'We shed as we pick up, like travellers' … Septimus and Thomasina in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

A revival of Arnold Wesker's 1959 play, Roots, opens at the Donmar Warehouse next week. It stars Jessica Raine as the young Beatie Bryant, who has left her Norfolk farm-labouring family for the bright lights of London and fallen under the spell of an intellectual, Ronnie. I like the play very much, but I absolutely love Beatie's miraculous speech near the end, when she suddenly discovers her own voice. When this play is done well, it can one of the most joyous and electrifying moments in theatre. Continue reading...

Promenade performance ... Borrow a dog and make a piece of DIY theatre. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

Theatre may be ephemeral, but it leaves traces everywhere. We know what the Greeks who lived more than 2000 years ago watched on stage, and how they watched it, through written records, broken architecture and a precious few play texts that survived. We know very little about William Shakespeare, but we know his writing, because his colleagues and friends had the wit to publish it. Contemporary playwrights know they've made it when the publisher Methuen compiles their first anthology. And yet, the traces of theatre found in play texts are misleading, because they present living, breathing work as literature. Our notion of what theatre is and can be has exploded over the past 50 years, but have the published impressions of it kept pace?

If you consider Paper Stages, the answer is yes. These slim, neat books – there have been two so far – represent the work of some of Britain's most exciting experimental theatre-makers. But rather than publish the scripts of their shows (where such things exist) or descriptions of what took place, they contain ideas for actions, interventions and small performances, to be carried out by the reader. As the introduction puts it, Paper Stages is not a book, but "a festival waiting patiently for you to assemble it".

The project is the brainchild of Forest Fringe, a group led by theatre-makers Deborah Pearson and Andy Field. It was founded in 2007 to create an alternative, free festival at the heart of the Edinburgh fringe. In 2012, the dilapidated church hall they used as a venue was requisitioned, so the pair changed tack and asked everyone they hoped to work with to contribute to a book. Available in an Edinburgh cafe for the price of one hour of voluntary work, it offered a radically different way to engage with theatre amid the hubbub of the fringe: it was quiet, contemplative, and created its own economy that expressed non-capitalist values. Continue reading...

Model characters … Laurence Olivier and National Theatre architect Denys Lasdun in 1967. Photograph: Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis

Everyone who works in theatre knows that it is the successful act that is the hardest one to follow. If you take over a less than spritely company or a theatre, it is much easier to make a difference. But take the top post at an organisation already perceived to be in fine fettle and people tend to judge your actions with one eye on the previous regime. Continue reading...

Youth appeal … Punchdrunk's The Drowned Man is an example of forward-thinking immersive theatre. Photograph: Perou

Are theatre audiences getting younger and more experimental? According to a new report conducted by Ticketmaster, 16-19 year olds say they are more likely to attend theatre than any other age group. Those surveyed say they prefer new work to old and are keen on immersive theatre and comedy, and are not at all averse to experimentation and live streaming. Continue reading...

Sea Odyssey sailed into Liverpool in 2012

Accepting a special commendation at this year's Amnesty International Freedom of Expression award in Edinburgh for their staging of Our Glass House, as part of the Edinburgh fringe, members of the Common Wealth company remarked that they were not all that interested in regular festival theatregoers seeing the show.

Common Wealth weren't being arrogant or rude. They were simply pointing out that the show – an extraordinary and harrowing fragmentary reflection on domestic abuse – was deliberately staged in a house about 30 minutes from the centre of Edinburgh. It seemed appropriate to take the show to the audience, rather than expect the audience to come to the show – especially people who might never have come into the city to see it, but who embraced it in the heart of their community. Continue reading...

Another conventional portrayal of women … The Lightning Child. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

Women are at the heart of Ché Walker and Arthur Darvill's The Lightning Child, a version of Euripides' The Bacchae at Shakespeare's Globe. But one of the odd things about this performance is how conventionally the women are portrayed. For all its apparent attempt to examine gender issues, in its presentation of the chorus it falls back on a line-up of scantily clad women gyrating as if in a Rihanna video. Similarly, the camper element of the production fetishes the drag-queen stereotype in which men offer up an outlandish, often monstrous take on femininity. Continue reading...

One eye on the next script … Cathy Naden in Forced Entertainment's Exquisite Pain. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

Playwright Simon Stephens says actors are being creatively "stifled" and are reluctant to take risks because short-term contracts for a single play mean they are always wondering where the next job is coming from. In a conference speech reported in the Stage, Stephens said: "They would have one eye on the director, to make sure they don't offend them, one eye on the writer, to make sure they seduce and tantalise them so they maybe might want to write something for them, and one eye on the artistic director to let them know they are not a difficult person to have around the theatre." Continue reading...

Hats off to Joan … Littlewood had a vision of fun palaces as cultural spaces welcoming to all. Photograph: Jane Bown

The trailblazing director wanted to create fun palaces across the UK. In 2014, her centenary year, you can make it happen

Popular demand … there are more productions of plays by John Godber, such as Teechers (pictured here), than by Samuel Beckett. Photograph: Louise Buckby

Leafing through an old theatre guide to playwrights, living and dead, which was published more than 25 years ago, I was struck by how plays and playwrights go in and out of fashion. Of course, there's no Ravenhill or Butterworth in the guide, no Kane, Stephens, Kirkwood or Morgan, either. Polly Stenham had barely been born. On the other hand, Peter Ustinov and John Galsworthy are both celebrated in the book as significant playwrights, but you would have to be a pretty avid theatregoer to catch a revival of one of their plays now (although Galsworthy was seen in 2007 at the Orange Tree in Richmond and Ustinov earlier this year at Southwark Playhouse). Continue reading...

Give us a bit of the Yellow Pages … Judi Dench in Madame de Sade. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

Interviewing Michael Grandage earlier this week, Mark Lawson observed that although Grandage's West End production of Madame de Sade was a rare misfire, its box-office success "proved the proposition that people would pay to see Judi Dench in anything." Possibly even reading the telephone directory, although Maureen Lipman has already tried that trick. Continue reading...

Name games … Secret Theatre doesn't want you to know what's on the menu, ahem, stage. Photograph: Alicia Canter

A critic who tweeted the title of the Lyric's new season sparked outrage – and possibly drove audiences to the theatre

In it together … a good audience can contribute to the success of a show. Photograph: Alamy

The comic timing and dynamic of spectators are just as important as the performances on stage.

On the shoulders of giants … the stage version of Michael Morpurgo's War Horse, which itself owes a debt to Anna Sewell's Black Beauty. Photograph: Paul Kolnik/AP

If William Shakespeare were writing plays today, what would his inspirations and sources be? As we all know, Shakespeare was a great playwright but not a great originator of plots, and quite happily plundered the work of writers and historians. He took familiar stories and made them his own. It's really no different to what Dennis Kelly has done with Matilda or the creators of War Horse with Michael Morpurgo's story, which itself borrows from Black Beauty. Great theatre is often adaptation by any other name. Continue reading...

From pop to poppy fields … The Prodigals at the Belgrade theatre, Coventry. Photograph: Keith Pattison

A story of war, pop and prison shared between father and two sons is a great idea for a musical but lacks power on stage, writes Lyn Gardner

Japjit Kaur in Nirbhaya, a play based on the deadly gang rape of Jyoti Singh Pandey in India. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod

One commentator has suggested that productions such as Nirbhaya and Our Glass House present rape as entertainment for theatre audiences. But the presentation of violence in theatre makes us contemplate something we may prefer to ignore