ABSTRACT
Another way in which the theatrical languages of realism/naturalism could be contested-although it goes beyond this-was connected to the renewed interest in popular, ‘illegitimate’ and non-literary theatre forms. In some ways, ‘vital theatre’ was a synonym for popular theatre. Looking back to the nineteenth century for appropriate models, Ted Willis argued (at the Universities and Left Review symposium on vital theatre) that ‘the only real vitality…lay in the music-halls’ (Willis 1959:22), a point of view endorsed by Devine in relation to contemporary theatre: ‘My own thought is that the use of music, song and dance in the so-called straight theatre is the direction in which we must go’ (Devine 1959: 23). Encore’s interest in practitioners working outside dominant forms was often focused around those who had a relationship with an idea of the popular-Brecht, for example, or Planchon. The journal ran a series of articles on the subject at about the time that the vital theatre debates were taking shape, which drew in contributions from Michel St Denis amongst others. And the influence of popular forms on several plays in the period-on Osborne’s The Entertainer and The World of Paul Slickey, for example, and all the plays of John Arden-has been frequently noted (see, for example, Davison 1982 and Hunt 1974).
