Joan Littlewood, 'mother of modern British theatre'

Witness History

BBC

Society & Culture, Personal Journals, History

4.5 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 20 October 2020

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The working class woman who shook up the British theatre establishment in the 1950s and 60s. Joan Littlewood introduced improvisation and helped break down class barriers. She set up a theatre in a working class area in the east end of London which put on plays written by amateur writers and actors, many without classical training. She delighted in the fact that the laziest person in the company might be working class and the poshest the one scrubbing the stage. She went on to create successes such as 'Oh! What a Lovely War' and 'A Taste of Honey'. Claire Bowes has been talking to her friend and biographer, Peter Rankin.

Photo: Joan Littlewood outside the Theatre Royal Stratford in 1974 (Press Association)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless
0:06.8	searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the
0:11.8	telly we share what we've been watching
0:14.0	Cladie Aide.
0:16.0	Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.
0:19.0	Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.
0:21.0	And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less
0:24.9	searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds.
0:30.9	Hello and thanks for downloading Witness History with me Claire Bowes on the BBC World Service.
0:40.0	Today we're remembering a woman known as the mother of modern theatre in Britain.
0:44.6	Joan Littlewood was a working-class woman who transformed what audiences saw on stage,
0:50.0	from the sets to the plays to the acting itself.
0:53.3	I've been speaking to a close friend of hers and listening to interviews from the BBC's
0:57.4	archive.
0:58.4	You can make anybody act if you really have to.
1:01.1	I mean I have beaten some old bird into talking like a human being like you
1:06.2	teach a Budger-Gar once in despair. You can do that. But it takes time and you have to
1:12.3	really give them hell.
1:13.6	Joan Littlewood, she was, in the words of one of her actors, a slave driver.
1:19.0	Peter Rankin worked with her as an actor for many years and later wrote a biography of her.
1:24.0	One day I was standing there with a cup of coffee which was actually I'd brought for her
1:28.6	because somebody had asked me to get it for her and she said what do you think you're
	...

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