ABSTRACT
Like the 1960s, 1970s Britain was also characterised by the emergence of new self-confident and articulate socio-cultural configurations that manifested around issues of race, gender, sexuality, regional identity and ecology. The new subcultures campaigned for radical change and accelerated the breakdown of the post-war consensus that had underpinned and ossified British society. Caryl Churchill's trajectory as a playwright through the 1970s is framed through her leftist political resistance, a feature of which is her joyous discovery of collaborative theatre-making. The first of Churchill's plays to scrutinise revolutionary conditions and the psychological and physical abuse associated with authoritarian political systems, it manifests preoccupations to which she has repeatedly returned the human rights of torture victims, and of those oppressed by domestic or international conflict, especially children. Light Shining premiered in September 1976 at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh and is ambitiously experimental, the product of a famous collaboration with actors from Joint Stock.
