ABSTRACT
After the Second World War, British theatre practitioners and spectators who were interested in 'serious' theatre had to look abroad for inspiration, and intelligent drama was imported from USA and Europe in attempts to galvanise London. In the mid-1950s this earnest rationalism was broken open by the 'Theatre of the Absurd'. Starting in 1951, his work was formalised in 1964 into 'World Theatre' seasons at the Royal Shakespeare Company's Aldwych Theatre and were seen annually until 1975. Perhaps the most important of Daubeny's guest companies for their effect on British theatre was the Berliner Ensemble, whose visit in 1956 he arranged. Provincial repertory companies and alternative fringe groups were as inspired by him as the National Theatre or the Royal Shakespeare Company, and it was only when Communism collapsed in 1989 that his hold loosened. Nevertheless, it is impossible to understand British theatre in the three decades after 1960 without acknowledging Bertolt Brecht's ubiquity.
