Introduction

Abstract

In the decade prior to the First World War the entertainment profession experienced a period of considerable change, especially in the repertory theatre. There was a discernible move away from the dominance of the actor, and in particular the actor-manager, and the contents of the play assumed a greater importance. Commercial consideration was no longer the sole prerequisite for mounting a production. Barry Jackson, the director of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, exercised his commitment to art by concentrating on plays by contemporary play-wrights, for example Bernard Shaw and new dialect works by regional authors. Jackson did not, wrote the critic J. C. Kemp ‘set out consciously to convert the Birmingham Philistines’,1 but he attempted to ‘educate’ them by concentrating on the aesthetics of production; this sense of obligation was shared by his manager John Drinkwater — a playwright and minor poet — who on the opening night of the city’s purpose-built repertory theatre in 1913, recited a poem specially written by him for the occasion. The first verse reads: In these walls Look not for that light trickery which falls To death at birth, bought piecemeal at the will Of apes who seek to ply their mimic skill; Here shall the Player work as work he may Yet shall he work in service to the play.2 KeywordsRetail Price IndexTentative PeriodRegional AuthorMusical ComedyWartime ConditionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.