Remembering Joan Littlewood

‘The Mother of Modern Theatre’, a statue commemorating Joan Littlewood by Phillip Jackson (photograph by Robert Day).

To mark twenty years since her death in September 2002, I wrote a piece for The Theatre Times about Joan Littlewood, her formation and significance as a working-class artist, and the question of how we should remember her today. You can read the piece here. Most of the content is drawn from my book Theatre Studios: A Political History of Ensemble Theatre-Making (more info and links on the ‘Writing’ page), though I don’t mention there the notable references to Marx in Littlewood’s statements about theatre.

Joan Littlewood photographed in 1974 sitting on a pile of rubble outside the Theatre Royal Stratford East