Theatre Workshop grew from the pre-War collaboration of Joan Littlewood and the socialist singer/writer Ewan MacColl. Convinced that 'theatre must face up to the problems of the time', they worked with groups incorporating radical experimentation in form and content. Theatre Workshop itself was founded when some of these pre-War collaborators regrouped in Manchester in 1945, under a Manifesto that declared: 'We want a theatre with a living language ...which will comment as fearlessly on Society as did Ben Jonson and Aristophanes.'
Theatre Workshop's early years were marked by continual touring. Their touring production of MacColl's Uranium 235 in 1946 was a dazzlingly inventive meditation on the Atomic Age. The show included a Ballet of Atomic Fission and an explanation of quantum theory by knockabout comics with ze phoney German accents, and concluded with a direct, unflinching interrogation of the audience: 'Which way are you going?'
However, in a 1947 letter to Michel St-Denis at the Old Vic, Littlewood expressed her frustration at the lack of a permanent base - 'this wandering with a company is often fruitless' - and hoped to establish a permanent training centre in Scotland, which she saw as more welcoming of artists than the English theatre. Despite this aspiration, itinerant touring productions would mark the next five years of Theatre Workshop, which had to wait until 1953 to find a permanent home, back in London at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, in East London.
During the Stratford years, Theatre Workshop became famous for its re-interpretation of classics such as Jonson's Volpone, as well as new works such as Brendan Behan's The Quare Fellow, Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey, and the company-devised Oh, What A Lovely War!. However, material worries were always to plague the group; in 1956 Sean O'Casey regretted they were 'a Cinderella without a fairy godot-mother'.
After a experiencing a performance of Uranium 235 in Rhymney Church Hall in 1950, recently qualified school teacher Harry Greene decided to abandon his career to work with Theatre Workshop. Greene describes his experiences with the Workshop in a wide-ranging interview, which you can read in transcript here.
During his time with the company, Harry made a number of beautifully observed sketches, five of which are reproduced in the Harry Greene picture page. They include set designs for Theatre Workshop's 1955 production of Richard II, which was also staged at the same time by the Old Vic company. In reviewing both versions, Harold Hobson thought the Stratford production 'the more interesting, controversial and subtle'. Sean O'Casey thought Theatre Workshop one of the few bright spots in English theatre, and in 1956 proposed that it 'should get what is given to the Old Vic, for it is as adventurous as the other is timid, tired and lazy'.
Interview transcript 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Theatre Workshop drawings by Harry Greene