John McGrath
Playwright, Author
1935 – 2002
Who was John McGrath?
John Peter McGrath was a British playwright and theatre theorist who took up the cause of Scottish independence in his plays.
From an Irish Catholic background, McGrath was born in Birkenhead, and educated in Mold and, after his National Service, at St John's College, Oxford. During the early 1960s he worked for the BBC, and wrote and directed many of the early episodes of the Corporation's police series Z-Cars which began in 1962.
He is though remembered as a playwright and for his theoretical formulation of the principles of a radical, popular theatre. The 7:84 Theatre Company was established in 1971 by McGrath with this aim in mind, and The Cheviot, the Stag, and the Black Black Oil, his best-known play, was created with these principles in mind. It utilizes some of the dramaturgical and theatrical techniques of epic theatre - actors take on multiple roles and frequently slip out of character - of the type associated with the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, but which McGrath argued have a genealogy that stretches far further back through the history of popular traditions of performance.
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- Born
- Jun 1, 1935
Birkenhead - Also known as
- John Peter McGrath
- John McGraith
- Spouses
- Elizabeth MacLennan
(1962 - 2002/01/22)
- Elizabeth MacLennan
- Religion
- Irish Catholic
- Ethnicity
- British people
- Nationality
- United Kingdom
- Profession
- Lived in
- Liverpool
- Died
- Jan 22, 2002
Edinburgh
Submitted
on July 23, 2013
Citation
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"John McGrath." Biographies.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Mar. 2024. <https://www.biographies.net/people/en/john_mcgrath>.
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