Political Theatre and the Threat of Class

Abstract

The eroding of discourses of class and class politics, and the demotion of political, class-conscious culture since at least the 1980s, has meant renewed interest in working-class culture, or in the politics of performance, rarely extends to the analysis of theatre and other cultural initiatives that are both political and working class. This has severed a connection between working-class theatre and political theatre, once understood to be intrinsic. Drawing attention to implications of this severance, the chapter argues that political working-class culture has a vital role to play in ongoing class struggle. With reference to critical debates in sociology, theatre history, and cultural policy, the chapter demonstrates that working-class culture remains a key site through which both class, and culture, can be reclaimed as potent sites of political activism. As such, the chapter recentres political working-class culture, paying attention to patterns of its marginalization but also how they can be broken. The analysis of class as an active, politically productive position is contextualized by historic and persisting class prejudices reinforcing class divisions in the British cultural industries. While the treatment of working-class culture as either substandard or a threat to vested interests is demoralizing, contemporary examples of practice provide hope.