Completion of book for CUP 'Theatres in Twentieth Century Britain: Industry, Art and Empire'

This book is about where .why and how theatre took place across the British Isles during the twentieth century. Most published general histories of British theatre tend to concentrate on what happened in the capital both in large prestigious buildings and shabby, but equally prestigious fringe venues.
No one in the UK is unaffected by metropolitan power and influence, but the majority of the population do not live there. Many people who enjoyed, and continue to enjoy theatre as audience or non-professional participants, never went to, or go to, London. While success in London remains the goal of many artists and other theatre workers, throughout the century theatre has happened in a wide range of buildings and performance places in all the component nations' of the UK.
This book respects the claims to nationally specific theatre histories in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland but the designation 'British' is not, as so often in previous publications, used indiscriminately. I seek to weave an international historical narrative which recognises the constant movement and reconfiguration of peoples of many different cultural identities and ethnicities. AH sorts of boundaries blur and break down in theatre as they do in every other aspect of cultural exchange.
This book focuses mainly on the social and economic factors which influenced the extent and success (or otherwise) of theatrical ventures and the lives of the people who depended on them. What would a map of UK theatre look like in 1900, 1950 and 2000? Why were theatres built where they were especially at the beginning of the century in rapidly expanding industrial and urban areas? What kind of audiences was served by different kinds of buildings?
What happened in periods of economic collapse? How the working lives of artists, managers, directors and entrepreneurs develop in the first half of the century? What kind of engagement, professionally, was there with the new media of film, radio and television? If relatively little professional theatre was available in certain areas, especially outside England, why was this the case and why, most significantly in the interwar years, was amateur theatre as valuable as a creative and therapeutic instrument for communities under stress?
The second half of the book picks up the strands of practice identified in the first half, and discusses: artistic and economic strategies in building-based theatre in the age of state subsidy; the extent to which the demography of professional theatre has changed as participation has gradually widened to include those previously excluded by reason of gender, sexuality, physical and learning ability and colour. Finally I return to how the community 'played' in a performative exchange between professional and amateur in the end-of-century social and economic context.