Fw: [scottish_theatre] John McGrath

[Denis Salter]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Joyce McMillan" <101723.2705 at compuserve.com>
To: <scottish_theatre at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2002 8:43 AM
Subject: [scottish_theatre] John McGrath


> Here's what I wrote for the Obit. page of the Scotsman, for information,
> and as the best tribute I could manage to John on the day.  J McM.
>
> ___________________________________________
>
> JOYCE MCMILLAN on JOHN MCGRATH for The Scotsman 24.1.02
> ___________________________________________
>
> THE DEATH OF JOHN MCGRATH, at the age of 66, leaves the British theatre
and
> film
> world bereft of one of its most brilliant, radical, and charismatic
> figures; the
> founder of the 7:84 Theatre Companies in both England and Scotland, and a
> writer, director and producer whose passionate political commitment -
above
> all
> to the creation of drama and entertainment which spoke to and about
> ordinary
> working people and their lives - helped transform the terms of debate
about
> the
> role of theatre and the arts in Britain.
>
> Born in Birkenhead in 1935, into a lower-middle class family with strong
> Irish
> and Welsh connections, McGrath was a proud member of that great postwar
> generation of meritocrats who climbed the ladder of grammar school
> education,
> National Service and Oxbridge to the very gates of the British
> establishment;
> and who have been struggling since the 1960's with their anger at the
> failure of
> successive governments to produce the radical shift in the distribution of
> wealth and power in Britain of which they felt they were the vanguard.  At
> Oxford in the late 1950's, after National Service, McGrath became part of
a
> powerful student theatre scene that involved stars like Alan Bennett,
> Dudley
> Moore, and Citizens' Theatre director Giles Havergal, as well as his
future
> wife
> and lifelong artistic partner Elizabeth MacLennan, whom he married in
1962;
> through MacLennan's Scottish family - she was raised in Sutherland, and is
> the
> sister of Liberal Democrat politician Robert MacLennan - McGrath began to
> develop an interest in the people and politics of the Scottish Highlands
> and
> Islands, which became a key recurring theme of his work.  In the 1960's,
he
> was
> one of the writing team who broke new ground in British television with
the
> hugely popular police series Z CARS; he also wrote plays for theatre,
> including
> his much-admired national service drama EVENTS WHILE GUARDING THE BOFORS
> GUN.
>
> But it was with the founding of the 7:84 Theatre Company in 1971 - and its
> sister company in Scotland in 1973 - that McGrath began the defining
> creative
> project of his artistic life, the one that would make his name and shape
> his
> powerful theoretical contribution to the understanding of theatre.  Named
> after
> a statistic McGrath had come across which suggested that 7% of the people
> in
> Britain owned 84% of the wealth, the companies were committed to a twofold
> policy for bringing theatre to "those people who are normally excluded by
> geography or class"; they intended to tour constantly and intensively, to
> the
> kind of village-hall and community-centre venues that most theatre fails
to
> reach, and to combine serious polemical writing and dramatic content with
> strong
> elements of popular entertainment, from ceilidh dancing to stand-up comedy
> and
> soul music.
>
> The first production of 7:84 Scotland, THE CHEVIOT, THE STAG, AND THE
> BLACK,
> BLACK OIL - which toured around the Highlands and Islands in 1973, and
> famously
> used a ceilidh and cabaret format to present a searing radical history of
> land
> ownership and economic exploitation in the Highlands - rapidly became one
> of the
> legendary successes of postwar British theatre, a production that marked
> not
> only a defining moment in theatre practice, but a turning-point in
Scottish
> life
> and politics, a first step in the radical modernisation of home-made
> Scottish
> culture that gained such momentum over the next two decades.  At the turn
> of the
> millennium, THE CHEVIOT, THE STAG AND THE BLACK, BLACK OIL was one of only
> two
> Scottish-made plays to find its way into the Royal National Theatre list
of
> the
> top 100 plays of the 20th century; significantly, the other was Ena Lamont
>
> Stewart's tremendous 1948 tragedy MEN SHOULD WEEP, saved from obscurity by
> McGrath when he staged his great Clydebuilt series of postwar Scottish
> popular
> drama at Glasgow's Mayfest in 1982.
>
> THE CHEVIOT was followed, through the 1970's, by a series of hugely
> successful
> shows in the same vein, including, in Scotland, THE GAME'S A BOGEY, LITTLE
> RED
> HEN, JOE'S DRUM, and BLOOD RED ROSES, all of them written and directed by
> McGrath.  By 1979, when McGrath was invited to deliver a series of
lectures
> as
> Visiting Fellow in Theatre at Cambridge University, his thinking about the
> kind
> of theatre he wanted to develop - and in particular about the importance
of
> the
> messages conveyed by the context in which a show is performed - had
reached
> such
> a level of richness and coherence that the resulting collection of essays,
> A
> GOOD NIGHT OUT (1980), rapidly became a popular best-seller among fans and
> students of modern British theatre, and is widely regarded as one of the
> key
> books of theatre theory published in the last quarter century.  And
despite
> the
> election of a Conservative government in 1979 - McGrath always said that
> one of
> the great regrets of his life was the failure of his generation to
"prevent
> Thatcher" - the success of the large-scale Clydebuilt series in the early
> 80's,
> reviving work by Joe Corrie and Ewan McColl as well as Ena Lamont Stewart,
> seemed to augur well for McGrath's future in Scottish theatre.
>
> In the end, though, the 1980's proved a difficult decade for McGrath and
> Elizabeth MacLennan, as they struggled to continue their theatre work in
an
> increasingly hostile climate, and to adapt as artists to what were
suddenly
> very
> different times.  They continued to attract strong support from a huge
> network
> of friends and colleagues in Britain and internationally, as well as from
> their
> own three children; their homes in London and Edinburgh were always full
of
> visitors from every corner of the earth, from South America and Georgia,
> South
> Africa and the USA, every part of Europe.  But in 1985, the funding of
7:84
> England was withdrawn by the Arts Council of Great Britain, and in 1988
> McGrath
> resigned as director of 7:84 Scotland after prolonged rows over policy and
> priorities with the Scottish Arts Council; his second series of Cambridge
> lectures, given in 1988 and published in 1990 under the title THE BONE
> WON'T
> BREAK, is much bleaker and angrier than the first, and carries the
subtitle
> "On
> Theatre and Hope in Hard Times".
>
> But despite his unavoidable role as Britain's leading spokesman for
radical
> left-wing theatre, McGrath had always been equally interested in film and
> television, which he saw as straightforwardly popular art-forms; and it
was
> his
> work as a screenwriter and film producer that brought him a new creative
> impetus
> - and new recognition - in the last fifteen years of his life.  As a
writer
> and
> thinker, McGrath always had a more subtle, searching and lyrical side to
> his
> work than was often reflected in his plays for 7:84; and it found full
> expression in scripts for films such as THE DRESSMAKER (1988, with Joan
> Plowright and Jane Horrocks), and THE LONG ROADS, made in the early
> Nineties for
> BBC television.  He also produced the Emma Thompson/Jonathan Pryce biopic
> CARRINGTON - a winner at Cannes in 1996 - and Alain Berliner's debut movie
> MA
> VIE EN ROSE, which opened the 1997 Edinburgh Film Festival, and won the
> Golden
> Globe Award in 1998 for best foreign film.
>
> Despite his success as a film producer, however, and the depth and
subtlety
> of
> much of his solo writing - which should win increasing recognition with
> time -
> it's for his ringing, radical 1970's challenge to the terms on which
> theatre in
> Britain is produced that McGrath is likely to be most vividly remembered.
> His
> was a life of terrific creativity, intense commitment, and continuing
> political
> struggle, warmed by the love of his family, and by the affectionate
respect
> of a
> whole army of political and artistic comrades.  John McGrath is survived
by
> his
> wife Elizabeth, and by their children Finn, Danny and Kate; and by a
> generation
> of theatre artists whose working lives he helped to transform, for good.
>
> ENDS ENDS
>
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