Banner Theatre

Banner Theatre is one of Britain’s longest established community theatre companies, with over thirty-five years’ experience of working with trade unions and marginalized and disadvantaged communities.

Using a combination of theatre, music and song, digital imagery and “actuality” (recorded voices captured by video or audio), the company creates dynamic, thought-provoking, issue-led productions based on people’s real-life experiences and in support of disenfranchised sections of society.

We perform to community and trade union audiences in pubs, clubs and community centres and at rallies, festivals and conferences.

Banner Theatre was founded in 1973/4 and creates powerful, innovative, issue-based multimedia theatre productions, which it tours to community audiences.

The company pioneered and continues to use documentary theatre techniques. Productions include recorded interview material, theatre, song, music, video and slides. Above all, what makes the company unique is its use of “actuality” – ordinary people’s words captured by camera.

Banner is the only theatre company that tours consistently to Britain’s trade unionists, a potential audience of eight million. The company has performed at trade union events, pubs, clubs, theatres, festivals and rallies over the past 40 years.

A founder member of the company was former BBC radio producer Charles Parker, who with Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, created the radio ballads, award-winning musical documentaries broadcast by the BBC in the 1960s. These have been a major influence on Banner’s work and have recently informed our development of the ‘video ballad’.

Banner Theatre’s archive is held in Birmingham Central Library and has been catalogued as part of the Connecting Histories project.

Banner Theatre – from the Performing Resistance section of Connecting Histories

If you want to know Banner in person, please, read People.