Abstract
The mass media today — radio, cinema and especially television — attracts enormous audiences, many times larger than the followers of experimental theatre. The average viewer in Britain, for example, is supposed to watch something in the region of 22 hours television each week; many children spend more hours in front of the television than they do in school. Virtually everyone has access to one set and many households now have two. Even radio, which is not thought of as a particularly ‘mass’ form of listening, can notch up audiences of 800 000 for its plays — a total which would require many live theatre performances even to approach. Clearly there are implications here for alternative theatre in Britain. Albert Hunt like many others has found that whereas the theatre is remote from the lives of young people, television is ‘taken for granted’.1
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References
Albert Hunt The Language of Television (London: Eyre Methuen, 1981) p. 94.
See his pamphlet, Art and Culture in Relation to Socialism (London: ILP Publications, 1926).
Val Gielgud, British Radio Drama 1922–1956 (London: Harrap. 1957) p. 36.
Angus Calder, The People’s War (London: Panther, 1971) p. 416;
Francis Worsley, ‘Anatomy of ITMA’, in Pilot Papers, vol. 1, no. 1 (January 1946) p. 42.
Charles Parker, ‘The Dramatic Actuality of Working-class Speech’ in Wilfried van der Will (ed.), Workers and Writers (Birmingham: conference papers, 1975) p. 100.
Jackie Highe, ‘The Archers’, in Living, 10 July 1985, p. 37.
‘The Largest Theatre in the World’, in the Economist, 4 August 1984.
Ian Rodger, Radio Drama (London: Macmillan, 1982) p. 156.
Malcolm Lynch, ‘Pageants for the People’ in the New Statesman (26 August 1983) p. 9.
John McGrath, ‘TV Drama: The Case Against Naturalism’ in Sight and Sound, vol. 46, no. 2 (Spring 1977) p. 103.
See Terry Lovell’s remarks in her essay ‘Ideology and Coronation Street,’ in Richard Dyer (ed.), Coronation Street (London: British Film Institute, 1981).
Dorothy Hobson, Crossroads (London: Methuen, 1982) p. 142.
Gillian Skirrow ‘Widows’ in Manuel Alvarado and John Stewart, Made for Television (London: British Film Institute, 1985) p. 184.
Quoted in Alvarado and Stewart, op. cit., p. 82.
Edgar, ‘Political Theatre’, op. cit., p. 35.
Theodore Shank, American Alternative Theatre (London: Macmillan, 1982) p. 73.
See Manuel Alvarado and Edward Buscombe, Hazell (London: British Film Institute, 1978).
Theodore Shank, ‘Contemporary Political Theatres and their Audiences’, in Das Theater und sein Publikum (Vienna, 1977) p. 296, n. 15.
Philip Purser on Dennis Potter in George Brandt (ed.), British Television Drama (Cambridge University Press, 1981) p. 168.
Interview with Griffiths in Theatre Quarterly, vol. VI, no. 22 (Summer 1976) p. 36; and the Leveller, no. 1 (November 1976) p. 12.
Interview in The Leveller, op. cit., p. 12.
Mike Poole and John Wyver, Powerplays (London: British Film Institute, 1984) p. 5.
John Wyver, ‘Real Life Stories’ in Time Out (23–9 March 1979) p. 18.
Interview with John McGrath in Theatre Quarterly, vol. v, no. 19 (September–November 1975) p. 43.
Dorothy Hobson, op. cit., p. 123.
Graham Murdock, ‘Radical Drama, Radical Theatre’, in Media, Culture and Society, vol. 2, no. 2 (April 1980) p. 160.
Edward Braun on Trevor Griffiths in George Brandt (ed.), op. cit., p. 71.
Poole and Wyver op. cit., p. 179; Stuart Cosgrove, ‘Refusing Consent: the Oi for England Project’, in Screen, vol. 24, no. 1 (January–February 1983) p. 95.
See Albert Hunt, op. cit.
Interview with Trevor Griffiths in Marxism Today (May 1985) p. 40.
Alan Plater, ‘The Wages of Commitment’, in Bob Baker and Neil Harvey, Publishing for People (London: Labour Library, 1985) p. 10.
Quoted in Philip Purser ‘Is the writing on the wall for the TV play?’, in Sunday Telegraph, 24 March 1985.
Richard Last, ‘Drama bosses opt for Soap’, in Daily Telegraph, 2 December 1985.
Stuart Hood, ‘Dilemma of the Communicators’, in C. W. E. Bigsby (ed.), Approaches to Popular Culture (London: Edward Arnold, 1976) p. 212.
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© 1987 Andrew Davies
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Davies, A. (1987). Alternatives within Radio and Television Drama. In: Other Theatres. Communications and Culture. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18723-2_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18723-2_12
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