ABSTRACT
In her 1967 lecture, “Some Unconscious Influences in the Theatre,” British theatre practitioner Ann Jellicoe (1927–2017) recalls her experience observing audiences react to her play, The Knack (1960), while it toured England. Jellicoe theorizes on the ways the population of the audience shapes their collective theatrical experience. As a writer, director, and total theatre-maker, Jellicoe reflects on the components of a production—audience, actors, text, physical space—and how they affect each together to design the overall theatrical experience. The accompanying essay argues that the lecture, which Jellicoe delivered at the midpoint in her career, functions as both a theoretical summation up to that point of her practical research relating to the audience-actor-text-space relationship, as well as a roadmap for her future theatrical explorations. Jellicoe unified her theoretical research and practice in the early 1980s when she created her community play methodology. The underpinnings of the community play form and ethos are evident not just in her lifetime of work, but in her observations from “Some Unconscious Influences.” Additionally, the essay asserts that rather than viewing Jellicoe as a playwright or director of postwar British theatre, it would be more accurate to look at her career in its totality and see her as a total theatre-maker.
