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Council estates, otherwise known as British social housing estates, have been subject to media scrutiny since their inception, and widespread criticism of social housing remains a prominent feature of British Welfare State discourse. In recent media coverage, for example of the 2011 riots, these spaces remain central to discussions of class, economics, and crime in the UK. This article draws on postcolonial theory to explore contemporary representations of the council estate on the Royal Court stage – with a focus on narratives of ‘authenticity’. Here, two plays, Off the Endz (Agbaje, 2010) and The Westbridge (De-lahay, 2011), are studied to assess how narratives of authenticity work in theatrical representations both to reinforce and to resist popular impressions of council estate spaces. Charlotte Bell is a PhD candidate in the Drama Department at Queen Mary University, where she is currently writing her PhD thesis on the urban social housing estate and the contemporary cultural economy. Katie Beswick is a Research Associate in Applied Theatre at the University of Leeds, where she has recently completed her PhD on the representation of the council estate in theatrical performance practices.

This article explores issues surrounding the representation of contested place by looking at the links between the Council Estate and social well-being in a specific project. The National Youth Theatre's The Block, was a new writing piece premiered as part of their 'Playing Up II' programme. Playing Up II attempted to offer access to higher education in the performing arts to those not in education, employment or training (NEETS). The article focuses on the play's portrayal of the problematic Council Estate space and uses Bourdieu's 'habitus' to analyse the way in which the performance process mediated the social structures of opportunity available to participants. The article explores the issues of representation, aspiration, opportunity and spatial practice that arose during the course of the project. The work in this article has arisen as part of a larger project that considers the representation of council estates in live performance.

This article is a provocation, discussing the ways class measurement is complicated in efforts to understand participation and barriers to access for working class people. I explore class as a structure of feeling, emerging as a not-yet-worked through aspect of the theatre experience. I ask what would need to happen in theatre institutions if we took seriously people's self identification, rather than relying primarily on external measures, and suggest ways that doing so might offer strategies for overcoming inequality.

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