8 - Social commitment and aesthetic experiment, 1895–1946

Summary

There have been theatres in which social commitment and aesthetic experiment work in tight tandem. The most familiar and sharpest example is probably that of Brecht. But whilst this chapter touches on practices that align quite well with the Brechtian model, it has a more complex and fragmentary story to tell. There are a number of reasons for this. In general terms, in this period of British theatre there were also instances of aesthetic experiment for its own sake, of progressive belief wedded to ‘conservative’ forms, and of conservative ideology wedded to ‘progressive’ forms. The analysis of theatre practices that follows mirrors that range of possibility. And whilst most of them, in different ways, were part of the great ‘modernist’ project of the first half of the twentieth century, each had a particular and often complex relationship to its own historical moment. Their experiments negotiated quite specific rhetorical engagements with audiences, typically by exploiting theatre’s quintessential capacity as a reflexive and ironic apparatus.

More specifically, this chapter deals with theatrical phenomena that are marginal in a double sense. First,whilst the impact of modernity in this period – at once exhilarating and alienating – was potent in Britain, the burgeoning of European modern theatre movements was only faintly reflected there. This was despite fairly frequent visits, mostly to London, by such in fluential foreign companies as Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes (1910–14), the Moscow Art Theatre (1928), the ensemble Compagnie des Quinze (1931) and Kurt Jooss’s dance theatre (1933).