Committing Theatre

Theatre Radicalism and Political Intervention in Canada

Alan Filewod

Committing Theatre offers the first full-length historical study of political intervention theatre and theatrical spectatorship in English Canada. Building on twenty years of research and engagement in the field, this book’s historical narrative frames close-up examples of how theatre artists have intervened in and engaged with political struggle from the mid-19th century to the present. Lumber-camp mock trials, Mayday parades and street protests, the Workers Theatre Movement, agitprop theatre, the counter-culture theatre of the 1960s and 1970s, and more recent anarchist theatre collectives all played a role in a vibrant and unique radical theatre culture that went largely unnoticed, unrecorded, and undocumented by the professional theatre establishment.

Contents

• Introduction: Purposeful Theatre and Theatrical Refusals
• Chapter 2: Class and Spectatorship in the Unruly Nineteenth Century
• Chapter 3: Theatrical Mobilizations and the Invention of Agitprop
• Chapter 4: ”Six Comrades and a Suitcase:” Agitprop to Eight Men Speak
• Chapter 5: Crafting Theatre Work: Theatrical Radicalism into the Fifties
• Chapter 6: Agitprop Counter-Cultures, with Puppets
• Chapter 7: A Microhistory of Cultural Sabotage: The Mummers Troupe
• Chapter 8: Powering Structures and Popular Theatre
• Chapter 9: Out There: Digital Spaces, Chaos Aesthetics and Heritage Guerillas
• Coda
• Out There/ In Here
• Notes
• Bibliography

About the Author

Alan Filewod is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph and a recognized authority on Canada’s theatre history. He has been involved in political theatre for over thirty years.