Bernard Shaw and the British Regional Repertory Movement

This book is the first to explore Shaw’s full involvement with the twentieth-century British regional repertory movement. Using extensive archival research to piece together Shaw’s connections to regional theatres, this book explores monumental regional productions of Shaw’s plays and investigates Shaw’s relationships – both professional and personal – with key figures in the repertory movement. British repertory theatres and companies, with their emphasis on the use of the short run and ensemble acting, played a crucial role in the staging of non-commercial and theatrically experimental work in the early twentieth century. Shaw collaborated extensively with repertory companies, providing them with plays, which offered alternatives to the London trends of the long run and star system. These theatres, in turn, offered Shaw a way to disseminate his radical artistic and political ideas in British locations outside the capital city as well as internationally. Dr Soudabeh Ananisarab is Lecturer in Drama at Birmingham City University, UK. She is a theatre scholar and historian with a focus on regional theatre histories. She has published several articles and chapters in this area and on early twentieth-century British and Irish theatre more broadly, including contributions to The Edinburgh Companion to Modernism in Contemporary Theatre (2023), The Routledge Companion to Twentieth Century British Theatre and Performance: 1900-1950 (2024) and Sean O’Casey in Context (2025).