ABSTRACT
Theatre and performance skills of all kinds have always played a role during periods of social and political change in Britain. Emerging political movements have used theatre and music to express and support their struggles, and radical social change has also affected the avant-garde wings of theatre, which are always receptive to new ideas. During the 1840s plays were performed in support of the Chartists, and in the course of the nineteenth century various attempts were made in London to establish theatres and produce plays for ‘worker-audiences’.
