Airdate: Lessons from Joan

Foxtel Arts screens Lessons from Joan, a locally-made doco on “The Mother of Modern Theatre” director Joan Littlewood and showcases a Melbourne revival of her musical “Oh, What a Lovely War!”

It was recently restaged at Grant Street Theatre under director Maude Davey with additional material by Nick Enright.

Joan Littlewood gained world fame with her musical “Oh, What a Lovely War!” which played Broadway an amazing eight months. Walter Macintosh uses a Melbourne revival of the musical in order to revisit Joan Littlewood’s life and career assembling an astonishing number of survivors from those days in the 1960s. Her great causes were community and political theatre, improvisation and working class language, all of which have passed into the mainstream of drama. The Theatre Company Joan Littlewood and Gerry Raffles founded in Stratford, East London, continues to showcase new theatre work inspired by its local community and the world today.

7:30pm Thursday September 13 on Foxtel Arts.