Ann Jellicoe, the writer, and the ‘community play’
JUNE 27, 2016 ~ COMMUNITYTHEATREPLAYWRIGHT
My introduction to community theatre came through the work of Ann Jellicoe, probably the most influential writer and director working in the field and the woman who is still most closely identified with the notion of the ‘community play’. Indeed Jellicoe’s own book Community Plays: How To Put Them On, published in 1987 is still the only available text that provides any kind of blue print for the creation of community theatre; (I know three of the people in the photograph on the front of this book – Mr Carlyon was the father of one of my best friends and Mrs Hill still works in a shop in my home town of Colyton. I have always been a little bit frustrated by this cover though – for I was standing just behind Alexandra, and yet somehow missed out on being included in the image).

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In many ways Ann Jellicoe and ‘community theatre’ have become synonymous, and her work, which had great success during the eighties and into the nineties, became for many the defining notion of what ‘community theatre’ should be (and, for many, still is). Put very simply it was the idea that the play, a play which was produced by a professional production team and written by a professional writer, would be performed entirely by the community.