Public spaces, public words: towards the making of a pro-localist theatre in The Newham Plays

This essay contends that a localist and grassroots approach is the most effective way of empowering wider access to the arts. It argues for an increased emphasis on performance in local spaces rather than in mainstream auditoria. The Newham Plays series have marked out a distinct territory by making a virtue of the absence of elements most commonly associated with conventional theatre spaces, such as a stage, scenery, lighting, seating. I contend that non-institutionalized theatre in community, site specific and localized environments can offer a greater resistance/indifference to commodification or mass reproduction than mainstream or commercial performance. It is precisely the evanescence of this kind of theatre, its ephemerality, that provides or proves its own justification or meaning, without the need to validate itself by entering the “economy of reproduction” (Phelan).

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