Joan's Book

Joan Littlewood (1914 - 2002) was one of the foremost directors of our time and founder of the iconic theatre company Theatre Workshop, most famous for Oh What A Lovely War. Her left-wing politics and commitment to enabling theatre to reach the working classes meant that this was a keen preoccupation in all of her work and methods. She was famous for her anti-Establishment, radical theatre work that defied the censorship laws of the mid-twentieth century and gained the company a great deal of attention and acumen.Philip Hedley was Artistic Director of Theatre Royal Stratford East for twenty-five years from 1979 to 2004. Upon his departure, the Theatre Royal named him Director Emeritus. He was a founding student of E15 Acting School and later in his career taught and staged productions there and at LAMDA, RADA, Rose Bruford and Drama Centre in the UK, the Vancouver Playhouse Drama School and the National Institute for Drama in Sydney. He ran Lincoln Theatre Royal for three years from 1968 to 1971, during which time he directed and/or produced over fifty productions. He went on to be director of the Midlands Arts Theatre Company, followed by two years as Assistant Director to Joan Littlewood and Assistant Administrator to her partner, Gerry Raffles, at Theatre Royal Stratford East.

The tumult of [this book] is testimony to one of the great creative forces of our time. Like the Shakespearean character with whom she has most in common, she has, in her way, once again voiced her own unanswerable demands, betraying neither 'faith, truth nor womanhood' in the process.