The Society for Theatre Research is delighted once again to have partnered with Methuen Drama on another distinguished contribution to theatrical scholarship in the form of the paperback edition of Don Watson’s Theatre with a Purpose. This is about to be distributed  to all members with an active subscription for 2024-2025. Is your membership up-to-date? Log in and check! If you need to renew, click on the appropriate subscription here:
Membership – join or renew – Society for Theatre Research

Methuen describes the book thus:

This study of British amateur theatre in the inter-war period examines five different but interwoven examples of the belief, common in theatrical and educational circles at the time, that amateur drama had a purpose beyond recreation. Amateur theatre was at the height of its popularity as a cultural practice between the wars, so that by 1939 more British people had practical experience of putting on plays than at any time before or since.

Providing an original account of the use of drama in adult education projects in deprived areas, and of amateur theatre in government-funded centres for the unemployed in the 1930s, the book discusses repertoires, participation by working-class people and pioneering techniques of play-making. Amateur drama festivals and competitions were intended to raise standards and educate audiences. This book assesses their effect on play-making, and the use of innovative one-act plays to express contentious material, as well as looking at the Left Book Club Theatre Guild as an attempt to align the amateur theatre movement with anti-fascist and anti-war movements. A chapter on the Second World War rectifies the neglect of amateur theatre in war-time cultural studies, arguing that it was present and important in every aspect of war-time life.

Don Watson builds on current scholarship and makes use of archival sources, local newspapers, unpublished scripts and the records of organizations not usually associated with the theatre. His work explores the range and diversity of amateur drama between the wars.

In due course this book will also be available to anyone to buy via the website – the Annual Publication Page will be updated when this is so. Members will be able to purchase extra copies at a third off the published price – as they can already do for every extant STR publication. Note that there are two new issues of Theatre Notebook coming out right now as well – the last issue of Volume 78 and the first of Volume 79 – watch out for them in the post!

Not yet a member? Need to renew? Click here!