Scenes from the Revolution

Kim Wiltshire is a playwright and academic who specialises in issue based theatre, especially issues around young people, gender and sexuality, through her company Laid Bare Theatre, with plays such as Project XXX and The Value of Nothing. She is Programme Leader for the Creative Writing course at Edge Hill University. She edited the book Scenes from the Revolution (Pluto, 2018). Billy Cowan is an award-winning playwright and artistic director of Truant Company. His first play Smilin' Through, produced by Birmingham Rep was nominated for Best New Play 2005 by Manchester Evening News and his play Caretakers won the Stage Edinburgh Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2016. He is senior lecturer for creative writing at Edge Hill University. He edited the book Scenes from the Revolution (Pluto, 2018).

Introduction: A Very Brief History of Political Theatre in the


Twentieth Century up to 1968 - Kim Wiltshire and Billy Cowan


Prologue by Lyn Gardner


Scene 1: Agitprop and Political Theatre


Introduction - Kim Wiltshire


Interview with Rod Dixon (Red Ladder) and Kathleen McCreery (Red Ladder and Broadside Mobile Workers' Theatre) - Kim Wiltshire


Apartheid: The British Connection (Extract), Broadside Mobile Workers' Theatre - Kathleen McCreery


Contemporary Protest Theatre in South Africa - David Peimer


The Lost Art of Agitprop and the Return of Socialist Praxis - Rebecca Hillman


Scene 2: Working-Class Theatre


Introduction - Kim Wiltshire


Blood Red Roses at the Liverpool Everyman - Bob Eaton


Ways of Seeing: Class, Gender and the Universal, from Blood Red Roses to The Sum - Lizzie Nunnery


Plugging into History: Time Travel with John McGrath and 7: 84 - Lindsay Rodden


Scene 3: Theatre in Education


Introduction - Anthony Jackson


Farewell to Erin (Extract), Belgrade TIE Company


Interview with Tony Hughes (M6 Theatre Company) and Justine Themen (Belgrade TIE Company) - Billy Cowan


Everyone's Got a Story to Tell ... and Their Own Way of Telling It - Julia Samuels (20 Stories High)


Scene 4: Women's Theatre


Introduction - Kim Wiltshire


Interview with Sue Parrish (Sphinx) and Mica Nava (Women's Theatre Group) - Kim Wiltshire


Work To Role (Extract), Women's Theatre Group


The Work of Open Clasp and Why Women-centred Theatre is Still Relevant Today - Catrina McHugh (MBE) and Jill Heslop


Forty Years of Women-centred Theatre-Making - Anna Hermann with Kim Wiltshire


A Conversation on Sexual Assault in Theatre - Mighty Heart and Kim Wiltshire


Scene 5: Queer Theatre


Introduction - Billy Cowan


Men (Extract), Don Milligan and Nol Greig


Interview with Julie Parker (Drill Hall, 1981-2011) - Billy Cowan


Interview with Ruth McCarthy (Outburst Queer Arts Festival, Belfast) - Billy Cowan


We Who are Here Together: (Re-)making Queer Theatre - Chris Goode


Scene 6: Theatre and Race


Introduction - May Sumbwanyambe


A Tainted Dawn (Extract) - Sudha Bhuchar and Kristine Landon-Smith


The Personal is Always Political - Sudha Bhuchar


Pokfulam Road Productions: A Political Theatre Company? - Jingan Young


Epilogue: Where Next for Political Theatre? - Billy Cowan and Kim Wiltshire


Further Reading


Notes on Contributors


Index