politics covers what one might expect tofind, for example, in the‘Politics’
section of a newspaper: parliamentary debates, elections, domestic and
foreign policy, taxes, budgets, the internal affairs of specific political par-
ties and organisations, and so on. If one hears, as is often claimed (at least
in England), that it is‘rude to talk about politics’, then presumably it is
this narrower sense that the speaker has in mind. But there is a broader
sense of‘politics’–much broader than the affairs of government: this
broader notion covers the power relations between people and the orga-
nisations and institutions that shape their lives and that, to some degree,
give them meaning. Thus, to take an obvious example, a churchmightbe
political in the narrow sense–it might express views aboutfiscal policy
or immigration rates–but it certainly will be political in the second
sense, because it organises groups of people and structures the relations
between them. Obviously, the kinds of activities that fall under these two
categories are not distinct from one another, and each can and does have a
great impact on the other. Thus, say, government legislation can affect
religious organisations or power structures in the workplace, just as
churches can and frequently do have an effect upon how the members of
their congregations are likely to vote. Finally, the question of what counts
or ought to count under‘politics in the narrow sense’is itself a highly
charged political question and is liable to depend on the context. Thus,
for the Greeks, certain religious and artistic duties (theatrical festivals, of
course, counted as both) were self-evidently affairs of thepolis, whereas, in
modern Western democracies, religious and artistic institutions are often
held to be beyond the purview of politics in the narrow sense.
When it comes to politics in the broader sense, a theatrical event
obviously is already a political event, so the question is not whether
theatre is political but in what ways. The fact that theatre at least typi-
cally (if not necessarily) requires more than one person may be seen to
give theatre a specially political dimension as an art. Compare the
potentially solitary activities of playing the piano, looking at a painting
or watching afilm. There is no standard, theatrical event involving just
one person. Indeed, when Hannah Arendt writes that theatre is‘the
political art par excellence’, it seems that this is partly what she has in
mind. Theatre offers action and interaction among characters and, of
course, the audience.^4 It both represents and is already an instance of
politics in the broader sense. Primarily, our interest in this chapter is in
politics in the narrow sense. But discussions of political theatre must not
ignore the attempt of theatre not only to convey certain political messages
to spectators, but also, in order to do so, to gather them together in an
ordered group of some kind. In sixteenth-century England, Robin Hood
plays–traditional plays in which Robin Hood’s followers are imprisoned
by the sheriff, but then turn the tables and imprison the sheriff himself–
162 From the Stage to the World