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Left Book Club Theatre Guild

These five very scarce items were purchased by Janey Buchan and deposited with Giving Voice Workshops. Although not directly concerned with political song or with songs of social conscience they serve to enhance an understanding of the role of the performing arts in political debate, and the fact that the Guild was part of the work of the Left Book Club makes them especially interesting.

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Pages within the Janey Buchan Materials collections: Finding Aid | Janey Buchan and Political Song | Songsheets & Songbooks | Long Play Vinyl Records | Left Book Club Theatre Guild

Author Title Notes
Titterington, John The pay out : a play in one act The play has 9 characters. It describes the development of solidarity amongst the workers in an office. At the end of the play the following excellent advice is offered “There you go – I-I-I – that’s the trouble. It’s the wrong word. Don’t say I, say We and then you’ll get somewhere. The men were no use until they got together”. 16 pages
Allen, John and Harrisson, Tom Swelling the Labour vote This play does include 5 brief skittish  campaigning songs, all using well known tunes and lyric structures; the Production Notes include the admirable advice that “The singing should on no account be shirked”! The play contains many statistics, and the title page states “Facts and statistics supplied by Mass Observation”. 25 pages.
Williams, Leyshon The son of the house The play has 5 characters – a working man about 50 years old, his wife, son and daughter in law, and the daughter in law’s brother, and is set in “A living-room, such as would be found in the house of a steady working-man”. The son, Ted, is long term unemployed, and his family discover that he has turned to stealing and picks locks for a gang, not for the money, but because the gang depends on him  and his “hands that nobody else cares a hang about”. 31 pages
[not given] Union label Set in “Any shop where sweatshop conditions prevail”. The characters are “Six girls who work in the shop, and Williams, their boss”. In several places the text has been amended in pencil. 12 pages.
Rapoport, I The art of the actor “Translated from the Russian by Herbert Marshall”. An essay on the various skills required by an actor, such as “organic attention”, “creative fantasy”, and “stage inter-influence”! The item contains 2 folded typescript pages of the start of a play set outside an air-raid wardens hut. 32 pages
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