein and Harry Corbett, who rallied following Raffles’s death and
were part of discussions about the future of Theatre Workshop and the
Theatre Royal. During this time Clive wrote to Joan making several
suggestions for ways forward, but importantly refused to pull any punches in
urging her to revisit the ethos, culture and practice underpinning the early
years of Theatre Workshop. He wrote:

I think ‘popular’ has been confused with ‘populist’ in recent years and
this is a mistake. The early basis on which TW worked, and to which
most of us were attracted, did not make theatre an easy experience, but
sought to take an approach to very difficult plays that would make
them both positive socially and accessible. Recently content and
discipline have been jettisoned and what set out as accessibility has
almost reached the point of insulting the audience’s intelligence. In
fact, I think it has been insulting.42

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Clive Barker and His Legacy

For Clive, the larger-than-life quality of Littlewood’s engagement with life

even infiltrated his response to her death. In his highly revealing piece
‘Closing Joan’s Book: Some Personal Footnotes’, he cannot countenance her
death, the expulsion of this extraordinary force of nature; instead he imagines
her as a ghostly spectre, ‘a frightening gargoyle’ watching his every move
with a beady eye, ready to pounce or launch into song. His knowledge and
intimate acquaintance prompt him to humorously question the manner of
her death as uncharacteristically low-key. As he puts it, ‘I could imagine
someone strangling her or pushing her under a bus, but to die quietly in her
sleep was totally at odds with the nature of the woman’.43 The legend and
myth-making are undeterred by death.

Tribal scribe as social barometer

Throughout all forms of communication Clive was mindful of how his

background and experience as a working-class Northerner defined his social
relations and interactions with the world. In a typically self-deprecating
turn, he begins ‘A Brief History of Clive Barker’ with ‘I was born in
Middlesbrough in 1931, and it’s been uphill all the way since then’.44 He
writes about how his time working at the Ministry of Pensions and National
Insurance in Middlesbrough at the age of sixteen gave him an insight
into the devastating impacts of extreme poverty and how this defined
his political affiliation. Moreover, he aligns himself with a post-war
generation bitterly disappointed by the failure to see through the possibility
of change and a more egalitarian society. This background and perspective
led him to have a particularly acute appreciation of Littlewood’s own
working-class background and how this translated into a political attitude
and purpose riven through her creative outputs. For instance, in The Theatre
Workshop Story Goorney quotes from oral history conducted with
Clive when he praises how ‘She constantly celebrated the resources of the
working people, their humour, their intelligence, their sharpness, their ability
to cope with enormous problems and dilemmas in life: above all, their ability
to survive. That’s political, but it arises out of Joan’s very deep love of
humanity.’45
As such, as Bratton argues about the Victorian ‘tribal scribe’ Clement
Scott, the stories he offers provide ‘a vision of the cultural space involved that
is more densely cross-hatched, inter-related and populated’.46 His engagement
with Theatre Workshop’s performance work is also about the conditions in

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 Clive Barker: Tribal Scribe

which it was created, and it is also revealing about social attitudes not only
around class, but gender and sexuality too. He offers glimpses into the
ramifications of the material conditions of Theatre Workshop’s existence
without any Arts Council funding to support their endeavours. With
minimal personal and company resources when he arrived at the Theatre
Royal in 1955, Clive slept in the theatre, as did others, and he provides
a particularly revealing anecdote about the strict rationing of toilet
paper distributed by the box office manager. This, I think, finds accord
with Bratton’s suggestion that ‘[t]here is firstly a kind of detail, more or
less minute, that is recorded entirely for its own sake, almost as if it were
produced out of a hat with a triumphant air of conclusive satisfaction’.47 It is
a well-known fact that Theatre Workshop lived a hand-to-mouth existence,
but this nugget cements the lived experience of this in a particularly
telling way.
Pinpointing how Littlewood made him experiment with performing
femininity on stage by dancing cancans and strutting on catwalks, Clive
acknowledged how this made him, as a young man ‘desperately unsure of my
masculinity’, feel profoundly uncomfortable, as he was the product of a time
when what was deemed appropriate gendered behaviour was deeply
ingrained.48 Being coerced to explore a spectrum of gendered responses in
the public realm of performance highlighted his insecurities around his
everyday performance of masculinity, in a society where homophobia was
underscored by legal jurisdiction given the illegality of same-sex relationships
at the time. In this regard, Clive repeats an anecdote several times about the
actor Peter Smallwood, who played the lead in Littlewood’s production of
Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II . In his retelling he notes how whilst the
performance he gave was astounding in its richness and subtlety, it took a
remarkable toll on the actor as Littlewood pushed him to ‘confront his latent
homosexuality, at a time when no great sympathy or tolerance could be
expected from society at large’.49 In this wording it is possible to detect Clive’s
unease with Littlewood’s ruthless exploitation of Smallwood’s sexuality as a
means of eliciting a truthful and edgy performance that achieved great
critical acclaim, but also an intense sadness that regressive and damaging
societal attitudes propelled Smallwood into a destabilizing personal crisis
that saw him retreat altogether from acting. Hence, this anecdote – drawn
from the network of relations built up around the Theatre Workshop
community, as Clive did not work with Theatre Workshop during this
production – tells a huge amount about the times, as well as the sympathy of
the teller for radical social change.

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Clive Barker and His Legacy

Conclusion

Clive’s impact has been felt across a complex matrix of actor training courses,
university classes, adult education, teacher associations, professional practice
and the international theatre workshop circuit. As Baz Kershaw stated in his
obituary:

No one else of his generation travelled the extraordinary distance

from a conventional stage management course to become a world
leader in actor training workshops, as well as an editor and scholar of
distinction. He was a pioneer in bridging the uneasy divide between
professional theatre and its serious study in British universities.50

In choosing to focus on Clive’s contribution to theatre studies as a ‘tribal

scribe’ working with and through anecdote, I in no way want to undermine
the huge contribution that Kershaw articulates. Instead, I hope to have made
the case that Clive’s work and our understanding of the culture and practice
of Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop have uniquely benefitted from the
stories he has been able to tell, that have enriched and illuminated through
the particularities, the minutiae that anecdote facilitates and celebrates.

Notes

1. Schneider, 100.
2. Ibid., 101.
3. Pollock, 2.
4. Salazar, 25.
5. Schneider, 102.
6. Barker, 2003, 106.
7. Bratton, 2012, 5.
8. Ibid., 3.
9. Ibid., 5.
10. Bratton, 2003, 103.
11. Bratton, 2012, 5.
12. Holdsworth, x.
13. Letter from Clive Barker to the author, 10 October 1995.
14. Barker, 2007, 295, 298.

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 Clive Barker: Tribal Scribe

15. Barker, 2003, 107.

16. Bratton, 2003, 102.
17. Ibid., 106.
18. Pollock, 5.
19. Ibid., 1.
20. Letter from Clive Barker to Joan Littlewood, 20 July 1976, copy in possession
of the author.
21. Goorney, xii.
22. Barker, in Hodge, 113.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid., 121.
25. Barker, 2003, 99.
26. Ibid.
27. McAuley, 5.
28. Barker, in Hodge, 118.
29. Barker, 1977, 2.
30. Barker, in Hodge, 123.
31. Barker, 2003, 100.
32. Barker, in Hodge, 126 (footnote 20).
33. Barker, 2003, 102.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid., 103.
36. Ibid., 100.
37. Ibid., 102.
38. Barker, 2007, 299.
39. Bratton, 2003, 103.
40. Murray Melvin quoted in Arditti; Victor Spinetti speaking on Joan Littlewood:
Great Lives, BBC Radio 4, 2 January 2007; and Barker, 2003, 107.
41. Barker, 2003, 100.
42. Letter from Clive Barker to Joan Littlewood, 20 July 1976.
43. Barker, 2003, 99.
44. Barker, 2007, 295.
45. Goorney, 165.
46. Bratton, 2012, 8.
47. Bratton, 2003, 25.
48. Barker, 2003, 101.

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Clive Barker and His Legacy

49. Barker, in Hodge, 121.

50. Kershaw, 2005, online.

Bibliography

Arditti, M., ‘Joan Littlewood: Making a Scene’, Independent Magazine, 26 March

1994.
Barker, C., Theatre Games, London: Methuen, 1977.
Barker, C., ‘Joan Littlewood’, in A. Hodge (ed.), Twentieth Century Actor Training,
London: Routledge, 2000, 113–28.
Barker, C., ‘Closing Joan’s Book: Some Personal Footnotes’, New Theatre Quarterly,
19:2, May 2003, 99–107.
Barker, C., ‘A Brief History of Clive Barker’, New Theatre Quarterly, 23:4, November
2007, 295–303.
Bratton, J., New Readings in Theatre History, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2003.
Bratton, J., ‘Clement Scott, the Victorian Tribal Scribe’, Nineteenth Century Theatre
& Film, 36:1, 2012, 3–10.
Goorney, H., The Theatre Workshop Story, London: Eyre Methuen, 1981.
Hodge, A. (ed.), Twentieth Century Actor Training, London: Routledge, 2000, 113.
Holdsworth, N., Joan Littlewood’s Theatre, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2011.
Kershaw, B., ‘Innovative spirit at the heart of theatre studies’, The Guardian, 19. April
2005, available at https://www.theguardian.com/news/2005/apr/19/
guardianobituaries.artsobituaries.
McAuley, G, Not Magic but Work: An Ethnographic Account of a Rehearsal Process,
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012.
Pollock, D. (ed.), Remembering: Oral History Performance, New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2005.
Salazar, D., ‘Performance Arts and Their Memories’, in T. Sant (ed.), Documenting
Performance: The Context and Processes of Digital Curation and Archiving,
London: Bloomsbury, 2017, 19–28.
Sant, T. (ed.), Documenting Performance: The Context and Processes of Digital
Curation and Archiving, London: Bloomsbury, 2017.
Schneider, R., ‘Performance Remains’, Performance Research, 6:2, 2001.

66
CHAPTER 6
‘A NEW TEAM’: CLIVE BARKER
AND SHELAGH DELANEY’S
THE LION IN LOVE
Aleks Sierz

In 1960, at the age of twenty-nine, Clive Barker directed his first major play.
It was Shelagh Delaney’s follow-up to her much-praised debut, A Taste of
Honey, and it was called The Lion in Love. After opening on 5 September for
a two-week run at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry, the play toured briefly
and was finally staged at the Royal Court for a month from 29 December.
The Court’s programme gave a short biography of the director:

A Yorkshireman from Middlesborough [sic], he apprenticed himself

to the theatre in 1945, training as a stage manager at the Bristol Old
Vic School. Joined Theatre Workshop as stage manager and also played
in The Good Soldier Schweik. After a year as stage manager at the Arts
Theatre, went to Carlisle as stage director, designer and actor. Stage
managed for television’s ‘Cool for Cats’ then rejoined Theatre
Workshop to appear in ‘The Hostage.’1

With its note of mild irony, this sounds like Barker’s youthful voice.

Littlewood and Delaney

It was Barker’s work with Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop company at

the Theatre Royal Stratford East, where he was an assistant director to her
for two years as well as an actor, that brought him into contact with Delaney.
Her award-winning A Taste of Honey had been a big hit in May and June
1958 and was to transfer to London’s West End in February 1959. Delighted
by her success, Delaney wrote a second play for Littlewood. She was still
nineteen. Meanwhile, in early October 1958, Barker was rehearsing his role
in Brendan Behan’s The Hostage, a play beset with problems: on ‘the Saturday

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Clive Barker and His Legacy

before we were due to open, we still had no Act Three’, remembered

Littlewood in her autobiography, Joan’s Book.2 As she and Gerry Raffles, her
theatre manager and life partner, struggled to get Behan to complete his play,
‘a package’ containing The Lion in Love arrived from Delaney; Littlewood
read it ‘with growing disappointment. It had more characters, less appeal and
even less shape than Honey. She had learned nothing from the company’s
adaptation of her first work.’3 She wrote to Delaney advising her to ‘read a
good play, an Ibsen for example, then analyse it’ – ‘play-writing is a craft, not
just inspiration’.4 Delaney’s response was to say, ‘If you aren’t interested
enough in my play to sort out the good from the bad, and generally put me
right where I’ve gone wrong, then I may as well be working on it with people
who think that there is enough stuff there to be doing something with.’5
Littlewood decided that the young writer ‘would have to cool her heels for a
bit’.6 This cooling-off period lasted for more than a year.
In early 1960 Delaney wrote once more to Littlewood, complaining that
her previous letters had been ‘ignored’, saying that Raffles’s attitude to her
during a phone conversation was ‘arrogant, pompous, witless and ham-fisted’,
and that she wanted to know whether they would be staging her new play; if
Littlewood was not interested, she would work ‘with the people who think
there is enough stuff there to be doing something with’.7 On 25 February,
Littlewood wrote back, making some general points about her method of
play-making: ‘Whether it was Aristophanes, Molière, Shakespeare . . . or
Chekhov or Strindberg or any other dramatist worth their salt, only half their
work can be done alone, the rest must be done actively in co-operation with
the group of artists who are to bring that play to physical life.’8 She regretted
Delaney’s ‘sense of grievance and self-pity’, and called her new work a ‘good
deal of raw material’ which ‘may or may not produce a good play’.9 Although
she doesn’t talk about Lion in Love specifically, she does say that ‘you must
know that to work on somebody’s play as I did on “Honey” or “Hostage”, you
must love the authors very much. You must love and understand their work
more than you love yourself. It is a tremendously hard task to “form” a play;
without feeling very near to the author you cannot do it.’10 Evidently,
Littlewood no longer felt ‘very near’ to Delaney.

The Lion in Love

Delaney’s new play was both similar to and different from her debut. Clearly,
as critic John Russell Taylor said, ‘Its scope is much wider than that of the

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 ‘A New Team’: Clive Barker And Shelagh Delaney’s The Lion In Love

earlier play.’11 Set in an unnamed northern town, which could easily be

Delaney’s native Salford, the play is significantly more ambitious, featuring a
much larger cast. It concerns an unhappy married couple, Frank and Kit,
who stay together despite their mutual antagonism, and despite Kit’s
compulsive drinking and Frank’s unfaithfulness. By the end of the three-act
play, they reach a crisis: Frank, an impoverished street salesman, has to
decide whether to leave Kit in order to be with Nora, who has a market stall.
Things are complicated because Frank and Kit have two children: Banner, an
apparently successful ex-boxer newly returned from his travels, and Peg, a
feisty teenager. Like their parents, they also have to make a decision: in the
end, Banner decides to leave again, this time for Australia, while Peg decides
to marry Loll, an ebullient Glaswegian dress-designer whom she has just
met. Three more characters make a significant appearance: Jesse, Kit’s father
and the children’s grandfather; Nell, a casual sex worker; and Andy, a friend
of the family who is an unemployed circus performer and part-time pimp of
Nell. Andy and Nell plan to go into the entertainment business together, but,
typically, this idea falls through. Because some of the action takes place in
the street, there are also speaking parts for several local people.
The main theme, indicated by the inclusion of the Aesop fable called The
Lion in Love (number CIX) in both the programme and play text, is
unsuitable marriage. In the fable, the lion falls in love with a forester’s
daughter and allows her father to remove his teeth and claws as a condition
of marriage; after he does this, the forester kills him. The moral is that
‘Nothing can be more fatal to peace than the ill-assorted marriages into
which rash love may lead.’12 This applies not only to Frank, the play’s lion, but
also to Peg and Loll, and maybe even to Andy and Nell. Added to this,
Delaney wrote a short paragraph in which she emphasized the importance
of location. It begins ‘Most of us know what we want but how many of us
recognize it when we get it?’ and then describes the ‘restless city alive and
dying in the same breath’ of her play, a place that is ‘like a terrible drug – you
really want to get away from it and give it up but you can’t. So you stay.’13 This
also has a generational aspect, as Delaney knew from her own experience. As
H. Gustav Klaus puts it, ‘The younger people quit the milieu and seek their
fortunes elsewhere, whereas those who have reached “the chaos of middle
age” remain ineluctably stuck.’14 As well as being naturalistic, the play has
some quietly dreamlike moments, reminders of the nursery rhymes of A
Taste of Honey, such as the improvised adult fairy story that Peg tells at the
end of Act Two (84–5) and Jesse’s song ‘Winter’s coming in, my lass’ in Act
Three (104).

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Clive Barker and His Legacy

A New Team

With her one-time mentor, Littlewood, uninterested in her play, Delaney

had to find another director and another producer. She used her connections
with Theatre Workshop, where her friend, Una Collins, an actor, costume
and set designer who had contributed to A Taste of Honey and Luigi
Pirandello’s Man, Beast and Virtue (Theatre Royal Stratford East, 1958) had
also worked. In the different programmes of the play’s regional tour, Barker
and Collins are featured under the heading: ‘A New Team’. The programme
note reads: ‘The career paths of Shelagh Delaney, director Clive Barker and
designer Una Collins, met at Theatre Workshop. Here they found and
developed ideas they hold in common. The Lion in Love gives them the
opportunity to put these ideas into practice as the first team to emerge as an
independent creative force from the Theatre Workshop background.’15 This
professional friendship group gave Barker his chance of directing a high-
profile show.
But the ‘New Team’ still needed a producer and a theatre. The former
came in the shape of Wolf Mankowitz, who had had his play Make Me an
Offer successfully staged at Stratford East and the West End at the end of
1959. Born in the East End of London, Mankowitz was the writer, with Julian
More, of the book of the satirical musical Expresso Bongo in 1958. A film
version, starring Cliff Richard, was the next step soon after, and Mankowitz,
together with his partner Oscar Lewenstein, a producer who was closely
connected with the Royal Court, the new writing rival to Littlewood’s
theatre, had taken A Taste of Honey into the West End.16 These successes gave
Mankowitz the confidence to raise money for The Lion in Love, his first
venture as an independent producer. Having secured the rights of the play
and Delaney’s next one, Mankowitz gave Barker a contract that offered a fee
of £100 plus royalties, with a guarantee of at least £200, stipulating that
Barker had to ‘visit the play at least once in every 16 performances’.17 The
contract mentions the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry as a possible venue.
During the summer of 1960 the Belgrade was in trouble: the venue’s
founding artistic director, since 1957, was Bryan Bailey, who had championed
Arnold Wesker’s work, including his trilogy, the first of which, Chicken Soup
with Barley, premiered there in 1958. But, in March 1960, while the final play
in the trilogy, I’m Talking about Jerusalem, was in rehearsal at the Belgrade,
Bailey had to drive down to Theatre Royal Stratford East for his production
of John Wiles’s Never Had It So Good, co-directed with Richard Martin. On
his way, he was killed in a motorway accident. He was just thirty-eight.

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 ‘A New Team’: Clive Barker And Shelagh Delaney’s The Lion In Love

Although Bailey was soon succeeded by Anthony Richardson, the venue was
still in a state of shock. Nevertheless, Delaney’s play was scheduled for a
short run in September.
For Barker, these kinds of cooperative relationships between broadly left-
leaning individuals and their theatres offered him a chance to advance his
career. But this left-wing nexus, a friendship group based on shared political
and theatrical ideals, was not without its problems. Mankowitz was suspected
by the security services of being a Communist agent because his wife Ann
was a Communist Party member and the couple had voiced Marxist ideas,
although he had opposed the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956.18 And
Theatre Workshop was starved of state subsidy precisely because of
Littlewood’s left-wing political views, a reminder of the deep prejudices of
the Cold War era.

Auditions and rehearsals

When the Belgrade’s Richardson accepted the play, the summer of 1960
became busy for the ‘New Team’. Auditions for Lion in Love began in July,
with Barker, Mankowitz and Delaney seeing young actors such as Terence
Stamp, Sean Connery and ‘Oliver Read [sic]’.19 On 29 July it was announced
that the play would be staged first at the Belgrade Theatre for two weeks and
then go on a short regional tour to Liverpool and Manchester. The Salford
City Reporter heard that it was ‘darkly hinted that Miss L[ittlewood] thought
it “too bourgeois” ’ to produce the play.20 In Coventry, local newspapers also
expressed an interest. Vanda Godsell was named as the star, playing the key
role of Kit. As the Coventry Evening Telegraph reported, ‘There is a taste of
Theatre Workshop about the production’, because of the involvement of
Barker, Collins and actors Howard Goorney and Diana Coupland. Coupland
was of particular interest locally because she had made her debut as a singer
in Ferdinand the Matador at the Belgrade in 1958, and her husband, composer
Monty Norman, created the music for The Lion in Love.21 Norman, of course,
was an East Ender and the composer of Expresso Bongo, a project which had
also involved Mankowitz.
The new production also caused a national stir. A Daily Mail newspaper
report from the summer of 1960, headlined ‘The Sagan of Salford . . . Still
Waiting for a Real Taste of Money’, featured an interview with Delaney when
she was attending rehearsals, which began on 8 August, at the Bloomsbury
YMCA in London. She is described as wearing ‘long sloppy jerseys which

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Clive Barker and His Legacy

Figure 4 Flyer for the regional tour of The Lion in Love, Hippodrome Theatre,
Birmingham (1960). Editor’s collection

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 ‘A New Team’: Clive Barker And Shelagh Delaney’s The Lion In Love

make her look taller than her lanky 5ft 11¾ in’ and the article mentions in
passing that she sometimes stays ‘at the home of Clive Barker (he is producing
[directing] the play) and his wife [Josephine]’ at 19A Oakley Square, off
Camden Street, north London – she says, ‘I don’t fancy living on my own.’22
In late August, Mankowitz saw a run-through of the play and wrote to Barker
and Delaney recommending significant changes to Act Two. ‘I always felt
that there were passages of irresolution in the writing.’23 He suggested giving
Kit a bigger role. It was a good point, but Barker and Delaney ignored this
advice.

Barker directs

What was Barker’s approach to the play? Although no records exist of his
rehearsal process, it is surely likely that he brought his experiences of
Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop to this new show. Looking back, many years
later, he talked to Theatre Workshop colleague Goorney about the importance
of Littlewood’s working-class background: ‘She constantly celebrated the
resources of the working people, their humour, their intelligence, their
sharpness, their ability to cope with enormous problems and dilemmas in
life.’24 Something of the same empathy must have influenced Barker’s work
on The Lion in Love. He saw Littlewood’s production ‘style’ as not forming
‘pretty pictures on the stage’, but rather as creating ‘a live dialogue’, ‘how the
actor communicated with the audience’.25 This might involve elements of
music hall and also ‘moments of intense realism’, but although she ‘used to
stir up trouble between actors’, keeping everybody insecure and dependent
on her, there is no evidence that he imitated this style of directorial control.26
Still, the ‘quality she put on stage was of living life to the full’, and this
comment could also apply to Delaney’s second play.27
Having originally been ‘confused’ by Littlewood’s technique of extensive
improvisation, Barker probably now embraced it.28 In his seminal book on
theatre games, he gives some insight not only into those early years of
working at Theatre Workshop, but also into his general approach to creating
a show. For example, he states, ‘One cannot teach “acting”. One can only
create situations in which the actor can learn and develop.’29 While working
on The Hostage, he was given the job of leading a session devoted to
movement work and discovered that he was too inexperienced to do this
well. So he ‘went back to the one physical area of training that was enjoyable
– the warm-up games and exercises’.30 In these situations, some company

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Clive Barker and His Legacy

members could do the warm-up exercises and some could not, so the
participants were split between ‘movers and non-movers’.31 It is probable,
surely, that Barker used some of these techniques with The Lion in Love
company. Having learned from Littlewood’s practice of the ‘via negativa’, and
suffered its humiliations, he probably took a more positive approach.32 After
all, he had learned the hard way that it was better for an actor ‘to let something
happen’ on stage rather than forcing it.33 Judging by the reviews of the show,
Barker did succeed in creating a stage atmosphere that was realistic and
coherent. Clearly, he was well on his way to believing that the acting ensemble
‘is the theatre’s greatest strength’ and that the role of the director is to ‘take
the pressure off the actor and allow him [sic] to work freely’.34
Barker’s desire to have a unified ensemble of Littlewood stalwarts who
would gel naturally on stage did suffer from two problems. One was cast
changes: when the play transferred from the Belgrade to London two of the
actors were replaced: Patricia Burke, a friend of Delaney and a Royal Court
actor and radio star (she played Jimmy Clitheroe’s mother in the BBC’s The
Clitheroe Kid) replaced Vanda Godsell as Kit, and Renny Lister replaced
Sheila Allen as Nell. So both the actors playing the women in Frank’s life
changed. It’s unclear how these changes affected the sense of a coherent
ensemble. Added to this, there was a further problem: Barker must have
made an early decision not to insist that all the actors had the same northern
accent. In this he was going against something that Theatre Workshop had
pioneered: the use of regional accents. For example, when Raffles wrote to
critic Harold Hobson about A Taste of Honey he could admit: ‘I never
believed that Manchester speech could be an essential part of a work of art,
but she [Delaney] has succeeded in making it one.’35 In the reviews it is clear
that in The Lion in Love the actors spoke with their own accents and this was
seen as unrealistic. For example, critic John Russell Taylor noted that Patricia
Burke’s Kit was ‘emotionally dead on centre, and yet somehow she failed to
come over from the stage as a living character simply because the actress’s
accent was wrong’.36 As Barker argues in Theatre Games, the actor is not
‘simply the mouthpiece for the dramatist’s words’ but ‘is the theatre’.37 For
this reason, the tyro director might have thought that his cast should keep
their own linguistic identities, because these were truer to themselves. He
soon became an advocate of real-life speech, gradually discovering ‘that
there is a great deal more dynamic physical movement (and use of musical
range) in everyday speech than ever seems to find its way on to the stage’.38
Given that Littlewood had undermined his confidence to the extent that
‘words terrified’ him, The Lion in Love can be seen as a process of

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 ‘A New Team’: Clive Barker And Shelagh Delaney’s The Lion In Love

experimentation with how to make speech seem natural on stage.39 Barker

also used composer Norman, Mankowitz’s trusted collaborator, to replicate
what one biographer calls ‘the rollicking atmosphere of a Joan Littlewood
production’, with his ‘Delaney’s Theme’ played ‘in many different styles and
rhythms, sometimes as a tango, sometimes as a waltz, a march or a cha-cha-
cha’.40

The Lord Chamberlain

The play also ran into some trouble with the Lord Chamberlain. Mankowitz’s
company manager, Ben O’Mahony, applied for a licence to stage it and on 24
August, C. D. Heriot, the Lord Chamberlain’s reader, required changes to the
use of the word ‘bugger’ and the exclamation ‘by Jesus’.41 He was unimpressed
by the play: ‘It has no shape, no movement, no drama and only a kind of wry
sentimentality’, and put his blue-pencil crosses in two places: once in Act
Two, when Nora says, ‘These’ll keep the breezes from blowing round some
bugger’s bottom.’42 The second cross was against ‘It’s a bugger of a life by
Jesus!’43 The word ‘bugger’ was simply not allowed. After revisions were
submitted during rehearsals, Heriot noted that ‘the Teddy Boy [Loll] is now
made to come from Glasgow – I suppose to add a little variety to the accents’
and ‘the two “buggers” have been altered to “bastard”.’44 This was on 2
September with the play due to open on 5 September, so after a last-minute
phone call, the licence was issued. Meanwhile, it was time to publicize the
show.

At the Belgrade Theatre

At a Belgrade Theatre press conference, a few days before the opening night
of 5 September 1960, ‘Delaney was quiet, almost lifeless’, and Mankowitz
did most of the talking: he said he chose the Belgrade because it offered ‘a
first-class theatre for a group to work in’, underlining Barker’s ensemble
approach.45 But the ensemble approach of the ‘New Team’ was not universally
admired and the play got mixed reviews. According to a short piece in the
Manchester Guardian, Mankowitz refused to allow critics from the national
papers to review the show until its second week, although he did not go as
far as he might have: it had become ‘the practice’ for ‘national newspapers to
wait until a new play reaches London before taking official notice of it’.46 This

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Clive Barker and His Legacy

meant that local critics got priority. Coventry’s newspaper praised much of
the acting and the fact that Barker ‘has given the piece lively and varied pace’,
although ‘he should, however, remember his sightlines’.47 The Birmingham
Post said that Barker put ‘great emphasis, rightly, on the laughs’, but that most
of the actors had different accents, with Goorney ‘more at home in Brixton’
than Salford, and Godsell ‘would never have been recognized north of
Islington’.48 Likewise, The Stage’s critic commentated that Barker and his cast
overestimated the Belgrade’s ‘possibly “too-perfect” acoustics’ because ‘it was
disturbing for the audience at the first night to miss the first twenty minutes
or so because the dialogue was seldom directed towards them’.49 Hugh
Stewart, a BBC drama producer, noted that the ‘applause at the last curtain
was less than half-hearted’.50 In the second week, reviews in the national
newspapers were notably tougher. Gareth Lloyd Evans of the Manchester
Guardian, for example, complained that ‘nothing happens’ and although ‘the
dialogue is idiomatically hot and sharp as cinders’, ‘the setting by Una Collins
is untidy without being convincing, with an ill-painted backcloth fronted by
a half-and-half composite interior/exterior set’.51
After the play finished at the Belgrade it went on tour, and during its short
run at the Palace Theatre, Manchester, in September, Delaney was interviewed
by the Manchester Guardian, saying that she got ‘some consolation’ for bad
reviews in Coventry because the play had attracted a young audience.52 But
reviews continued to be negative: Manchester’s local critic called the play ‘a
sprawling, shapeless creation’, while admitting that it ‘is pushed along at a
vigorous pace as a result of some intelligent direction by Clive Barker’.53 At
the Bristol Hippodrome, the local critic wrote: ‘The play is directed by Clive
Barker (who was trained at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School) in an appropriately
dismal and tawdry setting by Una Collins, another ex-trainee from the same
school.’54 During the Belgrade staging and tour, further rewrites were made
to the play text, with the Lord Chamberlain agreeing to changes four times
in September.
Poor press did have an effect on the show, despite all the media interest
aroused by Delaney, still famous because of her hit debut. On 29 September,
Mankowitz wrote to Barker, despairing because he couldn’t get any West End
theatre to take her new play. ‘I’m very sorry indeed that I have been unable to
make a deal for a London theatre for the show.’55 In an interview with the
Salford City Reporter on 21 October, Mankowitz stated that he ‘lost money on
tour’.56 Help came from an unexpected quarter: John Osborne, key playwright
at the Royal Court, Littlewood’s rival venue for cutting-edge drama, saw the
show in Bristol and George Devine, director of The English Stage Company

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 ‘A New Team’: Clive Barker And Shelagh Delaney’s The Lion In Love

at The Royal Court, brought it to London, arguing that this was ‘an act of
artistic faith in Delaney’s talent’.57 Not everyone agreed. According to critic
David Nathan, who was unimpressed by the show in Coventry, the play had
been ‘all set to die a quiet death’ before ‘on to the scene strode St George John
Osborne slaying the dragon critic’.58 As the Sunday Dispatch commented,
‘Osborne meant it kindly, but he did 22-year-old Shelagh Delaney – as well as
audiences – a disservice by encouraging her second play into London’.59

At the Royal Court

The English Stage Company at the Royal Court paid Barker £60 to re-direct
the show, which started rehearsals in London on 28 November 1960 with
two cast changes and an extra scene between Frank and Nora added to Act
Three (97–100).60 Other accounts also had to be settled. Three days before
rehearsals began, Barker wrote to Mankowitz asking for his arrears of £43-
1s-5d on his contract to be paid.61 By the time her play opened at the Royal
Court on 29 December, Delaney – according to the anonymous critic of The
Times – had ‘revised some of the dialogue and added a scene designed to
strengthen the last act’, but ‘it cannot be said that these improvements make
much difference’.62 Because of these changes, a new licence from the Lord
Chamberlain’s Office was applied for on 6 December. In the process of
revision, Delaney was deliberately provocative, adding bad language rather
than toning it down. Heriot’s report on 19 December was scathing: ‘This
lamentable play was re-read [meaning re-written] in an attempt to bring it
up to West End standard, but it died before it could get there’; ‘Now, in a
desperate attempt to inject new life into an old corpse, the author (and, I
suspect, the producer [Barker]) have attempted to restore all the bad
language and broaden what was already broad’.63 For his part, Barker noted
that ‘His Lordship will not allow the word “bugger” in the script’ and listed
five instances of changes to the text.64 These included cuts such as Andy’s
suggestive description of how he looks after Nell, ‘And every morning and
every night I make sure she’s in good working order’ (27), and Kit’s earthy
assertion about Frank: ‘Just because Nora thinks the sun shines out of your
backside’, amended in the published play text to ‘thinks you’re a tin god’ (95).
His Lordship also censored the phrases ‘You dozey buggers’, ‘I’ve been a bit of
a bugger’, ‘Good suffering Jesus’ and of course the last line, ‘It’s a bugger of
a life, by Jesus’, which had originally been cut, but which Delaney had
provocatively restored.65 The censor preferred the word ‘bastard’.

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Clive Barker and His Legacy

This time, however, Barker was unwilling to accept these changes without
a fight. On 20 December he typed a long letter to the Lord Chamberlain,
arguing in favour of Delaney’s original text. In particular, he defended the
repeated use of the word ‘bugger’, pointing out that it was commonly used in
the north of England ‘in a totally different manner from it’s [sic] literal
meaning. In most working class homes it is used as a term of grudging
affection.’66 For evidence, he drew on his own life. ‘In my own home, the term
“it’s a bugger” was freely used between parents and children’, who would
never dare say ‘bastard’ for example.67 Barker especially defended the use of
‘bugger’ in Delaney’s final line, pointing out that the censor’s alternative
of ‘bastard’ ‘is an offensive term and rings false’: ‘It is too vicious and bitter
to convey the meaning Miss Delaney requires.’68 He stated too that at the
end of the play, Kit ‘is under considerable emotional strain’, and that
alternatives to the forbidden word were either ‘too vicious or too insipid’;
finally, he reported that ‘a well-meaning attempt’ to substitute ‘It’s a begger
[sic] of a life’ during some performances earned nothing but scorn from
‘the press and the public’, singling out the Manchester Guardian’s Gareth
Lloyd Evans as being particularly critical.69 But it was no use – the Lord
Chamberlain was unmoved. In the margin of Barker’s letter, Heriot wrote
one word: ‘NO.’70
Mankowitz, Barker and Delaney had cut things rather fine by contesting
the changes demanded by the Lord Chamberlain, and the new licence was
issued on 29 December, the day of the play’s London opening. In fact, Pieter
Rogers, the Royal Court’s general manager, agreed to the cuts at the very last
minute and on 29 December offered to send someone from the theatre to
collect the licence as soon as it was ready. Delaney was angry about the cuts,
and included a small leaflet in the Royal Court programme, which stated her
regret that audiences ‘will not have the opportunity of hearing all the script
of the play as originally written’ because ‘certain important passages have
had to be altered’, and although admittedly mainly trivial she felt that ‘the
alterations to her script necessitated particularly by the removal of a word
which is a current North Country expression [bugger] weaken the impact’ of
the dialogues.71 She was especially incensed by the change to the play’s final
line. Clearly, both Delaney and Barker felt that the Lord Chamberlain did
not understand northern idioms and that the flavour of some of the dialogues
had been weakened. The issue certainly rankled with the playwright and,
during the play’s run, Delaney was featured in an article in the Sunday
Dispatch entitled ‘HYPOCRISY’. In this interview she is described as ‘hot on
hypocrisy’, the ‘national sport of the English’.72 Arguing that ‘everyone’ knows

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 ‘A New Team’: Clive Barker And Shelagh Delaney’s The Lion In Love

what ‘four-letter words’ mean, and that they are ‘good, honest words’, she asks
rhetorically, ‘Why do people try to pretend that when they are put in print
they become pornographic!’73 She says that ‘The Lord Chamberlain spoiled
the end by censoring a word I used in the line’, a word that to northern ears
is ‘almost a term of endearment’, and made her substitute ‘bastard’, ‘a much
harsher word’.74 She then pours scorn on an incident when she and other
members of the company were excluded from a West End restaurant because
they were scruffily dressed, and ends up by criticizing the H-bomb, marriage,
established religion, social conventions and snobbery. She comes across as
an Angry Young Woman.
Given the critical response to her play at the Court, you can see why. The
litany, by now familiar, was that it had no drama and no story. W. A.
Darlington said that ‘it is verbose and dreary’ and a Times critic opined: ‘The
play does not so much end as come to a stop.’75 Still, some of the major critics
were more appreciative. Harold Hobson of the Sunday Times said that nearly
all the time the play ‘sings; it is lyrical’; although he does not mention Barker,
he admired the acting: Peg’s Act Two fairy story is ‘told with a sustained and
quiet rapture by Patricia Healey, and listened to with a meditative seriousness
by Howard Goorney’.76 Despite the intervention of the Lord Chamberlain,
the last line, delivered by Patricia Burke, is ‘excellent’; she ‘expresses in it the
meaning of the whole play, which is that life isn’t at all bad’.77 The only critic
to quote the last line was Peter Lewis in the Daily Mail, who said the show
‘lacks a plot, a development, and a climax’, but its revised last line was
perfectly effective: ‘Ee, life can be a bastard, can’t it?’78
Hobson’s rival, Kenneth Tynan, also praised the work’s authenticity in its
portrayal of the urban poor, ‘especially the girls, sceptical and self-reliant’, but
pointed out that ‘one cannot distinguish between lines that are intended to
sound banal, and lines that are banal by accident’; he also praised Barker
‘whose use of music to enhance exits and entrances lends to the play a helpful
tang of lyricism’.79 Bernard Levin of the Daily Express praised Delaney’s
‘accomplishment as a playwright’ but condemned the play as ‘a shockingly
bad production, clumsy and stiff, [which however] cannot conceal some
excellent acting’.80 The last lines of his review – ‘Miss Delaney can have any
prize on the stall’ – were quoted in the published play text. The Manchester
Guardian said that while Littlewood directed A Taste of Honey ‘with extreme
gusto and bounce’ Barker’s effort was ‘limp and uncertain’.81 Tom Milne of the
New Left Review thought Delaney was an English Chekhov.82
At the Court, The Lion in Love, remembered John Osborne, played
to ‘poor houses’, about 40 per cent capacity, and when he attended ESC

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Clive Barker and His Legacy

chairman Neville Blond’s annual lunch for critics at the Savoy during January
1961 he was ‘feeling especially spiky because of the obtusely vicious reception’
given to it by the press; ‘It was a classic example of a second play being
demolished on the grounds of feigned admiration for a first play’s privately
resented success’.83 In the end, however, the Court production earned a box
office income of £3,049, more than twice the production costs, and, in
defiance of what is usually perceived as a solely adversarial relationship,
Rogers of the Court wrote to the Lord Chamberlain on 2 January 1961,
thanking him for his help in expediting the licence.84

Afterlife of the New Team

The ‘New Team’ which had staged Delaney’s second play then embarked on
a more ambitious plan: to create the Clive Barker Community Theatre in
Salford, Delaney’s home town. In February 1961 it was reported that Barker
and Delaney ‘and a friend of hers, Una Collins’ were thinking of taking over
the disused Salford Hippodrome and creating a community theatre. Barker
took the lead, describing the venue as ‘a place for plays, concerts – jazz and
classical – and a focal point for the community’.85 But the plan fell through.
In a letter to the Salford City Reporter, Arthur Taylor, one of the plan’s
promoters, defended the plan from attacks and especially from the ‘childish’
statement that this theatre group ‘was inspired by Communism’.86
Interestingly enough, The Lion in Love had a brief afterlife as an example
of ‘naturalism in its purest form’ when New Left Review editor and cultural
critic Stuart Hall wrote a polemical piece in Encore magazine entitled ‘Beyond
Naturalism Pure’. He thought that Delaney’s second play ‘came as close as any
play of substance in the period to reproducing the naturalism of everyday
life’, but saw that the future of British theatre would draw more on absurdism
to create new forms.87 Delaney was already being seen as old-fashioned.
More recently, however, this view has been vigorously contested. The play,
according to Maggie B. Gale, ‘heralds a new class of woman playwright who
shows a stronger desire to experiment with form as well as content’.88

Conclusion

The Lion in Love is one of post-war British theatre’s forgotten plays,

remembered, if at all, merely as a flop, Delaney’s failure to follow up her

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 ‘A New Team’: Clive Barker And Shelagh Delaney’s The Lion In Love

successful debut. On the international stage, it also performed poorly: in

1963, it made a brief appearance off-Broadway at One Sheridan Square –
only to close after six performances.89 But, seen from the perspective of its
director, The Lion in Love is a fascinating case study of how Littlewood’s
Theatre Workshop inspired ‘A New Team’ of like-minded friends to produce
a show which embodied many of her values, both political and theatrical. In
the process, Barker, in his first major work as a director, tried to apply the
lessons of his experiences at Stratford East not only to this one play, but also
as a springboard for a more ambitious project of setting up a community
theatre in Salford. Along the way, as The Lion in Love struggled to find a
metropolitan venue after an out-of-town tour, Barker fought hard, right up
to the last minute, with the censor to preserve the linguistic texture of
Delaney’s original text, while at the same time encouraging his cast to
achieve the naturalistic authenticity that was Littlewood’s hallmark, using
music to imitate some of her exuberant onstage quality. Delaney, in her 1964
book, Sweetly Sings the Donkey, a collection of prose which mixes fact and
fiction, quotes a fictional fan who writes to her asking for a loan: ‘Success
spoils some people. I know it will not spoil you.’90 This might be true, but
after her experiences with The Lion in Love Delaney virtually gave up
playwriting. Similarly, Barker began to focus more on working in a university
setting. It could be said that, in his case, failure did not spoil him. On the
contrary, the experiences of the ‘New Team’ spurred him on: he now began
systematically to develop his ideas about theatre games.

Note on Sources

Play quotations from Shelagh Delaney, The Lion in Love (London: Methuen,
1961); Clive Barker’s letters and other materials from his archive, Rose
Bruford College of Theatre and Performance Library, Sidcup; programmes,
reviews and newspaper cuttings from the V&A Theatre & Performance
Archive; Joan Littlewood letters and Lord Chamberlain reports from the
British Library.

Acknowledgements

Thanks for help to Paul Fryer and Nesta Jones, Frank Trew, librarian of Rose
Bruford College, Simon Trussler, and the staff of the V&A Theatre and

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Clive Barker and His Legacy

Performance Archives, Coventry Archives, Theatre Royal Stratford East, and

British Library.

Notes

1. Shelagh Delaney, The Lion in Love, Royal Court, 1960, programme. Barker
played the Military Policeman in Ewan MacColl and Joan Littlewood’s The Good
Soldier Schweik (Theatre Royal Stratford East, 1955; Duke of York’s, 1956); Cool
for Cats on Associated Rediffusion (ITV) ran twice-weekly from December
1956 to February 1961, and was one of the first British shows to feature pop
music for a teenage audience; and he played Feargus O’Connor, Volunteer, in
Brendan Behan’s The Hostage (Theatre Royal Stratford East, 1958; Wyndham’s,
1959).
2. Littlewood, 529. The Hostage’s first performance was 14 October 1958.
3. Ibid., 530.
4. Ibid.
5. Quoted in ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Delaney to Littlewood, n.d., Littlewood archive, British Library, Add Ms
89164/5/30. See also Joan Littlewood Archive Production Correspondence:
Shelagh Delaney and A Taste of Honey, British Library website: https://www.bl.
uk/collection-items/letters-between-shelagh-delaney-and-joan-littlewood-1960
(accessed 6 June 2019).
8. Littlewood to Delaney, 25 February 1960, British Library, Add Ms 89164/5/30.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Taylor, 136.
12. Play text epigraph.
13. Delaney, The Lion in Love programme.
14. Klaus, 141.
15. Lion in Love, Palace Theatre, Manchester, September 1960, programme, Clive
Barker Collection, box 209.
16. Dunn, 1–6, 83–140.
17. Mankowitz to Barker, 15 July 1960, Clive Barker Collection, box 209.
18. Travis, 2010, online.
19. Audition list, Clive Barker Collection, box 209.
20. Quoted in Harding, 98.
21. Anon, 22 August 1960; Norman,, BL Music Collections.

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 ‘A New Team’: Clive Barker And Shelagh Delaney’s The Lion In Love

22. Wilson, 12 August 1960.

23. Mankowitz to Barker, 26 August 1960, Clive Barker Collection, box 209.
24. Quoted in Goorney, 165. See also 180–3.
25. Ibid., 166.
26. Ibid., 166, 174.
27. Ibid., 176.
28. Ibid., 190.
29. Barker, 6.
30. Ibid., 5.
31. Ibid., 4.
32. Ibid., 2–3.
33. Ibid., 3.
34. Ibid., 48–9.
35. Raffles to Harold Hobson, 22 May 1958, Littlewood archive, British Library, Add
Ms 89164/5/28.
36. Taylor, 138.
37. Barker, 211.
38. Ibid., 206.
39. Ibid., 176.
40. Harding, 97.
41. Lord Chamberlain’s Papers, British Library, LCP Corr 1960/1067.
42. Ibid., and Lord Chamberlain’s Papers, British Library, LCP 1960/30, Lion in
Love, II-1-5.
43. Lord Chamberlain’s Papers, British Library, LCP 1960/30, Lion in Love,
III-2-12.
44. Lord Chamberlain’s Papers, British Library, LCP Corr 1960/1067.
45. N. K. W., 2 September 1960.
46. Anon, 6 September 1960.
47. N. K. W., 6 September 1960.
48. K. G., 6 September 1960.
49. Anon, 8 September 1960.
50. Quoted in Todd, 117.
51. Evans, 13 September 1960.
52. Quoted in Harding, 99.
53. John Mapplebeck, no headline, undated cutting, Clive Barker Collection,
box 209.

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Clive Barker and His Legacy

54. John Coe, ‘Taste for “Lion” Is Second to “Honey” ’, undated cutting, Clive Barker
Collection, box 209.
55. Mankowitz to Barker, 29 September 1960, Clive Barker Collection, box 209.
56. Quoted in Harding, 100.
57. Devine in Roberts, 78.
58. Nathan, 30 December 1960.
59. Anon, no headline, Sunday Dispatch, 1 January 1961.
60. Original playscript, Clive Barker Collection, box 209.
61. Barker to Mankowitz, 25 November 1960, Clive Barker Collection, box 209.
62. Anon, 30 December 1960.
63. Lord Chamberlain’s Papers, British Library, LCP Corr 1960/1349.
64. Barker to Penn, 29 December 1960, Clive Barker Collection, box 209.
65. Lord Chamberlain’s Papers, British Library, LCP 1960/49, Lion in Love, I-1-22,
II-13, 2-25, III-1-11, III-1-12 and III-1-18.
66. Lord Chamberlain’s Papers, British Library, LCP Corr 1960/1349.
67. Ibid.
68. Ibid.
69. Ibid.
70. Ibid.
71. Untitled leaflet in Shelagh Delaney, Lion in Love, Royal Court, 1960, programme.
72. Sewell, 1 January 1961.
73. Ibid.
74. Ibid.
75. Darlington, 30 December 1960; Anon, 30 December 1960.
76. Hobson, 1 January 1961.
77. Ibid.
78. Lewis, 30 December 1960.
79. Tynan, 1 January 1961.
80. Levin, 30 December 1960.
81. Hope-Wallace, 31 December 1960.
82. Quoted in Harding, 101.
83. Osborne, 172; statistic from Roberts, 78; see also Little and McLaughlin, 67.
84. Todd, 118; Harding, 102; Lord Chamberlain’s Papers, British Library, LCP Corr
1960/1067.
85. ‘ “Politics Killed Delaney Theatre Plan” ’, Clive Barker Collection, box 192;
Harding, 109–13; Fielding, 28 February 1961.

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 ‘A New Team’: Clive Barker And Shelagh Delaney’s The Lion In Love

86. ‘ “Politics Killed Delaney Theatre Plan” ’, Clive Barker Collection, box 192.
87. Hall in Marowitz et al. (eds), 214.
88. Gale, 196.
89. Harding, 135.
90. Delaney, 97.

Bibliography

Anon, ‘Coventry Debut for New Delaney Play’, Coventry Evening Telegraph,
22 August 1960.
Anon, ‘Not Sent to Coventry’, Manchester Guardian, 6 September 1960.
Anon, ‘The Lion in Love’, The Stage, 8 September 1960.
Anon, ‘Revised Lion in Love’, The Times, 30 December 1960.
Anon, ‘ “Politics Killed Delaney Theatre Plan” ’, Salford City Reporter, 26 January
1962.
Barker, C., Theatre Games: A New Approach to Drama Training, London: Eyre
Methuen, 1977.
Darlington, W. A., ‘Miss Delaney Past Hurdle’, Daily Telegraph, 30 December 1960.
Delaney, S., Sweetly Sings the Donkey, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968.
Dunn, A. J., The Worlds of Wolf Mankowitz: Between Elite and Popular Cultures in
Post-War Britain, London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2013.
Evans, G. L., ‘A Taste of Medicine’, Manchester Guardian, 13 September 1960.
Fielding, H., ‘Shelagh Approaches Her Dream with Caution’, Daily Herald, 28
February 1961.
Gale, M. B., West End Women: Women and the London Stage 1918–62, London:
Routledge, 1996.
Goorney, H., The Theatre Workshop Story, London: Eyre Methuen, 1981.
Hall, S., ‘Beyond Naturalism Pure: The First Five Years’, Encore, 8:6, November 1961,
in C. Marowitz et al. (eds), The Encore Reader: A Chronicle of the New Drama,
London: Methuen, 1965.
Harding, J., Sweetly Sings Delaney: A Study of Shelagh Delaney’s Work 1958–68,
London: Greenwich Exchange, 2014.
Hobson, H., ‘The Brightest Nights of 1960’, Sunday Times, 1 January 1961.
Hope-Wallace, P., ‘The Lion in Love’, Manchester Guardian, 31 December 1960.
K. G., ‘ “The Lion in Love” at the Belgrade, Coventry’, Birmingham Post, 6 September
1960.
Klaus, H. G., ‘Delaney, Shelagh’, in K. A. Berney (ed.), Contemporary Dramatists,
5th edn, London: St James, 1993.
Levin, B., ‘I’m Glad Miss Delaney Moved On’, Daily Express, 30 December 1960.
Lewis, P., ‘Miss Delaney Takes the Stage for Lesson 2’, Daily Mail, 30 December 1960.
Little, R. and McLaughlin, E., The Royal Court Theatre Inside Out, London: Oberon
Books, 2007.

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Clive Barker and His Legacy

Littlewood, J., Joan’s Book, London: Methuen, 2003.

Marowitz, C. et al. (eds), The Encore Reader: A Chronicle of the New Drama, London:
Methuen, 1965.
N. K. W., ‘Miss Delaney Shy but Confident’, Coventry Evening Telegraph, 2 September
1960.
N.K.W., ‘ “The Lion in Love” – Warm and Vital’, Coventry Evening Telegraph, 6
September 1960.
Nathan, D., ‘This Lion Is Too Real for Me!’, Daily Herald, 30 December 1960.
Norman, M., ‘Delaney’s Theme’, Score, British Library Music Collections
VOC/1960/NORMAN.
Osborne, J., Almost a Gentleman: An Autobiography Vol II: 1955–66, London: Faber,
1991.
Roberts, P., The Royal Court Theatre and the Modern Stage, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1990.
Sewell, E., ‘HYPOCRISY ’, Sunday Dispatch, 1 January 1961.
Taylor, J. R., Anger and After: A Guide to the New British Drama, London: Eyre
Methuen, 1962.
Todd, S., Tastes of Honey: The Making of Shelagh Delaney and a Cultural Revolution,
London: Chatto & Windus, 2019.
Travis, A., ‘To Russia with Love: Wolf Mankowitz Suspected of Bonding with the
Enemy’, The Guardian, 26 August 2010, available at https://www.theguardian.
com/uk/2010/aug/26/wolf-mankowitz-bond-spy.
Tynan, K., ‘The Lion and the Mange’, Observer, 1 January 1961.
Wilson, C., ‘The Sagan of Salford . . . Still Waiting for a Real Taste of Money’, Daily
Mail, 12 August 1960.

86
CHAPTER 7
THEATRE GAINS: REMEMBERING CLIVE
Ceri Pitches (formerly Edwards)

1988. Very early October and some twenty strangers gather together in a
classroom on the top floor of a four-storey corporate-looking building
somewhere in the West Midlands. There’s a nervousness, a tension in the
atmosphere because these individuals, forming here as a group for the very
first time, would be spending the next three years getting to know each other,
working and playing together, growing – together and apart, learning and
revealing much about themselves in the process. There was a need to impress,
to stand out or to be in control. Some felt this need more strongly than
others, such as the young woman sitting cross-legged on a table near the
door, confidently demanding each new entrant introduced themselves: ‘So
who have we here?’
I, nineteen years old, more than a little naïve and hailing from the nearby
East Midlands (perhaps the two were not unrelated?), found a seat at the
edge of the group and listened in some awe and wonder at the ease of flow
in the conversation, not to mention the diversity of accents. My new
companions had, it seemed, arrived from all over the country – from leafy
suburbs of London, from towns such as Tenby, Bolton and Winchester to
industrially named places I’d never even heard of like Grays and Barrow-in-
Furness. This was pre-internet, pre-mobile phones, remember, and the world,
even the UK, seemed a much smaller place back then.
Thus it was, the inaugural gathering of the University of Warwick, BA
Theatre Studies and Dramatic Art, Class of ’91. Most of us had taken Theatre
Studies at A Level and arrived with preconceptions of what university drama
was going to be about, but I doubt any of us had imagined our first encounter
with an actual lecturer would be as surprising and indeed, perhaps as
confusing as it actually was. Eventually, into the room came a slightly scruffy,
short-ish, round-ish and distinctly hairy person with a mischievous smile
and definite glint in his eye. Several of the group would later recall him as a
sort of ‘Santa Claus’ figure or loveable, cuddly uncle. This was, of course,
Clive Barker. All eyes were now on him, any vying for high status amongst
our group quickly forgotten as we hungrily soaked up the wisdom our new

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Clive Barker and His Legacy

tutor had to impart. Or did we? Clive had a most unusual demeanour and
from that very first encounter, a habit we would later become used to of
casually wandering around the entire space as he spoke. In this instance, the
space was a conventional classroom with tables and chairs facing the front,
and, since it was on the end of the building, it had windows on at least two
sides. This was important, because on this occasion, as he spoke, Clive would
sometimes pause and gaze out of the windows before moving away, gliding
softly and mysteriously around the room to the extent that it would not have
surprised some of us if he’d simply opened a window and floated away. That
a number of us recollect this same feeling many years later is testament to
the impression his eccentricity made on us in those first few moments. He
was quite simply like nothing most of us had ever encountered in a teacher
before and his physical actions often distracted from everything else.
What he talked about, I can’t now recall. I probably didn’t understand
much of it, as my overriding memory is of his words coming forth in a
seemingly disconnected stream of complex ideas. Nevertheless, this was our
introduction to the whole degree course and as a welcome gift he set us the
extraordinary challenge of a ‘choice’ of two essay questions: Why theatre? or
Theatre, why? I think I found this mostly confusing, and dare I admit, a little
irritating. Was it some kind of test designed to reveal to Clive something
unknown about ourselves depending on whichever title we selected? Or the
sign of a lazy lecturer unwilling to commit time to devising more varied
questions? Perhaps something made up on the spot before he floated out of
the window and away towards Coventry? Certainly, this moment was to go
down in the annals of ‘Clive’s history’, and nearly all of my former classmates
consulted recall also being perplexed at the so-called ‘choice’.
‘If it were done when ’tis done, ’twere well it were done quick’ he repeated
mantra-like several times, dramatically enunciating every syllable, all buck
teeth and wide eyes behind thick lenses, perhaps inspired by the Kathakali
dancers he would introduce us to much later. Possibly Clive was evoking the
spirit of Macbeth as a means to spur us on to get cracking with the task at
hand, to start writing as soon as possible, lightening the mood, sensing some
resistance in the room to his essay challenge. But more likely he was just
simply enjoying himself.
I can’t recollect how I addressed the essay question, or indeed, which title
I chose, but I do know that I would have answered it diligently and seriously,
eagerly hoping to find the ‘right’ answer, qualities of mine at that time in my
life that made me, ironically, a less than ideal student for someone like Clive.
I realize now that he was being playful. There was no right or wrong answer.

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I think he was simply hoping to encourage us to set free our minds from the
rigid confines of an A Level syllabus, which back in the 1980s, did little more
than shore up the now defunct notion that all performance began in the
sixth century bc with Thespis, and that staging something ‘in the round’ was
truly cutting edge. As I was to learn throughout three years of study in
sporadic classes with Clive, he was all about getting us to shake off our
inhibitions – both physically and intellectually – and the Why theatre? /
Theatre, why? conundrum was simply the very first step in that direction.
Massages, relaxation exercises and walking, endless walking. Clive’s
practical sessions were something else. With the benefit of hindsight, I can see
now that some of his approach must have been influenced by his deep
involvement with theatre anthropology and his experiences across Europe,
Asia and Latin America. We didn’t know much about these at the time, save for
the fact that he sometimes referred to spending vacation time working in far-
off places like Bogotá and of course, there were our group trips to the Midland
Arts Centre in nearby Birmingham to witness the Kathakali dance-dramas.
Practical work with Clive, though, was totally unexpected and often
required us to reveal more of ourselves than some of us might have liked,
myself included. I think we were all aware that he had written Theatre Games
and that it was quite a big deal. My then boyfriend (now husband), also
studying drama, at Birmingham University, remarked with envy how lucky
we were to actually be taught by the man himself. I’m not sure I felt lucky at
the time. We spent an extraordinary amount of time massaging each other
from tip to toe, in pairs, laid out on the dusty floor in the studio at Westwood
campus, my own private inhibitions often leaving me feeling overwhelmed
with embarrassment at being poked and pinched in all sorts of places. This
pair work would eventually give way to solitary relaxation and meditation
exercises as Clive intoned, inviting us to imagine our bodies as a clear
Perspex shell filled with a swirling green liquid which gradually seeped out
of us through different exit points, leaving our limbs feeling light and
energized, ready to work. As an aside, when I became a drama teacher myself
some years later, I borrowed this (as well as other Theatre Games exercises)
in an effort to prepare my own students for focused work in the studio. I’m
not sure how successful it was, but I like to think that those who went on to
study drama at a higher level were a little more prepared for casting off their
physical inhibitions than I had been.
‘Your body is your instrument,’ Clive would often say, I’m sure with a glint
in his eye, ‘and you must tune it and practise it.’ This was surely part of all the
walking and the massage.

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During these intense warm-up and relaxation sessions Clive was often
keen that we should locate our chakras, unblock them and discover a
freedom of feeling and expression previously unencountered. As one of my
cohort put it, massage and chakras and meditation made for a rather sensual
and heady mix and was a world away from the arid cerebral academia they’d
anticipated. This was my feeling too. Most aspects of working with Clive
either in the classroom or the studio were unpredictable and enigmatic,
requiring much risk-taking and a generous dose of trust. Very, very
occasionally, certain elements of this trust were misplaced, such as an
unexpected and unwelcome encounter on one occasion when we played
‘Climbing the Matterhorn’. More enjoyable was the hilarity in the studio as
we struggled to remain composed during an extended session of ‘The Court
of the Holy Dido’, learning far more about self-control and heightened sense
awareness through that one seemingly silly exercise than we would have
thought possible.
I can’t be certain, but I think this game might have been played in the
context of Clive’s infamous third-year comedy option course. One friend
remembers the experience of studying with Clive in this context as mildly
humiliating. Indeed, for me, with a self-consciousness that although
diminished, still exists in later life, Clive’s sessions presented an enormous
struggle and were sometimes a painful experience. One of his most frequent
approaches in the studio centred around observation. We were instructed to
intently watch each other’s movements and physical behaviours – always
good fun if you were the watcher, less so when you were the subject! Clive
seemed to derive great enjoyment from spotting some small physical trait or
mannerism that you were previously unaware of and highlighting it for all to
see. We’d then take turns to re-enact the witnessed behaviour, exaggerating
every tiny element in it for comedic effect. It felt cripplingly embarrassing at
the time, even for the most confident amongst us, and I didn’t understand
the purpose, but now I think he was trying to get us to pare back ourselves,
to see ourselves with fresh eyes so that we could each take a critical stance on
our own physicality and start to build something new. None of this was
meant in an unkind way, of course, but as a means for establishing a starting
point for our comic personas. And my recollection is that Clive would join
in, also laying himself bare to be picked apart, not expecting us to do
anything that he wasn’t also willing to undertake. In a very simple way, he
seemed to be able to connect the selected physical traits with elements of
our own personalities, a sort of starting point for psychoanalysing ourselves
to help with building the persona. Something along the lines of ‘You are

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moving like this because you are concealing your fear of x. So how can you
use that to inform your comic self?’ I think too that he was attempting to
train us to be highly aware of ourselves and our environments, to notice
every little detail and store them away for future use when developing a
character.
A further memorable aspect of the practical element of the comedy
course was Clive’s near-obsession with us finding our strongest spot in the
performance space. When it became time to take your turn, you’d enter
the space and walk to wherever you believed your ‘spot’ to be, inevitably, at
the beginning at least, downstage centre. The assembled audience of
classmates would then assess whether or not we had judged this accurately,
debating with each other their reasons for the assessment while you stood
passively waiting on your spot. If it was deemed not to be the strongest spot,
as was often the case, we had to find another location, sometimes just inches
away from the original location. What was this all about? It seemed to make
little sense at the time: as with many aspects of Clive’s teaching, its meaning
and value were not immediately apparent. Looking back, I believe his interest
was in getting us to understand that a body can transform the energy in a
space and become a dynamic force. His goal was to enable us to work out for
ourselves that downstage centre might actually be the least interesting spot
on the stage.
Alongside all the walking and physical mimicry, the central task of the
comedy option was to search into our pasts and locate experiences and
encounters that we could use as the material from which to construct our
comic routines. Many of us recall that Clive encouraged us to choose
memories that might have been awkward or difficult in some way, presumably
the intention being that if we could laugh at ourselves against all the odds
then the audience were more likely to laugh too. These valiant attempts to
transform us all into stand-up comics, alongside our study of Trevor
Griffiths’s Comedians (1976), met with varying degrees of success within the
group. It was clear that some were natural-born comedians, swiftly
understanding the precise blend of physicality and vocal delivery that were
needed to create hilarious effect. Others instinctively realized the vast comic
capacity for visual irony, as with one friend who, for their final assessed
stand-up routine, costumed themselves in their Salvation Army uniform
from home. The fact that the wearer, like most of us, had made more than
their fair share of the opportunities for cheap alcohol consumption in the
Student Union bars, only served to enhance the comic contrast of actual
behaviour with the Methodist principles represented by the uniform. I’m

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sure Clive would have mischievously encouraged this – as he did with two
fellow students who chose to work as a comic duo, doubting Clive’s
suggestion that they should sing a witty duet with the utmost seriousness,
but feeling gratified when the audience fell about laughing that they had
followed his advice. I didn’t excel at the comedy option, but I gave it my very
best shot. I did learn much about the kind of performer I was and could be,
and in many ways, I think that was as important a lesson as anything. In the
same way as Clive’s practical teaching stripped us down so that we could re-
build more nuanced and knowledgeable versions of ourselves, so too the
comedy option course made us expose some of our most personal moments
and fears, making us vulnerable within the safety of his studio, so that we
could find courage and strength in confronting our weaknesses. Maybe I’m
over-rationalizing all this with the passing of time, but I do know that the
humiliation I felt at not being a natural stand-up comic was outweighed by
a sense of personal achievement that I had, at least, stood up and tried!
Remembering Clive and thinking about what it was like to share the
classroom and the studio with him, almost thirty years after we left, gives rise
to more questions than answers. But I have a strong sense of it all, perhaps
inevitably, leading back to his earliest challenge, Why theatre? / Theatre, why?
His teaching seems very much to have been about helping us find the many
and varied solutions to that problem over the course of our three
undergraduate years. For some, the lessons as they were learned at the time
have endured. One friend, an actor, recalls Clive’s tip of massaging your
‘third eye’ in the moments before entering the performance space. Located in
the middle of your forehead, just above your eyes, awakening it through
massage brings direction and focus leading to greater intensity and
concentration in performance – this friend still uses it today. Another, a
drama teacher, often returns to the practice of copying each other’s walking,
sometimes to enhance students’ observational technique, sometimes purely
as a time filler – maybe it was sometimes just that for Clive too!
For me, Clive was puzzling and often provocative, a great believer, I think,
of pointing you in the right direction and gently pushing you off the side to
navigate your own path through messy and complex experiences, but nearly
always there to help steer you back to safety should you go too far off course.
He was enigmatic and esoteric, the radical heart of the Warwick course. On
reflection, he was perhaps a surprising choice for what was then a distinctly
academic course, but without exception he is remembered amongst my
cohort for providing the most exciting and eagerly anticipated practical
encounters. Spontaneity over predictability, risk over security, no right and

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no wrong are just some of the messages that now, as time has passed, I
understand Clive was advocating – messages that are as useful in some
aspects of life as they are in theatre. He was simple and complex, brilliant
and straightforward.
We were very lucky to have been taught by him.
We just didn’t know it at the time.

Acknowledgements

For generously sharing their recollections and memories of Clive and our
undergraduate days at Warwick, I am very grateful to members of the Class
of ’91 cohort: Mark Frost, Sian Morrison, Karen Palmer, Emma Schad, Maria
Straw-Cinar and Tamsin Walker.

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CHAPTER 8
CLIVE BARKER AND MOVEMENT
Dick McCaw

Introduction

Clive Barker is watching a video recording of him leading the Clocking

Game. He turns to me and says, ‘Well at least there’s one thing I know, and
that’s how to observe movement.’ This rather laconic admission prompts a
number of questions: How did Barker develop and then display this
knowledge of movement observation? What constitutes such a knowledge?
What is it that you know when you know how to observe movement? To
answer these questions I will draw on passages from Theatre Games, on a
long interview I conducted with him in 2003, on transcripts of comments he
made when watching himself teach, and on a number of articles written by
him in the thirty years between 1974 and 2003.
While the arc of this chapter is historical, the main focus will be on
Barker’s negotiation with two pioneers of movement study: Rudolf Laban
(1879–1958) and Moshé Feldenkrais (1904–84). I will explore how Barker’s
eye for movement observation and his approach to teaching movement for
actors were developed through his negotiations with the writings of both
men. I will conclude with an analysis of his various commentaries on the
Clocking Game and argue that it sums up Barker’s whole approach to
theatre-making and improvisation.

Influences

Barker offers a theatrical genealogy where Piscator and Copeau were his
grandfathers and Stanislavsky his uncle. They ‘opened gates for me leading to
such influences as Delsarte and other movement pioneers’.1 Note how, from
the beginning, Barker’s interest in movement is informed by its use in
theatre. He explains that in the 1960s there was a ‘confusion of choice’ in
teaching methods which meant that there was ‘a range of methodologies
within the same area of theatre pedagogy – the movement work of Laban

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being a significant example of this’. He referred to the ‘appetite and impetus

of the auto-didact’ who was combining different methods to create new,
specialized forms of practice. However, he warned that such specialization
was often ‘achieved at the expense of a total, integrated view of the theatre’.2
Even though he found reading Laban difficult going, ‘at least you knew what
philosophy and range of ideas you were dealing with’.3 Barker possessed the
genius of an autodidact in being able to take essential principles from a huge
range of works – technical, sociological, philosophical – and then create his
own ‘total, integrated view of the theatre’.

Learning Laban movement

Barker’s study of Laban reveals a lot about his teaching and understanding
of theatre. When he first joined Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Royal Stratford
East in 1955, he would ‘read and study avidly’; he bought Laban’s ‘book
[Mastery of Movement?] and spent the next six years working through it on
the kitchen table’. At the same time he enjoyed Jean Newlove’s ‘classes in
movement, which owed a lot to Laban’; they were ‘fraught with division. The
company split into two groups. Half of us turned up at 9am and did class.
The others turned up at 9.30am, took a brief look at us, [. . .] and went off for
a coffee’.4 While these classes ‘revealed movements which I could not carry
out, and that work attracted me more’, it deterred other actors in the company.
‘The reason for their failure did not lie in any lack of physical aptitude. It lay
in the mind. Faced with having to carry out technical exercises they somehow
seized up and became mentally distressed. The experience created tensions
within the company as it split into two groups, movers and non-movers.’5
This theme of the conscious mind interfering with the free and spontaneous
movement of the body echoes throughout his writings and workshops. He
calls this a conflict between the front and the back brain and realized that an
intellectual approach – gained from book-learning – can interfere with a
more physical way of learning. The challenge was to find a way of teaching
this second way of learning.
This conflict between learning through books or through bodily
movement lies at the heart of how Laban movement is taught. It had ‘always
been for me the best basis for movement objectivisation’, Barker says, but he
then adds that ‘the best movement teachers teach movement, not the system’.6
This is because less enlightened or less confident teachers focus on the
terminology rather than the movement qualities that they refer to, and this

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Figure 5 Clive Barker and Dick McCaw playing a reaction game, International
Workshop Festival, 2001 from the video produced by Arts Documentation Unit
(https://vimeo.com/358019143). Bloomsbury Methuen Drama

inhibits rather than encourages movement since it supplies ‘preconceived

intentions and effects to be pursued’.7 Furthermore, focusing on the purpose
(or ‘preconceived intentions and effects’) of a movement pushes the student
‘towards doing the exercise, “properly” or “well” or “efficiently” as an end in
itself ’8 rather than understanding these different ways of movement through
the experience of doing them. This last point already looks forward to
Feldenkrais’s notion of ‘Awareness Through Movement’.
When Barker was performing in Littlewood’s production of Brendan
Behan’s The Hostage (1958–9), he and other company members decided to
continue their movement training. Having been ‘elected’ to lead the sessions,
he realized two things: ‘I didn’t have the trained skills of Jean [Newlove] and

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when I tried to correct myself I became self-conscious and clumsy. Whatever

I understood about Laban was in my head not my body.’ For all his kitchen-
table reading of Laban, this theoretical knowledge couldn’t help him teach
others how to move. In desperation he turned to games he ‘had played as a
child in the boy scouts and I started feeding these into the classes. People
began moving, so something was being achieved, however rudimentary.’9 At
the same time he and fellow actor Brian Murphy ‘began to wander round the
streets of London observing how people moved’; in libraries, art galleries,
railway stations they would compare the movement patterns they had
observed, and a ‘natural consequence was applying the lessons learned to
observation in the classes’.10
The account above offers a preliminary answer to the question of how
Barker learned to observe movement which in turn informed his teaching, a
relay he describes in Theatre Games as ‘an alternating process of doing, and
watching others do. [. . .] One acts, one watches, one acts again, one watches
again and so on.’11 The problems and discoveries arising from these early
experiences of teaching and learning movement would echo throughout his
writings. We are dealing here with two kinds of knowledge: knowing what
and knowing how (a distinction made by philosopher Gilbert Ryle), each
with its own appropriate form of learning; the teaching and learning
strategies of one cannot be applied to the other.
Already this discussion of actor training has taken us into much broader
realms of philosophy and pedagogy. Throughout his career Barker struggled
with the status and claims of these two types of knowing. If he proudly
announced to me that he knew how to observe movement it was because the
status of this knowledge was neither recognized nor even fully understood in
academia. In his 2003 interview he remarked how Mark Evans12 had ‘pointed
out an important feature of my work, which is that it is related to a physical
working-class society’. This distinction – between intellectual and practical
knowledge – used to carry over into higher education in the UK, with
universities teaching academic subjects and polytechnics practical ones.
This tension between knowing what and how lies at the heart of how we
learn movement. We have already seen Barker describe how overthinking a
movement prevents one from performing it. The verbal-analytical intellect
is not just the wrong tool for the job, it actually gets in the way of embodied
learning. Play was a crucial part of his strategy for getting students out of
their heads into the whole of their bodies. In this way Barker would create a
situation in which students could make their discoveries and not worry
about failing or falling flat on their faces.

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Writing Theatre Games

The writing of Theatre Games reflects this tension between intellect and
practice, between the institutions of academia and professional theatre,
between him working at Birmingham University and at the Northcott
Theatre, Exeter. He recalls that ‘four days after deciding to leave Birmingham
University, I sat down to write, and finished the book inside three weeks’. If it
could only have been written because he was leaving, equally it ‘could not
have been written if I hadn’t come to Birmingham’.13 While there he had
engaged in ‘an intensive period of study’ during which he ‘had looked at
Feldenkrais and got stuff on F. M. Alexander from Jane Winearls, and we also
had discussions about Laban, Kurt Jooss and Sigurd Leeder [two of Laban’s
most celebrated pupils]’.14 Barker’s book is the product of both academic
study and debate, and practical experiment and reflection, the one tested
and refined by the other.
Theatre Games marked a watershed in his thinking: he had started to
understand how mind and body can work together. He explains: ‘Slowly I
have been pushed towards learning about the interaction of mind and body
through the nervous system’ and continues, ‘I have ended up with an
understanding of the nervous system as an explanation for what I was doing.
It seems the clearest way of explaining it in a book.’15 While at Birmingham
he had built up a library, ‘and worked through all these books: Feldenkrais’s
The Body and Mature Behaviour being one in particular’,16 I would argue that
he got his ‘understanding of the nervous system’, which includes the crucial
distinction between front and back brain, from Feldenkrais’s book. He knew
that it was neurophysiological principles like this that should be in a book.
Feldenkrais is referenced frequently throughout Theatre Games; he
provides a theoretical foundation for Barker’s ideas about ‘how people stand,
how they move, how they relate to each other in various situations’;17 in
other words, about movement observation. One major concept is that the
human brain consists of a more cognitively orientated front brain which is
responsible for ‘the deliberate conscious control and direction of my actions’
and a back brain which ‘appears to control my physical actions and reactions
instinctively without my being directly conscious of what is happening’.18
Much of Barker’s observation and teaching is informed by this crucial
distinction. Like Feldenkrais, he was interested in what stops us moving with
ease and economy, and his belief that ‘Somehow if you let the back part of
the brain work, without conscious interference, the body works more
efficiently. If you concentrate on making the body work, you interfere with

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its working.’19 Barker’s thinking here chimes in with that of Feldenkrais and
theatre practitioners from Peter Brook, to Jerzy Grotowski, to Keith
Johnstone,20 all of whom argue that what blocks spontaneous and fluent
movement is conscious thought.
Although Barker’s neurophysiology may be patchy (Feldenkrais was his
only source), his constant enquiry into movement means that his comments
about perception, attention and reaction are now being borne out in
contemporary neuroscience.21 He had an acute understanding of both the
importance and the limitations of conscious control. For example, a learner
driver is awkward precisely because everything is being done ‘consciously:
changing gear, turning the wheel and pressing down the accelerator. Once
you have learned to drive you can operate unconsciously.’ He offers another
example of this phenomenon: ‘When jumping along stepping stones or
crossing the road if you are too conscious you make mistakes, whereas for
the most part our back brain instructs our body as to how it can get us where
we want to be.’22 These comments were on ‘reaction games’ where he could
gauge how much or little students slowed because they were thinking.
The next concept developed from Feldenkrais is what Barker calls ‘body/
think, or the kinaesthetic sense, by means of which muscular motion, weight,
position in space, etc., are perceived’. He explains that body/think is the
‘process by which we subconsciously direct and adjust the movements of
our bodies in space, either in response to external stimuli, or to intentions
arising in the mind’.23 Later he argues that actors ‘need to understand through
sensation the workings of their own bodies’.24 Note how Barker describes
what is usually considered a sense as a form of thinking. This notion of a kind
of bodily thinking explains a later passage in Theatre Games where he
suggests that an actor might ‘think’ of making a ‘movement several times
before actually doing it’. He immediately distinguishes this kind of body/
think from ‘making a conscious decision to move, or thinking about moving’.
No, this is a process where the actor simulates a movement in their
imagination, trying ‘to be aware of the chain of movements involved in the
action without actually following through to the movement itself.’25

Balance and alignment

Whether we consider balance a skill or a sense, it is most certainly a faculty

that is operated unconsciously. It is also central to Barker’s conception of
intelligent movement. While he drew some of his information from

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Feldenkrais, he also learned a lot from playing and watching cricket and
would often talk about actors who play on the front or the back foot. He
explained to students in 1996 that actors need a more acute sense of balance
than what we use in everyday life, which is why some of his games ‘work at
the basic elements of balance’.26 On page 38 of Theatre Games is the Harvard
University Chart, which indicates perfect posture (neither leaning forward
nor backwards, but on centre). So many of his comments about movement
and posture feature this coronal line:

It doesn’t matter what the age or condition of the person is, when their
body pulls on line then that is beauty for me. I have never lost the joy
of seeing the body. I sometimes feel guilty being paid for my work
because of the joy that I get out of it in this way.27

He was a great observer of bodies, because he loved seeing them move with
intelligence.

Teaching acting and theatre games

A central tenet for Barker is that ‘One cannot teach “acting”. One can only
create situations in which the actor can learn and develop.’28 In short it is
about ‘letting something happen rather than making it happen’,29 which
returns us to his distinction between front (‘making’) and back (‘letting’)
brain. Barker’s Theatre Games and Feldenkrais’s lessons in Awareness
Through Movement (‘ATM’) are such situations for learning. When
Feldenkrais argues that the most important thing is that a student learns
how to learn,30 this process of learning is about developing an ‘awareness of
themselves in action’.31 Quite how Barker developed a way of teaching that so
closely echoes that of Feldenkrais is a mystery, because he never actually
studied the Method and never took an ATM. Intuitively, Barker developed a
unique form of teaching where, as Feldenkrais put it, ‘The accent is on the
learning process, rather than on the teaching technique.’32
Above, we saw why Barker turned to theatre games as a means of feeling
different qualities of movement; now we turn to how he used them in
practice. He explains how he uses games ‘as parables. They are images of
action, through which general principles and laws are transformed into living
sensations of cause and effect, which make the processes involved easier to
understand.’33 His definition echoes David Zinder’s description of exercises

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as ‘models of behavior’ where actors ‘have to develop a mechanism for

turning the “behavior” into a learning experience’.34 Both men describe how
actors develop an awareness of what happens when one performs certain
actions.
Once Barker had developed his form of teaching based on theatre games,
and following the publication of his book in 1977, he kept on ‘doing the same
work’, but admitted that it became ‘deeper and more refined’ as he became
‘more interested in what is the core of acting’.35 Barker’s work begins with the
premise that the object of a game or an exercise ‘is to reveal to the actor what
happens when he works, and to help him be aware of the mind/body
processes involved in his work’. It follows, then, that a teacher should ‘never
predict what value any individual will get or take from any exercise. One
should never try to make an exercise or game “work”; one should set it up
and let it take place.’36 This requires a particular skill, with the teacher
following and listening rather than guiding and instructing. Barker considers
games to be an example of a child’s ‘process of learning through
experimentation’.37 He goes on, ‘One goes back to the root processes of
learning, by which he [i.e. the child] acquired movement skills in the first
place, and this helps him rediscover lost skills, or those which have atrophied.
. . . It substitutes for the pain of learning the joy of re-discovery.’38 This surely
has been influenced by his reading of Feldenkrais. What characterizes both
men’s accounts of childhood learning is that it was self-directed and rooted
in the child’s own experience. Their approach was heuristic – that is, about
the student or child making their own discoveries.
How do games work? By the adherence to a set of rules: ‘I discovered that
in many children’s games the “rules” constitute a resistance against which the
players struggle to raise their skill to a higher level.’39 Might it be that these
rules, these constraints, become our point of focus, and thus take our mind
off anything else? It is precisely the effort of following the rules that occupies
our mind and thus, unawares, we allow ourselves to explore non-everyday
situations.
But games are not just useful for training, they can also unlock the central
situation of a play. When rehearsals on Littlewood’s (unperformed)
production of Danton’s Death hit a problem, she proposed a game to discover
the solution. Through many playings of ‘The Raft of Medusa’, ‘basically a
horse-play game’, they managed to ‘create the style of a production’, but, he
adds, in a way that ‘bypasses intellectual activity. The physical actions are
already going on in the raft scene before the intellectual work, the painting is
brought in. If the painting is brought in first you start posing from the

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exterior.’40 Once again, the creative approach involves physical action rather
than intellectual reflection. The emotional truth of the scene comes from an
involvement in the physical action, in the situation of the game.
Throughout Theatre Games Barker offers other examples of games as
‘models of action’. He takes a game where a player identifies one person as a
friend to whom they want to get close, and another as an enemy whom they
want to avoid. He continues,

In a way this is a model for A Midsummer Night’s Dream and produces

images that you can use in a production. It gets the actors to play the
action of the scene and they can begin to feed in the dialogue as well;
thus you get dialogue which is alive and sustained by a physical
memory within the actors.41

Some readers may already have seen a connection with Stanislavsky’s later
Method of Physical Actions. Barker acknowledges the connection and notes
that the ‘physical memory’ mentioned above is ‘not something from your
biographical past but something from the rehearsal period, something much
more focused and immediate’. In this sense the theatre game is like an étude
– or improvisational study – that Stanislavsky would create in his later
method. An ATM, a game, an étude – all of these are situations in which the
student learns through heuristic activity.

Movement qualities and theatre games

Despite everything Barker has said about his reluctance to engage in Laban’s
theory, he does actually address the concept of movement qualities in some
detail. Commenting on his 2001 workshop for the International Workshop
Festival,42 he explains how

Laban classified the three elements that characterize movement –

these are:
Weight – all movements indulge or fight against gravity;
Space – all movements exist in space and move between emphasizing
direction or indulging in its use;
Time – all movements exist in time. They move between being quick
and being sustained.43

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In his 1996 workshop he describes them slightly differently: ‘All movement

exists in time; it is either quick or sustained. All movement exists in space: it
is either direct or indirect. All movement has a relationship to gravity: either
it is heavy or light.’44
This closely paraphrases Laban’s description of what he calls ‘Movement
Factors’ in The Mastery of Movement,45 his book that directly addresses
questions of theatre. Barker’s remarks preface his commentary on two classic
theatre games, ‘Grandmother’s Footsteps’ and ‘Pirate’s Treasure’. In the first,
‘one player faces the wall, while the rest gather at the wall furthest from him
or her. They attempt to creep up to touch the back of the isolated player. He
or she can turn round at any moment and those players who he catches still
moving are sent back to the base wall to start again.’46 The kind of movement
required in this exercise is ‘quick, light and direct’, or ‘dabbing’ in Laban
terminology. In Pirate’s Treasure ‘the player who is “it” sits on a chair
blindfolded and the other players in small groups try to creep up silently and
steal coins which lie at his or her feet. If the “pirate” hears them he points in
the direction he or she thinks the sound had come from. I stand behind the
“pirate” and it is my judgement whether he or she has caught them or not.’
The timing of the movement in this game is different to the first: it is
sustained rather than quick. Barker explains why the ‘training of the
sustaining element is important, since people give themselves away by not
sustaining but taking rests.’47 Players give themselves away when they start
moving again, with knees cracking or floorboards creaking with the
increased pressure.
Barker has made a case for how games can train students to move with
different qualities, but what is the connection with acting? His first answer is
that while children can use a full range of movement, ‘as we grow up we reject
some of these categories as not being useful to us’. He confesses that because
he was ‘used to getting things done’, his dominant movement quality was
‘punching’, that is, strong, quick and direct. Therefore, as an actor he ‘had to
work for long times at light, indirect and sustained movement, otherwise I
could only play characters who are “punchy”.’ Put more generally, the purpose
of effort training ‘is to help extend the range of an actor’s movement’: ‘For
example, you cannot play a role such as Coriolanus with quick, light direct
movements predominating. There has to be weight and some sustaining. The
opposite also obtains. There are some characters in Chekhov’s plays who have
little sense of direction, no clear intention and little sense of purpose.’48
More generally still, there is a connection with certain types of movement
and emotional states. Barker dwells on ‘what is called a “wringing” action –

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heavy, sustained and indirect’ and notes how many metaphors ‘connect
wringing or twisting with emotion: “it wrung a cry out of him” or “his guts
knotted up”. All that action is associated with deep emotion.’49
Barker understands that Laban’s effort actions can only be understood
and should only be taught through movement practice. They are a thing felt.
This goes both for an actor understanding how to broaden their range of
movement, and learning how to observe movement.

All that jazz (commentaries on the Clocking Game)

This is where we start talking about theatre jazz because the actor is
in a situation where he or she is constantly responding to what the
other person does and not making statements or blocking other
people off.50

The sign of a good game for Barker was that it would take you to the core of
theatre – improvisation-like theatre, which is about responding to rather
than blocking questions: ‘So often the stage is littered with questions that
none of the actors have picked up.’ His old friend from Theatre Workshop
would say to him that his ‘ambition was just to give one performance in
which he has only one conscious objective or intention, and that was the one
that took him out of the wings on to the stage. The rest should come from
reflex reaction to what happened out there.’51 This comment brings together
many themes and preoccupations around spontaneity, responsiveness and
consciousness.
I shall offer a short description of the ‘Clocking Game’ for those readers
unfamiliar with it. This was the third exercise after the rowdier ‘Tail Tag’ and
‘Finger Tag’, both of which were competitive tagging games. He describes it
as follows:

The players simply stand in space and look at the other players. They
are then free to move around and enjoy the contacts that arise
spontaneously from the encounters with other players. [. . .] The
ultimate state is to ask players to take up their places in space and only
to move when some internal urge presses on them. The stress is now
taken off action, or willed intention, and what happens is as near as we
can get to total reaction.52

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The Clocking Game involves the players moving when they feel moved, but
never following a conscious impulse. Although he never described it as such,
I would say that it is about responding to a change in the space that results
from someone else moving. Their move might make you feel cornered,
crowded in, or might open a space to which you want to move. The changes
in space are what should prompt your responses. He admits that ‘People will
find it difficult not to generate strategies, or make predetermined decisions
as to how they will conduct themselves in face to face meetings. Players will
rush into activities to avoid letting things happen to them.’53
Although there isn’t a video recording of a satisfying playing of the
Clocking Game, Barker’s commentaries in his last essay – ‘In Search of the
Lost Mode’ – and in transcripts indicate how important it was to him. Way
beyond a means of training, it was a vision of a new kind of performance: ‘A
vision of a new lyric theatre, in which the dramatic and epic could be
subsumed and music, dance and drama intertwined in increasingly new
combinations. A thoroughly disciplined and free theatre. Research and
practice combined. A lot of work stands between us and this vision, but it’s
worth working towards.’54
Barker never stresses the point, but isn’t this a kind of theatre that is
generated purely through the movement of actors? It recalls the last sentence
of Theatre Games, ‘The actor is the theatre, and the sooner we give it back to
him the better.’55
Not only does this game get to the core of theatre, it also reveals basic
elements of human dialogue and creativity. Looking at the spontaneous
groupings of the players, Barker notes how ‘each has their own thoughts and
reflections then it produces a set of stage pictures which, as I said, are often
much more interesting than stage choreography’.56 He is interested in the
lack of any predictable dramaturgy or choreography: ‘What happens in this
game, or rather what happens for me, its attraction for me, is that something
is always likely to happen.’57
Barker’s comments about this game are informed by more than movement
theory and touch on the ideas of sociologist Erving Goffman and philosopher
Martin Buber whose thinking lend a depth to his reflections on human
movement and creativity. Barker also cites Keith Johnstone’s classic study of
improvisation, Impro. From his 1996 workshop he notes that ‘to be creative
must be to be flexible, to be open, to be in relationship with. I think in Keith’s
terms, and mine as well, to actually do something between you, to put
something between you and the other people is not to be. It may be functional
and technical but it is not creative.’58 This reflects Barker’s broader philosophy

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of human interaction: that we should try to be open, to be in relationship,

with others. There is an unaffected profundity in his warning that to put
‘something between you and the other people is not to be’. This game was a
model of how we can be together in society.
I shall conclude by returning to the theatrical dimension of a game which
he had led ‘with a number of groups in various parts of the world and it
never fails to amaze me. [. . .] It stimulates our mind to try and make sense
of what is happening there. And this is what holds our attention.’59 One
playing he mentioned more than once ‘occurred in a college in Cali in
Colombia’. The group consisted of the staff – ‘composers, musicians, painters
and sculptors, as well as technicians and other workers’. He concludes: ‘The
end was a work of art in its own right because of the interaction of all these
people, each of whom had their own inspiration, or aspiration, if you like.
We could have put this in a museum of modern art and people would have
turned up and watched it.’60
Here, Barker offers us a far richer, more philosophical reflection on
theatre games. The rules for this game are rooted in the social, emotional,
psychological and creative impulses that make us human. All of this reflected
in how and why people move.

Notes

1. Barker, 2003, n.p.

2. Barker, 1995, 101.
3. Ibid.
4. Barker, 2003, n.p.
5. Barker, 2010, 4.
6. Barker, 2003, n.p.
7. Barker, 2010, 4.
8. Ibid., 46.
9. Barker, 2003, n.p.
10. Ibid.
11. Barker, 2010, 57.
12. Professor at Coventry University; studied with Jacques Lecoq and has edited
and authored books about movement training for actors.
13. Barker, 1974, 68.
14. Barker, 2003, n.p.

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15. Barker, 2010, 8.

16. Barker, 2003, n.p.
17. Ibid.
18. Barker, 2010, 17.
19. Ibid., 18.
20. An expert in improvisation and author of Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre
(London: Methuen, 1979).
21. The subject of my latest book Rethinking the Actor’s Body: Dialogues with
Neuroscience.
22. Barker, 2003, n.p.
23. Barker, 2010, 29.
24. Ibid., 97.
25. Barker, 2010, 100.
26. Barker, 1996, n.p.
27. Barker, 2003, n.p.
28. Barker, 2010, 6.
29. Ibid., 3.
30. Feldenkrais, 1985, 238.
31. Feldenkrais, 1981, 96.
32. Ibid., 7.
33. Barker, 2010, 9.
34. Zinder, 2002, 21.
35. Barker, 1996, n.p.
36. Barker, 2010, 51.
37. Ibid., 63.
38. Ibid., 64.
39. Barker, 1989, 233.
40. Barker, 2003, n.p.
41. Ibid.
42. The International Workshop Festival (1988–2007) was created to provide
continuing training opportunities for professionals working in the performing
arts. Dick McCaw was Artistic Director from 1993 to 2001, with Barker serving
as Chairman of the Board of Directors.
43. Barker, 2003, n.p.
44. Barker, 1996, n.p.
45. Laban, 116–17.

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46. Barker, 2003, n.p.

47. Ibid.
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid.
51. Barker, 2010, 45.
52. Barker, 2002, 15.
53. Ibid.
54. Barker, 2002, 16.
55. Barker, 2010, 211.
56. Barker, 2003, n.p.
57. Ibid.
58. Barker, 1996, n.p.
59. Barker, 2003, n.p.
60. Ibid.

Bibliography

Barker, C., ‘The Dilemma of the Professional in University Drama’, Theatre

Quarterly, 4:16, 1974, 55–68.
Barker, C., ‘Games in Education and Theatre’, New Theatre Quarterly, 5:19, 1989,
227–35.
Barker, C., ‘What Training – for What Theatre?’, New Theatre Quarterly, 11:42, May
1995, 99–108.
Barker, C., Transcript of a video recording of a workshop given at the IWF 1996 in
September 1996.
Barker, C., ‘In Search of the Lost Mode’, New Theatre Quarterly, 17:69, 2002, 10–16.
Barker, C., Transcript of an interview with the author, September 2003.
Barker, C., Theatre Games, 2nd edn, London: Methuen, 2010.
Feldenkrais, M., The Elusive Obvious, Capitola, CA: Meta Publications, 1981.
Feldenkrais, M., The Potent Self, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985.
Feldenkrais, M., Embodied Wisdom, ed. Suzanne Beringer, Berkeley, CA: Somatic
Resources and North Atlantic Books, 2010.
Laban, R., The Mastery of Movement, 2nd edn, London: MacDonald and Evans,
1960.
McCaw, D., Rethinking the Actor’s Body: Dialogues with Neuroscience, London:
Methuen, 2020.
Zinder, D., Body, Voice, Imagination: A Training for the Actor, London: Routledge,
2002.

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110
CHAPTER 9
ON SUPPLANTING OLIGARCHY:
CLIVE BARKER’S DEFIANT
ANTI-AUTHORITARIANISM
Chris Baldwin

Clive Barker believed that the world, our world, our social world, could be
‘understood’; it could and indeed should be analysed, using rationality and
reasoning, and as a consequence be open to change for the good. Clive was
an ethical, critical pedagogue who looked to Marxist materialism to inform
his thinking and practice. He insisted that his teaching and theatre practice,
being both embedded within and a reflection of our social world, could also
be understood and thus change and be changed. As a young theatre director
these ideas came somewhat as a relief to me. Otherwise, faced with 2,000
years of history, how could a young practitioner have anything to offer to the
world or a profession other than to acknowledge and revere the debt owed
to all that had come before?
In 2002 I asked Clive to write the foreword to a new book on devising. I
discussed with him our intentions not to write an instruction manual but to
draw together perspectives from professional directors, writers, designers
and others on devised and collaborative approaches to making theatre, in
the hope that such perspectives might encourage the next generation of
practitioners to change and extend their own thinking and making. Clive’s
contribution to the book was discreet and humble. Yet on reading it again,
almost twenty years later, it is not too strong to say that it provoked fear and
reassurance in equal parts. In a sense, he writes,

collaborative theatre making has always been with us, and we could
more easily try to establish at what point the producer took on the
power of the executive, the playwright rose to eminence as proprietary
rights were established in the text, and directors were brought in to
protect the financial interests of the backers. What has changed, over
the last forty years or so, has been a fluctuating activity intending to
draw into the creative process all the various talents of those members

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of the theatre ensemble, who have been disenfranchised by the

concentration of power of decision in the hands of a few key members
. . . it would not be stretching things too far to see this process as
attempting to supplant oligarchic, or even dictatorial control by a
more democratic way of working.1

Being a man of the theatre and an astute observer of our social world, Clive
would have been amongst the first to identify the recent global intensification
in concentrations of power and oligarchic expressions in the political,
economic, ecological and yes, even artistic realms. In his writing he reminded
us that to ensure more democratic ways of working, capable of orchestrating
the efforts of the ensemble, we needed to find ways to ‘harmonise the various
tensions, and utilize the differing, and often conflicting, contributions into a
rich dialectic, rather than a monofocal, blinkered vision’.2 What he suggests
here as an aesthetic and pedagogical basis for action clearly has political
implications for the social stage too. What would Clive have made of our
efforts to create pedagogical and theatre practices which, perhaps through
gentle example, attempt to provide mirrored spaces in which we can ‘rehearse’
and strengthen our political social collective, democratic muscles in safe
environments?
In this chapter I respond to this hypothetical question by discussing
‘citizen-centred dramaturgy’, an approach to making performance with
citizens who have an imperative to tell, in the context of the making of The
Flow Quartet, a project consisting of four interconnected multidisciplinary
performances created as part of the Polish city of Wrocław’s European
Capital of Culture (ECoC) 2016 cultural programme. I will briefly discuss
how the project enabled citizens and those with historical ties to the city to
make four large-scale performance works and in doing so identify collective
traumas associated with Wrocław. It is important to describe the scale of the
events, rehearsals and processes which were taking place over three years. If
theatre and arts practices really do aim to provide those mirrored spaces in
which we can ‘rehearse’ our democratic competencies, our abilities to
successfully intervene on the social stage, then does not some of such work
need to happen at a scale able to influence national, even global political
tendencies? This is what I describe as participatory arts processes ‘scaled up’;
public, political discourse in public spaces integral to cultural occasions such
as national cities of culture programmes or European Capitals of Culture
which, often over five or six years, can gain the attention of millions of people
as active participants and audience.

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The Flow Quartet – Wrocław, European Capital of

Culture (Poland), 2016

The Flow Quartet consisted of ‘Mosty’ (‘Bridges’, 17 June 2015), ‘Przebudzenie’

(‘Awakening’, 20 January 2016), ‘Flow’, parts I and II (11 June 2016) and
‘Niebo’ (‘Heaven/Sky’, 16/17 December 2016). Apart from ‘Niebo’, all
performances took place outdoors and occupied large parts of the city of
Wrocław (population 650,000). Again, apart from ‘Niebo’, these one-day/
night performances involved thousands of performers, hundreds of
thousands of spectators on the streets of the city and tens of millions of
national and international spectators via TV and internet. ‘Niebo’ involved
100 performers, approximately a hundred musicians and 60 technicians, and
was performed to an audience of 4,000 people on each of two consecutive
nights (total 8,000). Artists and citizens from six countries, supported by
their respective governmental organizations and funding (running into
millions of euros), participated in the making and performing of the events.
The entire project was curated and directed by me, supported by a
professional team of more than a hundred producers, technicians and artists
drawn from various disciplines.3 The title The Flow Quartet referred to
Wrocław’s river Odra, which flows through the Czech Republic and into
Poland and Germany, forming 187 kilometres of the border between these
two countries since the Yalta Agreement in 1945. Wrocław is a city dominated
by the Odra and is built on twelve islands connected by 112 bridges. Before
World War II there were as many as 303 bridges and footbridges. The city is
therefore defined as much by the ebbing and flowing of its history as by the
current of its waters.

Collective trauma, democracies and

citizen-centred dramaturgy

In many European post-authoritarian countries, such as Poland and Spain,

examples of collective trauma are widespread, intergenerational and
endemic – the result of war, ethnic cleansing and systematically applied
political and cultural strategies sustained over years and decades. What is
more, the existence of collective trauma within a society has been actively
appropriated, promulgated even, as part of the process of mourning,
sometimes to favour particular contemporary political actions and outcomes.
In such cases, official, state-regulated approaches to the teaching of history,

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the development of memory laws and even the development of particular

cultural practices can directly lead both to contemporary political
consequences, even the rise of demagogues and the loss of belief in the
transformative power of democratic models, and secondary traumatizations
of whole groups or populations. Manifestations of collective trauma are
sustained and passed across generations, impacting upon contemporary
political and social decision-making. Such examples of collective trauma
have been shown to play a key role in group identity formation. Poland is
such a place. Wrocław is such a city. It is clearly relevant to examine how
Wrocław and its experiences of collective traumas impacted upon the
development of the dramaturgy of The Flow Quartet, and how the project
itself created a social forum in which the impact collective trauma had on
individuals and the city could be examined.
To unpick some of this we need to acknowledge an intrinsic knottiness
about the theme. Looking only to theatre and performance theory does not
fully respond to the complexity of the questions we are raising here. And it
helps to weave together three strands of thinking: trauma and psychoanalytical
theory, Brecht and dramaturgical theory, and finally, the practices of history,
memory studies and public narratives. I talk about this in much more detail
elsewhere but for this chapter a few sentences must suffice.4 Cathy Caruth sees
traumatic experience not as a pathology of falsehood or displacement of
meaning but ‘of history itself’. In this respect she offers a definition of historical
practice which pushes at the boundaries of historiography. She also roots
psychoanalytic practice in a very concrete context – useful when attempting to
understand both Wrocław and Poland and the work we were attempting to
carry out through the making of The Flow Quartet.5 Brecht’s dramaturgical
recalibration of the notion of audience and fascination with working with non-
professionals was rooted in his practice from the early 1930s. As with citizen-
centred dramaturgy, he was making the case for rehearsal as an auto-referential
and auto-pedagogic act. For Brecht, both rehearsal and dramaturgy, as in
citizen-centred dramaturgy, can be described as applied political philosophy in
action. In many respects Augusto Boal articulated the links between Brecht’s
practice and what I have described as citizen-centred dramaturgy, through his
examples of how the human body is both keeper of lived experience of
oppression and trauma and a tool for liberation. What would Clive Barker and
Boal, who died in 2009, have made of rehearsals in Wrocław – especially when
thousands of people were active in the making of the dramaturgy?6
The history of Wrocław, Poland and the twentieth century was woven
into the very fabric of The Flow Quartet. The attempted annihilation of the

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country, the attempted destruction of its peoples, the resetting of borders,

decades-long occupations and fourteen years in the EU, all add up to a
reality in which The Flow Quartet was born, delivered and received. While
countries in both the east and west of Europe have memory laws which
legally restrict or define description or definitions of historical events, a
number of Eastern European state memory laws differ from their Western
counterparts. In Poland, Hungary and Russia, for example, legislation of the
past is often used to give the force of law to narratives centred on the nation
state. In Western European states, supported often by the EU, the goal of
such laws is to promote ‘a common European memory focused on the
memory of the Holocaust as a means of integrating Europe, combating
racism, and averting the national and ethnic conflicts that national narratives
are likely to stimulate’.7 It is relevant to mention here that the Polish Instytut
Pamięci Narodowej (Institute for National Remembrance) was established
in 1998 and describes itself as the ‘Commission for the Prosecution of
Crimes against the Polish Nation’. The senior directorial team is chosen by
the Sejm – the Polish parliament.8 This institution has the functions of state
and justice administration, of an archive, an academic institute, an education
centre and of a body which conducts vetting proceedings related to the
times of communism before 1990. However, recent political events in Poland
demonstrate how such laws can be used to perpetuate trauma and for other
undemocratic purposes.9
Political theorist Hannah Arendt is being read widely again as our
concern in understanding the rise of a new wave of political demagogues
across the planet increases. She points out that before any collective trauma
occurs the political lie is perpetrated. She distinguishes between ‘the
traditional political lie’ and ‘the modern political lie’.10 As Caruth reflects, ‘the
public realm in the modern world is not only the place of political action
that creates history but also, and centrally, the place of the political lie that
denies it . . . Facts are fragile in the political sphere, [Arendt] says, because
truth-telling is actually much less political in its nature than the lie’.11
‘Staying in the (rehearsal) room until knowledge is found’ is a concept I
have developed through practice and reflection which posits a political and
ethical stance to learning in rehearsal and aesthetic spaces. The concept is
rooted in therapeutic practice, radical pedagogy12 and theatre.13 Psychoanalyst
Dori Laub raises the question of ‘the imperative to tell’: ‘Survivors did not
only need to survive so that they could tell their story, they also needed to
tell their story in order to survive. There is in each survivor an imperative
need to tell, and thus to come to know one’s own story, unimpeded by ghosts

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of the past, against which one has to protect oneself.’14 While Laub is clearly
talking about his practice as a psychiatrist, his clear imperative to listen is
shared with staying in the rehearsal room until the knowledge is found.
Pedagogue Paulo Freire states that ‘the educator’s role is fundamentally to
enter into dialogue with the illiterate about concrete situations and simply to
offer him the instruments with which he can teach himself to read and write’.
Indeed, Freire conceptualizes his approach to pedagogy and curriculum
building as dialogical. ‘This teaching cannot be done from top down, but only
from inside out, by the illiterate himself, with the collaboration of the educator’.
He goes on to describe his mistrust of primers (textbooks) as they ‘end up by
donating to the illiterate words and sentences which really should result from
his own creative efforts’.15 It is only by staying in the rehearsal room until the
knowledge is found with citizen-performers that one can replace an existing
script (the theatrical equivalent to a primer) with a new, authentic series of
actions and images based on participant experiences of their own reality.
Augusto Boal asserts that the first word of the theatrical vocabulary is the
human body, the main source of sound and movement:

Therefore, to control the means of theatrical production, man must, first

of all, control his own body, know his own body, in order to be capable
of making it more expressive. Then he will be able to practice theatrical
forms through which by stages he frees himself from his condition as
spectator and takes on that of actor, in which he ceases to be an object
and becomes a subject, is changed from witness into protagonist.16

It is the role of Boal’s joker both to lead the emancipatory process of spectator
to actor and to mediate and curate the result of this process (a forum theatre)
to a new group of spectators setting out upon the same journey. The joker for
Boal, the curator in citizen-centred dramaturgy, thus commits to staying in
the room until the knowledge is found.

Poland and Wrocław

The history of Poland in the twentieth century is one of rebirth, virtual

annihilation and again rebirth; a story of a multi-ethnic nation becoming one of
the least ethnically diverse countries in Europe as a result of the atrocities
committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes. World War II, the Holocaust and
mass deportations removed entire communities from their villages and towns

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 On Supplanting Oligarchy: Clive Barker’s Defiant Anti-Authoritarianism

and left many devoid of their ‘communities of memory’. This was compounded
even further by communist rule between 1945 and 1990, which officially
prohibited the remembrance of some major traumatic events but used others as
unifying elements for national commemoration. German crimes and occupation
were commemorated in plaques and statues in almost every Polish city and
town yet the loss of the Polish territories in the eastern borderlands could not be
discussed until the mid-1950s. What is more, the ‘regained territories’ of Gdańsk,
Wrocław and Lower Silesia were given near-mythic status by the post-war
Polish authorities even if uncertainty about their long-term status as Polish
lands led reconstruction to be much slower than in Warsaw.
This complicated event in Polish history became a central metaphor in
‘Niebo’, the December 2016 closing ceremony of the ECoC and the backdrop
for a series of contemporary political confrontations between the EU
presidency and the government of Poland which played out over the
weekend.17 Wrocław had been Breslau until 1945: a German city with a
Protestant cathedral in which Protestant music could be heard for 600 years
on every religious occasion. A thriving Jewish population was integrated into
every aspect of urban life. Yet in the 1932 elections the Nazis received 44 per
cent of the votes cast, the third highest total in Germany. In the final few
months of 1945, 85 per cent of Breslau was destroyed by war, as much by Nazi
destruction as by the Soviet army. The expulsion of Germans from Breslau
did not begin in 1945 but in 1933 when the Jews were driven out. However, in
the three years after the war, almost the entire German population was
expelled from both the city and the region, and uprooted Poles, from the east
and other parts of Poland, colonized these lands. It is these complex events,
with ramifications stretching across many countries, which became the basis
for the development of everything seen in The Flow Quartet.

Citizen-centred dramaturgy

Citizen-centred dramaturgy is a conceptual framework directly extended

from Teatro de Creación (TdC), both developed by me over three decades of
practice and reflection.18 To explicitly define citizen-centred dramaturgy a
definition of TdC is first required: Teatro de Creación is the root from which
citizen-centred dramaturgy has emerged.
Teatro de Creación is an approach to making performance which
combines devising techniques, site-specific work and an emphasis on
contested social or collective memory. It is designed to be made in a place, be

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Clive Barker and His Legacy

about that place, its history and problems, and its relationship between place
and those with a ‘stake’ in that place – be it local people or diasporas.
Therefore, it happens almost anywhere except theatre buildings. The
representation of time in the final piece of work reflects the needs of the
storytelling and social context (relationship between performer and
audience) and not any adherence to linear representations of time.
Performances are not readily transferable or sellable. As a result of being
made for a specific place they have limited value as a re-sellable commodity.
Teatro de Creación abandons concepts such as ‘professional’ and ‘amateur’,
although professional and non-professional involvement in the process of
performance-making is present. But as co-makers of performative meaning,
we consider that the perspectives and stories of people with close attachment
to places and spaces determine their importance and dedication to the
project. Rehearsals begin without a text and instead with a dialogue about
expectations, outcomes, stories and rehearsals, and discussions are framed in
performance and artistic languages, using performative and creative tools
wherever possible. Long verbal discussions are avoided; so too the
predominance of one voice. The work is multi-directional – we celebrate
storytelling over and above realism of any form.
The nature of rehearsal is dialogical and always dialogical – while using
theatrical forms. Rehearsals are seen as opportunities to develop intercultural
competencies. Complexity within the rehearsal process is embraced and
given shape and expression within the emerging dramaturgy.
Teatro de Creación is a way of making performance, a pedagogical approach
to both the training of theatre-makers and also to the education of the social
being, a way of thinking about citizenship, a way of transcending professional/
non-professional categories, a way of defending the importance of culture as a
means by which to reflect on what it means to be human. In 2013, I added four
additional key concepts to Teatro de Creación, which led to the term ‘citizen-
centred dramaturgy’ in preparation for work on The Flow Quartet.
The following four key components guided the design, development and
artistic trajectory of the four movements of The Flow Quartet.

Citizens

The voices and experiences of citizens become the basis from which
dramaturgy is generated in a collaborative manner. They are invited to take
part as fully fledged performers in the events they co-devise.

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 On Supplanting Oligarchy: Clive Barker’s Defiant Anti-Authoritarianism

The voices and stories, in particular the unspoken and recounted traumas
of residents and citizens of Wrocław, were allowed to influence significant
performative and dramaturgical decisions. Curatorial decisions were made
not to work with professional performers but with those who had stories to
tell; ‘citizens’ became ‘principal performers’ and ‘storytellers’. Thousands of
citizens were invited to work with a small team of professional artists and
many professional technicians to create the four events in which the stories
of Wrocław and of the diasporas now living in Germany, Israel, Ukraine and
the Czech Republic were paramount. This study uses the phrase ‘citizen-
centred dramaturgy’ to describe the process and the emphasis on citizens
becoming intrinsic to the making process.

Space

Research processes, rehearsals, communication strategies, performance

outcomes and televised/streaming events are developed using the city as a
palimpsest.
Inevitably, with Wrocław’s twentieth-century history being the subject of
The Flow Quartet, the detection of personal and collective trauma occurred
within the physical context of the city. Streets, bridges, rivers, prisons, parks
and buildings became meaning-laden ‘spaces’, often denoting an absence left
unexplained by historical eras or political choices. Old industrial spaces and
factories, adapted to be used as rehearsal spaces for The Flow Quartet,
impacted upon the dramaturgy of the events as their histories became
known.

Design (sound and visual)

All design of sound and staging solutions is to be found from and within the
direct surroundings and is developed ‘in dialogue’ with local specific
traditions or conditions.
Regarding sound design, new music had to be commissioned for all four
pieces of The Flow Quartet. Composers from Wrocław and its diasporas
were the logical choice given the emphasis we give to the voice of citizens.
Composers from Wrocław, the Czech Republic, Israel and Germany were
commissioned.

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Regarding visual design, each of the twenty-six cultural bridge projects in

‘Mosty’ developed design solutions through a collaborative process curated
by me and supported by four assistant directors. This multiplicity of
approaches was sustained in ‘Przebudzenie’, the opening ceremony for the
European Capital year in 2016 which reached over 17 million viewers on TV
and online. In this case a unifying design element in the form of the four
‘spirits’ was added in order to encourage a linear storyline to emerge. Four
processions, each some seven kilometres long, passed through the streets of
the city. Highly mobile objects and design solutions were required to respond
to the fixed architecture of the city (for example trams and their overhead
cables) yet create spectacle for tens of thousands of people at any one given
moment. This needed to be achieved within the context of the main objective
of The Flow Quartet – namely to make major events for the city using the
voices and stories of those associated with the city as the dramaturgical base.
As the video material demonstrates, four ‘spirits’ were commissioned,
designed and built in steel as a result of a French/Polish collaboration.
In ‘Flow II’, citizen-centred dramaturgy decreased somewhat, becoming
more focused on an extended and curated conversation between four
composers. Lighting and video mapping of the old city accompanied the
performance and was designed and delivered by a dedicated small
professional team.

Dramaturgy

As with Teatro de Creación, citizen-centred dramaturgy emphasizes place,

its history and problems, and its relationship between place and those with a
‘stake’ in that place – be it local people or diasporas. The representation of
time in the final piece of work reflects the needs of the storytelling and social
context. Rehearsals begin without a text and instead with a dialogue about
expectations, outcomes, stories and rehearsals.
The Flow Quartet is an example of an approach to curating which enabled
citizens to tell stories and participate in devising over the four projects. The
Flow Quartet aimed to place itself at the centre of a conversation about the
nature of the city’s identity in contemporary Poland, and that of Poland in
contemporary Europe – a conversation very much contested nationally and
internationally.
The significance of this methodology in the field and the modes in which
it can be adapted to different performance contexts are explored below.

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Citizen-centred dramaturgy as democratic dialogue

The educator with a democratic vision or posture cannot avoid in his
teaching praxis insisting on the critical capacity, curiosity and autonomy of
the learner.19

Citizen-centred dramaturgy has a democratic vision

The curator and citizen-participant are in dialogue with one another in a
similar way to the educator and learner articulated by Freire. There is respect
for what citizen-participants know. This is very significant in large-scale
performance work and European Capital of Culture projects, large-scale
events where considerable production and political pressures militate
against accountable, transparent and collaborative decision-making.
By making the praxis of citizen-centred dramaturgy (citizen, space,
design and dramaturgy) visible to both citizen participants and the
professional support teams of administrators, technicians and politicians:
● Critical production decisions can be scrutinized and evaluated with
reference to their democratic/participatory intentions
● The power relationships underpinning decision-making between citizen
and support teams can be re-evaluated and re-calibrated where
appropriate. For example, the constitution of an orchestra can be based
on criteria developed through a cultural/political dialogue and not just
by taking into consideration highly prescriptive public procurement law.

Ability to use citizen-centred dramaturgy as a

diagnostic design tool
In large-scale project planning, in which more than one performance
outcome is envisaged, citizen-centred dramaturgy can be used as a diagnostic
tool to help design consecutive steps.
In part one of The Flow Quartet, ‘Mosty’ (‘Bridges’), significant emphasis
and respect was placed on the artistic autonomy of participating groups.
After the open call successful projects were given support in the form of
production and technical guidance but performative decisions were never
overruled by the curatorial director team.
Despite the open call placing emphasis on the historical nature of
Wrocław’s bridges, almost no group responded to the implicit and explicit

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invitation to explore the nature of this heritage for contemporary Wrocław

and Poland. (It should be stated that almost all of the 130 bridges in Wrocław
were built and designed by German architects and engineers, in some
instances German Jews, and had been given German names. These were
later changed and are now largely forgotten – part of a political process
extending from 1945 in which the city and region has been increasingly
made less German and more Polish in nature.) By June 2015 it was clear to
the curatorial team, led by me, that the absence of acknowledgement of the
German heritage of the bridges was either indicative of a reluctance to
approach what remained a difficult or delicate subject (the appropriation of
the region and city in 1945 by Poland) or pointed towards an absence of a
critical consciousness able to conceptualize artistic and symbolic
representations of this historical reality. This led to a series of curatorial
decisions to structure ‘Przebudzenie’ (‘Awakening’), the second part of The
Flow Quartet, six months after ‘Mosty’, in a way which would make it less
possible for the contested history of Wrocław to be avoided or downplayed.

Designing playfulness

A final reflection is required, perhaps, as this chapter has attempted to

suggest that implicit in Clive Barker’s words and practice was a continual
nudging and gentle prodding aimed at our ribcages; ‘What,’ he might
have asked, ‘is your practice offering which makes us better as collectively
minded human beings?’, and, ‘If theatre is better, richer and less wasteful
when it is more democratic, can it be used as some kind of rehearsal for a
better, richer and less wasteful world?’. So let’s go back a step as a way of
concluding. Clive was fascinated with Bakhtin’s book Rabelais and His
World. Why?
In Rabelais and His World, Bakhtin discusses the carnivalesque (or ‘folk-
humour’) a speech-genre which occurs most notably in carnival itself. A
carnival is a moment when everything (except probably violence) is
permitted and occurs on the border between art and life, and is a kind of life
shaped according to a pattern of play. It is usually marked by displays of
excess and grotesqueness. It is a type of performance, but this performance
is communal, with no boundary between performers and audience. In this
respect it has an objective in common with citizen-centred dramaturgy;
both create situations in which diverse voices are heard and interact, enabling
genuine dialogue; both create the chance for a new perspective and a new

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order of things.20 For Bakhtin, the carnival and carnivalesque create an

alternative social space, characterized by freedom, equality and abundance.
During carnival, rank is abolished and everyone is equal and indiscretions
permitted. As Stanley Brandes states, ‘Drunks appear rowdy and disruptive,
and their apparent inability to control what they say can be embarrassing
and offensive . . . but with uncanny precision, they accuse onlookers of
having transgressed this or that moral rule.’21 People are reborn into truly
human relations, which were not simply imagined but experienced. And it is
this which binds Clive Barker’s work to citizen-centred dramaturgy. When
planning and designing any citizen-centred dramaturgy project, neither
dramaturgy or visual design approaches are predetermined or predicted. In
the case of The Flow Quartet, the ‘playfulness’ of the scenography was decided
upon as a result of the specific conditions stemming from conversations
with citizen participants over months.22 The Flow Quartet, with its emphasis
on disrupting and questioning settled notions of collective memory, needed
an approach to visual design and dramaturgy which would support this aim
rather than contribute to more settled or homogeneous readings and thus
we were keen to encourage both visual and sound designers to be conscious
of the disrupting qualities of the carnivalesque.
Nevertheless, carnivals have turned into state-controlled parades and this
danger was always present in the work in Wrocław. Bakhtin believes that the
carnival principle is indestructible. It continues to reappear as the inspiration
for areas of life and culture, as in the design solutions in Wrocław and other
aspects of citizen-centred dramaturgy. Carnival contains a utopian promise
for human emancipation through the free expression of thought and
creativity. Both Bakhtin and Clive Barker, the author of Theatre Games, stand
for everything that is irreducibly unofficial and unserious, and in the end
irrecuperable by authoritarianism.

Notes

1. Clive Barker’s foreword in Baldwin and Bicat, 2002a, 6.

2. Ibid.
3. See www.chrisbaldwin.eu for full details, video materials and credits.
4. Baldwin, C., Citizen Centred Dramaturgy: The Flow Quartet and Poland’s
Wroclaw, Routledge (in preparation).
5. See Caruth, 1995; Caruth, 1996; Caruth, 2013; and Caruth, 2014.
6. See Boal, 2002; Boal, 2008; Baldwin and Bicat, 2002a; and Baldwin, 2003.

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7. Koposov, 9.
8. Institute of National Remembrance website: https://ipn.gov.pl/en.
9. For Poland, Hungarian and Russian examples of attempts to legislate on the past
see Koposov, 10. For Russia, see M. Gessen, The Future is History: How
Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (2017) and J. Grabowski, Hunt for the Jews:
Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland (2013). In September 2016
(three months after ‘Flow’ and three months before ‘Niebo’) Jan Grabowski,
Professor of Polish History at Ottowa University, wrote an article about the PiS
government in Poland. He highlighted recent attacks against the Polish High
Courts, journalists and the press, and changes to laws relating to collective
memory and the Holocaust: http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/as-poland-re-
writes-its-Holocaust-history-historians-face-prison/. These new laws, already
approved by the cabinet, would impose prison terms of up to three years on
people ‘who publicly and against the facts, accuse the Polish nation, or the Polish
state, [of being] responsible or complicit in Nazi crimes committed by the III
German Reich.’ The official response to this article, written by Łukasz Weremiuk,
Chargé d’affaires at the Polish Embassy in Ottawa, is striking if not chilling:
http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/the-polish-embassy-in-ottawa-responds-
to-jan-grabowski/. Some months earlier, in January 2016 (as the first part of The
Flow Quartet was performed), Professor Jan Gross, from Princetown University,
was also under attack from the same PiS government for presenting evidence of
Polish participation in post-war pogroms: http://wyborcza.
pl/1,95891,19612362,prof-gross-zasluzyl-na-ten-order.html. It is also fascinating
to hear Jan Gross explain how, in the late 1960s, his generation of young Polish
historians were ‘interested in how the communists falsified history’: https://
youtu.be/GKYgyLGvzP8. See also J. Gross, Neighbours: The Destruction of the
Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (2001).
10. See Arendt, 1971.
11. Caruth, 2013, 40–1.
12. I am thinking here about Freire, 2001.
13. See Boal, 2006.
14. Laub quoted in Caruth, 2014, 48.
15. Freire, 2005, 78.
16. Boal, 2008, 125–6. Boal’s translator does not attempt to address the ‘unmarked
catagories’ of Boal’s gendered language.
17. For general works (in English) on Wrocław and Poland see N. Davies and R.
Moorhouse, Microcosm: A Portrait of A Central European City (2003) and N.
Davies, God’s Playground (Volumes I and II) (2005). It is worth noting that
Davies and Moorhouse’s Microcosm was commissioned by Mayor of Wrocław,
Rafał Dutkiewicz and promoter of Wrocław, ECoC 2016. See also A. Applebaum,
Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe (2012) and Red Famine: Stalin’s
War on the Ukraine (2017), and T. Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and
Stalin (2010) and Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning (2016), on

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the Hitler/Stalin policy and legacy in Poland. For more reading on memory
studies relating to Poland see Blacker and Etkind, 2013, 173.
18. See www.chrisbaldwin.eu; Baldwin and Bicat, 2002b; Baldwin, 2003; and
Assenova and Baldwin, 2010.
19. Freire, 2001, 33.
20. See Introduction in Bakhtin, 2009.
21. Brandes, 1; see also Baldwin, 2008.
22. See www.chrisbaldwin.eu (Projects).

Bibliography

Arendt, H., ‘Lying and Politics’, in Crisis of the Republic, New York: Harvest, 1971.
Assenova, M. and Baldwin, C., 1989 – Mapping the Northwest Bulgaria: Applied
Theatre and the Teaching of Disputed Histories, Sofia: Factory for New Culture,
2010. Available at: http://chrisbaldwin.eu/writing-3/4592383051.
Bakhtin, M., Rabelais and His World, trans. H. Iwolsky, Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2009.
Baldwin, C., Stage Directing: A Practical Guide, Ramsbury: Crowood Press, 2003.
Baldwin, C., ‘Participatory Arts and the Agile Citizen in Spain’, 2008. Available at
http://chrisbaldwin.eu/writing-2/4592344937.
Baldwin, C. and Bicat, T. (eds), Devised and Collaborative Theatre, Ramsbury:
Crowood Press, 2002a.
Baldwin, C. and Bicat, T., Teatro de Creacíon, Madrid: Naque Editora, 2002b.
Blacker, U. and Etkind, A., Memory and Theory in Eastern Europe, ed. J. Fedor, New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Boal, A., Games for Actors and Non-Actors, London: Routledge, 2002.
Boal, A., The Aesthetics of the Oppressed, London: Routledge, 2006.
Boal, A., Theatre of the Oppressed, London: Pluto Press, 2008.
Brandes, S., Power and Persuasion: Fiestas and Social Control in Rural Mexico,
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988.
Caruth, C., Trauma: Explorations in Memory, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1995.
Caruth, C., Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History, Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1996.
Caruth, C., Literature in the Ashes of History, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2013.
Caruth, C., Listening to Trauma: Conversations with Leaders in the Theory and
Catastrophic Experience, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 2014.
Freire, P., Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy and Civic Courage, Maryland:
Rowman and Littlefield, 2001.
Friere, P., Education for Critical Consciousness, London: Continuum Books, 2005.
Koposov, N., Memory Laws, Memory Wars: The Politics of the Past in Europe and
Russia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

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CHAPTER 10
HACKING THE ARCHIVES: THE 2012
OLYMPIC LEGACY, FUN PALACES
AND GAME THEATRE
Joseph Dunne-Howrie

Introduction

‘All my life has been a search for community.’1

Clive Barker’s rich and varied career as an actor, writer, director and
pedagogue is interwoven amongst a history of radical theatrical
experimentation and political activism in the archives at Rose Bruford
College of Theatre and Performance, the University of East London, the
V&A Museum, the Theatre Royal Stratford East, and the British Library.
The origins of this alternative theatre movement can be traced back to the
cultural impact of socialism in the late nineteenth century. The
disenfranchisement of the working class was vividly documented in novels
by Margaret Harkness, Robert Tressell and Jack London, whilst eminent
figures such as George Bernard Shaw, John Ruskin, William Morris, and H.
G. Wells imagined utopian societies engendered by mass democratization.
Institutions that were part of this ‘settlement movement’,2 such as Toynbee
Hall, the Fabian Society, the Socialist League and the Social Democratic
Federation, were set up to ‘provide the sort of social leadership that pre-
industrial societies had’3 through workers’ education programmes, sporting
events and wider cultural activities. The First World War and the Russian
Revolution continued to inculcate a new class consciousness in the body
politick. The General Strike of 1926 expressed mass dissatisfaction with the
elitist, bourgeois and profoundly unrepresentative political establishment in
Britain. Class became a pressing political issue in British society as the
labour movement went from strength to strength in the early twentieth
century, leading to the first Labour government in 1924 and the creation of
the welfare state by Clement Attlee’s Labour government in 1945.
Notable theatre companies and organizations in this political milieu were
the Red Megaphones, the Workers’ Theatre Movement, Unity Theatre and

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Theatre of Action (which went on to become Theatre Union in 1936 and

later became Theatre Workshop in 1945). This movement continued in the
post-war period with the formation of Inter-Action, CAST (Cartoon
Archetypal Slogan Theatre), The General Will, Joint Stock, Gay Sweatshop,
People Show, Welfare State, 7:84 and Centre 42. These pioneering generations
of thinkers and artists considered theatre and political activism to be
synonymous. By the 1970s joining a theatre company expressed a
commitment to radical democratic social change through mass political
participation.4 Theatre was a tool for empowering audiences to create new
forms of social organization through artistic experimentation in public
spaces.
The history of the alternative theatre movement is preserved in the
archives, but this history is not over or complete. The past in the twenty-first
century ‘is not what it used to be. [Historical memory] used to mark the
relation of a community or a nation to its past, but the boundary between
past and present used to be stronger and more stable than it appears to be
today’.5 The lacunae of archives infuses history with liveness by giving ‘place,
order and future to the remainder’ and allows us to ‘consider things, including
documents, as reiterations to be acted upon’.6 ‘Archive fever’7 is the desire to
know and touch the past, to compose meaning out of life’s assorted fragments
so we can learn who we are and imagine who we may become. The archive
in the twenty-first century has emerged as ‘a politics of the imagination in
which the past has become a place of succour and strength, a kind of home,
for the ideas people possess of who they really want to be’.8 Therefore,
archival ‘documents are not in opposition to performance, but rather they
emerge from and are part of the environment generated by performance.
Not only do they require meaning in relation to it, they become a sign for it’.9
I contend that the performance environment includes the political ideologies
and exigencies that motivated Clive Barker and his contemporaries to use
theatre to reimagine the idea of community in collaboration with audiences.
One of the most valuable aspects of the alternative theatre movement’s
legacy in the current political climate is to inspire practitioners to collaborate
with audiences in making the idea of community perpetually open to
reinvention, in order to reimagine what British society could be through
theatre; this is particularly necessary at a time when the country is bitterly
divided along political, cultural and social lines.
In this chapter I frame the archive as a dynamic, live entity within theatre
historiography. This critical lens enables me to consider how the archives
mentioned above can act as ‘potential evidence for histories yet to be

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completed’10 by conceptualizing Barker’s legacy in the future tense. Archival

documents are treated as nascent imaginaries of communities that are
distinct from the hyper-individualized, mass consumer and market-oriented
forms of social organization that have been hegemonic in Britain for four
decades. I have written elsewhere that the live medium functions as a mode
of ‘archival production’ when documents and audiences’ memories become
catalysts for new performance processes and artworks.11 This reconfigures
liveness into an experience of distributive co-presence between objects,
places, people, times, histories and ideas that stretches over time through
archival documents.12 Conversely, the archive becomes a live space when
documents are accessed by readers, which enables the information
instantiated within them to enter contemporary discourse and consequently
creates a method of theatre historiography where ‘live acts and their
translation into text are generative iterations of knowledge production’.13 In
distinction to the archive’s role within an economic system of mass
reproduction where histories of performance are ‘re-written, through the
contemporary art market . . . as the performative production of objects,
relics and traces of value and desire,’14 liveness in the context of the archive
embodies the contemporary theatre ecology, which is ‘prodigiously spread
across material and virtual space in a myriad of interconnected systems’.15
‘Hacking’ is a term widely used in the areas of digital design, games
studies and interactive art to denote practical skills in reinventing computer
hardware and software and an artistic strategy of material reappropriation.
In broader cultural terms, hackers are rebels looking for ways to subvert
structures of power and control in the political sphere. In this spirit I hack
the historical figure of Clive Barker from the archives into an idea of
performative political emancipation from the paradigm of community as it
is structured in modern capitalist democracies. Moreover, the rubric of
hacking is used in my argumentation to analyse how participatory
performances that incorporate technology into their dramaturgies gamify
public spaces to embed theatre into everyday life, a mode of performance
that expresses the artistic and political imperatives of the alternative theatre
movement.
Barker’s future-tense legacy is explored in the context of the 2012 Olympic
legacy and its impact on East London’s cultural ecology. This perspective is
relevant for the following reasons. Firstly, Barker’s membership of Theatre
Workshop makes him a significant point of reference in Stratford’s theatre
history. His work with Joan Littlewood was an important influence on his
praxis in terms of how he came to understand that the basis of an actor’s

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work is conditioned by ‘the controlling discipline of the social and economic

necessities of life’ that the actor ‘carries around inside’ and ‘applies . . . in a
generalised fashion, to new areas of work’, which can inhibit their ability to
respond creatively to new dramatic situations and contexts.16 Barker’s work
with games as a basis for creative exploration and spontaneity acts as a
conceptual point of departure to examine how the Olympic legacy denudes
citizens of their right to act as agents of societal change, before the chapter
goes on to discuss how the Olympic Village in Stratford is an analogue of
future imaginaries of ideal communities. Barker’s contention that the
‘patterns or basic themes of culture should be deducible from the study of
play and games and no less from the study of economic, political, religious
or familiar institutions’17 provides a critical perspective for analysing how
the spectacle of the 2012 Olympics performed a version of Britain’s national
identity that failed to represent the power of citizens to continuously
participate in reinventing their ideas of home, belonging, nation and identity.
Further, games and workshop exercises as actor training tools are the
most well-known example of Barker’s praxis, but he passionately believed
that teaching should not just occur in institutions or as part of a prescribed
curriculum or training programme. The most important task for artists and
pedagogues in Barker’s estimation was to share knowledge so communities
could establish their own working practices and professional networks. This
goal could only be accomplished if teaching and theatre were considered
holistic activities responsive to the contemporary sociological conditions
that artists worked within. Whilst he was never directly involved in its design
or failed implementation, the Fun Palace project Joan Littlewood initiated in
the mid-1960s with the architect Cedric Price encapsulates this vision. I
consider how Joan Littlewood’s vision for the Fun Palace has been
transformed in the archive from an unrealized plan for creating an institution
in Stratford which ‘corresponded with the questioning of theatrical and
cultural orthodoxies and the progressive sensibility that emerged in [the
mid-twentieth century]’18 into archival lacunae that produce models of
communities resistant to commercial imperatives of social organization.
This acts as a critical framing device to discuss how Littlewood’s goal of
utilizing cybernetics to ‘democratise knowledge and engage in knowledge
transfer’19 is emulated in the use of digital technology to activate audience
participation in my site-specific audio-walk Voices from the Village (2014).
Voices from the Village was written as part of my practice research doctoral
thesis and explores the implications of the Olympic legacy for the residents
who live in Stratford and Hackney Wick (a former industrial estate that

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borders the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park), and what effects the legacy
might have on the public memory of these sites. Voices from the Village was
available to download on voicesfromthevillage.com from 2014 to 2015 and
can now be downloaded from the SoundCloud account soundcloud.com/
jdunne-1. The dramaturgy of an audio-walk reveals the invisible political
structures that govern regenerated sites using the sonic medium as a
perceptual lens to explore the social systems of control present in the
Olympic Village. Using Voices from the Village as a case study, I theorize how
performance can hack the idea of the Olympic Village as a model for
sustainable communities.
Finally, I discuss how Barker’s gaming praxis has become part of a cross-
fertilization of gaming, installation and participatory live artwork using
interactive pieces by the East London-based ZU-UK Theatre and Digital
Arts company as case studies. I discuss how interactive technologies and
sites are incorporated into the dramaturgies of ZU-UK’s Binaural Dinner
Date (2017) and #RioFoneHack at TBW (2019) to hack public spaces in sites
around Stratford and London’s Docklands area.

The Olympic legacy

The 2012 Olympic Games was presented to the public as a kernel for building
communities of the future. The opening ceremony ‘presented twenty-first
century Britain first and foremost as a land of cultural expertise (particularly
in digital developments) and ethnic diversity’.20 Following the 7/7 terrorist
attacks in London in 2005, the day after the city was awarded the bid to host
the games, the Olympics came to symbolize tolerance, internationalism and
modernity and the antithesis to political violence. The former London
Mayor Ken Livingstone described London as ‘a beacon of what the world
can be’ where children will dream of coming to ‘run faster, jump higher and
run farther than anyone has done before’.21 Some years later the Prime
Minister, David Cameron, stated that ‘legacy [was] built into the DNA of
London 2012’:22 ‘More cohesive and proactive communities would be a
genuine legacy from London 2012, which would last for generations and
would support the creation of the Big Society. We want to ensure that the
Games leave a lasting legacy as the most equality-friendly ever.’23
British politics has radically changed since 2012. Following Brexit,
London has become synonymous with an out-of-touch liberal elite, a bastion
of internationalism that is inimical to British traditions. London’s

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multicultural society is now widely regarded by the Conservative government

and the right-wing press as representative of everything wrong with the
nation that must be rectified by reducing immigration and injecting
nationalist rhetoric about Britain’s superiority into public discourse.
Moreover, a decade of austerity has eroded the social fabric of the public
realm, perhaps permanently, leaving many people in the capital to lead
precarious lives with insecure jobs, high rents and stagnant wages – leading
Jen Harvie to conclude that ‘London’s cultural strategies designed for
prosperity adversely affect liveability for its most vulnerable citizens’.24
The 2012 Olympic legacy is a benchmark of regeneration projects, which
have become commonplace in Britain over the past forty years. Regeneration
has become the shorthand for large-scale infrastructure projects designed to
redevelop dilapidated urban conurbations. The goal of these projects is to
create economic growth by attracting investment from private capital,
primarily in the areas of residential property and retail. Much of the
economic growth that regeneration projects have created in their local areas
has been built on risky property speculation and increases in public debt:
‘Since the 1980s, living on the never-never has been encouraged not only by
banks but by both Labour and Tory governments, for whom consumer
credit was the easiest way to stimulate growth. Moral and social status, the
issue of legitimacy and illegitimacy, become reduced to credit worthiness.’25
The Olympic legacy has materialized as the E20 Village, the Westfield
Shopping Centre, and the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, which I collectively
describe as the Olympic Village. I use the word ‘village’ because it is the
favoured term of property developers and estate agents to partition London
into hermetically sealed zones of affluence disconnected from the mess and
sprawl of the city.

[T]his is the architecture of extreme capitalism, which produces a

divided landscape of privately owned, disconnected, high security,
gated enclaves side by side with enclaves of poverty which remain
untouched by the world around them. The stark segregation and
highly visible mistrust between people, which together with the
undemocratic nature of these new private places, erodes civil society.26

Anna Minton traces the origin of regeneration projects to London’s

Docklands. Once the centre of UK trade and heavy industry, the brownfield
site by the River Thames is now home to the iconic enterprise zone the Isle
of Dogs. The regeneration of the Docklands began during the Big Boom of

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the 1980s when nationalized industries were privatized, and the City of
London became the driver of economic growth. Margaret Thatcher’s
government replaced Britain’s manufacturing centres with ‘a combination of
top-down diktat and economic laissez-faire’.27 The privatization of land has
now ‘taken root in towns and cities around Britain, changing the physical
fabric, the culture and the government of the places we live in’.28 Privatizing
land ‘to serve the needs of business has become the standard model for the
creation of every new place in towns and cities across the country’.29 The
regeneration of East London has not resulted in wealth trickling down but
has instead made local communities ‘displaced . . . as property prices ensured
new homes remained unaffordable for locals, [they were] forced to move out
further east to boroughs like Barking and Dagenham, or deeper into Essex’.30
The 2012 Olympic Games created a legacy built on debt, with ‘£600 million
. . . owed to the National Lottery’ and ‘£675 million to the London
Development Agency’.31 The economic legacy of the Olympics can be
described as a ‘payback legacy’ that ‘concentrates on the disposal of material
assets and liabilities – to whom are they bequeathed or sold off and under
what conditions – and how debts of various kinds are to be negotiated within
a time delimited frame’.32
These economic policies represent an assault on the hopes and aspirations
of the alternative theatre movement. The deep cuts to arts funding and local
government that Thatcher’s government instituted fragmented the cultural
landscape and made large-scale collaboration between artists extremely
difficult. The aim of using theatre to ignite the public imagination of a society
governed by mass democratic participation in local communities was
further diluted by the New Labour government (1997–2010) who rebranded
the arts as the cultural industries in order to absorb cultural activities into
the business community. Arts organizations were expected to run as small
businesses, embracing enterprise and entrepreneurialism. Human capital
and intellectual property were cited as key drivers of innovation and growth
in the knowledge-based economy. The Conservative–Liberal Democrat
Coalition government (2010–15) cut £6 billion from the Arts Council’s
grant from the Department for Media, Culture and Sport’s budget. The
National Portfolio scheme now sets artistic agendas concordant with pan-
government priorities. New and experimental work is largely funded by the
National Lottery and small grants from independent organizations. ‘By
simultaneously promoting a culture of philanthropy, Cameron’s government
. . . threaten[ed] the independence of arts organisations, requiring them to
bend to the priorities of business in order to survive’.33 Questions of identity

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rather than class have consequently become the defining issue for the
contemporary alternative theatre movement: ‘This current generation of
artists tend to commit to political action as individuals within more loosely
based collectives, perhaps as a direct result of the ways in which companies’
identities and bodies of work have been co-opted into the capitalist
marketplace of the creative industries.’34
Theatre in twenty-first-century British culture is thus valued for its
capacity to enhance and affirm extant values of nation, society and community
rather than radically hack what these ideas mean for audiences today.
Promoting values of inclusion, diversity and widening participation is
artificially set against the important artistic qualities of sublimity, beauty,
intimacy, experimentation and creative failure in the political sphere. This
false dichotomy fails to account for the political language of aesthetics. ‘The
personal is the means of experiencing the conceptual, while the conceptual
structure is a way of understanding the personal’.35 The new levels of social
cohesion and prosperity that London 2012 symbolized now appear crudely
fantastical. The ideas of nation and community traditionally defined as that
which ‘binds people together through shared temperament, language, history,
culture, landscape and so on’36 are unravelling under the forces of globalization.
Attempts to stage the essence of British culture in one event failed to perform
the experience of being a global citizen whose sense of community is not
determined by geographical territory. The real legacy of the Olympics is a
diminution of the status afforded to art and cultural events to construct new
ways of living. The archive of the alternative theatre movement can help to
restore this status by giving contemporary practitioners the conceptual and
practical tools to reinvent the idea of community in a globalized world.
The site where the Olympic Village now sits, opposite the Theatre Royal
Stratford East, was considered a suitable site for building the first Fun Palace.
In his personal correspondences housed in the Rose Bruford archive, Barker
writes that the Fun Palace responds to a deep social need for public spaces to
possess the quality of plasticity in their function and materiality by acting as
an incubator of role play, games and make-believe:

At the moment, as a society, we seem to be leaving the solution of the

problems to chance or else to existing institutions, many of which
contain entrenched vested interests opposed to change and
development, many totally inadequate to the social needs of the time,
many of an important minority interest are presumed capable of
adaptation to majority interest.37

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The environment where art is experienced needs to be fully adaptive to the

contingencies of the cultural ecology of the audience. Whilst the
informational environment envisioned by Littlewood was never built, hybrid
performance practices that incorporate digital technology into the
dramaturgy as an agent of audience participation transform the political
exigencies of the Fun Palace as preserved in the archives into a discursive
event played out in sites and digital networks. The mobility of this mode of
artistic democratic participation emulates the thinking by Barker and his
contemporaries that theatre responds most effectively to the present
sociological conditions of the audience if institutions are dispensed with
and companies committed to touring full time. The leader of CAST, Roland
Muldoon, expressed the ambition thus: ‘What we are suggesting is that
theatre should go towards people, and not people towards theatre’.38 The
affordances of digital technology enable a form of theatrical mobility
favoured by the alternative theatre movement. I now go on to discuss how
audiences participate in Voices from the Village by hacking imaginaries of
future communities in the Olympic Village through producing documents
that act ‘as fictions of a reality with a transformative power in them’.39

Hacking the archives

The Fun Palace that Joan Littlewood envisaged was a public space functioning
as a cultural dialectic between ‘traditional forms of popular entertainment
such as the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens and the funfair’, and the ‘impetus
between settlement houses that originated in Victorian England, where
reformers lived and worked in disadvantaged areas to facilitate social and
educational improvement’.40 Creating a space where future forms of social
organization can be experimented with through interacting with technology
reflects a ‘social impetus [that] is [now] present in the now fashionable
themes of lifelong learning, brownfield regeneration and intelligent
environments’41 without entrenching political and economic inequalities.
The Fun Palace would serve as an immersive informational environment
for leisure and educational purposes. Littlewood felt that the automization
of society had the potential to multiply the means by which artists could
directly communicate with audiences. Art, technology and entertainment
would come together to ‘awaken interest and desire and satisfy a demand for
knowledge’ using ‘electronic games and machines of language structures to
lead to co-operative action’,42 which in a broader sense would allow visitors

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to experience ‘how to live in a scientific culture’.43 Littlewood considered it

vital that public spaces were designed as interactive systems ‘for encouraging
the creative behaviour that is necessary in an automated society’ so ‘that
people in a democratic society should know something about high level
decision making in order to use their vote’. This system would ‘provide them
with knowledge about decision making that could not readily be obtained in
real life’.44 We can see the influence of the cybernetic lexicon in Baker’s praxis
when he says that the human being is a learning programme.45
In the age of big data, smart objects, pervasive information and the
internet of things, the notion of a technologically immersive learning
environment is no longer theoretical. Indeed, the consumption and
transmission of information through digital technology acts as the
infrastructure of modern democratic capitalist societies. But the internet has
shifted modern imaginaries of these informational environments from
institutions to portals, spaces, fluid structures and discursive events that are
sewn into the fabric of everyday life. Furthermore, the surveillance
affordances of digital technology conflict with the emancipatory potential
Littlewood and Barker envisaged for cybernetics: ‘Rather than CCTV being
used as a vehicle for surveillance and control, Littlewood planned to co-opt
this technology as a democratising resource for allowing access into other
worlds and transmitting an appreciation of the performativity of everyday
life.’46
Surveillance today is used to stifle political dissent or antisocial and
undesirable behaviour. The social forms of interaction that surveillance
technologies engender in public spaces makes their co-optation by artists
wishing to utilize them to enhance systems of democratic participation
almost impossible. ‘The very software that enables almost incomprehensible
invasions of privacy is protected by laws that guard its privacy. This is the
new privacy. It is a post-democracy privacy’.47 The pervasive nature of the
internet turns all communication technologies into surveillance systems
and configures public imaginaries of social interaction into a ‘human
simulation of machine learning systems; a confluent hive mind in which
each element learns and operates in concert with every other element. In the
model of machine confluence, the “freedom” of each individual machine is
subordinated to the knowledge of the system as a whole.’48
Regenerated sites such as the Olympic Village inflict the dystopian vision
of pervasive systems of surveillance acting as the model for contemporary
democratic ideals of community that beget participatory social
experimentations, by immersing the public in invisible systems of

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informational organization and categorization that are out of their control.

When the autonomy of the individual can only be expressed through acts of
economic consumption, their natural desire to explore and discover through
doing is suppressed. This renders the social function of the 2012 Olympic
Games in direct opposition to Barker’s belief that the aim of games is ‘not to
produce a multi-potential puppet, since every human being will find new
possibilities in his own way by using his own personal resources and
overcoming his own resistances’.49 If we turn to Barker’s praxis for inspiration,
hacking the social structure of modern communities requires artists to
create modes of audience participation not confined to a particular event or
institution by using games and gaming dramaturgies as a model for social
interaction.
Games, here, are defined as systems that emulate the plasticity of the Fun
Palace in their capacity to be restructured by players so that they may
‘examine alternative choices and [. . .] work through the consequences of
those choices’.50 The informational environment of the Fun Palace diverges
from contemporary forms of networked communication through its
emphasis on learning through social experimentation. In contrast,
communication technologies today function to organize behaviours and
social codes within a network of law enforcement operations.51 Terminology
from the field of information science can aid in the conceptual development
of this mode of audience participation by framing the sites where these
structures play out as platforms. ‘ “[A] platform” is a system that can be
programmed and therefore customised by outside users, and in that way
adapted to countless needs and niches that the platform’s original developers
could not possibly have contemplated’.52
By guiding participants around a regenerated site via an audio guide,
Voices from the Village structures encounters between the London Legacy
Development Corporation’s version of East London’s past and the
participant’s present, live experience of this ‘legacy blueprint’.53 Participants
are guided through the sites in the first two acts by the Legacy Builder and
the 2012 Manager who attempt to inculcate them into the Legacy Project – a
new type of citizenry based on the regeneration paradigm. In the third act
participants explore what would happen to the communities in the
neighbouring Hackney Wick estate if it was regenerated. The audio-walk is
designed for one person to experience at any time of day. The open-ended
form of this technologically mediated performance echoes Littlewood’s wish
to create a mobile and adaptable site that functions as a ‘brain-bank’ where
‘information [is] piped from site to site’.54

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The first two acts of Voices from the Village are titled ‘Gateway to the
Nation’s Dreams’ and ‘Training for the Next Stage of Regeneration’,
respectively. In ‘Gateway to the Nation’s Dreams’, the Legacy Builder
describes Stratford as the ‘Old Quarter’ to denote its ruinous state. The
rumours of crime and degradation provide titillating anecdotes for
the Village’s residents who can comfortably sneer at their neighbours whilst
enjoying the fruits of regeneration. The Legacy Builders only have to
point to the older buildings across the train tracks to remind the community
of the hell they’ve escaped from. In contrast to Stratford, the Olympic Village
is the beginning of a new, more prosperous, happy, better time.

Legacy Builder You are currently passing through parts of London’s

Old Quarter. This is a site that is ripe for building new homes for
hard-working families – as long as those families have the money,
of course. The empty spaces you see will be gone one day. Eventually,
we’ll regenerate all of London, perhaps even the entire country . . . You
probably won’t be alive to see it, but if the Legacy Project goes smoothly
then your children sure will . . . the E20 residents are always looking
ahead, and never look back farther than 2012.55
2012 Manager It’s a jungle beyond the perimeter fences. No one is
safe. These people’s lives are nothing more than fights for survival.
You’ve seen the news; gangs of teenagers patrolling the streets . . .
women prostituting themselves out to their neighbours . . . old people
terrorised by children from local estates.56

The Westfield mall not only acts as a portal to this future but is also a training
ground for an ideal model of citizenry. Participants shop for appropriate
outfits in Westfield during ‘Training for the Next Stage of Regeneration’ to
role play their future regenerated selves. Giving participants the task of
shopping for clothes acts as a means of deepening their immersion into the
Legacy Project; their role as participants in a performance bleeds into their
role as consumers in a mega-mall.

2012 Manager You are looking at the future you, the regenerated
you, which you could become if you live in the Village. Don’t you look
happier, healthier and wealthier? Surely you agree the regenerated you
is just better than the present one? This outfit could mark the start of
an exciting adventure.57

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The act of trying on new clothes to conform to the regenerated community

transforms the participant into the archetype of the modern consumer who
‘has become a consumer of illusions’.58 Consumer culture produces an
illusory experience of society where the citizen trades their rights of
democratic participation for the right to buy limitless products. True,
consumer culture has been with us since the Industrial Revolution, but the
elision between consumerism and democratic participation is a hallmark of
modern democratic capitalism. The neoliberal model of citizenry is
distinctive because it allows the modern twenty-first-century citizen to buy
products to enhance their freedom. In a direct parallel with Augusto Boal’s
forum theatre techniques, Barker was interested in using role play so
audiences could ‘participate in the event by changing it’.59 Playing the role of
a regenerated citizen in Voices from the Village allows the participant to
project an image of themselves into the regenerated community in order to
imagine how their lives would change if they became part of the Legacy
Project.
During the third act, ‘An Exhibited Community’, participants are guided
through a time in which Hackney Wick has become a regenerated
community. The Documenter character speaks to participants from a
dystopian future. He instructs them to take photographs of the site to begin
an archive that will make the public aware of what will be lost if the Olympic
Legacy is expanded. The juxtaposition between what the participants see in
the sites with what the Documenter describes the sites as looking like in his
time shifts the participant’s perceptions of what constitutes the past.

Documenter Micro-cameras and movement sensors have been

installed everywhere . . . Some of the cameras filming you now are
already controlled by the Legacy Builders. If I ever manage to hack
into their network maybe I’ll find a video of you, listening to me . . . All
of the graffiti you can see has been painted over in the future. All those
houseboats you can see? All gone. Only marine security and rowing
teams are allowed on the canal – it makes the community safer,
apparently.60

The Hackney Wick which participants walk through is past in the sense that
what they can see – the graffiti, the houseboats, the crumbling factories and
warehouses – will not remain in the future as they see it, but will become
incorporated into the Olympic Legacy. The Documenter never prescribes
what the Wick should become, only that it is vital for participants to begin to

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imagine other futures for it so it does not become the site of yet another
regeneration project.
Documenting sites in Voices from the Village invokes the social impetus
of the Fun Palace by constituting a performance of potential democratic
participation, via participants contributing their story to a collection of
documents that act as nascent versions of democratic communities. Each
photograph is evidence of a time and place that in the dramaturgy of Voices
from the Village has been largely forgotten, whilst on the Voices from the
Village website the photographs constitute an idea of community that is
becoming commodified by regeneration. Voices from the Village involves
connecting with people in the imaginative and digital realms, and reflects
the mode of performative historiography I discussed in the introduction by
seeding alternative forms of community in the public imagination. By
documenting Hackney Wick, participants contribute to its evolving history
and challenge the notion that its future is inevitable by making these
documents part of a live experience in a performance.

Hacking public spaces

ZU-UK’s practice strives to show that art isn’t far away from working-class
communities, and that collaborating with artists in the creation of art can
enhance how people relate to themselves and each other in public spaces.
Their commitment to ‘mak[ing] art for people who don’t think it’s for them in
spaces art does not usually inhabit’61 led the company directors Persis Jadé
Maravala and Jorge Lopes Ramos to establish their GAS (Games Art Stratford)
Station studio and office in the Gainsborough Learning Centre, an adult
education college located in West Ham, one of London’s most economically
deprived areas. ZU-UK’s decision to embed themselves in a working-class
community resonates with Clive Barker’s resistance to working in venues that
are part of the artistic establishment for fear that the institutional constraints
would dilute the political impetus of theatre:‘Working inside the establishment
is always a contradictory process. The basic compromises necessary to present
politically committed work inside an alien system will mute, if not silence, the
radicalism of the dramatists’.62 However, he also recognized that the presence
of artists could alter ‘the system’ in order ‘to accommodate them’.63 Maravala
and Lopes Ramos became alert to the tension between radicalism and
inclusion that Barker alludes to when they realized that their immersive show
Hotel Medea (2009–12) was only being seen by a predominantly white,

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middle-class audience with high levels of disposable income.64 Consciously

turning away from producing large-scale immersive spectacles, ZU-UK
decided to make work in public spaces as part of a wider strategy for making
theatre and art a part of people’s everyday lives.
Invoking the philosophy of Michel de Certeau, Alan Read argues that
performances in public spaces embody the dialectical relationship between
theatre and the everyday through ‘the emergence of others’ stories from
other places, through which theatre might elucidate a political claim, a
romantic gesture, or a metaphysical meaning’.65 Performing in public spaces
where artworks do not usually exist allows people to encounter ZU-UK’s
work in a familiar setting, and works as an artistic strategy designed to
ameliorate the risk of alienating audiences from the situations ZU-UK are
inviting them to participate in.
Altering perceptions and experiences of public space is one of the artistic
propositions for #RioFoneHack at TBW. ZU-UK hacked Brazilian public
phones so participants could interact with voice recordings. The phone rings
continuously, allowing any passer-by to experience it if they decide to pick it
up. #RioFoneHack was previously installed in the Olympic Village in 2015
where three fictional Brazilian artists interacted with audiences using pulse,
motion and voice.66 The latest iteration is in Trinity Buoy Wharf in East
London’s Docklands area. The voice at the other end of the phone enhances
the participant’s awareness of the space by guiding them through gentle, easy
to follow breathing exercises. Their focus is then directed to their immediate
surroundings. Interspersed with these instructions are meditations on the
history of the site.

The Thames has a sense of itself and the Lea has a sense of itself and
we are subject to a perhaps wavering sense of self that has to negotiate
all the other senses of selves out there in the world – 7.6 billion of
them. It’s a struggle sometimes not to be carried away by the tide of
another.67

The voice directs the participant’s gaze to the various metamorphoses the city
is undergoing, embodied in housing developments, retail parks and business
zones produced from regeneration projects. #RioFoneHack at TBW makes
participants aware that they are always immersed in stories; as an artistic
intervention the piece enhances their awareness of the presence of the
‘unconscious zones of the city’.68 #RioFoneHack at TBW scaffolds artistic
relations using the familiar form of a phone to engender intimate and

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surprising encounters between participants and public spaces. The experience

subverts the spectacle of conventional immersive artworks by effectuating
the conditions for the participant to imagine an internal personalized
narrative of the sites they are standing in without having to articulate these
narratives to another audience. The whole process acts as an analogue for
how individuals can become the subject of their own narrative if they are
able to experience the sites they live in as palimpsests of other people’s stories.
Becoming attuned to these spectral presences hacks the familiar idea of what
a community consists of by including the real and the imagined, the living
and the dead, in the experience of living in a global city.
Rather than making them play a fictitious role where the codes of
participation can be so obscure that audiences think they are ‘getting it
wrong’, a key principle of ZU-UK’s practice is to create supportive structures
where participants are offered opportunities to take risks but are never
forced by artists into making decisions that transgress a personal boundary.
Binaural Dinner Date is a mixed-reality performance that premiered in
Gerry’s Kitchen, a restaurant named after the theatre manager Gerry Raffles
opposite the Theatre Royal Stratford East, in the summer of 2017. The
dramaturgy is based on gaming structures where audiences participate
according to a set of easy to understand yet sometimes challenging rules.
When participants arrive at Binaural Dinner Date they are greeted by a
Hostess who tells them to put their headphones on and await further
instructions. This initial greeting explicitly states the expectations of the
artists. This is a crucial step in making the contract between artists and
audiences as clear as possible for participants to feel comfortable in the
dating reality ZU-UK create. Participants are guided through tasks and
games by the live actors and by a voice speaking to them through the
headphones. The binaural technology creates an intimate sonic universe for
each couple to share secrets and play out fantasies of who they are and what
they might become. This game-based dramaturgy emulates the effect
Barker’s gaming praxis aims to achieve in that it ‘provides a situation where
the student [or the participant] can find things out for him or herself rather
than trying to reproduce a formula given by the teacher [or the artist]’.69

Conclusion

‘The dream isn’t dead. The dream of theatre being a community, a

family, dies hard’.70

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In this chapter I have discussed Clive Barker’s legacy using a critical framing
of performance historiography where archival documents are treated as
materials that generate theatrical experiments with digital technology and
audience participation in public spaces. This is an apposite approach for
considering the legacy of the alternative theatre movement because the idea
of community should always be open to reinvention, just as the knowledge
that archives preserve continues to inspire future generations of artists to
put the audience at the centre of their work. The task of the current generation
of practitioners who have picked up the baton of left-wing political and
artistic radicalism from the alternative theatre movement is to innovate
forms of social organization that are not structured by the individualism of
liberalism or the exclusionism of conservatism, if they wish for theatre to
help bring about a more equal and just world. Crucially, artists today must
develop techniques in developing interdisciplinary collaborations with
audiences, which will optimally enable them to rehearse new ways of living
that are not stymied by present political realities. This will require artists to
take theatre out of the institutions and embed their work in public spaces.
Indeed, the idea of ‘the work’ must be hacked to include everyday, ostensibly
mundane and inconsequential interactions with the public, who must come
to feel that they are valued as critical and creative agents within their cultural
ecology.

Notes

1. Barker, 2007, 295.

2. Bew, 55.
3. Ibid., 54.
4. Cartwright, 37.
5. Huyssen, 1.
6. Clarke et al., 11.
7. Derrida, 1995.
8. Steedman, 76.
9. Dekker et al., 66.
10. Clarke et al., 11.
11. Dunne, 2015, 19–20.
12. Ibid., 44.
13. Dunne and Makrzanowska, 5.

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14. Clarke et al., 12.

15. Kershaw, 77.
16. Barker, 2010, 2–3.
17. Barker, 1989, 228.
18. Holdsworth, 208.
19. Ibid., 214.
20. Tomlin, 20.
21. Fenwick, 2006.
22. Department for Media, Culture and Sport, 2012, 6.
23. Ibid.
24. Harvie, 114–15.
25. Cohen, 220.
26. Minton, xii.
27. Trilling, 12.
28. Minton, 3.
29. Ibid., 5.
30. Minton, 8.
31. Cohen, 220.
32. Ibid., 220.
33. Harvie, 15.
34. Tomlin, 8.
35. Rebellato, 249.
36. Ibid., 248.
37. Barker, c. 1960.
38. Working Men’s College, c. 1965.
39. Pérez, 88.
40. Holdsworth, 206.
41. Ibid., 232.
42. Barker, c. 1960.
43. Cybernetics Committee, 1965.
44. Ibid.
45. Barker, 2010, 21.
46. Holdsworth, 216.
47. Harding, 141.
48. Zuboff, 20–1.

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49. Barker, 2010, xvi–xvii.

50. Barker, 1989, 232.
51. Harding, 134.
52. Pérez, 80.
53. Department for Media, Culture and Sport, 2012, 7.
54. Littlewood, c. 1958.
55. Dunne, 2015, iv.
56. Ibid., xv.
57. Ibid., xvii.
58. Debord, 24.
59. Barker, c. 1960.
60. Dunne, 2015, xxvi.
61. Dunne, 2017.
62. Barker in Cartwright, 37.
63. Ibid.
64. Talking About Immersive Theatre, 2018.
65. Read, 138.
66. ZU-UK Theatre and Digital Arts Company, 2018.
67. ZU-UK, 2019.
68. ZU-UK, 2019.
69. McCaw, xv.
70. Barker, 2007, 298.

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Derrida, J., ‘Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression’, Diacritics, 25:2, 1995, 9–63.
Dunne, J., Regenerating the Live: The Archive as the Genesis of a Performance
Practice, Doctoral dissertation, University of Lincoln, 2015.
Dunne, J., ZU-UK’s Directors on Artistic Leadership Post Brexit, 2017. Available at
https://www.theatrebubble.com/2017/04/zu-uks-directors-artistic-leadership-
post-brexit/ (accessed 17 January 2020).
Dunne, J. and Makrzanowska, A., ‘Poor Traces of the Room: The Live Archive at the
Library’, Performance Research, 22:1, 2017, 106–14.
Fenwick, R., Ken Livingstone: London United, 2006. Available at https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=6BSIBPsbL9c (accessed 9 April 2014).
Harding, J. M., ‘Outperforming Activism: Reflections on the Demise of the
Surveillance Camera Players’, International Journal of Performance Arts and
Digital Media, 11:2, 2015, 131–47.
Harvie, J., Fair Play-Art, Performance and Neoliberalism, Basingstoke and New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Holdsworth, N., Joan Littlewood’s Theatre, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2011.
Huyssen, A., Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory, Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2003.
Kershaw, B., Theatre Ecology: Environments and Performance Events, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Littlewood, J. C., What Will I Be? An Enquiry by Joan Littlewood [document],
Theatre Royal Stratford East, c. 1958.
McCaw, D., ‘About Theatre Games – A Critical Introduction’, in C. Barker, Theatre
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Minton, A., Ground Control: Fear and Happiness in the Twenty-First Century City,
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Pérez, E., ‘Experiential Documentation in Pervasive Performance: The

Democratization of the Archive’, International Journal of Performance Arts and
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Read, A., Theatre and Everyday Life: An Ethics of Performance, Abingdon and New
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Rebellato, D., ‘From the State of the Nation to Globalization: Shifting Political
Agendas in Contemporary British Playwriting’, in A Concise Companion to
Contemporary British and Irish Drama, N. Holdsworth and M. Luckhurst (eds),
Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008, 245–62.
Steedman, C., Dust: The Archive and Cultural History, Manchester: Manchester
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Talking About Immersive Theatre, TAIT Episode 20: Jorge Ramos Lopez [podcast],
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Tomlin, L., British Theatre Companies: 1995–2014: Mind the Gap, Kneehigh Theatre,
Suspect Culture, Stan’s Cafe, Blast Theory, Punchdrunk (Vol. 3), London and New
York: Bloomsbury, 2015.
Trilling, D., Bloody Nasty People: The Rise of Britain’s Far Right, London: Verso, 2012.
Working Men’s College, WMC Prospectus 1965–1966 [document], V&A Museum, c.
1965.
Zuboff, S., The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the
New Frontier of Power, London: Profile Books, 2019.
ZU-UK, Binaural Dinner Date [theatre], London: Gerry’s Kitchen, 2017.
ZU-UK, #RioFoneHack at TBW [installation], London: Trinity Buoy Wharf, 2019.
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Brady, 2018. Available from: https://zu-uk.com/project/riofonehack-at-tbw/
(accessed 24 January 2020).

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148
CHAPTER 11
AN EVENING WITH CLIVE BARKER :
AN EDITED TRANSCRIPT OF A
UNIQUE EVENT
Edited by Paul Fryer

On 24 October 2003, as part of a celebratory weekend, Rose Bruford College

of Theatre and Performance hosted An Evening with Clive Barker, introduced
by vice-principal Professor Anthony Hozier and chaired by Chris Baldwin.
The event was videotaped by Phil Wigley, and an edited transcript was
made by Belinda Hoare. This gives us a wonderful opportunity to hear Clive
talking about aspects of his life, his work, his interests and his opinions in his
own words.
Anthony Hozier’s introduction placed the event in context:

Clive’s association with the college firstly began as an examiner, an

external examiner. He was given a visiting Professorship at the college
and has been more closely associated since then. And some years ago,
he was given a Senior Research Fellowship . . . and together with Simon
Trussler we have developed another association with NTQ , New
Theatre Quarterly. So, it’s become an ongoing span of the family. Some
years ago, Clive indicated to us that he wanted to bring his archive to
the college. And it has been coming in small loads, in the back of his
car and in college vans, and I went on a trip recently and was quite
overwhelmed by the packing.
So, it’s been accumulating in our new learning resources centre . . .
This in some ways is a launch for raising some funds to archive the
collection because it’s quite overwhelming. There are various letters,
bus tickets . . . photographs, endless correspondence associated with
Clive’s work over the years and it’s a feast of material, but for a
cataloguer, an archivist, it’s an enormous job.
So, tonight we’ll have some ventures into this . . .

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Chris Baldwin (CB) . . . what we’re going to do tonight is investigate a

little bit about this archive in this three-dimensional game. Underneath the
white sheets I have chosen various objects, and most of them are objects. Just
remember that there are 700 books from Clive’s archive that are in the library
. . . I haven’t included those, neither have I included books that Clive has
written. They are there for another day. These have a slightly more, perhaps
theatrical potential or perhaps visual potential which I thought might be fun
this evening. So, the idea really, Clive, is that friends and colleagues from the
audience will elect to reveal the objects from under here.
Now, we all ought to know as well that Clive has no idea what’s underneath
these sheets. Therefore, the risks are quite high! And if he mutters or starts to
speak quite quietly it’s because he hasn’t got a clue what it is and we have to
provoke him by reminding him.
The other thing to say is that what we’re trying to do here is to create an
ongoing narrative, an ongoing aural history of the theatre that Clive has
been involved in during his long and distinguished career – so as an archivist,
as a person who’s kept everything from posters to detailed notes on various
trends of the theatre – and Clive wants to stress the same thing, this isn’t a
one-way dialogue, it’s not something where Clive intends to just speak about
you or what’s under these sheets. If people have their own recollections, their

Figure 6 Clive interviewed on stage by Chris Baldwin, An Evening with Clive

Barker, Rose Bruford College (2003). Reproduced by permission of Phil Wigley.

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own memories, or it sparks off a connection with something which you wish

to draw out, then please do, that’s the really important thing to remember.
Please feel free to ask questions, but also to throw in your own memories,
your own connections, your own professional experiences of the issues, the
ideas, the histories that are raised this evening.

Clive Barker (Clive) Let me say something first before we . . . There are one or
two things I want to make clear. Several years ago, in return for a big favour a
colleague had done for me, I did some workshops in Littledale . . . in the West
Riding of Yorkshire which is a very beautiful place which my father loved very
dearly and the colleague of mine was trying to reconstruct a barn and start a
Youth Theatre there. So, in order to help her raise funds I said I would go up and
do a weekend of workshops. Most of the people who turned up for the workshops
were as you would expect, from Bradford and Leeds. There was an Afro
Caribbean lad and a lass who turned up who had obviously said to their parents
that this is respectable, we’re going to spend the weekend together, but they didn’t
arrive on the second morning, and they came at lunchtime looking shagged out.
And on the last day I set this exercise and the boy collapsed and passed out so if
you want a new aphrodisiac to replace Viagra, theatre games is it.
The other thing was a rather buxom young lady turned up from
Manchester looking very Mediterranean wearing two-inch-high [heels].
And a skirt that barely covered her knickers and I did think at the time, this
is a bit odd for a workshop, a games workshop. We’d done about two games
and she put her hand up and said ‘I thought I’d come for a weekend of horror,
I’ve made a mistake.’ Because on Mastermind that week someone had
answered questions on the novels of crime writer Clive Barker.
So if anyone’s come thinking they’re going to get an evening of horror then
all I can say is what I said to the young woman, stick around and I’ll do my best!
[An]other thing – any sensation seekers among you who’ve come in
anticipation of the fact that I’d do my world-famous interpretation of a
bumblebee in full flight or my impersonation of Nureyev dancing Swan
Lake, I’m afraid, those days have gone.
I’d also appreciate it if you didn’t pick up this one [points to object covered
by a sheet on the floor in front of him] because it looks like it might contain
a very thin file marked ‘Clive Barker’s love letters’. Some of the others look
fascinating. I’ll leave it to you to decide.

CB Well, ladies and gentlemen, who wants to elect to uncover something?

Show your hands.

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[At this point an audience member indicated one of the covered objects,
which CB uncovered]

Clive . . . it’s a green box file, I think. As far as I can tell it contains a lot of
addresses and some card indexes . . . I’ll look at the other file and see what the
first thing is . . . there’s a bulletin, ‘Theatre workers’ movement. Duplicated
editor, Charlie Mann’, then it’s got a list of articles from the Workers’ Theatre
Movement, December 1932. I know what this is.
Workers’ Theatre Movement . . . began in the late 1920s, started with a
secretary called H. B. Thomas who’s known as Tom Thomas, in response to
much that was happening in the world at that time which was to begin workers’
theatre groups. Inspired by stuff that was happening in Soviet Russia where
after the revolution there was the use of drama, theatre to, for a number of
causes – one of which was dealing with a proletariat in their terms, who were
largely illiterate and therefore propaganda put out in sheets on posters had no
effect whatsoever on them, so [the Bolshevik party] tried to find ways of
communicating, creating some sense of support and unity among the peasantry.
By visual means. There’s a great deal you can find in books on the . . .
visual art of that time, and one of the things also was they sent out a train
with actors on it, who would act out scenes from the things that were
happening – propaganda to inspire the proletariat support.
. . . from this it spread outside Russia, all over . . . The Workers’ Theatre
Movement spread. At one time Ewan MacColl assured me that the entire
Korean resistance against the Japanese was based upon Workers’ Theatre
Groups going around and doing Japanese propaganda in the paddy fields
and other places and inspiring political revolution at that point.
However, this then took off all over the world and it became what’s
variously know as the International Union of Revolutionary Theatre, IURT
– it’s known by several names depending what the language is, if it’s French
it’s obviously Du Théâtre . . . Internationale and things like that and in Britain
it became the Workers’ Theatre, which, as I say, was largely placed in this
country through a man called Tom Thomas who ran a group of . . . it was
really a drama group in Hackney, just an ordinary drama group which
became more and more politicized.
And then [it] began to spread to other places, through Tom Thomas and
Charlie Mann, and began its own magazine called Red Stage. I don’t know
how many, at one point there were forty-eight groups I think working.
The disaster came in 1932, when there was an international Olympiad
mounted in Moscow, between groups from all over the world. Ah, well, one

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should say one thing first, in 1927, in order to celebrate ten years of the
Russian Revolution . . . one of these Russian groups came to Berlin . . . and
there were other people who were in Berlin at that time who were celebrating
the ten years, and this inspired quite worldwide exposure of Workers’ Theatre
groups. And in 1932 there was this Olympiad in Moscow at which . . . the
actual group that won it were a French group who oddly enough did a
play by a surrealist author, which is very strange – but, an English group
went . . . because the English group had started all along with a motto of ‘Our
theatre or theirs’, therefore they encouraged no professional involvement
whatsoever in their work, purely amateur groups. And the standard then was
extremely low.
One sideline to this was a group in Manchester called The Red
Megaphones run by Jim MacMillan . . . was so ashamed by the standard that
was presented by the English crew . . . that they actually split and joined with
Joan Littlewood and that’s where Theatre Workshop begins.
But to go back to the international scene, these groups spread all over; at
one point, according to Ewan MacColl, they took over all theatres in Tokyo,
before the government cracked down on them and broke them up . . . In
Germany they were exceedingly successful, again, which is why I mentioned
The Red Megaphones, because they were an imitation of . . . a German group
which had a furniture van which used to tour around . . . working-class areas
of Berlin . . . and before the police or authorities would turn up, [they] would
push off and go somewhere else.
MacColl claims to have performed to 20,000 during a strike in Rochdale.
This is all very well, but at a certain point, it began to fizzle out – first of
all, the weather was inclement and the light doesn’t last that long in the
winter so this begins to restrict the numbers of areas in which you can do
this work.
Also, people began to think what these problems are. The problem in
Russia was that the movement was stopped by Stalin in 1928 because he
declared that the working-class revolution was over at that point and so he
was moving towards involving all classes in the revolution. The Russian
Movement was the Blue Blouses, that was the company who had this agitprop
stuff which was based on visuals and song and dance and theatrical forms,
all of which were politicized – but Stalin stopped it in 1928. But by that time,
it had spread all over the Soviet Union and there were groups in factories
and towns . . . and they crumbled. In other places of course it kept up because
that edict didn’t apply. The Germans kept up, the French kept up, and China,
this then was the movement.

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Two things happened, towards 1935, one was that Mussolini bombed
Abyssinia, and so it became within political terms a question that the
opposition now was not so much against class, against the bourgeois, but
against fascism, and therefore the groups changed direction completely at
that point. The other thing was, people began to think, we can’t stand out in
the cold and wet, in winter in the dark and try and do this work, we must
move indoors, so at that point [they] began to move into, and work within a
club and that’s how Theatre Workshop was born.
The same thing’s happened in other parts of England, and London . . .
where a number of groups came together and decided to take over a deserted
chapel in Mornington Crescent and formed Unity Theatre which became an
indoor theatre – so that’s how the movement adapted, at that point
transformed itself from being on the streets to being indoors.
It didn’t stop at that. It still continued in various places. In one time under
Mao, in China they began a group of theatre companies which were going
over all of China in the new revolution in political terms, and also they
expanded that into literacy programmes and other ways of working with
audiences.
The Vietnamese struggle against the Americans was largely based on
agitprop groups. What was known as agitprop. Hitting and running, getting
us into areas inside of Vietnam, then skipping back to base and safety. As was
the pattern which had been established throughout.
The reason why it’s in that green box, is that when I . . . was a member of
staff at Birmingham University I took a group of first-year students to mount
a research project in which we were to find all the material that was available
at that time, and classify it and put it in that filing cabinet.
So that’s why that’s there.

CB . . . just in that five [to] ten minutes Clive has outlined a tradition, not
just a tradition but really the history of a party, a living, thriving strain of
theatre and culture not just here in the UK but across Europe and the world
and I would go as far as saying, not only through this box here but through
most of what you’re seeing tonight, and through his own life and work, he’s
set up and extended that tradition through his own practice as a teacher,
director and a writer and also offered a myriad of ways in which many of us
who work in the profession will work in this century.

Clive What has developed, because you can follow a direct line through
there to Augusto Boal . . . not only Boal but to various other people as well.

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Question from the audience . . . you presented that box as an academic

saying I got my students to research this, but as an actor you were in
Joan Littlewood’s performance of Oh What a Lovely War so it may be
a short answer, I don’t know, but . . . what’s your personal connection
with this?

Clive Ah, well this largely came about through periods of politicization in
myself. First of all I think the main thing that came was from a man called
Len Jones. Len Jones . . . was at Cambridge in the thirties, a working-class
man who got a corporate scholarship to Cambridge and when he finally
graduated . . . in about 1938, was unemployed and finally in the end went
across to the GDR East Germany after the war and began to teach . . . Len
did his thesis on the Workers’ Theatre Movement . . . and he sent me a copy
of the thesis which someone’s stolen so I no longer have, it’s not in the archive
unfortunately, but Len sent me the thesis to read . . . it’s a lovely piece of work
. . . I went across and saw Len, stayed with him and talked to him and in the
thesis was Tom Thomas of course. Tom Thomas was thrown out of the
Workers’ Theatre Movement in 1935 as the party shifted from anti-capitalist
to anti-fascist and Tom was living in a flat above a grocery shop in Welwyn
Garden City. I went across to Welwyn and met up with [him], I sent him a
copy of Len Jones’s thesis and asked him to comment on it, and he corrected
certain things, or provided an alternative interpretation . . . so I still have a
bunch of tapes recorded with Tom Thomas.
Raphael Samuel at one point . . . kept insisting that he wanted to talk to
me about this when he was at Ruskin College and he finally called me up on
the Tuesday before Christmas and said I can only come up tomorrow or
something, can I see this material you’ve got? So, I said OK, I’ll go in and
open the university and let you see it, and he saw it and he was knocked out.
So, he went away and published material on this. He also included a lot of
material that he shouldn’t have published because it was my material that I’d
collected and not his.
Raphael went on from there and he discovered Charlie Mann who was
living in Somerset at that time, so he did a lot of recording with Charlie
Mann and other people . . . so we know a lot about what happened.
What I was interested in with the students was part of a bigger project. That
if I had a group of students working with me for almost a year in which we did
practical work, which is the basis of Theatre Games really . . . I wanted to prove
that you could do serious academic work with first-year students if you got on
the right lines, and they did two projects, one of which was to classify the

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Workers’ Theatre Movement, through this material, and the other was to do a
major project on the nineteenth-century working-class theatre in Oxford.

[An audience member selects another covered item]

Clive The love letters . . .

CB This is a CD . . .

Clive The LP of Karl Valentin. Well, there’s not a lot I can say about Karl
Valentin. I never saw him actually work.

CB Have you seen any of his work at all?

Clive I’ve seen stuff on film. Karl Valentin was a very big influence on
Brecht’s work. He was a clown, a theatre clown not a circus clown . . . there
are certain stories in Brecht that Valentin advised him on – the soldiers in
Edward II with the white faces and everything. The bits I’ve seen of Valentin
are quite marvellous. There is a lovely thing where he’s conducting an
orchestra, and at a certain point . . . and he with his baton and the first violin
start fencing . . . no he’s a great, great comedian.

CB Well, recently in Germany a Karl Valentin DVD pack has been made
available and we’ve got it here this evening and I thought we might like to see
two or three minutes of a sketch from 1915. For those of you who are
interested in these things, Karl Valentin and his partner Liesl Karlstadt who
many people will tell you wasn’t his wife, they were partners . . .

Clive Oh God, she’s a great clown.

CB We’re going to see a piece just with Karl Valentin, and it’s called The
New Chair . . .

[The Karl Valentin DVD is shown]

Clive The essence of it is, that he is always in the present tense, he is never,
never in the past [he stands to demonstrate] and he’s never in the future . . .
It’s the essence of that period of clowning at that time. I mean Chaplin was
just as effective, you can see that . . . my favourite Chaplin film was Dog’s Life

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when he picks up a mongrel who lives on the streets and there’s a stall with a
plate of cakes and fried sausages and Chaplin, with his coat buttoned like
that, leans on the counter and right near the plate of cakes, and he picks up a
cake and puts it in his mouth like that [he demonstrates] and the bloke turns
around, and at that point there’s nothing to be seen so the bloke turns back
again, and he keeps on doing this until he’s eaten all the cakes – but the
interesting thing to watch is the man who’s frying – I mean Chaplin’s brilliant,
the man who’s frying sausages there keeps turning round like that and when
Chaplin’s got the cake, he sticks his head forwards and he leaves his body
behind. His body is in the present but he’s looking to see, then his body is
going straight like that and it’s a marvellous piece of clowning – but it is with
Valentin as well . . . he is always there in the present tense.

CB . . . Are you suggesting that in the case of the man eating that his head
is in the future, that his head moves towards the future?

Clive No his head is trying to work out what happened – he buys the
sausages then he comes round quick to try and catch Chaplin . . . and the
plate is empty and the head goes forward to see what he did then it comes
back and he’s absolutely clear in the present again, so he goes back to frying
the sausages but his head is always trying to work out, to catch what Chaplin’s
doing but he never does.

[CB selects a satchel from the items on stage]

CB Can I bring it to you? . . . it was full if I remember rightly of books and

articles on Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble. I think it was something you
carried around Germany, collecting?

Clive I’ve had this for years. What it’s got is articles on Teater, the book on
German theatre just after the war, and a chapter on Morecambe and Wise . . .
. . . should we talk about Brecht or Morecambe and Wise?

CB Morecambe and Wise. We’ll probably talk about Brecht later. Did we
see the same structure with Morecambe’s performances as we see with Karl
Valentin, being in the present, and the head moving to the past?

Clive In some ways I think we can. J. B. Priestly had Morecambe and Wise
summed up when he said there was nothing new in what [they] did in the

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sketches, but the big thing they did was to change the double focus of the two
men in that they switched roles around and they played with the audience as
well as playing with each other. And this is what he found was the advantage
on what the old music hall had done. I liked Morecambe and Wise, I’ve
always liked Morecambe and Wise because they have this rapport between
them where one plays the stage manager and the other plays the stooge –
then they switch round and they can actually do that mid sketch, so where
you’re going with one of them is suddenly turned about so you’re sympathizing
with the wrong one. And you should be sympathizing with the other one . . .
they’re very witty and a friend of mine worked with them on the last series
that they did and it’s common knowledge that if you gave the telephone
directory to Morecambe and Wise they would get the laughs but it wasn’t her
experience at all. She said she worked for five and a half weeks on a half-hour
show, and every day for five weeks they worked on every sketch all the way
through and she said the amazing thing was, that neither of them moved for
the first two weeks. It was only at the end of the second week that one of them
got up. And they’d actually done two weeks working on the script, sorting out
the script and analysing the script – before the end of two weeks one of them
got up and sort of vaguely wandered around with the script in his hand. And
then at the end of the third week the other one got up and walked around
with the script in his hand. Then they began to rehearse the script and that’s
how the piece was put together. So, you know what it’s like . . . you know 90
per cent is hard work and the other is genius. They actually knew exactly
what they were doing and technically had it all worked out.

CB If we just try to draw together our strands . . . what has already started
to appear from the three objects that we’ve uncovered so far – it seems to me
that what seems to be appearing is a deep interest, an historical interest in the
roots of theatre and alongside that a deep respect, taking on an equal footing
an academic interest in popular culture and in politics, would that be right?

Clive For me, yes . . . that’s my roots, back beyond musical, but back to an
understanding of how theatre worked in the past . . . to go back to the roots
of theatre . . . the origins, not in Greek theatre, but to see, the origins in terms
of those strands of continuous development of theatre . . . There are certain
things that disturb me – it’s very easy to make generalizations. John Arden
writing at one point says there was no political theatre in the nineteenth
century – it is just not true. A student, a postgraduate student working with
me went all the way through the chartered performances and they’re there
. . . it’s just not true.
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And so it’s things like that, quotes like that . . . there were all sorts of
questions which could be asked but had never been asked and answered, so
I was interested in finding out and . . . clowns yes, you go back and see the
reaction to clowns – that spreads out in other ways as well, you know,
because, one of the facets of Shakespeare which has interested me is . . . how
much he draws on what we understand as the cross-talk actor. And you
know you go to things like the opening scene of Othello between Iago and
Rodrigo and he’s a cross-talk actor basically – and if you move it like
Morecambe and Wise lots of things come out, between Iago and the audience,
that later comes out in the soliloquy and later comes out during the rest of
the play. And it’s things like that which interest me.

CB But Robert Vine talks about Richard III when Richard III stops talking
to the audience . . . and retreats into himself and so on . . .

Clive . . .Well, I disagree, but still . . .

CB Any questions for Clive at this stage?

Question from the audience This is probably going to come up later but
who do you respect of modern clowns, who are working at the moment?

Clive Ronni Ancona.

CB Ronni Ancona?

Clive There’s a lot, I think for me, there’s a lot of sketch clowning that goes
on . . . I like The Fast Show and I like the League of Gentlemen . . .

[An audience member selects another covered item – it is revealed as a

collection of material about Madonna]

CB One of the startling, or surprising elements in Clive Barker’s archive is,

well let’s not call it an obsession, but let’s call it a substantial element devoted
to Madonna. There are cassettes and there are videos, there are academic
books devoted to Madonna, photographic books of Madonna nude, and
there’s some magazines devoted to her, and there’s some very serious,
academic papers, unpublished I believe . . .

Clive At a point at the end of my period at the University of Warwick

when I was allocated to do a paper on theatre structure, and I thought the
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students would be much more interested not to do Ibsen, Strindberg, but to

do Madonna . . . Years ago there [was] an old article in Playboy somewhere in
which Herb Grier interviewed Peter Brook and asked the question of course
which nobody else has ever asked, which was what are you trying to sell to
an audience? So I then started with these kids asking what is she selling,
what is she putting across, what are we taking in, and once I’d started on that
I got very interested in female songwriters and singers, you know, going back
to Bessie Smith, and other people, and for several years, this really worked
for me. The kids became very interested in it . . . by the fourth year I felt the
kids had got fed up with Madonna and they’d passed on . . .
I was just interested in what she was selling, what the image implies and
the changes to that image. And also the literature she put out, the stories she
put out, and the stories other people put out as well and how the city affected
the way you responded to performance. Very interesting . . . in the process I
fell in love with Janis Joplin, I have a collection of practically every Janis
Joplin [recording]. And I’ve seen Janis Joplin live . . .

An audience member How do you rate Madonna as an actress?

Clive . . . not very high, I think she overstates herself in most parts . . . out
of herself. She’s a very interesting woman, a fascinating woman. The first one
was alright; she’s largely playing herself. She’s a good performer, she has an
electric presence . . . she pulls you right in . . . She reinvents herself . . . you
might be depressed if she reinvents herself as more respectable . . .

[Another covered item is selected]

CB We have here, Clive, three boxes . . . this is simply called ‘Africa’. The
second one, ‘The Caribbean’, and the third one ‘India’ and I think it said
‘Bangladesh’ . . . Each one of these boxes is crammed with papers, newspaper
articles, applications for money, all nevertheless in relation to theatre for
development, theatre and development, what else could we call it, community
theatre, in each of these countries . . . from People’s Theatre, from revolution,
to popular theatre, to reconstruction – a Zambian workshop. I don’t think
anything else exists like this in the world.

Clive . . . it goes back a long way. It goes back to ED Berman and Inter-
Action, their publishing company at that time, and some papers came out of
some work that was being done in Botswana by a man called Ross Kidd.

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[He] started off with a group of people working in Botswana because in the

north of Botswana there was a big problem . . . of cattle theft. What Ross
decided was to get this group together and do some plays or something
which would raise opposition to cattle theft . . . then Ross realized a short
time after that the only people who were worried about cattle theft were the
people who owned cattle. The normal peasants were not in any way
concerned with cattle theft because they didn’t own any cattle anyway and
were more likely to be involved in stealing cattle than in worrying about
other people stealing their cattle.
And Ross Kidd, as much as Boal or anyone . . . then began to set up a
network of theatre in development in various countries . . . this fascinated
me and I actually started to collect this stuff because they wanted me to write
a book on it – there’s one big problem with my nature, which is, I read all
sorts of things. I read up and think about all sorts of things, but when I’m
ready to write it down I’ve lost interest and move on to something else!
I’d collected this amazing amount of stuff on literacy programmes – this
fascinating movement that goes on, it’s fading now, which is a great pity. I
mean Boal’s ideas have taken over to some extent, and I don’t mean to
rubbish Boal’s ideas . . . by any means, but there was a lot of other work that
was being done that was very interesting, starting with language, starting
with teaching literacy in that way and then moved on to politicization . . . I
never did the book.
. . . There’s all sorts of very interesting things going on – there’s a couple
running a company on the outskirts of Delhi in a resettlement camp called
Jalan . . . who actually came over here . . . brought over by the Commonwealth
Institute so I did get the chance to see them, the only time I’ve ever seen
anyone do a play about a pile of shit.
They were doing it instead of leaving the pile of shit where it was which is
unhealthy anyway – they dried it out under the sun in the end using it as fuel
to start a generator, and that provided street lighting in the villages and there
were all sorts of things . . . there are so many fascinating ideas which can be
taken further which are relevant you know to working in this country as
well. Boal’s creamed off part of that, but there were all sorts of other projects
that were done . . . all sorts of . . . acts as well, now they’ve issued a warning
on this – the Indonesians used to send traditional puppet workers out to the
villages with their puppets and then do shows about contraception and birth
control . . . the more you start to get into cultural things like that you’re
in fact committing cultural genocide, you’re killing off the form by just
replacing the content within that form. You know, there is a dialectic here,

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because you know Brecht’s idea, when change comes about, either you keep
the form and change the content or you keep the content and change the
form. And then Bordanami [sic] comes along and says you’ve got to be very
careful when you do this, you’ll just kill the culture by changing the content.
. . . there is an archive on this material in The Hague. ESCAP [United
Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific] . . . But
there’s all sorts of ways you get into this. You subvert the political intentions,
the humans, by interposing reactionary mechanisms on it.
When I was in Bangladesh the whole thing had come to a finish there, I
talked to a lot of people who had been involved in what was going on . . . they
lost the energy to go on fighting without national government support.
. . . you look at Nigeria, it all came out of the universities there . . . Where Ross
Kidd is now, I have no idea, he went to do a PhD on this in Toronto, but he
seems to have disappeared completely, so I’ve completely lost contact with him.

A question from the audience Clive, you haven’t talked much about
Theatre Workshop . . . I wanted to ask, what do you think ought to be the
legacy of the Theatre Workshop story, perhaps not what is the legacy but
what ought to be?

Clive I think that is very clear, it’s very clear in the old Encore files, in an
article by Charles Marowitz, whose practice I deplore but he was a good
critic . . . what we want is not more Joan Littlewoods but companies like
Theatre Workshop which work on an ensemble principle. And that’s what I
would see as Joan’s heritage. I was expecting her to come tonight, I was
thinking that if anyone was going to come back from the dead it would be
her. But I would have thought the great legacy of Joan is the power of the
group. She said she used to work in great detail, but most of the theatre work
is sixteen actors realizing the vision of one director whereas in fact what she
wanted was seventeen people’s imagination working together, and I think
that’s what she left us, the power of the collective. I mean, she left us all sorts
of things, but that maybe is the main thing, and that’s Marowitz’s summing
up which I think is quite accurate. And that’s deplorable in this country,
because what’s gone on in the last twenty-five years is a cutting down of the
possibilities of those ensembles arising by a lack of consistent funding –
companies have been squeezed out, or . . . have been made to conform.
I just think it was a great luxury that we could be critical of Pip Simmons,
we lost Pip Simmons, it was a tragedy . . .

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CB Who was Pip Simmons?

Clive Pip Simmons was a theatre group – they were more interested in
making direct contact with the audience than they were in presenting stuff
to the audience but they . . . got most of their money working in Holland, or
somewhere like that, or Scandinavia – and then at a certain point the Arts
Council said they had to do a number of performances, and all their work
was spontaneously worked up . . . and they couldn’t, or they wouldn’t accept
that quota of performances that they had to give and they retired first of all
to the continent and then they left, it’s terrible. They split up the same time
that the Arts Council killed 7:84, and I think to have lost those two companies,
particularly, you know . . . what an enormous loss that is. . . . 7:84 because
[they] did good political theatre, [they] did politics and . . . good theatre that
was well worth watching.
There was a very interesting quote from Roland Rees in Cathy Itzin’s
book on the theatre and the revolution in which she interviewed Roland
talking about the first thing that the company did – what was it called, Foco
Novo – which they did it in an old factory in Kentish Town . . . It was a take-
off of a film, you know, but it was very exciting because they had a big car
and lit the whole thing from the lights of a car and they had a corrugated tin
roof on the building and people ran over it, and you heard the noise of them
running over the roof, the noise of the iron and the fire escape outside.
And after she’s done this long interview with Roland Rees, Cathy Itzin
says, ‘You know what else you want to say?’, and he said ‘Well, we never
worked that way again. After that we got funded and we moved into
performance spaces and theatres after that,’ and you think, God, when all the
rest of the world is moving into alternative performance spaces and
alternative performance forms, we went back into theatre forms and what we
missed, or lost by doing that . . . we missed a lot of possible invention – you
know . . . what Dario Fo or Barba and the others did by not going back into
the theatre but by insisting on different performance spaces, we lost a lot . . .

CB Chris asked whether we were going to talk about Littlewood and

Theatre Workshop, in fact under there are two boxes which would have
provoked more discussion about them.

Clive I think the audience could say more about them. Dudley Sutton . . .
would you like to say something about them?

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Dudley Sutton I don’t remember, I was pissed. I rely on Clive to remind

me what happened . . .
Our theatre is cropped by two things, one is funding, you cannot be
subversive in the pay of the government, it’s such bullshit. The idea is bullshit.
Funding seems to buy all our energy, and to steal it. To rob our theatre of our
spirit. Arts Council funding and Lottery funding or any other kind of
funding, it always comes at a hellava price.
The other thing is this star system – if you don’t have a star you’re screwed.
And when I first saw a Theatre Workshop production I was in such despair.
I’d been in the air force as a mechanic and I went to the RADA and I was
crying in my kitchen, this was in 1955, because all the theatre in London was
about the middle class and if they had anybody in the theatre in the working
class it was some person in a shop who couldn’t remember the number of the
bus to go home, then somebody passed that person and said ‘Don’t worry,
we’ll sort it out.’
Then somebody told me to go down to the East End and see a production
of The Good Soldier Schweik – and I went down there, and I saw what I had
been looking for all my life. And as Clive had said it was a theatre of people
who had been working together for so long and in such difficulties, and with
no funding, nothing from the outside – and they shared their gestures, they
shared their meaning as an organic whole, and that is theatre of the sublime.
But to have to go into the theatre in the West End to see some fuck arse who
was being paid a fortune to ponce around and everyone else had to serve
them. To me, beyond anything tedious. Littlewood always said to me one
thing, the definition of a genius was someone who eliminated spirituality.
Who was committed to the elimination of their own job. Which is sublime.
Thanks.

Clive . . . what terrifies me is there is now an advert on television which

says, somebody’s closing up a mansion house and it says, where are all our
American stars, this year they’re on the stage in London. And I think oh my
God, they’re now selling theatre in terms of movie stars. Don’t they have
anything else that’s impressive. Occasionally you have – there are small
companies growing up who are doing the work, they’re being unsupported,
they’re actually going that way.
The last time I was in this college a young woman said, ‘Can I ask you
some questions?’ and proceeded to put out a whole collection of ideas that
I’d been working on the whole time I was in the Bristol Old Vic theatre
school. The company settling down in one place, earning their living and

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doing whatever work was available at that time, and gradually building
themselves into the community . . . and I wasn’t sure whether to say ‘Don’t do
it because you’ll only get trampled on,’ or whether to say ‘That’s a wonderful
idea.’ The fact that I didn’t make it work doesn’t mean that you won’t.
The past is full of really good ideas which should be revitalized again you
know – the fact that they didn’t work when they first came up could well
mean that they came up at the wrong time, or the people weren’t well enough
equipped at that time to make them work, and they should be re-examined
and tried over again.

CB Clive, you mentioned earlier on in the discussion Augusto Boal, and

the questioner over here wants to know what you really think about what’s
important, in particular in relation to spectator . . .

Audience member Spect-actor.

CB Spect-actor, sorry, Spect-actor – that role of a joker mediating between

the audience and the actual stage.

Clive I still have problems with Boal, principally because whenever I’ve
run into [him] he’s never spoken to me. Or, whenever I’ve been, whatever
workshop he’s been doing he’s been living somewhere else, so he’s gone back
to . . .

Audience Member Five-star hotel . . . ?

Clive Yes, and I don’t think this sort of equation – let’s do political theatre
with Brazilian presidents to let’s do it psychologically – worked with us
Europeans. I don’t think we really accept that. I think this theoretical stuff at
the beginning of Theatre of the Oppressed is brilliant, I think he’s a great
critic. But when you get into it you understand that he doesn’t know very
much about actors and he passes stuff off which doesn’t meet up to what we
know about processes of acting. The spect-actor, that idea . . .

Clive Declan, what was your experience when you were sent to Ireland?

Declan That was when he insisted upon travelling first class, it was a
horrendously expensive five-star hotel. And he was working in Northern
Ireland and the Southern Irish disliked the Northern Irish, and the Northern

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Irish disliked them. The English were great, everyone disliked them, and I
was called over as you know because he said I would even the workshop, too
many people were disagreeing. And I thought this was the point, and he
bottled out big time – and what was interesting was that Barney Simon as
you know had started his work as a health worker, going out into the bush
and trying to help black people understand that the hospitals weren’t
preserved for the white folk, that you too could come and have your children
for example, all because of the child mortality at the time. And having those
two men there at the same time, one who accepted [staying] at a bed and
breakfast . . . he was the educator was Barney, he let things come out of
people. What I found with Boal was that he was this fantastic showman and
he retreated to this five-star hotel at the end of the day. There was only one
rule to this workshop, I come in here at ten and I go to bed at twelve, there
were no rules other than that, so you have some really good examples of
practice . . . I would say that Clive himself is a really good example of good
practice here – so that’s what happened in Northern Ireland, I poured oil on
troubled waters and he agreed to go back into the workshop.

Clive Totally fazed by the political divisions of Northern Ireland.

Declan Yes.

Chrissie Poulter Can I just make a point . . . just a couple of points about
you and your work, is just that the sort of conversation you’re having about
Boal people can easily have about you in relation to some of the references
you’ve made today, of who you are as a man and how you live your life.
And people have the same relationship with Boal and who he is and how
he lives his life. And that was the problem some people had in the north, the
fact that he was a white man in the situation, that he was saying the things
that he said. And Boal himself says that he had a problem coming to Europe
and saying, ‘What’s the problem, why can’t you speak to each other that’s not
a problem.’ And came around and as usual saw a way where the work was
relevant to people even if he didn’t agree with them, and I think what we’re
hearing now is, people who don’t like people staying in their five-star hotels,
we’re mixing our personal prejudices about people coming out. What I think
is interesting is that your work, like his work, travels and if you take the
people and the cultural context away from it, and Boal would say, the minute
you let people speak to each other you’ll do this, you’ll start liking them and
not liking them.

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And if you go back to Joan Littlewood’s ensemble you take how she must
have worked to get seven imaginations to be able to coexist in a room, part
of that would be to keep the cultural specificity out of the room for a while,
while we find a way that works. And he may do that inch by inch by looking
at the images and watching people who aren’t speaking while they are
reading, but not by people who are giving them. In the same way your work
travels Clive, that [we] all like magpies take it and develop our own use of
games. We will probably have disagreements with you about aspects of it.
And in a sense I would defend Boal in as much as he’s not here and I think
what’s interesting for all of us, is the way your work and his work, works –
how you manage to get those people to actually take things to pieces and go
relate our playfulness, our ability to play within a group etc., use those games
and take them within a political, social, theatrical application.

Audience member I have a question I’d like to ask, it’s about Clive Barker
and theatre games . . . you’re a teacher of theatre, you’ve worked with actors,
would you like to say something about that?

Clive I’ll take Brechtian terms – we made certain propositions, that’s what
Brecht said . . . we made proposals, and I think, in a way, what I’ve done is
taken that work and not followed it, but taken it into their own practice then
[they] found their own way . . . which is really what I intended, there’s no
copyright and people use the work . . . [a] constant condensation to see things
at the core – the thing that embarrasses me about theatre games is that there’s
all sorts of theatre games and exercises I haven’t done in donkey’s years.

Audience member Are you still inventing new ones?

Clive No. I’m interested in several things. I’m interested in the last problem
of directing, that you can’t ask an actor to play mood. You know that the
mood is wrong, but you can’t say to the actor ‘Change the mood.’ So I’m
looking at questions connected with jazz using many roles, ways of using
music to set scenes. The other thing I’ve got very interested in, largely
through watching television, is autism, so I’m doing a certain amount of
reading looking at autism . . . looking at it from a different perspective. You
know a lot of work, this is normal, this is not normal, but there is a gradation
between all of us – we all belong in the same community in a way. Some
minds don’t work the way other minds work, but there is a communication
gap. It’s not a normal–abnormal gap, it’s a failure to communicate.

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Audience member You talked a little bit earlier about being in the present
and you mentioned about having a straight spine, when you talk about
autism, is that different . . .

Clive No cross-over . . . I’m horrified by the fact that I recently tried to tidy
up my filing and I opened up two files, one’s marked ‘pending’ and the other’s
marked ‘ideas’, with the outlines of five books in them that have never been
written . . . I should’ve written them . . . one thing about me retiring . . . is that
idleness becomes addictive . . . I’m trying . . . one of my children, the youngest
of my children has a damaged brain at birth. In many cases he’s normal in
many ways, but his brain is slightly squashed, and he can only partly control
his left hand so he can’t write. In every other respect he’s well ahead of his age,
except the writing – he can’t write at all. Which would be alright on the
continent where the examinations are oral; in this country the examinations
have to be handwritten. So, I’m interested in [that], but also my colleague has
a wife who has Asperger’s Syndrome as well, I just got interested in . . .

Audience member I wanted to tie up different topics we’ve been talking

about tonight. The comedy . . . about spectators being involved in the action,
and I know Keith Johnstone who’s another huge hero of mine came from a
theatre workshop background and then developed game playing and
different scenarios with his impro and storytellers, and I just wondered how
you felt he had developed his work . . . and how you feel your genres can
work together and how you view his sort of theatre games?

Clive I’m very fond of Keith and I like his work as well . . . very impressive,
the thing is, as Keith does with many things, he sets a path and you have to
have a lot of discipline to follow [it]. What he’s doing is talking as much as
anything about the discipline not to take the easy way out, not to take the
short cut . . . the choices you make and the interaction, and I entirely agree
with him. There are certain things – I went and saw a company about two or
three weeks ago who were doing improvisatory theatre which appeared to be
on Keith’s model, but it wasn’t. What they had was a series of well-rehearsed
routines, and what happened was that whatever the audience threw at them
they would then provide a link to the routine and I thought no, this is not it.
The problem, I saw, when I saw one of his groups work in Vancouver, the
problem was that whatever the audience gave them or whatever suggestions
they make, they took the comedy one each time . . . when given a choice they
always took the comedy one . . . The pair of us once sat in on a discussion . . .

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and someone in the audience said ‘Do you think of yourself as a master?’ and
I said, ‘Oh no, I think of myself from one image, a John Ford film called
Stagecoach.’ Wherever I go, I know I’ll meet people I’ve never seen before and
I’m now connecting things that happened. And Keith said ‘That’s exactly
how I feel,’ so I thought we’ve both got a lot in common there.

CB Can I just make a comment, and I hope Clive you won’t mind me
saying this – just to say that the one thing that really struck me tonight was
something you said in the café . . . I was a first-year student of Clive’s . . . and
Clive used to really put us through our paces. We had a dance teacher but
Clive used to kill us in terms of his nine o’clock physical workouts – and
through his writing and everything and his whole stuff about the body and
physicality . . . I hope you don’t mind me telling people this, but last year
Clive had a stroke and couldn’t walk and couldn’t stand, and what you told
me in the café out there, going back to the Alexander work, was how you
worked for yourself to get your mobility back again. To me that was the
teacher I have from my first year who’s not talking about doctors or
physiotherapists or anything else but going back to his Alexander to the
point where who would know you had a stroke last year, the way you are
now, sitting in that chair tonight – so it’s just a personal tribute to Clive, who
you were thirty years ago and who you are tonight.

Clive In some way I think I’ve got soft. No I haven’t – I’ve balled classes out
frequently in recent years . . . fascinating, Anita met up with me a few years
ago, she was at Coventry, she said to me, ‘Did you have to make it that hard?’
and I said, ‘Yes, well obviously ’cause you’ve got through it.’ Maybe I’m not
tough now, I’m fairly tough . . .
I’ve also got patience as well. Someone sat through my classes at
Edinburgh University and I had to do an hour and a half and I did three
hours and I got them, anyone else would have given up after an hour, but you
kept going . . . I’ve got patience . . .

CB Clive, thank you very much for everything this evening.

Clive, you talked this evening about honing down, doing less and less, but
actually what’s going to happen from now on, tomorrow, is opening up, the
reverse, what’s happening tomorrow is I think the sequence, lots of people
are invited to participate in how your ideas and the ideas of the practitioners
who are running those workshops have widened and enriched and taken
those ideas in a myriad of ways . . . One other point that strikes me as being

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absolutely essential about this evening is this link of two worlds, which are
so well integrated they are virtually indistinguishable, performance and
research, they go hand in hand, they go together and spur the next enquiry.
Thank you, Clive, for allowing us into the world of research.
Clive Barker, thank you very much.

Coda

Taking a random collection of boxes, covering them with white sheets on a

stage and then discovering their contents through banter between Clive and
an audience over a couple of hugely enjoyable hours. This was the closest I
could imagine as serving for a theatrical metaphor for Clive’s imagination,
his approach to teaching and his humanity. Clive was freewheeling,
provocative, incorrect and trusting. He trusted himself and others to find
meaning and form after the event and from the chaos. That was the artist in
him. He meticulously, though chaotically, saved everything. That was the
academic in him. While he died more than fifteen years ago his legacy still
remains vivid and worth returning to, and perhaps this transcript reminds
us of the need not to edit as we work but simply to feel, intuit and act on
hunches. The editing can come later. On that night in the Rose Theatre at
Rose Bruford College we glimpsed back over fifty years of inquisitive
theatre-making from across the globe. And if we realized anything it was
that it is the game that counts.

Chris Baldwin, February 2021

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CHAPTER 12
NINE LIVES AND COUNTING
Chrissie Poulter

Introduction

I first heard of Clive Barker in 1972. I was a teenager, going to weekly drama
workshops in Leeds, led by Carry Gorney, who set up Interplay Theatre that
same year.1 Interplay was modelled on her experience working with ED
Berman2 and Interaction,3 in London, so drama games, improvisation and
the local outdoors were some of the key ingredients. Some of us from the
workshop joined the Interplay street theatre and outdoor summer project –
a ‘dramascape’4 – for children, in Armley. Amongst the volunteers that year
were drama students from Birmingham University, where Clive was
teaching. They sang his praises and encouraged me to apply, which I did. I
began my degree there in 1973.
My experience of Clive’s approach was short-lived. He left while I was still
in the first year. He was a theatre man and brought the intensity expected of
an actor training programme to ours. I was not an actor – nor did I want to
be. We shared one guiding principle though – playing games, with an
ensemble, as the starting point for working with a group. I was, and am, in
the community arts stable, first with Interplay and then with Jubilee Theatre
& Community Arts, the project four of us, students, set up in 1974, in the
newly invented borough of Sandwell in the West Midlands.5
It was my mother’s idea back in 1970 to send teenage-me to drama
workshops – to counter what she saw as my anxious, asthmatic home-self. It
was my experience of workshops, with Interplay and in class with Clive,
which, in turn, led to my preoccupation with guardianship in groupwork
and with play as a way to build personal and social confidence. My concern
was that play also has the capacity to destroy both. ‘Sure it’s just a game. We’re
only messing.’ In Jubilee, I got the chance to develop my own approach and
experience – armed with games from Interplay and from Clive.
Three years after graduating I was back in the department – teaching this
time, leading some of the classes which were Clive’s in 1973. Unlike him, I
did not ask students to take flying leaps, or stand on top of pianos before

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falling forward into the arms of waiting classmates, as we had done for him
– terrified and exhilarated at the same time.6 Adrenaline rushes were the
order of the day, in our day. I did, though, instruct blindfolded students to
play tag, as we had with Clive – hunter and hunted, or ‘quarry’ as he more
menacingly preferred to say.
Over the three months of summer 1979, before starting as a lecturer, I
was invited to share some of my community arts experience in Belfast,
bringing theatre games and workshop with me, for those wanting to create
connection, explore stories and share a stage within and across communities.7
I knew that cultural identity colours what we say and show, what we see and
hear, but every new situation demands attention to my own behaviour, so as
not to superimpose it as some sort of unconscious protective bubble around
myself. As we moved around the city I was faced with the reality of how
unrest, disturbance and combat can play themselves out on the body of a
place and its people. Puppet shows and face-painting.8 Smiles and laughter.
Outside, soldiers walking backwards, watching windows. Open-eyed, broad
daylight, hunters and hunted, drama in the landscape.
At the heart of Clive’s book Theatre Games is a concern for the human
that is the actor. He describes how his own experience of emotional and
physical tension, when working with Joan Littlewood and her Theatre
Workshop, led directly to his use of children’s games in training and
rehearsal.9 Every theatre actor, engaged in the challenge of creating theatre,
is also a social actor engaged in the challenge of what theatre processes
demand of them on a human and social level. Clive is clear about moving to
‘un-self-consciousness’, via physical training, using children’s games and
play, first ‘for release’ and later, with ‘discipline’, for the basis of a training.10
Clive’s focus on developing the actor’s ‘body think’11 is what interests me. I
already know how it helps non-actors fast-track some acting skills when
wanting to use theatre to tell their stories.12 I can also see how it could be
helpful to the intimacy direction actors are receiving now, in the 2020s, for
stage and screen scenes – and to those working with them.13 My focus is not
on the physical training that is so important to Clive’s approach but I do hold
the body to be central – and sacred.
In 1987 I published a book of theatre games, Playing the Game.14 It was
laid out like a recipe book, written specifically for local people in Belfast who
were developing drama workshops for and with young people in their local
areas.15 Over the years since then I have learned much more about how the
experience of a game can vary, for individuals and the group – bringing fun
and/or fear, depending on who is leading or participating, the context in

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which it is happening, etcetera. So, thirty years later I published a second

edition, included a section on guardianship and put a note – an ‘Alert’ – on
every game’s recipe, alerting the reader to possible considerations which
might mean the game was suitable or not suitable, in human terms, beyond
its theatrical or creative aspects. I also removed all the blindfolds.

Letters to Clive

1. Better late than never

Dear Clive,
Your one and only letter to me was short and to the point:

C.P.
C.V.
C.B.

I knew what you meant:

Chrissie
Send me your CV
Clive

What need for six words, when six letters say it all? Same content, more style.
It was for your colleagues in Bogotá. You wanted me to take on some of your
teaching there. I never did send it, never went to Bogotá. Now you are dead
and gone but your legacy lives on. I’ve been asked to write 5,000 words about
it. Five Thousand Words! Isn’t there a small boy somewhere with a basket?16
Five lives and two wishes. Cats have nine. Lives. Cat o’ nine tails? Truth be
told, that’s my image of you – a boy, hit with a knotted rope, in games your
masters bid you play.17
If 5,000 words are too many to be reading right now, here are the crucial
ones:

In Theatre Games you wrote:

Since I am never going to sexually assault an actor in class, why be

afraid of it? Most of the emotional insurance policies are taken out

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against things which could never happen in the normal course of

events, and certainly never within a theatrical context. All fears are
precipitated by the projection of imagined results. They may be
justified in the world outside, where real actions have real consequences,
but the play areas are safe.18

Once upon a time I might have agreed with you. I even wrote a book of drama
games myself, assuming it was safe to do so – that all playleaders, professional
or otherwise, were automatically guardians and trustworthily so. Time opens
eyes – mine certainly. So now, with 2020 vision, I find I disagree with what
you have written here and I wonder if you would too – fifty years on from the
‘anything goes’ world of ‘encounter groups, touch therapy groups and the
like’.19 ‘The play areas’ may be safe for you but they are not universally so.

2. Horseplay and hugs

Dear Clive,
Maybe, when people read this, the world will have changed – again – and the
handshake will be back, with its best mate the hug. However, right now, in
May 2021, we’re over a year into a global pandemic – COVID-19 has kept us
in lockdown for most of that time, virtually halted international travel, closed
shops, schools, businesses and more. Crucially for my conversations with you
– it has closed in-person activity in university drama departments and
theatres. Over a year ago, when the pandemic was declared on 11 March 2020,
the chief medical advisor in America, Dr Fauci, said he thought no one should
shake hands again, ever. A year later and the UK media were headlining the
English prime minister’s announcement that we would be allowed to hug
each other from 17 May 2021, when ‘social distancing’ rules would be relaxed.
The last time I had a hug was a year ago – from my brother, on my birthday.
I wanted to talk with you, about ‘horseplay’ – its place in your approach to
actor training and groups in general – but it seems unreal and irrelevant to
raise my questions about players crawling across the sprawling bodies of
their playmates, when the immediate puzzle is how to rehearse intimacy – or
anything – whilst keeping apart by a minimum distance of two metres.
Beyond that, the challenge for me is how to engage the players in any kind of
collaborative physical activity when the ‘room’ is a computer screen and the
players each confined to one small square of the many caught in that glass.
I usually make much of a handshake at the beginning of a first workshop
with a group. If it is an international group, the hug is also discussed. Well

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before social distance became a legal health requirement of everybody, some

of my students would make it clear that they only ever felt comfortable with
a social distance between them and other people – no pandemic required.
The handshake is a useful construct, like a perfectly formed sentence. You
have to step into each other’s personal space, to be able to touch hands.
Physical contact is a close and intimate thing. The handshake, however, does
not overstay its welcome, allowing you to part amicably. It has a natural
ending, an inbuilt full stop, as you release the hand and step away.
If the group is international, we will start to explore greetings in mother
tongues other than English. We learn from those in the group whose cultural,
or subcultural, greeting of choice, is not a handshake – those whose tradition
is to kiss on either cheek the person they are greeting or to put their hands
together and bow while saying ‘Namaste’, those whose subcultural greeting
might be a high five or one of discomfort at human contact – not wishing to
touch another person or be touched. As this conversation, around a
seemingly innocent opening, continues, we discover the cultural diversity
and richness within the room. There are smiles, as people appreciate being
recognised as Other, as a non-handshaker, a non-English speaker, yet all will
happily go on to use handshakes and hellos, as those around them become
interested in the alternatives, welcoming the hugs and the high fives.
That was pre-pandemic. Now my classes are in the world of computer
screens. ‘Hello’ becomes the first point of contact each session – typed into
the comments or ‘chat’ section of our shared screens. In a way it echoes the
handshake. It is a physical engagement – albeit with the keyboard. We lean
close, touch the keys to type a greeting, then I count down ‘Three, two, one,
send’ and a cascade of hellos tumbles into the ‘room’. We play games, the
players adapting old favourites for this new playroom:

Zip, you call someone’s name and they have next call.
Zap, everyone gets close up to their camera – a chessboard of eyes covers the
screen.
Zoom, everyone dives out of range of their camera, disappearing from the
screen.
Laughter, engagement – ‘release’, then back in our seats we get ready to focus.
Some will turn their cameras off from time to time – part of the comfort
protocol we establish as a group from the start. With camera off you can still
listen, but no one will watch if you dance, walk around or lie down to breathe.

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Sensory overload, privacy concerns or simply the need to move – you are
still ‘in the room’. With microphones on mute most of the time, people use
the available cartoon images – hearts, a raised hand, applause – to stay
connected and there are always digital breakout rooms for work in small
groups. I miss the sound of all that in the one, live, physical workshop space.
It’s been a muted year all round.

3. What makes people happy?

Dear Clive,
I’m thinking about happiness.
You wrote that ‘what makes people happy [. . .] has never been directly
demanded by the teaching or rehearsal situation’.20 Did you really think that?
I can’t tell if you changed your mind about anything as Theatre Games wasn’t
revised, though often reprinted. Five years after you died a reprint was
published. Dick McCaw wrote a detailed introduction but nothing in that
mentioned any evolving, changing thinking on your part. In case I’ve
misunderstood – here’s the full extract:

There is a lot of work to be done in finding out what makes people

happy. I have done a great deal less work in this area than in most
others because the need to carry it out has never been directly
demanded by the teaching or rehearsal situation. I set it down here in
case someone else wants to explore it.21

Yes please – I’d like to explore it.

Augusto Boal’s slogan, when he was campaigning to be elected Vereador
in Rio de Janeiro, was Dare To Be Happy! He got elected for four years.22 I
still have the campaign sticker – a cartoon of him, drawn in fluorescent pink,
carrying the slogan on a placard. If I had to sum up my experience of the
people I worked with on drama and arts projects back in Belfast in 1979 and
through to the time of the Good Friday Agreement,23 it would be that they
dared to be happy.
You say you’ll leave happiness for others to write about, but you did write
about pleasure. Your case for the playing of games employs pleasure as a
tactic to use against pressure. You invite us to hark back to a time of childhood,
‘to a period and process that is associated with pleasure, and often delight,
and that was free from anxiety’.24 I can see where you are coming from and
maybe your childhood was as rosy as this implies, but I am uneasy claiming

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that to be so for others. Not every child associates group play with delightful
memories and for some their childhood itself was a period of anxiety.
I came across your article ‘When the Kissing Stopped . . . and What
Happened Next’,25 the kissing games of the title being those you played
within your community as a young person. The section ‘Games for Actors –
and Others’ (apart from reminding me of Boal’s book Games for Actors and
Non-Actors!)26 expands the point about children’s games:

The work I do has developed the use of children’s games as the basis for
training actors. In this work, instead of carrying out a strict programme
of technical exercises, we appeal to a learning process which is associated
with pleasure rather than anxiety. When we can reveal physical
inhibitions and blocks, we can use adult powers to overcome them.27

My interest is in the fact that ‘physical inhibitions and blocks’ can reveal
personal or social inhibitions and blocks. I want to understand them – not
to ‘overcome them’ but to know if our practice needs to change, in order to
prevent or heal something. I’m not sure what you mean by ‘adult powers’, by
the way, but that can wait, though the phrase sparks other associations. I am
minded of an image that has stayed with me for years, from Agatha Christie’s
autobiography.28 In one of her childhood memories – out on a pony trek –
the guide caught and pinned a butterfly to her hat. She was mortified,
traumatized for the dying butterfly and unable to speak, for fear of upsetting
the guide, who thought they were giving a gift. Hours later, back home,
Agatha still not speaking but in floods of tears, her mother understood, as
soon as she saw her. ‘She looked at me thoughtfully for some minutes, then
said, “Who put that butterfly in her hat?”’29
Just as in Boal’s Image Theatre,30 the observer, Agatha’s mother, reads the
image: ‘You didn’t like it, did you? It was alive and you thought it was being
hurt?’31 I’ve never read any accounts of what it feels like to have an observer
recognize the heart of one’s own image – though I have experienced it more
than once and Agatha’s account rings so true: ‘Oh the glorious relief, the
wonderful relief when somebody knows what’s in your mind and tells it to
you so that you are at last released from that long bondage of silence.’32
Boal uses the body to create an image, pre-words and post-words, to
express feelings, events, thoughts and reflections – a way to connect, stay
open to what the ‘reader’/listener/viewer/Other takes and understands. The
intention is not to guess the story, but to show what you feel and for the
spect-actor33 to say what they see.34 It’s fascinating how one image can

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resonate differently for different people. Boal uses image in many ways. I am
imagining a Cop-in-the-head35 workshop on Agatha’s butterfly – to give
body to the voices in her head, telling her not to upset the man who pinned
the butterfly to her hat, ‘How could I hurt his feelings by saying I didn’t like
it?’36 I think that is a line many will recognize as one they could so often say
themselves, in a variety of situations in life.
A student recently opened up further possibilities in my thinking as she
described her interest in using drama workshops and games:37

Throughout my life and mental illness, I have turned to the creative

arts (drama, music, poetry, dance and art) to express and deal with my
complicated emotions as sometimes the words themselves are too
hard to find to express the pain or discomfort you are in.
Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT) [helps] you regulate your
emotions, reactions and responses to the world and its obstacles.
Through my treatment, education from [university] and future
qualification as a Special Needs Assistant (SNA) I hope to work with
children in schools and beyond, specifically those who are
neurodivergent, by using drama workshops to teach them mindfulness,
interpersonal effectiveness skills, emotional regulation, and distress
tolerance skills in order to proceed into their teenage and adult life
with more ease than I and a lot of others had.

You write that you’re not interested in applying the work to psychotherapy
settings.38 Neither is she:

I am aware of multiple theatre companies etc who work with adults,

teens and children who are neurodiverse, however I’m not yet familiar
with those using drama to deliver specific treatments in a more casual
environment than drama therapy, which is why I wish to pursue this
career path, eventually creating a new kind of art centre wherein
children can come to express their emotions and learn how to deal
with them through the arts.

She has included games from my book and some of those I learned from you.
Something I heard on breakfast radio recently was a eureka moment
for me, on BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week39 – the opening greeting from a cheery
presenter: ‘Hello. As we skip and frolic towards a better and brighter time, after
the horrible long lockdown, it’s a very appropriate week to be talking about
mental health. Or, if you prefer an older-fashioned term, happiness.’

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Yes – mental health and happiness. You have written a book for actors,
student actors and anyone working on theatre productions based on words in
a written playscript, but your underlying focus is on human fear of failure –
especially in relation to the body – and the anticipated retribution, derision or
rejection that follows; on what to do when it happens, and more importantly
how to prepare so that it doesn’t. Fight or flight? Neither. As you note, near the
end of Theatre Games, ‘Actor training deals with the whole human personality
and all the interactive processes, mental, physical and emotional. The same is
true, but more crucially so, when one is working in the educational field.’40
It is this which, for me, makes the heart of your work relevant to the social
actor in all of us – because, as you say, it is about ‘interactive processes,
mental, physical and emotional’. It is about our mental health ‘or, if you prefer
an older-fashioned term, happiness’.

4. ‘Concern for the human condition’

Dear Clive,
I have four copies of Theatre Games (long story – pandemics, no travel,
possessions scattered), each from a different year, including the 2019 reprint
of the new edition, which I am using for all the extracts in these letters. Three
have glowing reviews on the back cover which say nothing about what is in
the book. An earlier reprint doesn’t use reviews but I think the back-cover
blurb is much more helpful:

It was while working with Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop that

Clive Barker first became preoccupied with the question: how can an
actor bypass the stress which occurs when he is faced with demands
outside his previous experience and which he is, as yet, not equipped
to cope with. He found the answer in children’s games – where
unselfconsciousness can combine perfectly with involvement in
imaginary situations, ranging from a simple game of tag to the most
complex physical and psychological interaction.41

Let me borrow your question, replacing actor with person, plus changing a
pronoun or two if that is OK. The personal politics which led me to avoid he
by using s/he for the first edition of my 1987 book Playing the Game now ask
me to think again. ‘How can a [person] bypass the stress which occurs when
[they are] faced with demands outside [their] previous experience and
which [they are], as yet, not equipped to cope with?’

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In fact – let’s get personal about this: ‘How can [I] bypass the stress which
occurs when [I am] faced with demands outside [(or inside) my] previous
experience and which [I am], as yet, not equipped to cope with?’
When I think about mental health, I think about students over the years
and what I have learned from them – those who have invited me to take
account of their particular circumstances in how I structure a class, in terms
of time, space, preparation, expectations and more. Such circumstances have
included anxiety disorders, depression, borderline personality disorder,
Asperger’s, autism, ADHD, dyspraxia, dysphasia, dyslexia, chronic fatigue
and much more. The current gathering-term is neurodiverse, signalling an
otherness to neurotypical.42
You have a whole section in Theatre Games where you list five different
ways of ‘taking the pressure off the actor’.43 Did you ever describe it as that to
those taking part? Did we know you wanted to do that for us? I don’t
remember you ever saying so. For years I thought the back-brain/front-brain
stuff was about tricking the body into attempting physical exercise, disguised
as playful games – more a question of focus on fun as opposed to the it’s-
good-for-you school of stretches and star jumps.
In your book you make a point of saying you don’t discuss it: ‘I would
never, for instance, expose the basic principles on which the work is based
before I started on it. [. . .] It seems the clearest way of explaining it in a book.
Many actors who have worked with me will be amazed to read it, since no
discussion of it had ever entered our work.’44
And, more specifically about the in-session awareness:

If an actor is told in advance what the purpose of an exercise is, this

knowledge might push him towards doing the exercise ‘properly’ or
‘well’ or ‘efficiently’ as an end in itself, and this would interfere with the
experience and sensations that are encountered in simply ‘trying’ it.
His concentration would be on the end result, instead of on the process
or means, which would defeat everything I am trying to do. If the
games and exercises are to be used, then read the explanation, stow it
away at the back of your mind, forget it, see what happens when you
try the exercises, and take it from there.45

I wonder how much that perpetuates the power relations inherent in an

outdated teacher/student, director/directed tradition? It’s not that I disagree
about the problem of ‘concentration [being] on the end result, instead of on
the process or means’, but is that not something the actor is used to? The

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character doesn’t know what is going to happen next – the actor does, and
the actor can invest in the character’s moment-to-moment experience,
reliving for us what rehearsal has embedded for them. If we invite the
participant in a drama workshop to consider what is ahead, before entering
the game/role, does that not give them an opportunity to meet us halfway,
awake to the joint project, as opposed to assuming that there is good reason
behind a teacher/director’s unexplained instruction and guidance?
In my own practice I bring reflection and self-awareness into the
conversation with a group right from the beginning, as an accepted and
expected part of the experience. If we get into a circle at the outset I might
comment on circles – how some of the group are probably feeling energized,
for a circle usually means we’re about to do something. Yet others will be
feeling apprehensive for the same reason, caused by the potential exposure
and high focus from that same circle – ‘everybody’s looking at me’. Since
taking the gaze is a prerequisite for a theatre performance, I invite each
participant/player to notice their own responses and sensations, the
possibility of diverse reactions and experiences co-existing moment to
moment in the workshop – to value them and be open to how best we
develop from a group into an ensemble, ensuring the safety of all and
developing our capacity for powerful, creative, expressive work. You point to
a key aspect of ensemble when describing your Theatre of Man experiments:

It was also understood that, in the circumstances, the ensemble was

the best teaching instrument. The group had to define very clearly the
common ground that existed between the members. It became clear
early on that no political, religious or philosophic common ground
existed between us and that all we did have in common was a concern
for the human condition.46

If we expect to support each other because of our ‘concern for the human
condition’, then students, actors – people – should be able to trust us enough
to share something of their personal circumstances and perceptions, their
human condition, to inform the work and ensure the emotional and
psychological safety of all involved. How do we encourage that trust?

5. Consensus and consent

Dear Clive,
I’ve been thinking about consensus, agreement and consent. Did you ever ask
us what we needed or thought would be helpful – for working with you,

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and each other, in your classes? I don’t recall. Not that anyone else did. I just
wondered.
I was looking at the contents pages47 of Theatre Games and there’s a whole
family of words that make me uneasy – ‘Victim games’ (in the section
‘Category of games’); ‘Breaking down’ and ‘Violence’ (in the section ‘Release
of physical inhibitions’). I don’t see these words as living in the world of
guided play – they exist and will appear but I’m not convinced we should go
looking for them. I already wrote about your use of ‘punishment’ in the game
‘Court of the Holy Dido’ (which also triggers resistance in me) – in the
tribute issue New Theatre Quarterly did about you.48 ‘Playing with Pain’49 I
called it. I wasn’t going to mention it here but I saw the word in Nadine
Holdsworth’s article ‘Spaces To Play’,50 about Joan’s Fun Palace Trust51 and
the way projects were developed with young people on reclaimed waste-
ground sites and later in the Theatre Royal Stratford East – partly to combat
antisocial behaviour and so the young people might see themselves ‘as
citizens sharing the same social space. This identification led them to hold
and respect court-style “mock trials” to interrogate anti-social behaviour
and to enact their versions of social justice. Interestingly, Littlewood recalls
that “the worst punishment was banishment”.’52
This took me back to 1974, at the end of my first year at Birmingham
University, launching into the first summer drama playschemes of our
fledgling company Jubilee. We were based indoors, unlike the summer
schemes I had been a part of with Interplay. At the beginning of the
playscheme we would create a contract with the young people. Their
suggestions were written onto a large paper. I would be looking out for three
key elements, not minding how they were phrased – just that they were there:
– Look after yourself
– Look after the others
– Look after the materials
A great show was made of signing the contract. Some children didn’t want to
on the first day but invariably they would come looking for it on the next
and ask to sign.
As with Interplay, every day started with a theatre games workshop, to
generate ideas and fun, and ended with everyone sharing and showing what
they had produced – artwork, music and drama. This was also the time for any
discussion about the day and a check-in with the contract. We used a ‘talk-
brick’ (as my mother later called it when adopting the practice in her infant

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school), any object which could be passed to someone who wished to speak –
Carry had called it ‘the conch’, as in Lord of the Flies.53 It made sure that ‘the
youngest child has a vote and every child is heard, no matter how small’.54
If some misdemeanour had occurred, for example when two older
children walked over the paintings of some younger ones (everything
happened on the floor!), it was raised in the end-of-the-day gathering, when
the question ‘How was the contract today?’ was asked, at which point the
paint-stompers would stand accused. By this time the accusers were usually
quite matter of fact. Then, when everyone was asked ‘What should we do
about it?’, the emotional energy would rise. Like Joan’s ‘court’ ours would ring
with cries of ‘throw them out’ but banishment never actually happened
because we would ask about alternatives, e.g. a second chance for the art-
tramplers. Invariably the youthful majority would relent, alongside very
vocal warnings ‘but if they do it again, they’re out’.
There’s something to be said for not being the sole go-to arbiter, judge, jury
and executioner. Because the young people had created their own contract
and because the daily ritual included a gathering and review, the focus was
not on us to do anything other than provide structure and moderation. The
one-voice approach, made possible with the ‘talk’ object, spared us from
raising our voices to quell others – they did it themselves if needed. The focus
was on listening and waiting for a turn to talk. There was no court and no
mention of punishment. It was more a case of ‘What shall we do about it?’
This comes full circle back to me and student voices now, adults not
eight-year-olds. Unlike the children of the 1970s, shouting out their
suggestions for our playscheme contract, the students I work with now have
long established their own protective shell. They don’t necessarily want to
make public announcements about their private demons, so I ask what they
want/need to see on the menu for our time together – to stake a claim to
their own learning.
At the start of a module/project, I get an individual written statement
from each person about what they want from the module, what obstacles
might stand in their way, what skills and qualities they bring that might help
others in the group, plus any personal note to me as to what might make
things go better for them. These are for my eyes only, done more as a memo
than a formal paper – the emphasis on content not form.55 This is when I
find out about neurodiversity, stress, lack of confidence – myriad challenges
before they even get into ‘the room’. It is this contemporary diversity that my
facilitation must include, working with consensus, their agreement and
consent.

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6. Boundaries
Dear Clive,
Victoria Wood’s official biography was published last October. I was
expecting it. I’d let them see some of her letters from way back in the 1970s
and 1980s. I wasn’t expecting to read about you though. I don’t know why.
You were on the staff for all three years of her degree after all. There’s a
mention of Vic being interviewed by Clive James where she describes the
Birmingham degree ‘as a BA in “groping” for students who “feel each other
up with the lights out”.’56 Was that your class? You do say that ‘performed in
the dark the exercise gives an opportunity for the group to approach and
contact the leader in a safe situation’.57 I wonder, did everyone feel the same?
As I write this, drama schools, theatre companies and film directors are
being asked to acknowledge and avoid any abuse of power within their training
spaces, performance places and rehearsal rooms – to consider the seeking of
consent and permissions as opposed to assuming that ‘anything goes’ or that a
performer must be able/prepared to act/re-enact all human situations.
Once again it is a student in one of my classes58 who puts this into words
and deepens my understanding:

I would like to start by saying that I’m from Turkey. [. . .] I’ve learned
and practiced three different acting theories/systems. Not all worked
for me. Most of the time it looked like there was a block in my acting.
And, I realized I was nervous to do a scene with a partner. More
specifically I felt a fear of doing an intimate scene with another actor.
I thought this was about me, I maybe couldn’t understand the theory/
system I am working on at the time or I was just not qualified for this
profession.
After several conversations with academics and research that I
managed to access, I found out that this ‘problem’ of mine is not a
problem but a reality for a lot of people. [. . .] Even when an actor in
any country could feel these things in their body, I see it through my
own point of view. And, my point was definitely shaped by the culture
I have grown into. That is why I want to be clear of my identification
of being Turkish. [. . .]
Ita O’Brien’s59 work in Ireland is related to the things I have been
trying to understand and express through all my acting journey. [My]
main goal will be finding a solution [to] the block of my acting. And,
to be able to narrate this [. . .] thus other actors can benefit from it.

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Alongside the work of Ita O’Brien and other intimacy coaches, there are
campaigns to change attitudes and behaviour across the board – such as the
Irish Theatre Institute campaign, Speak Up and Call it Out – Dignity in the
Workplace.60 The triggers for some of this have been a number of high-
profile directors brought to a different sort of limelight over the past couple
of years, as abusers and now, for some, as convicted sex offenders, who
abused performers working with/for them over a number of years. A
worldwide movement, #MeToo,61 has seen more performers and others
working in theatre and film call out their own experiences and/or support
those who do so. It’s all a far cry from your own reflection on the release of
‘one’s feelings and desires’ through play:

The task is not to allow full reign to one’s feelings and desires, but to
release them in play situations so that they may be controlled instead
of inhibited. [. . .] If one accepts that these feelings are sometimes
released by the work and if one refrains from consciously inhibiting
them, it is surprising how easy they are to live with and control. Since
I am never going to sexually assault an actor in class, why be afraid of
it? Most of the emotional insurance policies are taken out against
things which could never happen in the normal course of events, and
certainly never within a theatrical context. [. . .] the play areas are safe.
Control achieved through release in play frequently creates a
confidence which can be carried over into real situations in the world
outside. Games are a means of education and personality growth.62

You do write about things getting out of hand though, or the potential for that
to happen, about staying out of the game – reading the room, ready to step in
– but that’s for activities in the dark: ‘I would not carry out this work and take
part myself in the early stages. The group can then rely on the security of one
person standing outside the activity, as a guarantee that the activity will not get
out of hand and lead into areas where they cannot control what is happening.’63
Elsewhere you say you stay out initially but then you participate. Is this
something you changed over time? Or is the guardian just for playing in the
dark? Here’s what you wrote: ‘Working instinctively, I watch the first game
played and the second forms naturally in my mind. It is important that this
instinctive response be trusted, and this is only possible if one participates
physically in the session’.64
In cricket, a player ‘fielding’ near the boundaries of a cricket pitch
‘participates physically’ in the game. When I’m running a drama workshop, I

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see myself as that fielder – trying to remain alert, protecting the boundaries.
I don’t join in the activities, though I usually demonstrate how they work as
part of each set-up. Like you, I love the alchemy of working with what’s in
the room, responding moment by moment, but I’m learning that this goes
counter to the well-being strategies of some participants. Those sensitive to
certain topics or tactics may protect themselves in advance, either by not
turning up or by avoiding full engagement when present, so now I send an
outline to the participants, before each session. Much like a relaxed
performance in a theatre, I am trying to avoid unnecessary shocks and fear
of the unknown. I don’t ask who wants or needs the outline – it goes to
everyone. Like a map, in the bag with the sandwiches, it’s a safety net. We’re
fine unless we get lost and then we can get out the map and see where we are.

7. The last post

Dear Clive,
I’m finally going to post these epistles – though I don’t want to. Why am I
reticent? Print pins the butterfly. And yet print also widens access to practice.
I have no wish to publish fixed ‘facts’ – because epiphanies and experience
change what I know and think. I need to revisit examples, extracts and case
studies, which have become so familiar over the years of using them that I
don’t always spot the aspect which makes them now untenable. For example
– a play which I have used for many years as a way of working on ensemble,
rhythm and different styles of language woven together, is Robin
Glendinning’s Mumbo Jumbo.65 In it, pupils are learning the poem ‘The
Congo’ by Vachel Lindsay,66 with its rhythmic chanting, for a performance in
school. The playwright has woven in interjections spoken by the teacher. In
a later scene we hear a poem occurring to one of the boys as the others
continue their rehearsed chanting. Again, the theatrical weaving of tone,
rhythm and form made me think it was an excellent vehicle for an acting
class. I had not considered how its content might offend and exclude.
Including work from the island of Ireland is part of my own personal politics.
I was teaching in Dublin; the playwright (who I had met years before when
he attended a drama workshop I was leading) was a teacher in a boys’ school
in Belfast before turning full-time to playwriting. All seemed fine.
Then, a couple of years ago, keen to bring the voices of women into my
teaching and to invite students to look further than the performativity of a
script, I came across a review by a young woman, challenging the use of this
poem in schools because of its colonial approach to the subjects of the poem.

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How had that never occurred to me? I had seen the play as a Romeo and
Juliet for Belfast – a Spring Awakening, echoing the city at the time I had been
there and, since Robin had been a teacher in that very type of school, I didn’t
think to question it.
As I write this, following the year of the Black Lives Matter campaign67
around the world, yet again I am reminded of pinning the butterfly. I need to
stay open to what we learn as we learn about ourselves and each other. A
student68 tells me she is tired of waiting:

We all need to feel like we are part of something, understood and

represented to prove we exist[ed]. So it is only fair to require from
theatre to represent ALL people as part of the society. [. . .] People of
color should be represented on stage as part of the Irish society, which
they are in real life.

Those of us who lead educational and artistic programmes need to review

our materials constantly. For the past few years, for example, as a result of the
campaign Waking the Feminists69 in Dublin (which initially aimed to
increase the number of plays written and directed by women in Ireland), I
tried to ensure that my teaching references were to women playwrights,
theorists, performers, etcetera. Today as I write this, but maybe not the today
when it is being read, the binary of male–female has been challenged. Now
genderfluidity is centre stage in the arena of our work and our students. The
lexicon gives us ‘cis-gendered’ as an adjective, alongside the prefixes ‘bi-‘ and
‘trans-‘. The more established Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual – LGB – extends to
become LGBTQ+,70 the + resisting any attempt to place a full stop on other
possibilities.
The centuries-long campaign for parity of esteem continues.

8. Serendipity
Dear Clive,
A sure sign that this is ready to wing its way to you and yours, with permission
granted to me to step out of the frame – an article in The Guardian newspaper
(an aptly named journal given our topic). It was a correction published on
21 May (21.5.21) that caught my eye: ‘to correct the name of the Theatre
Royal Stratford East. A previous version of this article referred to it as the
Royal Stratford East.’
Might as well have been labelled ‘for Clive and Chrissie’!

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Clive Barker and His Legacy

The full article, on 20 May, by Jason Okundaye, is about Rikki Beadle-

Blair’s life in theatre and screen, writing, directing his friends as a child,
going to evening classes at the Anna Scher Theatre,71 joining the Old Vic
Youth Theatre72 at fifteen and on into a never-ending life and love of making
theatre and film. The mention of Theatre Royal Stratford East is because he
produced his play Bashment73 there in 2005, with his company, Team
Angelica.74 Dealing with homophobia, ‘it was criticised for its happy ending.
For Beadle-Blair, this joy is essential in order to ensure that queerness is not
just represented as trauma.’
Reading Okundaye’s article is inspiring and echoes so much of what I
have been trying to say here. Rikki Beadle-Blair’s words tell me I’m using the
right dictionary – mental health, happiness and even butterflies! He tells
Okundaye:

I’ve come through the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, all of that – and I’m happy, I’m
integrated, my mental health is strong.
The caterpillar has had some time in the cocoon and can now be
a butterfly: we can really bring entertaining work that includes
everybody – Black voices, working-class voices, older, younger.
Everybody up there, instead of what we had before. The pandemic’s
been rough, but you know what? It was time for a change.75

9. Postscript
Fare Thee Well – Words for a wake when the others leave the room
C.B.
No C.V.
C.P.
I’m retired now.
Life sentence
Death sentence
I’m shredding a lot of paper and writing labels
As my mother did
You and she were born the same year – 1931
Same month – June
You the 29th and she the 30th
The day before you were born was my dad’s second birthday.
Stay well, wherever your shade is shading.

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 Nine Lives and Counting

Your star still shines, clearly,

here on the blue planet
why else would they come looking for legacies?
(Clive turns in his grave)
‘There is a lot of work to be done in finding out what makes people happy.’
True . . .
Nine lives and counting!
Cx

Notes

1. See Gorney, 205–14, for details of this time, the improvisation workshops, the
setting up of Interplay, the street theatre and outdoor children’s projects.
2. Ibid., 201, gives a description of ED Berman.
3. Ibid., 200, gives a description of Interaction, of which Barker was a trustee.
4. Dramascape – from ‘drama’ and ‘landscape’. Each one was based on a bombsite/
waste ground, with daily arts activities generated from a games workshop each
morning.
5. Jubilee – third-year student Steve Trow invited us to join him in creating theatre
in various settings in his hometown of West Bromwich, where the departure of
the local amateur opera group prompted him to remedy the resultant total lack
of cultural/arts activities in the town. I was in my first year and brought my
Interplay experience of street theatre and drama playschemes, resulting in a
programme for young people in summer 1974. Pub theatre and a mummers’
play for older residents, along with a TIE (Theatre-in-Education) programme
based on the Fire of London (part of the junior school curriculum at the time)
were the main performance projects. We later added a playbus to the ‘venues’ we
could access. That year local government was reorganized in England and ‘West
Brom’ became one district of the new borough of Sandwell. Jubilee worked
across the borough.
6. Barker, 2019, 93: ‘It would not be difficult to argue that falling is an essential
part of any actor’s training’.
7. Belfast at that time was in the midst of The Troubles, as the armed conflict was
called by many. The British Army patrolled the streets as the polarized
communities went about their daily lives.
8. I was working with Neighbourhood Open Workshop (NOW) that summer,
who ran creative workshops with children across Belfast.
9. Barker, 2019, 2–5.
10. Ibid., 69: ‘One must first of all release energy before one can work to control
and discipline it’.

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Clive Barker and His Legacy

11. Ibid., 29: ‘The kinaesthetic sense, or body think is the process by which we
subconsciously direct and adjust the movements of our bodies in space, either
in response to external stimuli, or to intentions arising in the mind.’
12. For example in Theatre of Witness, community plays, forum theatre, etc.
13. The role of Intimacy Co-ordinator on a production team is similar to that of Fight
Director, in that it concerns the safe choreographing of physical scenes, focusing on
the technicality of movement and the language used to describe it, with an emphasis
on safety, which in the case of intimacy includes emotional and psychological safety.
From initial negotiated contractual agreements through to working with actors on
the detail of who touches who, when and where in a scene – the respect shown for
and to the actors is in contrast to the experience many have had previously.
14. Poulter, 1987.
15. Imelda Foley, working for Northern Ireland Arts Council at the time, was
developing a network of community drama leaders, local adults working with
young people in their own neighbourhoods. Following training workshops on
using drama/theatre games, they asked for the playing instructions for more
games – which became the basis for Playing The Game.
16. Known as ‘The Feeding of the Five Thousand’ – in The New Testament, the story
is recorded in all four Gospels.
17. Barker, 2019, 85: On the origins of the game Court of Holy Dido ‘I learned this
game in a Boy Scout troop in Middlesbrough as a child, where the Holy Dido
was a knotted rope, which, with the terms Upper and Lower Deck, clearly points
to its adult naval origins.’
18. Ibid., 103.
19. Ibid., 101.
20. Ibid., 116.
21. Ibid., 116.
22. After years in exile, Boal returned to Brazil and continued to develop his
Theatre of the Oppressed forms in response to circumstances and need.
He entered local government, elected as a vereador (city councillor) for
a few years, where he developed Legislative Theatre.
23. The Good Friday Agreement, 1998.
24. Barker, 2019, 64.
25. Barker, 1988, 144–51.
26. Boal, 1992, 2002.
27. Barker, 1988, 148.
28. Christie, 77.
29. Ibid., 78.
30. Image Theatre – players create images using their body and/or those of the
others in the group.

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 Nine Lives and Counting

31. Christie, 79.

32. Ibid., 79.
33. As opposed to a passive spectator, Boal invites a spectator who takes action – a
‘spect-actor’.
34. In workshops Boal refers to The Image of the Reality and The Reality of the Image.
35. Cop-in-the-head was developed when he came to accept that individual
psychological pain/trauma was a significant social issue (he had found the high
suicide statistics for the Western country in which he was staying at the time,
during his exile . . . hence the name Cop-in-the-head – the internal ‘cops’ in the
head causing self-regulation and, for some, the extreme of taking one’s own life.
In workshop the participants embody these internal voices in order that
proposals for change can be tried/enacted.
36. Christie, 77–8.
37. Three students, preparing for a discussion, sent each other a brief statement – a
provocation – about something that was of concern/importance to them.
Extracts from each of those provocations are included in these letters to Clive.
This is the first of the three, Zara Gibney Fitzgerald.
38. Barker, 1977, 149.
39. BBC Radio 4, Start the Week, 5 April 2021.
40. Barker, 2019, 214.
41. Barker, Theatre Games back cover, 2010 reprint.
42. We still limit ourselves with the binary tendency.
43. Barker, 2019, 69–80.
44. Ibid., 8.
45. Ibid., 8–9.
46. Ibid., 215.
47. Ibid., vii–ix.
48. Poulter, 2007.
49. Ibid., 376–9.
50. Holdsworth, 293–304.
51. Fun Palace Trust – Joan Littlewood’s dream of creating a Fun Palace was given
shape in the designs of architect Cedric Price and a trust was set up but, unable
to acquire any land, the designs were never built.
52. Ibid., 301.
53. William Golding, Lord of the Flies, London: Penguin, 1954.
54. Gorney, 212.
55. This is outlined as a guardianship activity, ‘For Me’ (243–4), at the end of that
section in my 2018 edition of Playing the Game (236–42).

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Clive Barker and His Legacy

56. Rees, 62, ref. The Late Clive James, ITV, 22 June 1985.
57. In Barker, 2019, 105: ‘In order to concentrate on other senses than sight, these
exercises can be performed in the pitch dark. For some reason people have a
strong illusory belief that they are anonymous in the dark and are, therefore, free
to explore without normal restraint. For one other reason this is important. I
would not carry out this work and take part myself in the early stages. The group
can then rely on the security of one person standing outside the activity, as a
guarantee that the activity will not get out of hand and lead into areas where
they cannot control what is happening. For this reason, at the early stage, the
leader is detached from the group and a curiosity is aroused. Contacts and
relationships between him and the group are inhibited by factors outside the
work itself. When there is an age gap between the leader and the group, this is
intensified. Performed in the dark the exercise gives an opportunity for the
group to approach and contact the leader in a safe situation’.
58. KBC: this is the second of the three students mentioned in note 37.
59. Ita O’Brien became well known internationally following her work as Intimacy
Co-ordinator on the television dramatization of Sally Rooney’s book Normal
People. She has helped develop guidelines, train intimacy co-ordinators and
generally bring the practice of consent into the everyday world of training,
rehearsals and performance.
60. ‘Dignity in the Workplace: Towards a Code of Behaviour (2018), Irish Theatre
Institute, Dublin. This was announced at an event in 2018, Speak Up and Call it
Out, in the wake of the revelations about Harvey Weinstein (and others).
61. Founded by Tarana Burke in 2006 to support survivors of sexual violence and to
advocate for change, the Me Too movement was taken up globally in 2017,
promoted on social media using the ‘hashtag’ #MeToo, which enabled many
survivors to declare themselves as such, in solidarity with some sharing the story
of their experiences online. High-profile cases against powerful figures in the
entertainment world – e.g. Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein – prompted
many to speak up. Weinstein was convicted and jailed in 2020, sentenced to
twenty-three years. In 2021 he is appealing his sentence.
62. Barker, 2019, 103.
63. Ibid., 105.
64. Ibid., 67.
65. Published by Josef Weinberger Plays, 1987.
66. Vachel Lindsay, ‘The Congo’, in The Congo and Other Poems, 1913 (available at
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1021/1021-h/1021-h.htm).
67. Black Lives Matter – campaign founded in 2013, strengthened and taken up
globally in 2020, following the killing of George Floyd in America, by a white
police officer who knelt on his neck for a prolonged period (despite Floyd’s
calling ‘I can’t breathe’) and was subsequently convicted of his murder.
68. Yamélie Spautz: the third of the three students mentioned in note 37.

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69. Waking the Feminists was a successful campaign started in November 2015, in
response to the Abbey Theatre (Dublin) announcing its 2016 programme. Only
one of the plays was written by a woman, prompting a year-long campaign to
bring gender parity onto the agenda and into the policy and practice of the
theatre sector, starting with the companies receiving major funding from the
Irish Arts Council. Social media played a major part in spreading the news of
the campaign, which became known by its Twitter hashtag, #WTF.
70. LGBTQ = Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans, Queer/Questioning.
71. The Anna Scher Theatre was founded by Anna Scher in 1968, based in Islington,
London.
72. The Old Vic is a theatre in South East London.
73. Bashment, Oberon: London, 2005. Written and co-directed by Rikki Beadle-
Blair.
74. Team Angelica is a production company set up in 2002.
75. Okundaye, online.

Bibliography

Barker, C., Theatre Games, London: Eyre Methuen, 1977; new edition, Methuen
Drama, 2010, reprinted in 2012, 2016, 2017, 2019.
Barker, C., ‘When the Kissing Stopped . . . and What Happened Next’, New Theatre
Quarterly, 4:14, May 1988, 144–51.
Boal, A., Games for Actors and Non-Actors, trans. Adrian Jackson, London:
Routledge, 1992, and 2002.
Christie, A., Agatha Christie: An Autobiography, London: Collins, 1977.
Gorney, C., Send Me a Parcel with a Hundred Lovely Things, London: Ragged Clown
Publishing, 2015.
Holdsworth, N., ‘Spaces to Play / Playing with Spaces: Young people, Citizenship
and Joan Littlewood’, Research in Drama Education, 12:3, 2007, 293–304.
Okundaye, J., ‘Rikki Beadle-Blair: The Brilliant Stage and Screen Writer Who Should
Be a Household Name’, The Guardian, 20 May 2021. Available at https://www.
theguardian.com/society/2021/may/20/rikki-beadle-blair-brilliant-stage-screen-
writer-should-be-household-name.
Poulter, C., Playing the Game, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1987, 2nd edition, revised,
2018.
Poulter, C., ‘Playing with Pain: The Need for Guardianship in Groupwork’, New
Theatre Quarterly, 23:4, November 2007, 376–9.
Rees, J., Let’s Do It, London: Orion, 2020.

193
Figure 7 Programme for the West End transfer of Oh What a Lovely War (1963).
Editor’s collection

194
APPENDIX I: AUTHORIAL
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND
PROFESSIONAL CREDITS
Compiled by Nesta Jones

Authorial bibliography

Books
Theatre Games: A New Approach to Drama Training, London: Eyre Methuen, 1977.
Reissued in 2010 by London: Methuen Drama, including additional material:
‘About Theatre Games – A Critical Introduction’ by Dick McCaw, and a DVD.
Reprinted 2012, 2016, 2017 and 2019 with video and supplementary material at:
https://vimeo.com/channels/1495902 & https://www.scribd.com/lists/23051257/
Clive-Barker-Theatre-Games
The US edition was published in 1978 with Japanese and Italian translations
following in 1992 and 1999, respectively.
The Tragedy of the Iman Hussein (AS), editor and author of ‘Introduction’, London:
Bookextra Ltd, 1999.
British Theatre between the Wars, 1918–1939, ed. with Maggie B. Gale, Cambridge
Studies in Modern Theatre, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000;
including authored chapters: ‘Theatre and Society: The Edwardian Legacy, the
First World War and the Inter-War Years’, 4–37; ‘The Ghosts of War: Stage Ghosts
and Time Slips as a Response to War’, 215–43.

Translations
Bertolt Brecht, The Days of the Commune, co-translated with Arno K. Reinfrank,
London: Eyre Methuen, 1978.

Chapters in books
‘Theatre and Society’, in J. R. Brown (ed.), Drama and the Theatre, London:
Routledge Kegan Paul, 1971, 144–60.
‘A Theatre for the People’, in K. Richards and P. Thompson (ed.), Nineteenth Century
British Theatre, London: Eyre Methuen, 1971, 3–24.
‘Meeting People’, in J. G. Davies (ed.), Worship and Dance, Birmingham: University
of Birmingham Press, 1975, 34–42.

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Clive Barker and His Legacy

‘Theatre in East Germany’, in R. Hayman (ed.), The German Theatre, London:

Oswald Wolff Publications, 1975, 189–200.
‘From Fringe to Alternative’, in H. Hohne (ed.), Political Development on the British
Stage in the Sixties and Seventies, Rostock: University of Rostock, 1977, 60–85.
‘Television Drama’, in H. Hohne (ed.), British Drama and Theatre from the Mid-
Fifties to the Mid-Seventies, Rostock: Wilhelm-Pieck Universitat, 1979, 75–88.
‘John Arden, Arnold Wesker, David Mercer’, three critical essays in Contemporary
Dramatists, London: Macmillan, 1982, 48–9, 827–8, 965–6, respectively.
‘Il Teatro in un economia in declino’, trans. M. Cometa, in C. Vicentini (ed.), Il Teatro
nella societe dello spettacolo, Bologna: Societe editrice il Mulino, 1983, 109–28.
‘Theatrical Production’, in Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th edn, Vol. 28, 1987, 554–608.
‘What Happened When the Kissing Stopped’, in R. Deldime (ed.), 1er Congres
Mondial de Sociologie du Theatre, Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1988, [np].
‘Games in Education and the Theatre’, in F. Chami, A. Massala and B. Oufrid (eds),
Theatre et Education, Casablanca: Wallada, 1988, 97–111.
‘Old Plays and New Realism’, in J. Histric (ed.), La Critique et L’Avenir du Theatre,
Novi Sad: Sterijino Pozorje, 1988, 14–21.
‘Juegos teatrales’, in G. Antei (ed.), Las Rutas de Teatro, Bogota: Universidad
Nacional de Colombia, 1989, 225–39.
‘Alternative Theatre/Political Theatre’, in G. Holderness (ed.), The Politics of Theatre
and Drama, London: Macmillan, 1992, 18–43.
‘Theatre’, in W. Outhwaite and T. Bottomore (ed.), Blackwells Dictionary of
Twentieth-Century Social Thought, Oxford: Blackwells, 1992, 666–9.
‘The Problems and Possibilities of Intercultural Penetration and Exchange’, in P. Pavis
(ed.), The Intercultural Performance Reader, London: Routledge, 1995, 247–56.
‘The Experimental Tradition and its Methodological Possibilities’, in P. Paavolainen
and A. Ala-Korpela (eds), Knowledge is a Matter of Doing, Helsinki: Theatre
Academy of Finland, 1995, 7–38.
‘Rampant Pacificism: The Work of the Bradford College of Art Group 1967–1973’, in
T. Howard and J. Stokes (eds), Acts of War, Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996, 98–109.
‘The Silent Revolution’, in R. Merkin (ed.), Popular Theatres?, Liverpool: John
Moores University, 1996, 6–18.
‘Vision and Reality: Their Very Own and Golden City and Centre 42’, in
R. W. Dornan (ed.), Arnold Wesker: A Casebook, New York: Garland Publishing
Inc., 1998, 89–98.
‘Joan Littlewood’, in A. Hodge (ed.), Twentieth Century Actor Training, London:
Routledge, 1999, 113–28. Second edition retitled Actor Training, 2010, 130–43.
‘Introduction to Part 1 – Practice to Theory : Theatre Games’, in L. Goodman and
J. de Gay (eds), The Routledge Reader in Politics and Performance, London:
Routledge, 2000, 17–20.

Articles
Theatre Quarterly (TQ):
‘The Chartists, Theatre, Reform, and Research’, TQ, 1:4, Oct–Dec 1971, 3–10.

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 Appendix I: Authorial Bibliography and Professional Credits

‘The Dilemma of the Professional in University Drama’, TQ, 4:16, Nov 1974 – Jan
1975, 55–68.
‘The “Image” in Show Business’, TQ, 8:29, Spring 1978, 7–11.
‘New Paths for Performance Research’, TQ, 8:30, Summer 1978, 3–7.
‘Towards a Theatre of Dynamic Ambiguities’, David Edgar interviewed by Clive
Barker and Simon Trussler, edited transcript, TQ, 9:33, Spring 1979, 3–23.
‘The Audiences of the Britannia Theatre, Hoxton’, TQ, 9:34, Summer 1979, 27–41.
‘Pip Simmons in Residence’, TQ, 9:35, Autumn 1979, 17–30.
‘Theory, Practice, and Analytical Methods’, TQ, 9:36, Winter 1979–80, 6–8.
‘Pip Simmons: A Pictorial Postscript’, TQ, 9:36, Winter 1979–80, 55–9.
‘IOU and the New Vocabulary of Performance Art’, with Susan Burt, TQ, 10:37,
Spring 1980, 70–94.
‘The Science Fictions of Shared Experience’, with Mike Alfreds, TQ, 10:39, Spring–
Summer 1981, 12–23.

New Theatre Quarterly (NTQ):

‘Old Friends’, [obituary tributes to James Arnott and Alan Schneider], NTQ, 1:1,
February 1985, 128.
‘Callow on Acting’, [NTQ Notes and Reviews], NTQ, 1:3, August 1985, 317–19.
‘When the Kissing Stopped . . . and What Happened Next’, NTQ, 4:14, May 1988,
144–51.
‘Games in Education and Theatre’, NTQ, 5:19, August 1989, 227–35.
‘Zygmunt Hubner: Professional, Teacher, Diplomat’, [obituary tribute], NTQ, 5:20,
November 1989, 404.
‘Ewan MacColl’ [obituary tribute], NTQ, 6:22, May 1990, 199–200.
‘Ironies in Novi Sad – Yugoslav Theatre Part 1’, [NTQ Report], NTQ, 8:29, August
1992, 92–4.
‘Marshal Godot Goes to War – Yugoslav Theatre Part 2’, [NTQ Report], NTQ, 9:35,
August 1993, 290–2.
‘Obituary: Tom Vaughan, [NTQ Report], NTQ, 10:39, August 1994, 293.
‘And Still Kicking . . .’, [Jan Kott: An Eightieth Birthday Celebration], NTQ, 10:40,
November 1994, 307–9.
‘What Training – for What Theatre?’, NTQ, 11:42, May 1995, 99–108.
‘Tell Me When It Hurts: The Theatre of Cruelty Season, Thirty Years On’, NTQ,
12:46, May 1996, 130–5.

[NB: hereafter the numbering scheme changes according to NTQ’s revised system.]

‘Different Kinds of Strength’, [Editorial: ‘A milestone for the Millennium: One

Hundred Issues and Onwards’], NTQ, 15:4, November 1999 (60), 297.
‘In Search of the Lost Mode: Improvisation and All That Jazz’, NTQ, 18:1, February
2002 (69), 10–16 [written as a tribute to Dick McCaw on his resignation as
Artistic Director of the International Workshop Festival].
‘Closing Joan’s Book: Some Personal Footnotes’, NTQ, 19:2, May 2003 (74), 99–107.
‘A Brief History of Clive Barker’, NTQ, 23:4, November 2007 (92), 295–303.

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Clive Barker and His Legacy

Miscellaneous selection:
‘A Theatre for Social Reform’, Prompt, 5, 1964, 24–6.
‘Reflections on Working Class Culture’, Views, 4, 1964, 40–3.
‘The State of the British Theatre’, Views, 5, [np]; Views, 7, 82–98; Views, 8, 92–8,
Summer 1964 – Summer 1965.
‘Working in Leisure’, Continuum, 1, 1965, 6–12.
‘Look Back in Anger – The Turning Point’, Zeitschrift fur Anglistik und
Amerikanistik (Z.A.A.), 4, 1966, 367–71.
‘Die situation im Britischen Theater’, Neue Literatur (Bucharest), 5–6, 1966, 144–6.
‘Contemporary Shakespearean Parody in British Theatre’, Shakespeare Jarbuch
(Weimar), 1969, 25–9.
‘Universities and the Theatre, or Jack and the Beanstalk’, Speech and Drama, 19:1,
Spring 1970, 25–9.
‘Voice Production in the German Democratic Republic’, Speech and Drama, 20:2,
Summer 1971, 21–5.
‘Emergent (Malaysian) Theatre’, Drama, Winter 1973, 72–3.
‘Northern Manoeuvres’, Gambit, 6:23, 1973, 33–9.
‘Marxist Interpretations of Shakespeare: A Director’s Comments’, Socialist History
Journal, (Weimar), 1978, 115–22, from paper given at World Shakespeare
Conference, Washington D.C., April 1976.
‘From Fringe to Alternative Theatre’, Zeitschrift fur Anglistik und Americanistik
(Z.A.A.), 1, 1978, 48–63.
‘Alternative Theatre in Britain’, Artery, 15, Autumn 1978, 34–7.
‘Shakespeare, Brecht and After’, Socialist History Journal, Weimar, 1979, 63–71.
‘The Politicisation of the British Theatre’, English American Studies (EAST), 2, 1980,
267–78.
‘Shakespeare’s Clowns and Contemporary Comedians’, Shakespeare Jahrbuch,
Weimar, 1980, 61–8.
‘Outlook Changeable’, Outlook, 16, National Association for Drama in Education
and Children’s Theatre, 1981, [np].
‘Right You Are (If You Could Only Think So)’, The Yearbook of the British Pirandello
Society, 1, 1981, 26–34.
‘Theatre Anthropology’, Théâtre International, 1:1, 1981, 19–21.
‘Theatre in a Declining Economy’, Théâtre International, 7:3, 1982, 37–47.
‘Theatre East and West’, Theatre Ireland, 4, September 1983, 39–45.
‘Locating Pirandello in the European Theatre Context’, with Susan Bassnett, The
Yearbook of the British Pirandello Society, 5, 1985, 1–20.
‘La difficulte insurmountable’, with Susan Bassnett, Théâtre en Europe, 10, April
1986, 144–51.
‘Viejas Obras y Nuevo Realismo’, Tablas, 4, Havana, Cuba, 1988, 46–53.
‘Character and Discourse in Contemporary Productions of Shakespeare’,
Shakespeare Jahrbuch, Weimar, 1990, 149–59.
‘British National Theatres – Cuckoos in the Nest’, Euromaske, 3, Spring 1991, 20–22;
republished as ‘Teatros Nacionales Britanicos’, Revista ADE, 31/32, Madrid,
September 1993, 73–7.

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 Appendix I: Authorial Bibliography and Professional Credits

Novel
Woche fur Woche (Week in, Week Out), trans. Gunther Klotz, Berlin: Aufbau Verlag,
1971; Second edition 1983.

Editorial
Associate Editor, Theatre Quarterly, 1978–81, responsible for some editions and
initiating commissions.
Co-editor, New Theatre Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, 1984–2005.
Editorial Board, Assaph, Studies in Theatre, University of Tel Aviv, 1985–2005.
Editorial Advisory Board, South African Theatre Journal, Taylor & Francis, 1994–2005.

Professional credits

Theatre
Actor:
Member of the Theatre Workshop Company
First productions at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, London, UK:
The Sheepwell by Lope de Vega, 1955.
The Big Rock Candy Mountain by Alan Lomax, 1955.
The Good Soldier Schweik, adaptation of Jaroslav Hasek’s novel by Ewan MacColl,
1955.
The Dutch Courtesan by John Marston, 1959.
The Hostage by Brendan Behan, 1959.
Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be by Frank Norman and Lionel Bart, 1959.

Transfers and premieres in the West End, London, UK:

The Good Soldier Schweik, adaptation by Ewan MacColl, Duke of York’s Theatre,
1956.
The Hostage by Brendan Behan, Wyndham’s Theatre, 1959.
Oh What a Lovely War by Charles Chilton and members of the Company,
Wyndham’s Theatre, 1960.
The Merry Rooster Pantomime by Lionel Bart and Peter Shaffer, Wyndham’s Theatre,
1960.
Twang!! by Lionel Bart (book, music, lyrics), Harvey Orkin and Bert Shevelove
(book), Shaftesbury Theatre, 1965.

Created the roles of Solly Gold in Enter Solly Gold by Bernard Kops for Centre 42,
1962, and Inspector Foot in After Magritte by Tom Stoppard for Ambiance
Theatre, 1970.

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Clive Barker and His Legacy

Director:
A Clean Kill by Michael Gilbert, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, UK, 1960.
The Lion in Love by Shelagh Delaney, Royal Court Theatre, UK, 1960.
The Dice by Forbes Bramble, The Arts Theatre, Cambridge, UK, 1961.
The Police by Slawomir Mrozek, The Arts Theatre, Cambridge, UK, 1961.
Sinbad by Clive Barker, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, UK, 1961.
Enter Solly Gold by Bernard Kops, Centre 42, UK, 1962.
The Good Woman of Szechwan by Bertolt Brecht, St. Pancras Festival, London, UK,
1964.
Lay By by Howard Brenton, Brian Clark, Trevor Griffiths, David Hare, Stephen
Poliakoff, Hugh Stoddart, Snoo Wilson, German premiere, Buhnen der Stadt,
Cologne, West Germany, 1974.
You Can’t Take It With You by George S. Kaufmann and Moss Hart, German
premiere, Buhnen der Stadt, Cologne, West Germany, 1974.
Home by David Storey, Northcott Theatre, Exeter, UK, 1975.
Mahagonny by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill (Baden-Baden version), Edinburgh
Festival, Scotland, UK, 1975.
Der Jasager by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, Edinburgh Festival, Scotland, UK,
1975.
Mass by Leonard Bernstein, Coventry Theatre, and the Royal Albert Hall, London,
UK, 1976.
Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, Deutsches Nationaltheater, Weimar,
Thuringa Land, German Democratic Republic, 1983.
Oroonoko by Thomas Southerne, Teatro Colon, Bogota, Colombia, 1986.

Translation:
The Days of the Commune by Bertolt Brecht, co-translated with Arno K. Reinfrank
for the Royal Shakespeare Company production, directed by Howard Davies,
Aldwych Theatre, London, UK, 1977–8.

Scenario:
Le Farceur, a ballet choreographed by Clover Roope, Wyndham’s Theatre, London,
UK, 1958.

Media
Radio documentaries (written and compiled):
The Story of the Teeside Cyclists, on touring cyclists, BBC North, 1963.
Landmarks series, Birth and Old Age, BBC Midlands, 1964. (The Landmarks series
were subsequently remade for BBC TV.)

Radio features:
‘The Provincial Theatre’ – 2 parts, BBC Midlands, 1964
‘Business as Usual’, on concepts of Death and Dying in contemporary culture, Radio
3, 1965.

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 Appendix I: Authorial Bibliography and Professional Credits

‘Money for the Arts – A Plea for a Plan’, Radio 3, 1966.

‘The Cult of Festival’, Radio 3, 1967.

Television documentaries (research and field recordings):

The Abbey of the English, Westminster Abbey, BBC2, 1966.
BD8 – A Study in Blindness, 2-part documentary, BBC2, 1967.

Television authored play:

The Queen Street Girls, BBC2, 1966.

201
Figure 8 Clive with some of his students in Bogotá (1992). The Clive Barker
Archive, Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance.

202
APPENDIX II: TEACHING AND
TRAINING
Compiled by Nesta Jones

Permanent appointments

1966–1974 Lecturer in Theatre Practice, Department of Drama and Theatre Arts,

University of Birmingham.
1975–1996 Lecturer, Department of Theatre and Performance Studies, University
of Warwick, Senior Lecturer (01.10.1978), Acting Head of Department
(1978), Chair of Department (1982–1984).
1997–2000 Visiting Professor, Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance.
2000–2005 Senior Research Fellow, Rose Bruford College of Theatre and
Performance. Professor of the College, 2004–2005.

Temporary appointments

1964–1965 Visiting Tutor, London Academy of Dramatic Art (LAMDA), UK and

East 15 School of Acting, UK.
1964–1970 Director of Courses, National Youth Theatre.
1966–2005 Guest Teacher, Drama Centre (acting and directing), UK.
1971–1976 Guest Lecturer, Wilhelm-Pieck University, Rostock, GDR.
1981 British Council Exchange Fellow, Humboldt University, East Berlin,
GDR.
1983 Guest Teacher, University of Antioquia, Medellin, Colombia.
1984–1985 Guest Teacher, National Drama School, Bogotá, Colombia.
1986 Lansdowne Visitor, University of Victoria, British Colombia, Canada.
1978/1989 Guest Teacher/Workshop Leader, University of Warsaw, Poland.
1982–2000 Guest Teacher, La Escuela de Formacion de Actores del Theatro Libre,
Bogotá, Colombia.
1990 Guest Teacher, Upstairs Speech, Drama, Dance Workshop, Durban,
RSA.
Guest Teacher, Universities of Pietermaritzburg, Natal, Durban
Westville, and Indimiso College of Education, Edendale, RSA
1991 Leader, 4th National Drama Workshop, Guild Theatre Federation of
Bangladesh.
Guest Teacher, University of Jahangirnagar and University of Dhaka,
Bangladesh.
1991–1999 Workshop Leader, International Workshop Festival, London, UK.

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Clive Barker and His Legacy

1992 Trainer, Odin Teatret, Holstebro, Denmark.

1993 Workshop Leader, Medellin Theatres Colombia.
1994 Guest Teacher, National School of Drama, New Delhi, India.
Leader, Public Workshops for the British Council, New Delhi, India.
Trainer, The Company, Chandigarh, India.
1994 Guest Teacher, Academie Superior de Artes de Bogotá, Colombia.
Guest Teacher, Universidad de Los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia.
1995 Guest Teacher, Institute of Dramatic Arts, University of Havana,
Cuba.
Guest Teacher, Universities of Belgrade and Novi Sad, Yugoslavia.
1996 Guest Teacher, University del Valle, Cali Colombia.
Guest Teacher, University of Antioquia, Medellin, Colombia.
1997 Guest Teacher, La Casa de Teatro, Teatro Nacional, Bogotá,
Colombia.
Visiting Professor, University of Rome (La Sapienza), Italy.
Workshop Leader, Abraxo Teatro, Rome, Italy.
1998 Guest Teacher, University of Antioquia, Medellin, Colombia.
Guest Teacher, University del Valle, Cali, Colombia.
Guest Teacher, La Casa de Teatro, Teatro Nacional, Bogotá,
Colombia.
1998–1999 Workshop Leader, Beg, Borrow and Steal Theatre Company, Dublin,
Ireland.
1999 Workshop Leader, Instituto des Belles Artes, Cali, Colombia.
Workshop Leader, Centre for Performance Research, Conference on
Brecht and Eisenstein, Aberystwyth, Wales.
2000 Workshop Leader, University of Tehran, Iranian Islamic Republic.
Guest Teacher, Universidad del Atlantico, Barranquilla, Colombia.

University/drama school productions

University of Birmingham
Actor: Nitrogen by Rene Obaldia, directed by Geoffrey Reeves (professional
production); Chin-Chin by Francois Billetdoux, directed by John Russell Brown
(professional tour); title role in Tamburlaine Parts 1 & 2, directed by John
Russell Brown.
Director: plays by Euripides, Aristophanes, Stanislaw Witkiewicz, Bertolt Brecht
and Howard Barker.

Drama Centre, London

Director: Vassa Zhelessnova by Maxim Gorky.

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 Appendix II: Teaching and Training

University of Warwick
Actor: Afraid to Fight by Georges Courteline, directed by Michael Booth; Out of
Sight by John McGrath (also directed); Terkel by James Genereaux, directed by
Tony Dunham.

Boards and committees

1961–1971 Member of Board of Directors, Centre 42, London, UK.

1967–1993 Trustee of Inter-Action, London, UK.
1971–1980 Chair and Council Member, British Theatre Institute, London, UK.
1974–1982 Associate Director of Almost Free Theatre, London, UK.
1974–1976 Member of Equity Director’s Committee, London, UK.
1977–1986 Chairman, Advisory Panel on Drama, Warwick Arts Centre, UK.
1978–1985 Vice-Chairman, Executive Committee, International Theatre Institute
(British Centre), London, UK.
1985–2005 Member of Board of Directors, 7:84 Theatre Company, Scotland,
UK.
1980 Member, International Symposium on the Training of Theatre
Directors, Warsaw.
Adviser/Monitor, International School of Theatre Anthropology/
Odin Teatret of Denmark.
1983–1988 President, British Pirandello Society.
1984–2005 Honorary Member of the Centro Internazional Studi di Estetica,
University of Palermo.
1987–1997 Member, Board of Directors, Albatross Arts Project and Geese
Theatre, Birmingham, UK. Chairman of the Board, 1989–1997.
1988 Member, Panel of International Judges, 8th International Triennial
Exhibition of Theatre Books and Periodicals, Novi Sad, Yugoslavia.
1988–1989 Member, Advisory Panel for the Diploma Course in Dramatherapy,
Art and Therapy Centre, Athens, Greece.
1988–1992 Artistic Advisor, Company of Wolves, Glasgow, Scotland, UK.
1989–1994 Member, Board of Directors, Festival of International Theatre
Research, International Workshop Festival, UK.
1990–2005 Member, International School of Theatre Anthropology, Bologna,
Italy.
Chair, 1995.
1991 Member, Panel of International Judges, 9th International Triennial
Exhibition of Theatre Books and Periodicals, Novi Sad, Yugoslavia.
1996–1997 Member of the Directing Board of the National Council for Drama
Training, UK.
1996–1997 Member of the Acting Board of the National Council for Drama
Training, UK.

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Clive Barker and His Legacy

1997–1999 Member, Board of Trustees, East 15 Acting School, Southend-on-Sea,

UK.
1999–2000 Member, Academic Board, London Centre of Islamic Studies, UK.
1999–2005 Member, Advisory Board, East 15 Acting School, Southend-on-Sea,
UK.
1999–2005 Member, Board of Directors, Open Theatre and Shysters Theatre
Company, Coventry, UK.
1999–2005 Member, Board of Directors, Albatross Arts Project and Geese
Theatre, Coventry, UK.
1999–2005 Member, Board of Directors, Triangle Theatre, Coventry, UK.

Reports

1967 participated in an Expert Seminar, ‘Theatre and Community’, in

Nottingham, designated UNESCO City of Literature, UK.
Subsequently wrote reports on ‘Popular Theatre in Britain’ and ‘Street
Theatre in Britain’ for UNESCO. Report for the Leningrad State
Institute of Theatre, Music and Film, USSR on ‘The Organisational
Structure of the British Theatre’. These reports were used and
incorporated in institutional publications.

Conference Papers

It is impossible to itemize all the instances of Clive Barker’s work as a teacher,

supervisor, mentor, examiner, assessor, facilitator and theatre-maker; or list the titles of
over fifty papers he gave, panels he contributed to, and other interventions he made at
international conferences, meetings and festivals. Several of the conference papers
were developed into articles or chapters but the majority remain unpublished.
Provided here are selected examples of some of the UK organizations and those in
other countries which invited him to speak:

UK: Standing Committee of University Drama Departments, National Guild for

Community Arts Education, British Psychological Association, British Pirandello
Society, British Comparative Literature Association, Institute of Dramatherapy,
Centre for Performance Research, Total Theatre, Central School of Speech and
Drama, Liverpool John Moores University, and Consortium for the Co-ordination of
European Performance and Theatre Studies (CONCEPTS).

Overseas: Akademie der Wissenschaft (Berlin, GDR), Maxim Gorky Institute

(Moscow, USSR), University of Ferrara (Italy), American Theatre Association,
International Association of Theatre Critics, Marlowe Society of America, Shilpakala

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 Appendix II: Teaching and Training

Academy of Bangladesh, Netherlands Theatre Institute, University of Aarhus

(Denmark), and the Finnish Theatre Academy.

Conferences organized (University of Warwick)

‘Nineteenth Century Theatre’, with Michael Booth, 1976.

‘Nineteenth Century Popular Theatre’, 1983.
‘Women in Theatre History’, with Susan Bassnett, 1985.
‘The Musical’, 1987.

207
208
INDEX

The letter f following an entry indicates a page with a figure.

abuse 185 Arts Council of Great Britain 38, 39

accents 74 ATM (Awareness Through Movement) 97,
acting 74, 106, 172, 179 101 ‘Audiences of the Britannia
teaching 179–80 Theatre, Hoxton’(Barker, Clive) 19
Actor Training (Hodge, Alison) 4 audio-walks 130 see also Voices from the
Aesop Village
Lion in Love, The 69 autism 167–8
After Magritte (Stoppard, Tom) 6, 18, 35, 36f Awareness Through Movement (ATM) 97,
agitprop 154 101
alignment 100–1
alternative theatre 18, 27–32, 36, 143 Bailey, Bryan 70–1
history 127–8 Bakhtin, Mikhail
politics 127–8, 133 Rabelais and His World 122–3
TQ 28–9, 42 balance 100–1
women 34 Baldwin, Chris 2, 149, 150f
Alternative Theatre Handbook (Itzen, Flow Quartet, The 113, 114–15, 117,
Catherine) 29 118–22, 123
Ancona, Ronni 159 Baldwin, Chris and Bicat, Tina
anecdote 53, 55 Devised and Collaborative Theatre
myth-making 60–1 111–12
Anwell, Maggie 37, 38 Bangladesh 162
archives 9, 27, 28, 29–30, 128–9, 143 see also Barba, Eugenio 3, 5–6, 9, 16, 28
history NTQ 22
anecdote 53, 55, 60–1 Barker, Clive 8f, 24f, 36f, 97f, 150f, 202f
archive fever 128 LIFE: 1, 3; appearance 87, 88; birth 14,
Fun Palace 130 62; character 33–4, 88; education 15;
liveness 129 early employment 14–15, 62; family
as performance remains 51–2 78, 168; health 169; marriage/
RBC 149–56 divorce 22; masculinity 63;
scribal approaches 52, 54–5, 62–3 nickname 25; politics 62–3, 111–12,
Arden, John 158 140, 152–4, 155; thoughts 149–70
Arden, John and D’Arcy, Margaretta 40 (See Evening with Clive Barker, An)
Ars Longa, Vita Brevis 40 RELATIONSHIPS: Arnott, James 22;
Arendt, Hannah 115 Barba, Eugenio 5–6, 9, 16; Brown,
Arnott, James 22 John Russell 19; Collins, Una 70;
Ars Longa, Vita Brevis (Arden, John and Delaney, Shelagh 73; Holdsworth,
D’Arcy, Margaretta) 40 Nadine 53–4; Hunt, Albert 39–40;
arts, the 133 Johnstone, Keith 168–9; Jones, Len
Arts Centres: Every Town Should Have One 155; Littlewood, Joan 3, 4, 14, 15, 18,
(Lane, John) 42 23, 55–63, 74, 129–30, 162; Martin,

209
Index

Bill 41; Murphy, Brian 18; Poulter, Theatre, Hoxton’ 19; ‘Brief History
Chrissie 173–89; Samuel, Raphael of Clive Barker, A’ 54, 62; British
155; Schneider, Alan 22; Thomas, Theatre Between the Wars 19;
Tom 155; Trussler, Simon 13, 22; ‘Chartists, Theatre, Reform, and
Waterfield, Carran 39; Wesker, Research, The’ 19, 30–1 ‘Closing
Arnold 6, 16–17; women 33–4, 35 Joan’s Book: Some Personal
THEATRE CAREER: 9, 19–20, 32, 39; as Footnotes’ 4, 62; Days of the
academic 7–9, 14, 19, 20–1, 32–3, 40, Commune, The 5; ‘Dilemma of the
87–93, 99, 149, 171, 203–4; as actor Professional in University Drama,
3–4, 6, 14, 15, 23, 24–5, 35, 56–7, The’ 7–8, 19, 32; ‘Games in
73–4, 129–30, 199; alternative theatre Education and Theatre’ 9; Hostage,
27–32, 36, 42; archives 9, 27, 28, The 5; ‘In Search of the Lost Mode’
29–30, 127, 149–70; biographies 67; 106; ‘New Theatres, New Ideas’ 17;
boards and committees 205–6; body/ ‘Old Friends’ 22; Story of the Teeside
think 100, 172; Bradford College of Cyclists, The 31; Strike 31; ‘Theatre
Art 40; bullying 33–4, 90, 184; Centre for Social Reform, A’ 17; Theatre
42 16–17, 31; Clive Barker Games: A New Approach to Drama
Community Theatre 80; collaborative Training. See Theatre Games: A New
theatre 111–12; conferences Approach to Drama Training; ‘Vision
organized 207; conference papers and Reality: Their Very Own and
206–7; as director 5, 14, 15, 21, 67, Golden City and Centre 42’ 6; ‘What
70, 73–5, 76, 77–8, 81, 200; Drama Training – for What Theatre’ 9;
Centre, London 204; as editor 1, 13, ‘When the Kissing Stopped . . . and
16, 18–19, 22, 29, 41; Fun Palace 134; What Happened Next’ 177
games 57, 95, 98, 101–7, 130, 137, Barlow, Patrick 33, 34
139, 167, 171–2, 179, 180, 182, 184, Bart, Lionel
185; influences 95–6, 99–100, 122–3; Twang!! 6, 14
Inter-Action 35; Laban, Rudolf 95–8; Bart, Lionel and Norman, Frank
legacy 64, 173, 188–9; movement Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be 3, 57
95–107, 169; national service 15; Bashment (Beadle-Blair, Rikki) 188
networking 39, 40; New Theatre Beadle-Blair, Rikki 188
Quarterly 22; Northcott Theatre 21; Bashment 188
Prompt 16–17; RBC 149; rehearsal Behan, Brendan 58
56, 57, 58–9; reports 207; social Hostage, The (An Giall). See Hostage,
justice 6; as stage manager 15, 56; The
street theatre 37–8; as teacher 4, 5, Belgrade Theatre 70–1, 75–7
73, 87–93, 97f, 98, 101–5, 130, 151, Bennett, Alan
155–6, 159–60, 171–2, 203–4; Beyond the Fringe 14
Theatre Quarterly 18–21, 28–9, 41–2; Beowulf and the Dragon (Berman, ED) 37
Theatre Workshop 15–16, 18, 31, Berman, ED 18, 33, 34, 35–6, 38, 160
52–63; as translator 5, 200; travel Beowulf and the Dragon 37
6–7, 31, 89, 162; as trustee 6; games 37
University of Birmingham 7, 19–20, Bernard, Heinz 13
32–4, 39, 99, 171–2, 204; University Bernstein, Leonard
of Warwick 8, 21, 87–93, 159–60, Mass 5
205, 207; Workers’ Theatre ‘Beyond Naturalism Pure’ (Hall, Stuart) 80
Movement 152; as writer 5, 6, 16–17, Beyond the Fringe (Bennett, Alan) 14
29–30, 99–100, 112 Bicat, Tina and Baldwin, Chris
WORKS: 7, 111–12, 195–9, 200–1, Devised and Collaborative Theatre
207–8; ‘Audiences of the Britannia 111–12

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 Index

Binaural Dinner Date (ZU-UK) 131, 142 Callow, Simon 28

Bloomers 34 carnival 122–3
Blue Blouses 153 Cartoon Archetypal Slogan Theatre (CAST)
Boal, Augusto 114, 116, 161, 165–6 128
Cop-in-the-head 178 Caruth, Cathy 114, 115
Games for Actors and Non-Actors! 177 Casey, James, Roscoe, Frank and Taylor,
happiness 176 Ronnie
image creation 177–8 Clitheroe Kid, The 74
body, the 116 see also movement CAST (Cartoon Archetypal Slogan Theatre)
Body and Mature Behaviour, The 128
(Feldenkrais, Moshé) 99 Centre 42 6, 16–17, 31, 38, 128
body/think 100, 172 Chaplin, Charlie 156–7
Botswana 160–1 Dog’s Life, A 156–7
boundaries 184–6 ‘Chartists, Theatre, Reform, and Research,
Bradby, David and McCormick, John The’ (Barker, Clive) 19, 30–1
People’s Theatre 42 Chicken Soup with Barley (Wesker, Arnold)
Bradford Art College Theatre Group 39, 40 70
Destruction of Dresden or A Carnival for children 37, 38, 102, 176–7
St. Valentine’s Eve, The 40–1 Chilton, Charles and members of the
John Bull’s Cuban Missile Crisis 40–1 Company, Wyndham’s Theatre
Passion of Adolf Hitler, The 49–1 Oh What a Lovely War 1, 4, 14, 18, 57,
Bradford College of Art 40 155, 194f
Russian Revolution re-enactment 40 China 153
brain, the 96, 99–100 Christie, Agatha 177, 178
Bratton, Jacky 52, 53, 54–5 citizen-centred dramaturgy 112, 114,
New Readings in Theatre History 60–1 117–23
‘Breaking Down’ 182 citizens 118–19
Brecht, Bertolt 114, 156, 162 Clark, Brian, Griffiths, Trevor, Hare, David,
Days of the Commune, The 5 Poliakoff, Stephen, Stoddart, Hugh,
Edward II 156 Wilson, Snoo and Brenton, Howard
Visions of Simone Machard, The 13 Lay By 5
Brecht, Bertolt and Weill, Kurt class 127
Jasager, Der 5 Clean Kill, A (Gilbert, Michael) 14
Mahagonny 5 Clitheroe Kid, The (Casey, James, Roscoe,
Brenton, Howard, Clark, Brian, Griffiths, Frank and Taylor, Ronnie) 74
Trevor, Hare, David, Poliakoff, Clive Barker Award 8
Stephen, Stoddart, Hugh and Clive Barker Community Theatre 80
Wilson, Snoo Clive Barker Research Fellow 27
Lay By 5 ‘Clocking Game’ 95, 106–7
‘Brief History of Clive Barker, A’ (Barker, ‘Closing Joan’s Book: Some Personal
Clive) 54, 62 Footnotes’ (Barker, Clive) 4, 62
Brighton Combination 39 clowning 156–8, 159
British Theatre Between the Wars (Barker, collaborative theatre 111–12
Clive and Gale, Maggie B.) 19 collective trauma 113–16, 119
British Theatre Institute (BTI) 20–1 Collins, Una 70, 76, 80
Brown, John Russell 19 colonialism 186–7
BTI (British Theatre Institute) 20–1 Comedians (Griffiths, Trevor) 91
Büchner, Georg comedy 90–2
Danton’s Death 102 community 128, 129, 134, 136–7, 140, 143
Burke, Patricia 74, 79 community theatre 160–1, 165

211
Index

‘Congo, The’ (Lindsay, Vachel) 186–7 Dyson, Jeremy, Gatiss, Mark, Pemberton,
conscious control 100 Steve and Shearsmith, Reece
consensus and consent 181–4 League of Gentlemen, The 159
consumer culture 139
Cop-in-the-head 178 ECoC (European Capital of Culture). See
Coult, Tony 33, 35, 37–8 European Capital of Culture
‘Count of Holy Dido’ 182, 204 n. 17 economy, the 133
counterpoint 58 Edward II (Brecht, Bertolt) 156
Coupland, Diana 71 Edward II (Marlowe, Christopher) 63
COVID-19 pandemic 174–6, 178 Encore Theatre Magazine 46 n. 62
Croft, Susan 2, 27 ensembles 180
cybernetics 130, 136 Enter Solly Gold (Kops, Bernard) 6
Eugeniou, George 28
Danton’s Death (Büchner, Georg) 102 Europe 115 see also Poland
D’Arcy, Margaretta and Arden, John 40 European Capital of Culture (ECoC)
Ars Longa, Vita Brevis 40 (Wrocław)
Days of the Commune, The (Brecht, Bertolt) ‘Flow’ parts I and II 113, 120
5 Flow Quartet, The 113, 114–15, 117,
Delaney, Shelagh 15, 61, 71–3, 79, 81 118–22, 123
censorship 75, 77–9 ‘Mosty (‘Bridges’) 113, 120, 121–2
Clive Barker Community Theatre ‘Niebo’ (‘Heaven/Sky’) 113, 117
80 ‘Przebudzenie’ (‘Awakening’) 113, 120,
Lion in Love, The. See Lion in Love, The 122
Littlewood, Joan 15, 67–8 Evening with Clive Barker, An (RBC)
Sweetly Sings the Donkey 81 149–70
Taste of Honey, A 23, 67, 69, 70, 74, 79 autism 167–8
democracy 139 Boal, Augusto 161, 165–6
democratic dialogue 121 clowning 156–8, 159
democratic vision 121 communication 167–8
design (sound and visual) 119–20 community theatre 160–1, 165
Destruction of Dresden or A Carnival for St. community theatre abroad 160–2
Valentine’s Eve, The (Bradford Art funding 164
College Theatre Group) 40–1 games 167
developing countries 160–2, 166 health 169
Devine, George 76–7 improvisation 168
Devised and Collaborative Theatre (Baldwin, Ireland 165–6
Chris and Bicat, Tina) 111–12 Johnstone, Keith 168–9
diagnostic tools 121–2 Madonna 159–60
‘Dilemma of the Professional in University Morecambe and Wise 157–8
Drama, The’ (Barker, Clive) 7–8, 19, Pip Simmons Theatre Group 162–3
32 Poulter, Chrissie 166–7
diversity 187 revolutionary theatre 152–4
Doctor Faustus (Marlowe, Christopher) 5 7:84 163
Dog’s Life, A (Chaplin, Charlie) 156–7 Shakespeare, William 159
drama therapy 178 star system 164
dramascapes 37, 171 Sutton, Dudley 164
dramaturgy 114 theatre roots 158–9
citizen-centred 112, 114, 117– 23 Theatre Workshop 162
Dunne-Howrie, Joseph 2 Expresso Bongo (Mankowitz, Wolf and
Voices from the Village 130–1, 137–40 More, Julian) 70, 71

212
 Index

failure 179 technology 175–6

fascism 153 ‘Victim games’ 182
Fast Show, The (Whitehouse, Paul and ‘Violence’ 182
Higson, Charlie) 159 Games After Liverpool (Saunders, James) 37
feelings, control of 185 Games for Actors and Non-Actors! (Boal,
Feldenkrais, Moshé 95, 99–100 Augusto) 177
Awareness Through Movement (ATM) ‘Games in Education and Theatre’ (Barker,
97, 101 Clive) 9
Body and Mature Behaviour, The 99 Gatiss, Mark, Pemberton, Steve, Shearsmith,
feminism 34–5, 187 Reece and Dyson, Jeremy
Ferdinand the Matador (Lehman, Leo and League of Gentlemen, The 159
Whelen, Christopher) 71 Gay Sweatshop 35, 128
Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be (Norman, General Will, The 128
Frank and Bart, Lionel) 3, 57 Germany 153
‘Five Thousand Words’ 173 Gilbert, Michael
‘Flow’ parts I and II (Wrocław, European Clean Kill, A 14
Capital of Culture [ECoC]) 113, 120 Glendinning, Robin
Flow Quartet, The (Wrocław, European Mumbo Jumbo 186–7
Capital of Culture [ECoC]) 113, globalization 134
114–15, 117, 118–22, 123 Godsell, Vanda 71, 74, 76
Foley, Imelda 204 n. 15 Golding, William
Ford, John Lord of the Flies 183
Stagecoach 169 Good Soldier Schweik, The (ad. MacColl,
Freire, Paulo 116 Ewan) 3, 15, 57, 164
Fuente Ovejuna (The Sheep Well) (Vega, Goorney, Howard 25, 76, 79
Lope de) 3, 56 Theatre Workshop Story, The 4, 56, 62
Fun Palace 130, 134–5, 137, 182 Gorney, Carry 171
Grabowski, Jan 124 n. 9
Gale, Maggie B. and Barker, Clive ‘Grandmother’s Footsteps’ 104
British Theatre Between the Wars 19 greetings 175
games 37, 38, 40, 57, 101–7, 137, 167, 180 Griffiths, Trevor
‘Breaking Down’ 182 Comedians 91
Binaural Dinner Date 142 Griffiths, Trevor, Hare, David, Poliakoff,
children 176–7 Stephen, Stoddart, Hugh, Wilson,
‘Clocking Game’ 95, 105–6 Snoo, Brenton, Howard and Clark,
consensus and consent 182, 184 Brian
‘Count of Holy Dido’ 182, 204 n. 17 Lay By 5
in the dark 184 Gross, Jan 124 n. 9
feelings, control of 185 Guardian 187–8
‘Five Thousand Words’ 173 Guerrilla Theatre event, Birmingham
‘Grandmother’s Footsteps’ 104 University 39
Hunt, Albert 40, 41 ‘Guide to Underground Theatre’ (TQ) 18
Littlewood, Joan 58, 102
movement 98, 101–3 hacking 129, 140–2
movement qualities 103–5 Hall, Stuart
‘Pirate’s Treasure’ 104 ‘Beyond Naturalism Pure’ 80
pleasure 176–7 Handke, Peter
Poulter, Chrissie 171–3, 175–8, 179, 182 Offending the Audience 37
‘Raft of Medusa, The ‘102 handshakes 174–5
stress 179, 180 happiness 176–7, 178–9

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Index

Hare, David, Poliakoff, Stephen, Stoddart, identity 133–4

Hugh, Wilson, Snoo, Brenton, I’m Talking about Jerusalem (Wesker,
Howard, Clark, Brian and Griffiths, Arnold) 70
Trevor Impro (Johnstone, Keith) 106
Lay By 5 improvisation 168
Harris, Jenny 38 ‘In Search of the Lost Mode’ (Barker, Clive)
Hart, Moss and Kaufman, George S. 106
You Can’t Take It With You 5 India 161
Heriot, C. D. 75, 77, 78 Instytut Pamięci Narodowej (Institute for
Hesitate and Demonstrate 34 National Remembrance) 115
Higson, Charlie and Whitehouse, Paul Inter-Action 18, 33, 34, 35–7, 38, 39, 128, 160
Fast Show, The 159 Inter-Action Games Method 37
Hiley, Jim 33 International Theatre Institute (ITI) 21
history 55, 128 see also archives and International Union of Revolutionary
memory Theatre (IURT) 152
Caruth, Cathy 114, 115 International Workshop Festival 103–4
collective trauma 113–16, 119 internet, the 136
Poland 114–15, 116–17 Interplay Theatre 33, 35, 171, 182
revolutionary theatre 152–4 intimacy 174–5
#RioFoneHack at TBW 141 boundaries 184–6
Wrocław 114–15, 117, 119 consensus and consent 181–4
Hobson, Harold 79 direction 172
Hodge, Alison Ireland 165–6, 172, 176, 186–7
Actor Training 4 Italian Straw Hat, An (Labiche, Eugène and
Holdsworth, Nadine 2, 53–4 Marc-Michel) 59
Joan Littlewood’s Theatre 54 ITI (International Theatre Institute) 21
‘Spaces to Play’ 182 Itzen, Catherine 28, 163
Holocaust, the 115 Alternative Theatre Handbook 29
Home (Storey, David) 5 IURT (International Union of
Homosexual Acts 35 Revolutionary Theatre) 152
homosexuality 63
Hopes for Great Happenings: Alternatives in Japan 152, 153
Education and Theatre (Hunt, Jasager, Der (Brecht, Bertolt and Weill,
Albert) 39 Kurt) 5
horseplay 174 Joan Littlewood’s Theatre (Holdsworth,
Hostage, The (An Giall) (Behan, Brendan) 1, Nadine) 54
4, 5, 14, 23–5, 57 Joan’s Book (Littlewood, Joan) 68
casting 24f John Bull’s Cuban Missile Crisis (Bradford
movement work 73–4 Art College Theatre Group) 40–1
rehearsals 58, 60, 67–8 Johnstone, Keith 168–9
writing 68 Impro 106
Hotel Medea (ZU-UK) 140–1 Join Stock 128
Hoyle, Geoff 33 Jones, Len 155
Hozier, Anthony 149 Jubilee Theatre & Community Arts 171,
hugs 174 182–3
human condition 179–81 justice 182–3
Hunt, Albert 38, 39–41
Hopes for Great Happenings: Karlstadt, Liesl 156
Alternatives in Education and Kaufman, George S. and Hart, Moss
Theatre 39 You Can’t Take It With You 5

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 Index

Kelly, Jude 33–4, 44 n. 20 reviews 75–7, 78, 79–80

Kidd, Ross 160–1, 162 revisions 77
Kops, Bernard Royal Court 77–80
Enter Solly Gold 6 theme 69
Kustow. Michael 28 literacy programmes 161
Littlewood, Joan 3, 14, 18, 24 see also
Laban, Rudolf 95–8, 103–5 Theatre Workshop
Mastery of Movement, The 96, 104 background 73
Labiche, Eugène and Marc-Michel Barker, Clive 3, 4, 14, 15, 18, 23, 55–60,
Italian Straw Hat, An 59 74
Lane, John casting 24
Arts Centres: Every Town Should Have character 60, 61
One 42 counterpoint 58
Laub, Dori 115–16 cybernetics 130, 136
Lay By (Brenton, Howard, Clark, Brian, death 61
Griffiths, Trevor, Hare, David, Delaney, Shelagh 15, 67–8
Poliakoff, Stephen, Stoddart, Hugh Devine, George 76–7
and Wilson, Snoo) 5 Fun Palace 130, 135, 182
League of Gentlemen, The (Dyson, Jeremy, games 58, 102
Gatiss, Mark, Pemberton, Steve and Hostage, The (Behan, Brendan) 5, 58, 60,
Shearsmith, Reece) 159 67–8
Lehman, Leo and Whelen, Christopher Joan’s Book 68
Ferdinand the Matador 71 legacy 162
Levin, Bernard 79 Lion in Love, The (Delaney, Shelagh)
Lindsay, Vachel 67–8, 71, 81
‘Congo, The’ 186–7 Murphy, Brian 3
Lion in Love, The (Aesop) 69 myth of 60–2
Lion in Love, The (Delaney, Shelagh) 2, 5, Oh What a Lovely War (Chilton,
14, 72f Charles and members of the
accents 74, 75, 76 Company, Wyndham’s Theatre) 4
auditions 71 Osborne, John 76–7
Barker, Clive 73–5, 76, 77–8, 81 politics 62
Belgrade Theatre 70–1, 75–7 punishment 182
Burke, Patricia 74, 79 Taste of Honey, A (Delaney, Shelagh) 79
cast changes 74, 77 working method 52, 57, 58–60, 63, 73
censorship 75, 77–9 Littlewood, Joan and MacColl, Ewan
Collins, Una 70, 76 Good Soldier Schweik, The 3, 15, 57, 164
Coupland, Diana 71 liveness 129
Godsell, Vanda 71, 74, 76 London 131–2 see also Olympic legacy
Goorney, Howard 76, 79 regeneration 132–3, 137–40, 141
Hall, Stuart 80 #RioFoneHack at TBW 141
Littlewood, Joan 67–8, 71, 81 London Legacy Development Corporation
Lord Chamberlain’s Office 75, 77–9 137–40
Mankowitz, Wolf 70, 73, 75, 76 Lord Chamberlain’s Office 75, 77–9
media reports 71–2 Lord of the Flies (Golding, William) 183
naturalism 80
Norman, Monty 71, 75 McCaw, Dick 2, 176
off-Broadway 81 MacColl, Ewan 18, 152, 153
plot 68–9 MacColl, Ewan and Littlewood, Joan
rehearsals 71, 73, 77 Good Soldier Schweik, The 3, 15, 57, 164

215
Index

McCormick, John and Brady, David Murphy, Brian 3, 4, 18, 57, 59

People’s Theatre 42 movement 98
Madonna 159–60 myth-making 60–1
Magdalena Project 34–5
Mahagonny (Brecht, Bertolt and Weill, national identity 134
Kurt) 5 neurodiversity 167–8, 178, 180
Make Me an Offer (Mankowitz, Wolf) 70 neuroscience 96, 99–100
Man, Beast and Virtue (Pirandello, Luigi) Never Had It So Good (Wiles, John) 70
70 New Chair, The (Valentin, Karl) 156
Mankowitz, Wolf 70, 71, 73, 75, 76 New Readings in Theatre History (Bratton,
Make Me an Offer 70 Jacky) 60–1
Mankowitz, Wolf and More, Julian New Theatre Quarterly (NTQ) 2–3, 13, 22,
Expresso Bongo 70, 71 39 see also TQ
Maravala, Persis Jadé 140 ‘New Theatres, New Ideas’ (Barker, Clive,
Marc-Michel and Labiche, Eugène Marowitz, Charles and Muldoon,
Italian Straw Hat, An 59 Roland) 17
Marlowe, Christopher Newlove, Jean 96
Doctor Faustus 5 ‘Niebo’ (‘Heaven/Sky’) (Wrocław, European
Edward II 63 Capital of Culture [ECoC]) 113, 117
Marowitz, Charles, Barker, Clive and Norman, Frank and Bart, Lionel
Muldoon, Roland Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be 3, 57
‘New Theatres, New Ideas’ 17 Norman, Monty 71, 75
Martin, Bill 41 Northcott Theatre 21
Mass (Bernstein, Leonard) 5 NTQ (New Theatre Quarterly) 2–3, 13, 22,
Mastery of Movement, The (Laban, Rudolf) 39 see also TQ
96, 104
Melvin, Murray 1, 23, 24 O’Brien, Ita 184, 185
memory 51–3, 55, 128 Odin Teatret 3, 39
collective trauma 113–16, 119 Offending the Audience (Handke, Peter) 37
legislation 115, 117 Oh! Calcutta! (Tynan, Kenneth) 17
mental health 178–80 Oh What a Lovely War (Chilton, Charles
Method of Physical Actions 103 and members of the Company,
#MeToo movement 185 Wyndham’s Theatre) 1, 4, 14, 18, 57,
Midsummer Night’s Dream, A (Shakespeare, 155, 194f
William) 103 Okundaye, Jason 187, 188
Monstrous Regiment 35 ‘Old Friends’ (Barker, Clive) 22
More, Julian and Mankowitz, Wolf Olympic Games 131
Expresso Bongo 70, 71 legacy 129–35, 137–40
Morecambe and Wise 157–8 oral histories 51–2
Morgan, Fidelis 44 n. 34 Oroonoko (Southerne, Thomas) 5
‘Mosty (‘Bridges’) (Wrocław, European Osborne, John 76–7, 79–80
Capital of Culture [ECoC]) 113, 120, Othello (Shakespeare, William) 159
121–2
movement 95–107, 116, 169 Parker, Charles 31
movement qualities 103–5 Passion of Adolf Hitler, The (Bradford Art
Muldoon, Roland, Barker, Clive and College Theatre Group) 49–1
Marowitz, Charles pedagogy 116
‘New Theatres, New Ideas’ 17 Pemberton, Steve, Shearsmith, Reece,
Mumbo Jumbo (Glendinning, Robin) Dyson, Jeremy and Gatiss, Mark
186–7 League of Gentlemen, The 159

216
 Index

People Show 128 diversity 186–8

People’s Theatre (Brady, David and happiness 176–9
McCormick, John) 43 horseplay and hugs 174–6
performance 55, 56–9, 128 human condition 179–81
carnival 122–3 Jubilee Theatre & Community Arts 171,
live 129 182–3
remains 51–2 Mumbo Jumbo (Glendinning, Robin)
technology 129 186–7
Perspectives 33 Playing the Game 172–3, 179
Pip Simmons Theatre Group 162–3 ‘Playing with Pain’ 182
Pirandello, Luigi privatization 133
Man, Beast and Virtue 70 Prompt magazine 13, 16–17
‘Pirate’s Treasure’ 104 propaganda 152
Pit, The (TOC) 37 ‘Przebudzenie’ (‘Awakening’) (Wrocław,
Pitches, Ceri 2, 87–93 European Capital of Culture
platforms 137 [ECoC]) 113, 120, 122
play 38, 171–2 see also games psychoanalytical theory 114, 115–16
feelings, control of 185 psychotherapy 178
horseplay 174 public space 40, 135–6, 140–2
Martin, Bill 41 punishment 182, 183
movement 98
pleasure 176–7 Rabelais and His World (Bakhtin, Mikhail)
playfulness 122–3 122–3
Playing the Game (Poulter, Chrissie) 172–3, Raffles, Gerry 68
179 ‘Raft of Medusa, The’ 102
‘Playing with Pain’ (Poulter, Chrissie) 182 Ramos, Jorge Lopes 140
pleasure 176–7 RBC (Rose Bruford College of Theatre and
Poland see also Wrocław Performance) 9
history 114–15, 116–17 Evening with Clive Barker, An. See
Instytut Pamięci Narodowej (Institute Evening with Clive Barker, An
for National Remembrance) 115 ‘Theatre Games – A Celebration of the
Poliakoff, Stephen, Stoddart, Hugh, Wilson, Work of Clive Barker’ 9
Snoo, Brenton, Howard, Clark, Red Megaphones 127, 153
Brian, Griffiths, Trevor and Hare, Rees, Roland 163
David regeneration 132–3, 137–40, 141
Lay By 5 rehearsal 56, 57–9, 114, 115–16
politics 71, 112, 113–15, 117, 131–2 intimacy 174
arts, the 133 Teatro de Creación (TdC) 117–18
democracy 121,139 revolutionary theatre 152–4
economy, the 133 Richard III (Shakespeare, William) 159
fascism 153 #RioFoneHack at TBW (ZU-UK) 131, 141–2
privatization 133 Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare, William)
propaganda 152 187
revolutionary theatre 152–4 Roscoe, Frank, Casey, James and Taylor,
socialism 127 Ronnie
theatre 127–8 Clitheroe Kid, The 74
Poulter, Chrissie 2, 166–7, 171–2, 183, 188 Rose Bruford College of Theatre and
Barker, Clive 173–89 Performance (RBC). See RBC
boundaries 184–6 Royal Court 77–80
consensus and consent 181–4 Russia 152, 153

217
Index

Russian Revolution re-enactment (Bradford Storey, David

College of Art) 40 Home 5
Story of the Teeside Cyclists, The (Barker,
Sadista Sisters 34 Clive) 31
Saint’s Day (Whiting, John) 15 street theatre 38
Samuel, Raphael 155 Strike (Barker, Clive) 31
Saunders, James surveillance 136
Games After Liverpool 37 Sutton, Dudley 164
Schneider, Alan 22 Sweetly Sings the Donkey (Delaney, Shelagh)
Schneider, Rebecca 51 81
Scott, Clement 52
scribal approaches 52 Talacre Centre 36
7:84 128, 163 talk-bricks 183
sexual abuse 185 Taste of Honey, A (Delaney, Shelagh) 23, 67,
sexual politics 33–5, 173–4 69, 70, 74, 79
sexuality 63 Taylor, Ronnie , Roscoe, Frank and Casey,
Shakespeare, William 159 James
Midsummer Night’s Dream, A 103 Clitheroe Kid, The 74
Othello 159 TdC (Teatro de Creación) 117–22
Richard III 159 Teatro de Creación (TdC) 117–22
Romeo and Juliet 187 technology 131, 135–7
Shearsmith, Reece, Dyson, Jeremy, Gatiss, COVID-19 pandemic 174, 175–6
Mark and Pemberton, Steve That’s Not It 34
League of Gentlemen, The 159 The General Will 128
Sierz, Aleks 2 The Magdalena Project 34–5
Simon, Barney 166 The Other Company (TOC). See TOC
Smallwood, Peter 63 theatre 133–4 see also alternative theatre
social class 127 collaborative 111–12
socialism 127 community 160–1, 165
Southerne, Thomas funding 164
Oroonoko 5 improvisation 168
Soviet Union 152, 153 mobility 135
space 119 see also public space revolutionary 152–4
‘Spaces to Play’ (Holdsworth, Nadine) 182 roots 158–9
Speak Up and Call it Out – Dignity in the star system 164
Workplace 185 street 38
speech 74–5 underground 18
Stagecoach (Ford, John) 169 theatre archive game 28
Stalin, Joseph 153 ‘Theatre for Social Reform, A’ (Barker,
Stanislavsky, Konstantin Clive) 17
Method of Physical Actions 103 ‘Theatre Games – A Celebration of the
star system 164 Work of Clive Barker’ (RBC event) 9
Start the Week (radio show) 178 Theatre Games: A New Approach to Drama
Stoddart, Hugh, Wilson, Snoo, Brenton, Training (Barker, Clive) 1, 8, 21, 25,
Howard, Clark, Brian, Griffiths, 95
Trevor, Hare, David and Poliakoff, actors 74, 106, 172
Stephen consensus and consent 182
Lay By 5 fear 173–4
Stoppard, Tom interruptions 23
After Magritte 6, 18, 35, 36f as key text 32, 89

218
 Index

Littlewood, Joan 55, 58 University of Birmingham 7, 20, 171–2, 182,

McCaw, Dick 2, 176 184, 204
mental health 180 female student experience 33–4
movement 98, 99–100, 101, 103, Guerrilla Theatre event 39
106 University of Warwick 87–93, 205, 207
posture 101 Clive Barker Award 8
Poulter, Chrissie 176, 179, 180
publisher 56 Valentin, Karl 156–7
safety 173–4 New Chair, The 156
writing 99–100 Vega, Lope de
Theatre of Action 128 Fuente Ovejuna (The Sheep Well) 3, 56
Theatre Quarterly (TQ). See TQ ‘Victim games’ 182
Theatre Royal Stratford East 187–9 Vietnam 154
Theatre Technis 28 villages 132
Theatre Union 128 ‘Violence’ 182
Theatre Workshop 15–16, 18, 31, 70, 128 ‘Vision and Reality: Their Very Own and
establishing 54–6, 153, 154 Golden City and Centre 42’ (Barker,
legacy 162 Clive) 6
Melvin, Murray 23 Visions of Simone Machard, The (Brecht,
memories of 52 Bertolt) 13
movement classes 96, 97–8 Voices from the Village (Dunne-Howrie,
myth of 61 Joseph) 130–1, 137–40
politics 71
Poulter, Chrissie 167 Waking the Feminists campaign 187
rehearsal and performance 56–9 Waterfield, Carran 39
Sutton, Dudley 164 Weill, Kurt and Brecht, Bertolt
Theatre Workshop Story, The (Goorney, Jasager, Der 5
Howard) 4, 56, 62 Mahagonny 5
Thomas, Tom 152, 155 Welfare State 128
Time Out 29 Wesker, Arnold 6, 16–17
TOC (The Other Company) 37 Chicken Soup with Barley 70
Pit, The 37 I’m Talking about Jerusalem 70
TQ (Theatre Quarterly) 18–19, 20–1, 28, ‘What Training – for What Theatre’ (Barker,
41–2 see also NTQ Clive) 9
alternative theatre 28–9, 42 Whelen, Christopher and Lehman, Leo
‘Guide to Underground Theatre’ 18 Ferdinand the Matador 71
trauma 113–16, 119 ‘When the Kissing Stopped . . . and What
tribal scribes 52, 54–5, 62–3 Happened Next’ (Barker, Clive)
Trussler, Simon 1, 13, 18, 21, 22 177
Twang!! (Bart, Lionel) 6, 14 Whitehouse, Paul and Higson, Charlie
2012 Olympic Games 131 Fast Show, The 159
legacy 129–35, 137–40 Whiting, John
Tynan, Kenneth 79 Saint’s Day 15
Tyson, Annie 33 Wiles, John
Never Had It So Good 70
underground theatre 18 see also alternative Wilson, Snoo, Brenton, Howard, Clark,
theatre Brian, Griffiths, Trevor, Hare, David,
Unfinished Histories project 27–8, 34, Poliakoff, Stephen and Stoddart,
43 n. 4 Hugh
Unity Theatre 127, 153 Lay By 5

219
Index

women 33–5, 44 n. 20 see also feminism ‘Niebo’ (‘Heaven/Sky’) 113, 117

Women’s Theatre Group 35 ‘Przebudzenie’ (‘Awakening’) 113, 120,
Wood, Victoria 33, 184 122
Workers’ Theatre Movement 127, 152–3, Wymark, Jane 33
155
Wrocław 113, 119, 121–2 Yavin, Naftali 37
collective trauma 114, 119 You Can’t Take It With You (Kaufman,
European Capital of Culture [ECoC] George S. and Hart, Moss) 5
113
‘Flow’ parts I and II 113, 120 Zinder, David 101–2
Flow Quartet, The 113, 114–15, 117, ZU-UK 131, 140–1
118–22, 123 Binaural Dinner Date 131, 142
history 114–15, 117, 119 Hotel Medea 140–1
‘Mosty (‘Bridges’) 113, 120, 121–2 #RioFoneHack at TBW 131, 141–2

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