Arguably all theatre is political, as playwrights compose from a particular point of view and the theatre they create depicts a time, place and society affected by given circumstances. Western theatre that is notably political began with the satires of Aristophanes in Ancient Greece. The modern movement was forged in Germany from the 1920s by…
Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) was a French dramatist, poet, actor and theoretician who rejected Western theatre’s reliance on the spoken word, instead advocating an experimental theatre influenced by the East where ritualistic movement, stylised gestures and signals became paramount. Artaud’s physical theatre of cruelty was performed in non-traditional spaces with a weakened audience positioned at its…
Epic theatre began in Germany in the early 20th century with Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht. Working independently and together on a number of projects during the 1920s, mostly in Berlin, both practitioners developed their own brand of this radical new theatre form. Largely anti-realistic in style, epic theatre aimed to politically educate the German…
A living newspaper is a theatrical form in which social issues and current events are dramatised in order to prompt action. Living newspapers typically have elements of social activism, documentary theatre, left-wing political theatre, verbatim theatre and agitated propaganda (agitprop). Living newspapers were first used in the Russian Cvil War, where pro-Soviet daily newspapers were…