The Fringe: The Rise and Fall of Radical Alternative Theatre
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Embargoed until: 5555-01-01
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Editors
Harvie, J
Rebellato, D
Pagination
123 - 143 (21)
Publisher
Publisher URL
ISBN-13
9781108432382
DOI
10.1017/9781108377850
Location
Journal
The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre Since 1945
Cambridge Companions
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The various names given to the new theatre movement that emerged in the 1960s to challenge both the West End and the new subsidised theatre sector include ‘fringe’, ‘alternative’, and ‘underground’; each offers different aesthetic, social, political, and other definitions of what this theatre movement means. This chapter traces the modern precursors of the movement and the cultural forces that fed into its concerns, forms, and methods, before examining three companies as case studies: Portable Theatre, the Pip Simmons Group, and Monstrous Regiment. Through close analysis of each company’s history, the chapter explore somes key features of the fringe that would contribute to its strength but also its vulnerability: its relationship to the mainstream, its collective ethic, and its experience of arts subsidy. Focusing on the period from the mid-sixties to the mid-eighties (perhaps the first wave of the fringe), teh chapter asks how far the movement succeeded, whether its radicalism was absorbed by the mainstream or quashed, what contributed to its arguable decline, and what is left today of its legacy of political engagement, artistic experimentation, and much more.
Authors
Harvie, J; Rebellato, DCollections
- Department of Drama [98]