“Existentialist Hu-ha”?: Censoring the Existentialists in the British Theater

Abstract

This chapter will look at the censorship of playwrights associated with existentialist thinking in the British theater, from the opening up of the London stage to French writers after the Second World War to the end of theater censorship in Britain with the passing of the Theatres Act 1968. Consideration will be given to a range of writers but, inevitably, the focus will be on the plays of Jean-Paul Sartre, whose all plays except one (ironically, Kean) were performed on the British stage in this period. By looking at the process of censorship, we can gain new understanding of the ways that the British political and social establishment first responded to the plays of Sartre and his contemporaries, and the impact that this had on the plays’ subsequent performance histories (or absence thereof).