Ewan MacColl was born Jimmie Miller in Salford, Lancashire, in 1915. His father, William Miller, was an iron-molder, militant trade-unionist and communist who had left his native Stirlingshire in his mid-twenties. His mother, Betsy Hendry, was from Auchterarder, Perthshire. Both parents were active left-wing socialists and from his earliest days, MacColl was familiar with the cut-and-thrust of political discussion and argument. Equally important in the life of the household were the songs and stories his parents brought from Scotland - a huge repertoire with which his father and mother kept themselves and their friends entertained.
After an elementary
education,
MacColl
left school in 1930. The
Great Depression was in
full swing so he went
straight into the army
of the unemployed. He
worked at a variety of
temporary jobs:
motor-mechanic, factory
worker, builders'
laborer, street-singer,
etc. In the same year,
he joined the Workers'
Theatre. Finding it too
pedestrian for his
revolutionary
consciousness, he left
and formed his own agit-prop
street-performing group,
the Red Megaphones. For
the next four years he
devoted all of his
waking hours to
political activity of
one kind or another.
His first literary
experience was gained in
the early 1930s when he
wrote for, and later
edited, factory
newspapers. At one
period he was engaged in
writing satirical songs
and political squibs in
verse for nine such
papers - and also for
local restaurants who
hired him to make
advertising jingles for
them. After taking part
in the hunger marches
and the battles of the
unemployed (1932-33) he
joined forces in 1934
with Joan Littlewood, a
young actress just up
from the Royal Academy
of Dramatic Arts. They
married and set up a
workers' experimental
theatre in Manchester,
the Theatre of Action.
When Ernst Toller came
to Britain, he chose
MacColl
to play a leading role
in his production of
Draw the Fires. During
this period,
MacColl
wrote a number of short
sketches and dramatic
poems for the theatre.
In 1935 he and Joan
moved to London and
formed a workers'
dramatic school. This
venture was to provide
the basis for the
training methods which
were later to be used in
Theatre Workshop.
They returned to the
North of England in 1936
where they formed
Theatre Union, their
most ambitious theatre
venture to date. This
group described itself
as a "theatre of the
people" and made
considerable impact upon
audiences throughout the
industrial northeast in
the period between 1936
and 1939. Its most
notable productions,
which were directed
jointly by
MacColl
and Littlewood, were
Lope de Vega's Fuente
Ovejuņa, The Good
Soldier Schweik (adapted
by
MacColl
from Hasek's novel) and
a living newspaper, Last
Edition (written by
MacColl).
This highly successful
play dealt with the
political events leading
up to the Munich pact
and used the episodic
form which
MacColl
was later to extend in
his experimental
post-war play, Uranium
235. In 1939, Last
Edition was stopped by
the police and
MacColl
and Littlewood were
arrested and charged
with disturbing the
'peace'. They were both
heavily fined and bound
over - that is, barred
from taking part in any
kind of theatrical
activity for the next
two years.
The small group of
dedicated and talented
members of Theatre Union
formulated plans for a
future theatre and
embarked upon on
intensive studies of
theatre art and
techniques. World War II
began and within a few
weeks the group had been
scattered to the four
corners of the earth and
were serving with
various military forces.
Consequently, most of
the training had to be
done by correspondence.
Nevertheless, study
courses, reading lists,
books, etc., were
circulated consistently
throughout the whole
period of the war, and
there soon existed a
small body of far-flung
students who between
them possessed a
considerable corpus of
knowledge on matters
relating to specialized
theatre studies. For
example, one member made
a study of the Attic
theatre, and even went
to the extent of
learning to read
Aeschuylus and Socrates
in the original Greek;
another specialized in
studying the Commedia
del Arte and still
another concentrated on
the Chinese theatre.
By August 1945, a
sufficient number of
them had returned home
and, by pooling their
Army gratuities, it
became possible to
launch the group now
known as Theatre
Workshop. The ideas
which formed this group
were the result of the
ten years which
MacColl
and Littlewood had
devoted to various
theatrical experiments.
Up till this period they
had directed the plays
jointly, but now the
functions were divided:
Littlewood was to direct
the rehearsals and
produce the plays while
MacColl
was to write plays
suitable for the group,
train the actors and, to
a large extent,
formulate new training
techniques. During this
period, he wrote eleven
plays. Theatre Workshop
travelled from 1945-1952
and a number of
MacColl's
plays were performed
abroad and translated
into German, French,
Polish and Russian. By
this time, enamored with
the Lallans movement in
Scotland, he (like many
other Scots-born
writers) had changed his
name from Jimmie Miller
to
Ewan
MacColl,
a name by which he was
known for the rest of
his life.
The intention of Theatre
Workshop was to create
theatrical techniques
that were sufficiently
flexible to reflect the
rapidly changing
20th-century scene.
MacColl
always insisted that the
task of creating a
popular theatre is one
which cannot be solved
merely by changing the
class background of the
hero(ine)s or by
introducing technical
and stylistic
innovations. For him,
the problem was a
multi-dimensional one
which must be solved on
a series of different
fronts simultaneously.
If the theatre is to
play an important role
in the lives of the
people of our time then
it must develop
techniques which rival
in efficiency the
complex machines which
working people handle
every day of their lives
in the course of their
work. In addition, he
declared, the problem is
one of poetics. The
dramatic writer must of
necessity attempt to
close the enormous gap
which exists between our
literary and our oral
traditions. He/she does
not do this by acting
merely as an amplifier
for everyday speech, but
by analyzing the speech
rhythms, idioms and
nuances of everyday
conversation, and then
crystallizing them in
the way that Shakespeare
and Ben Jonson did in
their time.
Most of
MacColl's
plays are extraordinary.
George Bernard once
quipped that other than
himself,
MacColl
was the best living
playwright in Britain.
Several of
MacColl's
experimental plays go
into the realm of
dramatic philosophical
tracts. (It was
primarily these which
attracted Shaw in the
first place.) In all of
the plays, language is
approached honestly.
There is no attempt to
deceive the audience
into believing that they
are overhearing a 'real'
conversation. Rather the
reverse is true: it is
by stressing particular
speech rhythms,
varieties of idiom and
types of cadences that
MacColl
constantly sought to
change the perspectives
of action, and, as a
result, never allowed
the actor-audience
relationship to become
static. These concepts
are very evident in his
songwriting for many of
his songs were made from
speech recorded during
the radio-ballad work.
In 1950, he married the
dancer Jean Newlove, by
whom he had two
children, Hamish and
Kirsty, both of whom
became singers and
musicians. Theatre
Workshop defected to the
West End and
MacColl
began to turn his
attention to traditional
music. He was soon
playing a key role in
initiating and extending
what is now called "the
folksong revival" in
Britain. He was among
the first to recognize
the importance of the
folk club as a basic
unit in that revival, a
unit without which the
movement might never
have made a significant
impact. In London, he
founded (with Alan
Lomax, Bert Lloyd,
Seamus Ennis and others)
the Ballads and Blues
Club, later to become
the famed Singers Club.
The club opened in 1953
and closed in 1991.
In 1956, he met Peggy
Seeger and they embarked
upon a life-partnership.
Between 1959 and 1972
they had three children,
Neill, Calum and Kitty,
all of whom are singers
and musicians. Peggy and
Ewan
became a well known
singing duo. They gave
concerts, conducted
workshops and toured in
Britain and abroad as
singers of traditional
and contemporary songs
from 1957-1989. They
recorded extensively and
initiated projects such
as
The Long Harvest
(a 10-volume series of
traditional ballads),
The Paper Stage
(a 2-volume set of
Shakespearean sung
narratives). They formed
their own record company
(Blackthorne) and issued
discs of their own
renditions of
traditional and topical
songs.
From the early 1930s,
MacColl
had been involved in
radio as a narrator,
actor, writer and
producer. He had worked
with numerous
experimental producers
such as D.G. Bridson,
Dennis Mitchell and John
Pudney. In 1957,
collaborating with Peggy
Seeger and Charles
Parker, he wrote a
series of musical
documentaries for BBC
radio which came to be
known as
radio-ballads.
These were a combination
of recorded speech,
sound effects, new songs
and folk instrumentation
and they were hailed as
a major breakthrough in
creative radio
technique. The newspaper
critics dubbed them
'folk documentaries.'
Many of the concepts and
ideas which they
initiated have since
become routine
television and film
procedures.
MacColl
worked primarily in
education and
documentation. He wrote
scripts and music for
BBC films, for
commercial television
and stage. The photo to
the left was taken of
Ewan
MacColl
by Michael Tigar in
1962.
In 1965,
MacColl
and Peggy Seeger founded
the Critics Group, a
loosely organized
company of revival
singers who trained in
folk singing and theatre
techniques, with a view
to forming a base from
which a folk theatre
could be developed.
Every year for five
years, the Critics put
on The Festival of
Fools, a dramatic
musical revue of the
year's news.
MacColl
and Seeger collected
extensively from
traditional singers in
Britain. In addition to
books of their own songs
and various small
collections, they
produced two anthologies
of the music of
Britain's nomadic
people:
Travellers' Songs of
England and Scotland
and
Doomsday in the
Afternoon.
With Howard Goorney,
Ewan
co-authored Agit-prop to
Theatre Workshop, a book
of political play
scripts and
reminiscences of Theatre
Workshop.
As a songwriter,
MacColl
is best known as the
author of "The
First Time Ever I Saw
Your Face,"
"Dirty
Old Town,"
"The
Shoals of Herring,"
"Freeborn
Man"
and "The
Manchester Rambler."
He has written more than
300 songs. Peggy Seeger
has assembled 200 of
these into
The Essential
Ewan
MacColl
Songbook.
In 1979, he suffered the
first of many heart
attacks. The next ten
years saw a steady
deterioration in his
physical condition, but
he continued to work,
tour, lecture and write
songs. In 1980, he wrote
his last play,
The Shipmaster,
the moving story of a
sailing ship captain who
cannot adapt to the
coming of steam. In 1987
he began to write his
autobiography,
Journeyman.
In the same year he was
presented with an
honorary degree by the
University of Exeter. On
October 22 1989, he died
of complications
following a heart
operation. He was
awarded a posthumous
honorary degree by the
University of Salford in
1991.