Abstract

The dissertation is in three parts preceded by a preface and introduction. Part One outlines the scope of the study, namely Britain in the post industrial period, and the purpose of the study, an analysis of the aesthetics, ethics and politics of Theatre practice. Part Two examines critical texts from the 1930's, relates those texts to their contemporary reaccentuation in postmodernism, and adopts critical strategies from this theoretical encounter to analyse Theatre imagery and the contexts of that imagery in contemporary Britain. Part Three reconsiders the conceptual frame, and the critical approach of Parts One and Two, within an analysis of 'Everyday Life' and its relations to Theatre. ;The methodology of the dissertation is one of 'tactical investigations' adopted from the critical perspective of modernism and postmodernism. Its purposes as outlined in the Introduction, are to determine the criteria of a language of Theatre that is critical, accomodates aesthetic and ethical possibilities, is secular and socialist. This language is necessary to describe and analyse a practice of Theatre which is seen, directly observed, rather than read or heard about. The use of the word Theatre in the title and throughout the dissertation does not refer to a literary genre but a practice of image creation, an operation conducted by performers and audiences. These operations have a logic, and it is in the expression of that logic that the 'sciences' of Theatre are evident. It is these sciences, and 'practices' that the dissertation seeks to examine in the context of the discursive practices of Everyday Life. ;A question the dissertation raises is whether the Theatre is good, and the relevance of such a question for what the Theatre means. A conclusion of the dissertation is that critical analysis is predicated on a believable object, that the object in this case is a Theatre practice, and that the credibility of criticism depends upon a responsibility and regard for that practice, which invites participation in it, and return to it, within theory