Playwright & Context - Gotcha

The play was written in 1976 by Barry Keefe. Barry Keefe refers to cultural, political, social, and historical context surrounding Gotcha in the year of 1976.

The political context in 1976 refers very much to the resignation of Harold Wilson and the election of James Callaghan. The year was also very much about ‘winter discontent’ as described by Prime Minister James Callaghan; this was due to a year of strikes and raging inflation which was at 17% , and the government was in danger of falling apart. A year prior to when the play was set, unemployment in Britain had climbed to 1 million, which was over 5% of the workforce. 

In terms of the cultural context, 1976 was a very big year for music as this was the year when punk was extremely popular. The song ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ by The Ramones was released in 1976 and the lyrics relate to what happens in the play and also the context of it. Mary Whitehouse claimed that the song sounded like a punk record. The TV adaption of the play was best known, as Mary Whitehouse (successfully) tried to ban a rerun of it. ABBA also made the headlines in music in 1976, as they topped the charts with three songs, 'Fernando', 'Mamma Mia', and 'Dancing Queen'. Bands such as The Beatles, and The Rolling Stones, and also solo acts like Rod Stewart were increasing in popularity. These acts had  also respectively  had songs used in the play of Gotcha, The Beatles (Here comes the sun), Rod Stewart (The slow side of his album 'Atlantic Crossing'), The Rolling Stones (19th Nervous Breakdown, Satisfaction, Street Fighting Man, and Get off of my cloud) In television, Starsky and Hutch had just been put on screen, and Robert De Niro and Sylvester Stallone were also on screen, as Taxi Driver and Rocky were both respectively brought out in cinemas.


In terms of social context, the play focuses on the subject of education, and particularly comprehensive schools which were fairly new at the time and frequently talked about. The schools back then were much different from what they're like now; if children weren't behaving, then they would get the cane, and the children no longer had free milk, as Margaret Thatcher (Secretary of Education) put a stop to it in 1971. The housing in the 70s became easier to get when the Bank of England relaxed its lending rules, which allowed more Britons to get there hands on a property. The year 1976 was also a year of rising crime, growing inequality and destruction of the environment. On the subject of inequality, a year prior to 1976, both the Sex Discrimination act & Equal Pay act came into force in 1975 to tackle the problem of Sexual Discrimination against women and lack of quality in terms of work rights for women.

In terms of historical context, the summer of 1976 was the hottest summer in 350 years with the temperature topping 80F, and this didn't help much with a drought also on and reservoirs were empty. The drought wasn't the only problem, as the prices of food were also through the roof. In history, it was also the year when a space probe landed on mars.