Revisiting the role of class: Theatre as an organizational model for class struggle

This article revisits class as a political and analytical category by examining how theatre practices explicitly participate in class struggle. Drawing on long-term practitioner-researcher relationships, it explores three case studies: Jana Natya Manch (India), the Landless Workers’ Movement (Brazil) and Salford Community Theatre (UK). Through these examples, we analyse theatre’s role in supporting labour movements, fostering community solidarity and generating cultural forms that resist neo-liberal erasures of class. Contributing to and in conversation with studies that have brought in a renewed focus on class in theatre and performance studies, we offer an interventionist model of theatre-making that foregrounds collective politics and aesthetic innovation, attesting the enduring potential of performance in movements for social justice.