Subscription Theater - 9780812252477

Subscription TheaterDemocracy and Drama in Britain and Ireland, 1880-1939\nAuthor(s): Matthew Franks\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, United States\nImprint: University of Pennsylvania Press\nISBN-13: 9780812252477, 978-0812252477\nSynopsis\nSubscription Theater asks why turn-of-the-century British and Irish citizens spent so much time, money, and effort adding their names to subscription lists. Shining a spotlight on private play-producing clubs, public repertory theaters, amateur drama groups, and theatrical magazines, Matthew Franks locates subscription theaters in a vast constellation of civic subscription initiatives, ranging from voluntary schools and workers' hospitals to soldiers' memorials and Diamond Jubilee funds. Across these enterprises, Franks argues, subscribers created their own spaces for performing social roles from which they had long been excluded. Whether by undermining the authority of the Lord Chamberlain's Examiner of Plays and L.