Introduction

Summary

British theatre’s post-war cultural impact would be hard to deny, having produced generations of actors, writers, directors, and designers who have populated the world’s stages and screens. This vitality has often been explained in aesthetic terms, in the successive waves of generational artistic renewal in British theatre (from the ‘angry young men’ onwards). The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre since 1945 seeks to outline the discursive and material changes that have made this theatre possible; that is, the economic, infrastructural, and legislative structures that underpin what can and cannot be done in theatre and the structures and habits of discourse that govern what can and cannot be said about the theatre. Hence the book focuses on the working conditions of actors, writers, and directors; the economics of the West End, subsidised sector, and fringe; the theatre’s interaction with the British nation-state at the level of policy, theatre buildings, and in its nations and regions; finally, the book considers the theatre’s civic function, its changing engagement with audiences and the development of Black British and Queer theatre.