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Royal Court to explore middle-class issues

LONDON, Feb. 7 (UPI) -- London's Royal Court Theater, admitting its selection of poverty-themed plays may turn off people, rewrote its mission statement to be more "middle class."

Dominic Cooke, the theater's new director, said he wanted to put on more plays of interest to "aspirational liberal middle classes," the Daily Telegraph said.

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Britain had become so middle class that the theater now will launch a new movement of plays delving into middle-class issues, such as religious fundamentalism, Cooke said, instead of focusing on the problems of the poor, dispossessed and minorities.

Middle-class residents living near where the radical theater is located told him they felt the Royal Court didn't address their "issues," he said.

When the middle classes come to the Royal Court "sometimes they can see nothing that reflects their lives," he said.

Royal Court has been a home to political and social drama since the John Osborne's play "Look Back in Anger" in 1956. It has since championed the works of radical dramatists such as Howard Brenton, Harold Pinter and Edward Bond.

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