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Theatre in Towns offers a contemporary perspective on the role of theatre in the cultural life of towns in England. Exploring volunteer-led, professional and community theatres, this book investigates the rich and diverse ways that theatres in towns serve their locality, negotiate their civic role, participate in networks of mutual aid and exchange, and connect audiences beyond their geographical borders. With a geographical focus on post-industrial, seaside, commuter and market towns in England, the book opens questions about how theatre shapes the narratives of town life, and how localism, networks and partnerships across and between towns contribute to living sustainably. Each chapter is critically and historically informed, drawing on original research in towns, including visits to performances and many conversations with townspeople, from theatre-makers, performers, set-builders, front-of-house volunteers, to audience members and civic leaders. Theatre in Towns asks urgent questions about how the relationships between towns and theatres can be redefined in new and equitable ways in the future.Theatre in Towns brings new research to scholars and students of theatre studies, cultural geography, cultural and social policy and political sociology. It will also interest artists, policy-makers and researchers wanting to develop their own and others'understanding of the value of active theatre cultures in towns.The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Focusing on contemporary English theatre, this book asks a series of questions: How has theatre contributed to understandings of the North-South divide? What have theatrical treatments of riots offered to wider debates about their causes and consequences? Has theatre been able to intervene in the social unease around Gypsy and Traveller communities? How has theatre challenged white privilege and the persistent denigration of black citizens? In approaching these questions, this book argues that the nation is blighted by a number of internal rifts that pit people against each other in ways that cast particular groups as threats to the nation, as unruly or demeaned citizens – as ‘social abjects'. It interrogates how those divisions are generated and circulated in public discourse and how theatre offers up counter-hegemonic and resistant practices that question and challenge negative stigmatization, but also how theatre can contribute to the recirculation of problematic cultural imaginaries.

A truthful, personal and insightful exploration of the state of arts funding and carrying on in the face of adversity, by the renowned founder of Out of Joint. One March morning, out of the blue, Max Stafford-Clark learned that the Arts Council had drastically cut their grant to his theatre company, Out of Joint, leaving it in danger of imminent collapse. Journal of the Plague Year is his account of what happened next, as he sets out to contest the cut, make the case for public funding of the arts, and continue producing the work for which he and his company are renowned. Max's journal often takes on an autobiographical flavour, including the unexpectedly moving story of his two fathers, his surreal encounter with the New York theatre world, and the shocking details of what it is to suffer a massively debilitating stroke. By turns funny, alarming and deeply personal, Journal of the Plague Year offers a fascinating exposé of the often Kafkaesque workings of arts subsidy in England, and the financial and artistic manoeuvrings which are a fact of life for every arts organisation today. It is essential reading for anyone with an interest in the state of our arts, from students to theatregoers, and from struggling arts workers right up to the Secretary of State for Culture.'Fascinating... reads like an unpublished work by Franz Kafka... both horrifying and startling'British Theatre Guide

This book examines contemporary female portrayals of male Shakespearean roles and shows how these performances invite audiences to think differently about Shakespeare, the English nation, and themselves.

How the suspect sexuality of actors and actresses shaped early modern debates about gender and sexual identityFrom the Restoration through the eighteenth century, the sexuality of actors and actresses was written about in ways that stirred the public imagination. Actors were frequently suspected of heterosexual promiscuity or labeled effeminate or even as “sodomites,” and actresses were often viewed as prostitutes or sexually ambivalent victims of their profession. Kristina Straub argues that this depiction of players greatly shaped public debates about what made women feminine and men masculine. Considering a wide range of literature by or about players—pamphlets, newspaper reports, theatrical histories, and biographies as well as the public correspondence between Alexander Pope and the famed actor Colley Cibber—she examines the formation of gender roles and sexual identities during a period crucial to modern thinking on these issues.Drawing from feminist-materialist and gay and lesbian theories and historiographies, Sexual Suspects analyzes the complex development of spectacle and spectatorship as gendered concepts. She reveals how national, racial, and class differences contributed to the subjection of players as professional spectacles and how images of race, class, and gender combined to create divisions between “normal” and “deviant” sexuality.