Bradford theatre company's practical guide to making political theatre and challenging the status quo

Co-founders and co-artistic directors Evie Manning and Rhiannon White have now written a book in collaboration with academic and author Jenny Hughes, Professor of Drama at the University of Manchester. Do It Yourself: Making Political Theatre is an invaluable resource, a brilliant step-by-step guide to making your own political theatre. It is also a book about why theatre matters and how it can be a conduit for radical social change. Every production that Common/Wealth makes aims to challenge the status quo by asking a question, beginning a conversation and empowering the community that they serve.

For Hughes, a longtime admirer of Common/Wealth, it was important that the company’s work was documented. “I think their practice is so brilliant, interesting and doing something really important, politically and artistically, I wanted to make a publication for scholarship so that the work can be studied in an academic setting,” she says. “But also, a book that is accessible, very practical and can be engaged with by a wider audience. It is really thoughtful and it fits into an important trajectory of political theatre made not just in the UK but across the world.”

Our Lifestyle newsletter is a great weekend read

The process of writing the book allowed Manning and White a period of reflection and consolidation. “Because live performance is so ephemeral – here today and gone tomorrow – this was a way of doing something with a bit more permanence,” says Manning. “A lot of our work comes from a place that is raw and passionate and we don’t often have time to step back and reflect. So, it was good to do that and we also wanted to make sure the book is really useful for anyone who is making theatre. About a third of the book is practical exercises.”

That sense of generosity, of a desire to facilitate, to be helpful and empowering is typical of everything the company does and stands for; it completely fits with their ethos. “We are part of a canon of political theatre makers, we didn’t want to make it too much about us,” says Manning. “It is personal to us, and the first bit is about our journey, but we didn’t want it to be too navel-gazing. At each step we asked ourselves ‘is this useful and relevant and how will it help someone else?’” It is a guide that can be used by different practitioners in a variety of contexts. “It could be a student, an activist, a schoolteacher, or anyone with a story to tell,” says Manning. “We want to challenge assumptions about what theatre is and can be.”

The book features a foreword from acclaimed Welsh actor Michael Sheen who first encountered Common/Wealth through We’re Still Here, a site-specific play that was staged in a disused tinworks in Port Talbot, inspired by – and featuring – the people behind the campaign to save Port Talbot steelworks. Sheen describes the experience of being present at the performance as ‘galvanising’ and writes: “Out of community can come communion. This does not require anything but the will to make it happen, the audacity to imagine it into being and the courage to see it through.” That is exactly what Common/Wealth has been doing for the past nearly two decades and long may they continue.

The hope is that the book will encourage others to do the same. “When we started out, we felt we could change things,” says Manning. “At the moment we are living through scary and apathetic times and people don’t really know what to do. We want to try and empower people and inspire a whole new generation who want to effect social change. We know the power of theatre and that together we can make the world a better place.”

Do it Yourself: Making Political Theatre by Evie Manning, Rhiannon White and Jenny Hughes is published by Manchester University Press. Common/Wealth have been shortlisted in the Community Award category at the Stage Awards; winners announced on January 12 at a ceremony at the Royal Opera House, London.