In pursuit of a new theatre: the case of the Malvern festival

ABSTRACT This article considers the impact of the not-for-profit motive promoted by radical campaigners of the New Theatre movement on accounts of British theatre history. Using the Malvern Festival (1929–1949) as a case study of similar ventures associated with the New Theatre movement, this article explores the ways in which influential figures involved with these projects have distorted narratives of theatre through their emphasis on the not-for-profit/commercial binary opposition. The correspondence between key collaborators in the Festival – Bernard Shaw, Sir Barry Jackson and the lessee of the Malvern Theatre, Roy Limbert – discussed in this article reveals the flaws in such narratives, contradicting previous accounts of the Festival. These letters reveal that Shaw and Jackson failed to adhere to their own condemnations of profitmaking as they struggled to reconcile this outlook with the reality of the Malvern Festival and more broadly the material conditions of theatre.