ABSTRACT
If theatre seemed irredeemably conservative and unengaged in the immediate post-war period then this was partly because, as an institution and an industry, it was wedded to pre-war values and practices. These did not simply disappear at the arrival of the New Wave, but had their own trajectory; indeed, the subterranean patterns of funding and organisation that dominated theatre, especially metropolitan commercial theatre, helped to shape the possibilities for the new drama, how and in what circumstances it was produced, and the terms in which it was debated. It is particularly difficult to talk about one of the major objectives of much of the new theatre, the attempt to win new audiences, unless institutional factors are acknowledged.
