The term 'community arts theatre' is used here to describe theatre created and performed by groups of adults in Telford, Shropshire, a new town in the West Midlands of England. The author, who was the co-founder and a theatre worker at Telford Community Arts (TCA), argues that their work is best understood as grassroots artistic reflections of and on the changes and conflicts occurring in the participants' neighbourhood between 1974 and 1990. As well as describing the plays' form and content, the article examines their social roots, the creative processes involved in collective authorship and group control, the performance contexts and the personal, social and political impact of the work. The emphasis on the working class rather than on the socially excluded and the understanding of community as opposition to rather than a microcosm of the state gives TCA's work a contemporary relevance at a time when tens of thousands are on the streets demonstrating against imperialist wars and capitalist globalisation.