HOWARD AND WYNDHAM LIMITED
AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE BRITISH TOURING CIRCUIT
Paul Iles made a study of Howard & Wyndham Limited, the longest-lived theatre management in Britain. This covered a period from 1851, when founded at Edinburgh, its many decades as a nationally influential theatre chain and producer, to closure in 1977.
It sets out to analyse a number of key issues in theatrical management within the boundaries of a larger narrative about the history of Scottish theatre. The study considers changing shifts in leadership and policy, from actor-managers to business managers, from stock company to the rise and fall of the commercial touring circuit; tensions between the provincial theatre and London’s West End; the ground between commerce and art; the relationship of a profit-making company to subsidised theatres and the separation of theatre buildings and theatre production. The Howard & Wyndham study was by research and thesis at the University of Glasgow Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies.
View chapter on the rise of Howard and Wyndham as actor-managers, 1851-1894: right click here
These images are from The Laughing Audience ephemera collection:
