ABSTRACT
In reality, art and politics increasingly meet each other across the tables of sponsoring and funding organizations. There are plenty of examples of contemporary theatre, including theatre in education, which aim to win the audience's sympathy for and secure positive belief in something or other: victims of racial discrimination, Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) sufferers, striking workers. This is not incompatible with the production of work which is funny or moving and well-crafted. For presumably one can hold virtually any political position without being unfeeling, incompetent or humourless. However, art which illustrates a thesis is often dissatisfying just because we experience the work as merely illustrative without intrinsic interest. Picasso's Guernica is a political artist's painting; but it is not an illustration of an idea about what happened at Guernica: it explores what happened in the artist's own exploratory medium.
