Chapter 12 - Regions and Nations

Summary

This chapter explores the diversity of theatre outside London in the post-war period with a particular emphasis on work produced in the four nations that make up the UK and in the regions of England. It argues that much of this work has been under-examined and undervalued, and that a persistent metropolitan bias has long distorted existing accounts of British theatre in the period. The recent re-animation of distinctive regional and national identities within the context of an increasingly fractured and unstable UK, makes the continuation of this critical approach untenable. The chapter aims to set the record straight, therefore but also to note that metropolitan bias has been similarly at work in cultural policy and the distribution of funding, with the result that audiences in some parts of the country have been much better served than others. My aim is to consider the impacts of this persistent unfairness in its multiple contexts.