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Summary Historical Overview of Popular Theatre
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- Drama (D3)
- Institution
- Rhodes University (RU)
The documents gives the meaning of the Popular Theatre and its history
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1Popular Theatre – Historical Overview
Popular Theatre describes theatre which speaks to
ordinary people in their own language or idiom, and
deals with issues that are relevant to them. It also
concentrates on awakening the capacity of those
involved to participate, to make their own decisions
and to organize themselves for common action.
https://www.participatorymethods.org/glossary/popular-
theatre
Often known as ‘People’s Theatre’, these terms have been used interchangeably
and there has been some confusion over to what manner of theatrical presentation
each refers. This varies according to class viewpoint and ideological affiliations. The
debate goes back to fifth-century Athens when – one view has it – theatre could only
be popular, i.e. of the people, since no other theatre existed; by contrast, the
hierarchical society of Rome and the city- and nation-states which succeeded it
created quite clear distinctions between elite forms of theatre and popular
amusements.
It was not until the run-up to the French Revolution of 1789 that consideration was
given to theatrical expression of ‘the people’ as socially unifying, and thence in the
1850s to a concept of theatre to be taken to the people, transcending class conflicts
and working for social stability but, in fact, thereby promoting the interests of the
middle class. In the second half of the nineteenth century, with the bourgeoisie firmly
seated as the rising, if not dominant, class, people’s theatre as a possibility was
shelved. The Paris Commune of 1871 issued a set of decrees for the theatre but was
not in power long enough to put them into practice; yet this rising, and the presence
of other political unrest towards the turn of the century, restored the matter of a
people’s theatre to the agenda. After various attempts to create theatres in the
suburbs of Paris, Romain Rolland set out to establish the case for a people’s theatre
and became the spokesman for a considerable movement in the 1890s and the early
years of the twentieth century to establish theatres in working-class districts, funded
by the French government.
In cases where the interests of the middle class could be identified with a movement
for national liberation, as they could in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria, the
term ‘national theatre’ had a specific symbolic function. Elsewhere it became the
institutional instrument through which the values of the bourgeoisie were
disseminated and its traumas depicted and dissected. Such theatres included the
original independent theatre, Antoine’s Théâtre Libre, and Brahm’s Deutsches
Theater. On these stages, the plays of the reformers Ibsen and Hauptmann, and the
, 2
traumatists Chekhov and Strindberg, were performed. These theatres, more than
Rolland and his cries for an independent people’s theatre, were to be the influential
instruments of bourgeois proselytization.
What seemed to be wanted was the Freie Volksbühne movement, founded in Berlin
in 1890, which was a very sophisticated instrument for taking theatre to the people.
Backed by a mass membership, the Freie Volksbühne could afford to rent
performances or even commission performances (from the middle-class theatres) at
times when workers could attend. Almost as soon as it started, the contradictions in
its operation were exposed by some members of the organizing body, who preferred
to see plays promoted which directly reflected the values and interests of the working
class. The questions raised were: ‘Should we have theatre for the people or theatre
by the people?’ and/ or: ‘Should the purpose be education in theatre or
education through theatre?’ The schism provoked a breakaway movement, the Neue
Freie Volksbühne, which followed a more political policy, less successfully than its
progenitor.
In France, the movement for a people’s theatre petered out. Firmin Gémier created
the significantly named Théâtre National Ambulant, which made two tours in the
years before the 1914–18 war with a largely populist repertoire but with the important
intention of eventually touring the nucleus of productions and involving local people
wherever they went. The project was cumbersome and expensive and went no
further. Gémier was given a white elephant of a theatre in Paris as the Théâtre
National Populaire. The Trocadero was sited in a middle-class district and he was
given no budget with which to mount productions.
The two events which provoked the next important developments were the First
World War and the Russian Revolution. In Germany, Erwin Piscator was at the
centre of many initiatives made possible by the existence of a mass membership
Communist Party. Piscator redefined the orientation of people’s theatre as
proletarian theatre. A popular theatre was to ally itself to the most advanced
section of the working class, that is the Communist Party. Piscator’s theatre
aimed at political education. According to Brecht, Piscator ‘saw the theatre as
a parliament, the audience as a legislative body. To this parliament were
submitted in plastic form all the great questions that needed an answer… It was the
stage’s ambition to supply images, statistics, slogans which would enable its
parliament, the audience, to reach political decisions.’ Piscator’s vision of theatre
involved direct intervention in the lives of the audience. His form was that of epic
theatre. The dramatic form would no longer suffice to articulate the questions of the
day. The theatre would return to its didactic purpose, reinforced by all the possible
resources of the modern theatre. Actuality, in the form of documentary film, was
incorporated into the stage action. Scripts were constructed by a collective as
Piscator considered it was no longer possible for one writer to understand the full
economic and political complexity of the world. For the Communist Party he mounted
two large-scale revues – utilizing popular theatre forms and using montage to
replace the bourgeois drama. The achievements of Piscator were many. The
limitations were that he was drawn into a fascination with expensive stage
machinery, which could be supported only by solid backing from the wealthier
patrons, and the preference of the Communist Party for a less dialectical form
which could transmit party propaganda more directly and simply. Much of
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