Teaching Teechers

In The Guardian, David Ward talks to John Bennett about the new MA course in contemporary popular theatre that he is teaching at Liverpool Hope University.

He claims it is the only course of its kind in the UK. Bennett is targeting those likely to want to work in the theatre, because he thinks popular drama deserves serious study and has been given the cold shoulder by critics and academics.

"It has been marginalised," he says. "My PhD on [John] Godber was possibly the only thesis ever submitted with a non-bibliography at the end – a list of books that purport to survey British theatre since 1984 that make no mention of the third most performed playwright in the country. That's a very serious omission."