ABSTRACT
This chapter re-examines Holm’s work from a new modernist perspective by looking at her work from the 1920s to the 1950s as a whole. It deliberately takes a transnational approach and looks at modernist responses more widely than their geographical location. Equally, it dissolves the boundaries between what came to be perceived as high modernism and popular, commercial theatre. Key to this approach is a reconsideration of central, but often unacknowledged, features of her work, such as improvisation, which enabled her to travel, although not without difficulty, across both geographical and formal boundaries. Seen in this way, she was a pioneer in a much more extensive sense than has previously been acknowledged.
