Joan Littlewood

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Joan Maud Littlewood (6 October 1914 - 20 September 2002) was a theatrical director, famous for her work in developing the left-wing Theatre Workshop.

Born in Stockwell, South London, she had trained as an actress at RADA but left after an unhappy start and moved to Manchester in 1934 where she met Jimmie Miller (better known as Ewan MacColl) and joined his troupe Theatre of Action. Littlewood and Miller were soon married. After a brief move to London, they returned to Manchester and set up the Theatre Union in 1936.

In 1945, after the end of World War II, Littlewood, her husband, and other Theatre Union members formed Theatre Workshop. In 1953 Theatre Workshop took up residence at the Theatre Royal in east London, where it gained international fame, performing across Europe and in the USSR. One of Littlewood's most famous productions was the British première of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children (1955), which she directed and in which she also played the lead. Her production of "Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be," a musical about the London underworld, became a hit and ran from 1959-62. The works for which she is now best remembered are probably the satirical musical, Oh! What a Lovely War (1963),and A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney (1958), which gained great critical acclaim. Both were subsequently filmed. Many well-regarded television and stage actors came from the workshop, including Yootha Joyce, Brian Murphy, Babs Windsor, Glynn Edwards, Harry H. Corbett, George Cooper, and Richard Harris.

She and MacColl were married for about fifteen years, but divorced in 1950. They remained friends and collaborators for many years, and Joan was godparent to his two children. Her partner, after her split with MacColl, and until his death in 1975, was Gerry Raffles, a founder member of Theatre Workshop.

After Raffles's death Littlewood left Theatre Workshop and stopped directing. After a time of drifting she settled in France and became the companion of Baron Philippe de Rothschild, the vintner and poet, and wrote his memoirs, Milady Vine. In the mid 1980s she commenced work on her autobiography, which was published in 1994, entitled Joan's Book.

Littlewood died, in 2002, of natural causes at the age of 87 in the London flat of Peter Rankin, her UK base for the previous 23 years^[1]

[edit] Bibliography

Joan's Book: Joan Littlewood's Peculiar History As She Tells It ISBN 0-413-77318-3
Agit-Prop to Theatre Workshop, Political Playscripts, 1930-1950, edited by Howard Goorney and Ewan MacColl. 1986. ISBN 0-7190-2211-8
Journeyman, an Autobiography, by Ewan MacColl. 1990. ISBN 0-283-06036-0