‘A Good Woman of Business’: The Female Manager in the Portable Theatre

Abstract

The portable theatre embraced and valorised women throughout its 150-year history (from around 1800 to 1950), taking dramatic performances to towns and cities throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland. Mothers, wives and daughters were also actors and managers in these travelling companies, in close family units, and their career paths reflected both their skills and opportunities. Their working lives were physically hard, often organising theatrical licenses and recruiting professionals, as well as performing themselves. Many women combined the leading lady roles with management and caring for their children. Others were forced to relinquish an acting career to concentrate upon business. Mrs Marie Livesey, with six children to care for, fulfilled her late husband’s ambition to build a permanent theatre and did so, in part, with revenue from her portable theatre. Women managers of portable theatres were respected in their business and their achievements challenge the perception that all theatrical women laboured under ‘restricted conditions’.