ARCHIVE
The Littlewood Project
ARCHIVE The Littlewood Project
For fourteen years, I worked on a passion project, at the start it was a sort of side-hustle come dedicated hobby, but it grew into an obsession and ended in a series of films and an archive. The project explored the legacy of the radical foremother of people’s theatre, Joan Littlewood as told by some previously ‘off-the-record’ voices from her company of actors, Theatre Workshop. They spoke about her systems of rehearsal and her fight to break down doors in theatre for working-class actors and audiences alike.
The resulting documentary films were shared at community screenings, mini film festivals and Fun Palace events, most notably at the Working Class Movement Library in Salford, the town where Joan Littlewood and Jimmy Miller (later Ewan MacColl) first hatched their plans to create a radical popular people’s theatre.
The films are now freely available for anyone who wants to watch them on my YouTube channel.
The resulting feature-length documentaries (and accompanying short-films) are dedicated to sharing anecdotes from Joan’s company and stories about the practices, philosophy and politics of Theatre Workshop - as told by people who were part of that company.
In the Company of Joan
A film about the working life of Joan Littlewood and how she broke down doors in the arts for working class actors and audiences alike. We hear from those who worked alongside Joan as well as some who were inspired by her systems of rehearsal and dedicated work in developing that university of the streets, her Fun Palace concept.
No Time for Memoirs
The story of Maggie Bury Walker who spent fourteen years working in the company of Joan Littlewood, before setting up East 15 Acting School. It explores the practices and philosophy of the school under Maggie’s four decades of directorship through the eyes of many who taught and trained there.
Littlewood Archive
In addition, there’s a film archive of some who worked with Theatre Workshop, many who attended East 15 Acting School and the voices of a few who weren’t part of that system but who have been inspired in their working practice by Joan Littlewood.
“We have to trust our colleagues as one trapeze artist does another, this trust can only ever be evolved by the technique of collaboration, and in an atmosphere of difficulties shared and surmounted together. Such a theatre is a highly satisfying form of human organisation and in itself attractive to a world which longs for positive values”