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Banner Theatre
Banner Theatre is a community theatre company based in Birmingham, England. The theatre was founded in 1974. History Founded in 1974, the theatre works with marginalized and disadvantaged communities using a combination of documentary theatre, music and recorded voices. The aim of the company is to create issue-led productions based on real-life experiences and in support of disenfranchised sections of society, performing to community and trade union audiences in pubs, clubs and community centres and at rallies, festivals and conferences. A founder member of the company was former BBC radio producer Charles Parker, who with Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, created the radio ballads, award-winning musical documentaries broadcast by the BBC in the 1960s and now available via Listen Again on thBBC Radio 2 website These have been a major influence on Banner's work and have recently informed development of a new form, the 'video ballad'. Another founder member, and current artisti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the List of English districts by population, largest local authority district in England by population and the second-largest city in Britain – commonly referred to as the second city of the United Kingdom – with a population of million people in the city proper in . Birmingham borders the Black Country to its west and, together with the city of Wolverhampton and towns including Dudley and Solihull, forms the West Midlands conurbation. The royal town of Sutton Coldfield is incorporated within the city limits to the northeast. The urban area has a population of 2.65million. Located in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands region of England, Birmingham is considered to be the social, cultural, financial and commercial centre of the Midland ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Documentary Theatre
Documentary theatre is theatre that uses pre-existing documentary material (such as newspapers, government reports, interviews, journals, and correspondences) as source material for stories about real events and people, frequently without altering the text in performance. The genre typically includes or is referred to as verbatim theatre, investigative theatre, theatre of fact, theatre of witness, autobiographical theatre, and ethnodrama. History and Piscator While fact-based drama has been traced back to ancient Greece and Phrynichus' production of ''The Capture of Miletus in'' 492 BC, contemporary documentary theatre is rooted in theatrical practices developed in Eastern Europe during the 1920s and 1930s. In the years after the Russian Revolution, the USSR's Department of Agitation and Propaganda employed theatre troupes known as the Blue Blouses (so called because they wore factory workers' overalls) to stage current events for the largely illiterate population. The Blue ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Parker (producer)
Charles Parker (1919–1980) was a Bournemouth born, BBC Radio producer based in Birmingham from 1954 to 1972, who specialised in Documentary Radio and Theatre. In particular, he is remembered for his collaboration with Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger on the 1958–1963 series of Radio Ballads, which won an Italia Prize for Radio Documentary in 1960 and is seen as a landmark of study in oral history. He came to believe passionately in the value of the testimony of working people and the creative importance of the oral tradition and its relationship to folk music. This became the key to his work in radio, theatre and in his extensive teaching activities. He was a founder, writer, singer and actor with Banner Theatre in Birmingham from 1974 to 1980 and in 1966 established the Birmingham and Midland Folk Centre with Roy Palmer, Pam and Alan Bishop, Joan Smith, Olga Nicholls and other enthusiasts in the area. According to his frequent co-worker Philip Donnellan, Charles despised the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ewan MacColl
James Henry Miller (25 January 1915 – 22 October 1989), better known by his stage name Ewan MacColl, was a British folk singer-songwriter, folk song collector, labour activist and actor. Born in England to Scottish parents, he is known as one of the instigators of the 1960s folk revival as well as for writing such songs as "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" and " Dirty Old Town". MacColl collected hundreds of traditional folk songs, including the version of " Scarborough Fair" later popularised by Simon & Garfunkel, and released dozens of albums with A.L. Lloyd, Peggy Seeger and others, mostly of traditional folk songs. He also wrote many left-wing political songs, remaining a steadfast communist throughout his life and actively engaging in political activism. Early life and early career MacColl was born as James Henry Miller at 4 Andrew Street, in Broughton, Salford, England, on 25 January 1915 to Scottish parents, William Miller and Betsy (née Henry), both social ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peggy Seeger
Margaret "Peggy" Seeger (born June 17, 1935) is an American Folk music, folk singer and songwriter. She has lived in Britain for more than 60 years and was married to the singer-songwriter Ewan MacColl until his death in 1989. She is a member of the Seeger#Seeger_family_of_musicians, Seeger family of musicians. Life and career Early years Seeger's father was Charles Seeger (1886–1979), a folklorist and musicologist; her mother was Seeger's second wife, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Ruth Porter Crawford (1901–1953), a modernist composer who was the first woman to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship. The family moved to Washington, D.C., in 1936 after Charles' appointment to the music division of the Resettlement Administration. One of her brothers was Mike Seeger, and Pete Seeger was her half-brother. Poet Alan Seeger was her uncle. One of her first recordings was ''American Folk Songs for Children'' (1955). First American period In the 1950s, left-leaning singers such as Paul Robes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Radio-ballad
The radio ballad is an audio documentary format created by Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger, and Charles Parker in 1958. It combines four elements of sound: songs, instrumental music, sound effects, and, most importantly, the recorded voices of those who are the subjects of the documentary. The latter element was revolutionary; previous radio documentaries had used either professional voice actors or prepared scripts. Original radio ballads The original radio ballads were recorded for the BBC. MacColl wrote a variety of songs especially for them, many of which have become folk classics. The trio together made eight radio ballads between 1958 and 1964. They were: # ''The Ballad of John Axon'' (1958), about an engine driver who died trying to stop a runaway freight train # ''Song of a Road'' (1959), about the men who built the London-Yorkshire motorway, the M1 # ''Singing the Fishing'' (1960), about the men and women of the herring fishing fleets of East Anglia and Northeast Scotland # ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Banner-making
Banner-making is the ancient art or craft of sewing banners. Techniques used include applique, embroidery, fabric painting, patchwork and others. Trade union banners In the United Kingdom, the first of these banners were sometimes painted by local signwriters, coachpainters or decorators. More often than not, they were made by a member of the local branch who was considered to be artistic. However, from 1837 onwards, more than three quarters were made by the firm of George Tutill of Chesham in Buckinghamshire. All their banners were made from pure silk woven by Huguenots in London. At the height of banner production there were said to be 17,000 looms in operation. The silk was stretched taut over a wooden frame and coated with India rubber, and the Oil paint, oil colours applied to it were 'old', i.e. had been standing around for a while. This allowed the paint to dry quickly and to make it more pliant or elastic. There were many designs from the Bible (e.g. David slaying Golia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trade Union
A trade union (British English) or labor union (American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers whose purpose is to maintain or improve the conditions of their employment, such as attaining better wages and Employee benefits, benefits, improving Work (human activity), working conditions, improving safety standards, establishing complaint procedures, developing rules governing status of employees (rules governing promotions, just-cause conditions for termination) and protecting and increasing the bargaining power of workers. Trade unions typically fund their head office and legal team functions through regularly imposed fees called ''union dues''. The union representatives in the workforce are usually made up of workplace volunteers who are often appointed by members through internal democratic elections. The trade union, through an elected leadership and bargaining committee, bargains with the employer on behalf of its members, known as t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theatre Companies In Birmingham, West Midlands
Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors to present experiences of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music, and dance. It is the oldest form of drama, though live theatre has now been joined by modern recorded forms. Elements of art, such as painted scenery and stagecraft such as lighting are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience. Places, normally buildings, where performances regularly take place are also called "theatres" (or "theaters"), as derived from the Ancient Greek θέατρον (théatron, "a place for viewing"), itself from θεάομαι (theáomai, "to see", "to watch", "to observe"). Modern Western theatre comes, in large measure, from the theatre of ancient Greece, from which it borrows technical terminolog ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
