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Live Like Pigs
By John Arden
Two opposite worlds collide.
What follows is not pretty…
Hockney Theatre
15 to 17 March 2017
Image by
Homer Sykes
“
“
What I loved about Arden was the
intoxicating vigour of his language:
he wrote a muscular, colourful
prose, interspersed with ballad
and song, that ricocheted off
the walls of the theatre like
a ball in a squash court.
Michael Billington
The Guardian
Welcome
It is with great pleasure that I
welcome you to our production
of John Arden’s ‘Live Like Pigs’.
It is a real delight to bring to the stage a principal work by one
of Yorkshire’s finest playwrights. John Arden was one of
the first of the so called Angry Young Men to write for the
theatre in the 1950s and his plays, never dull, challenge
convention and explore uncomfortable themes.
‘Live Like Pigs’ is certainly not for the faint hearted.
It is a comedy that will force you to laugh, but one that also
has the capacity to move you. It challenges the respectability
and morality of British society and aims to leaves us
contemplating what is it about freedom, and those
who wish to own it, that so terrifies us.
Tonight’s performance is a true collaboration. I am indebted
to my co-directors Miss Stokes and Miss Bruce whose skill,
expertise and industry has been vital; we have dovetailed our
talents and together have shared the directorial burden.
Huge thanks and congratulations to Shelby Deal and Tony
Deacon for the fantastic set and staging; I didn’t think it was
possible and they have proved me wrong magnificently.
Thanks to Pete Dutton (for working with and supporting
Shelby on the stage) and also for the excellent props, the
lighting, the sound and for organising our brilliant tech crew.
Finally, a thank you and a well done to the cast, who have
taken this underperformed play and given it new life; it is
almost 60 years old, yet this young cast prove that ‘Live Like
Pigs’ still entertains and still has much to say. I’m sure John
Arden would be delighted to find his work being presented
once again in his native Yorkshire. Enjoy the show.
Lee Hanson
Head of English and Drama
Who was John Arden?
John Arden (1930-2012) was a Barnsley born dramatist, noted
for his politically challenging and linguistically rich plays in
the tradition of Brecht. He wrote for radio and television as
well as for the stage. His first professionally produced play
was a radio drama, The Life of Mars, broadcast in 1956. In the
late 1950s Arden was associated with the Royal Court Theatre
and it was at this venue that Live Like Pigs was first presented
in 1958. It was also the place where his stark anti-war and
best known play Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance opened in 1959.
This play was something of a commercial failure at the time,
but has been frequently revived since.
During the 1960s Arden produced most of his major
stage works; these included The Happy Haven (1960), The
Workhouse Donkey (1963), a play about municipal corruption
in Arden’s native Barnsley, Armstrong’s Last Goodnight
(1964), which drew parallels between contemporary political
events in the Congo and events in medieval Scotland, and LeftHanded Liberty (1965), a play about freedom and the Magna
Carta.
“
When I wrote this play I intended
it to be not so much a social
document as a study of differing
ways of life brought sharply into
conflict and both losing their
own particular virtues under
the stress of intolerance and
misunderstanding.
John Arden
Playwright
In 1972 Arden and his partner Margaret D’Arcy had a major
argument with the RSC about the staging of their Arthurian
play, The Island of the Mighty. The quarrel culminated in
Arden picketing the theatre and vowing that he would not
write for the British stage again; he was true to his word and
never did.
A member of the Royal Society of Literature, Arden also wrote
several novels, including Silence Among the Weapons, which
was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1982. He settled in
Galway, Ireland, in 1971 and died there in 2012. Upon his
death Whatsonstage chief critic Michael Coveney described
him as “one of the very few 20th-century dramatists you could
mention in the same breath as Shakespeare, Molière and
Brecht without the parallels sounding too far-fetched.”
“
The Sawneys are an anachronism. They
are the direct descendants of the ‘sturdy
beggars’ of the sixteenth century… the
apparent chaos of their lives becomes an
ordered pattern when seen in terms of wild
countryside and nomadic existence…
The play
John Arden
Playwright
“
“
Forced to move from their caravan site, the Sawneys, an
unruly family of travellers, unwillingly arrive at their new
home on a council estate. Living next door are the Jacksons,
eager to establish themselves as middle class.
At first the busybody Mrs Jackson is eager to befriend the
new arrivals, but when she is driven off the property with a
tirade of insults, she quickly realises this will not be possible.
As more travellers descend on the Sawneys’ home and threats
of eviction are made, the Jacksons and the local residents
become increasingly entangled with their new neighbours.
The play is both hilarious and moving in its portrayal of what
happens when these two opposite worlds collide.
Live Like Pigs was first presented by the English Stage Society
at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in September 1958.
“
Today, quite simply, there
are too many buildings in
Britain, and there is just
no room for nomads.
John Arden
Playwright
“
These two families represent two different, incompatible ways
of life: the Jacksons are good, solid, respectable, impeccably
conventional members of the aspiring lower middle class (or
at least think they are); while the Sawneys, who are moved
against their will, are essentially nomadic vagrants, the last
descendants of the Elizabethan sturdy beggars now barely
existing on the fringes of a society which has no place for
them.
Tonight’s cast
SailorLewis Day
Rachel Clem Hall
RosieEllie Kehoe
ColPaddy Partridge
SallyCatriona Ford
BlackmouthHaris Sultan
The Old Croaker
Sylvie Walsh
Daffodil
Siena Anderson
Mr Jackson
Billy Lucas
Mrs Jackson
Ruby Hendry
DoreenSarah Whitelaw
The Official
Christian Cardwell
The Doctor
Maariah Hussain
The Police Sergeant
Fraser Barton
Narrators
Hanna Panni, Bhavani Bhardwaj
Tonight’s technical team
Lighting and Sound
Pete Dutton , Shelby Deal, Isla Milwain, Samantha Tullie, Lily Orton,
Gowri Kanakath, Elliot Lack
Staging
Shelby Deal, Pete Dutton, Tony Deacon
Backstage and Costumes
Emelye Gill