Colin Chambers

Fringe theatre before the fringe

ABSTRACT There is much debate about, as well as new research into, what constitutes the fringe and when it began. In the British context, the fringe as a term originated at the first Edinburgh International Festival in 1947, in relation to those protesting at the lack of Scottish representation in the official programme. The label reached a wider audience in the 1960s through the revue Beyond the Fringe, and was subsequently applied to the flowering of counter-cultural theatrical activity later that decade and in the 1970s when the term became established in its current usage. The talk reproduced here, which launched the Society of Theatre Research 2009/2010 lecture series, explores the London antecedents of the contemporary fringe, beginning at the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century.

History in the Driving Seat: Unity Theatre and the Embrace of the ‘Real’

London’s Communist-oriented Unity Theatre was founded in 1936. During its 40-year existence, as well as presenting countless mobile shows, this amateur group mounted in its own theatre more than 250 productions, over half of which were new plays (many specially written for Unity) and a third of which contained original music.’ Holding this variety together was a political and aesthetic embrace of the ‘real’, driven by history and by Unity’s ideological relationship to history.2 Despite modification in changing circumstances, Unity’s notion of the ‘real’ remained remarkably consistent, and this integrity was a prime cause of both the theatre’s longevity and its demise.

‘Home, Sweet Home’: Stratford-upon-Avon and the Making of the Royal Shakespeare Company as a National Institution

Based in the town of Shakespeare’s birth, itself in the heart of England, the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) cannot avoid being cast in the role of the nation’s Pythian serpent, guardian of the Bard’s flame and anointed declarer of prophetic utterance. The RSC has welcomed and exploited this destiny but knows there is also a damaging price to pay. The Company nurses a peculiar double burden of privilege and responsibility that reflects the contradictory position it finds itself in: it is nationally subsidized, with a local, national and international audience, presenting in Britain and abroad the works of the supreme icon of national as well as international writing in ways that aim both to honour authoritatively the truths of texts that are four centuries old, and at the same time to ind meanings in them that resonate for its diverse audiences today. Like the playwright whose name the company bears, the RSC has to be both particular and general in appeal; it has to be ‘authentic’ and represent continuity, yet continually be new and embody change, if it is not to die.

‘A Flute of Praise’: Indian Theatre in Britain in the Early Twentieth Century

Indian theatre in Britain in the early 20th century, notably the work of Kedar Nath Das Gupta and the Indian Art and Dramatic Society, and the Indian Players (Himansunath Rai and Niranjan Pal).