Walking in the Middle of the Road: Working-class homecoming in British TV Drama
Birkbeck Cinema, 2nd November 2018: 18:00 – 21:00
If only the experience of Nigel Barton, over 50yrs ago, had nothing to say about the contemporary experience of students from a working-class background at university today, but sadly it seems it does. That's the premise of a screening of Potter's Wednesday Play Stand Up Nigel Barton (1965) being organised by Birkbeck, University of London at their Birkbeck Cinema. The television play - later adapted for the stage - is being show alongside Alan Plater's Land of Green Ginger (1973). Potter's play draws heavily on his own experience as a student from a working-class background at Oxford in the 1950's. Although not purely auto-biographical, scenes from Potter's appearance as a student in the television documentary Does Class Matter (1958) are reproduced shot-for-shot with the play's star Keith Baron in place of the young Dennis. As the billing for this latest screening puts it, it is perhaps as relevant now as it was then:
"The idea of the 'flattened' culture is being exposed for the myth that it is, and the 'classless society' truly has never arrived."
Fin our more about the screening, and book tickets, at the link here.
Birkbeck Cinema, 2nd November 2018: 18:00 – 21:00
If only the experience of Nigel Barton, over 50yrs ago, had nothing to say about the contemporary experience of students from a working-class background at university today, but sadly it seems it does. That's the premise of a screening of Potter's Wednesday Play Stand Up Nigel Barton (1965) being organised by Birkbeck, University of London at their Birkbeck Cinema. The television play - later adapted for the stage - is being show alongside Alan Plater's Land of Green Ginger (1973). Potter's play draws heavily on his own experience as a student from a working-class background at Oxford in the 1950's. Although not purely auto-biographical, scenes from Potter's appearance as a student in the television documentary Does Class Matter (1958) are reproduced shot-for-shot with the play's star Keith Baron in place of the young Dennis. As the billing for this latest screening puts it, it is perhaps as relevant now as it was then:
"The idea of the 'flattened' culture is being exposed for the myth that it is, and the 'classless society' truly has never arrived."
Fin our more about the screening, and book tickets, at the link here.
