Overview

Providing a new way of thinking about industrialism and its history through the lens of one of Britain's most recognisable heritage brands, Catherine Hindson explores the creativity that was at the heart of Cadbury's operation in the early twentieth century. Guided by Quaker Capitalism, employees at Bournville took part in recreational and educational activities, enabling imagination to flourish. Amidst this pattern of work and play arose the vibrant phenomenon that was factory theatre, with performances and productions involving tens of thousands of employees as performers and spectators. Home-grown Bournville casts and audiences were supplemented by performers, civic leaders, playwrights, academics, town planners, and celebrities, interweaving industrialists with the city's theatrical and visual arts as well as national entertainment cultures. This interdisciplinary study uncovers the stories of Bournville's theatre and the employees who made it, considering ground-breaking approaches to mental and physical health and education.

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9781009271844

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Reviews

'Catherine Hindson draws striking parallels in her conclusion between the corporate ethos cultivated at Cadbury's and that nowadays espoused at Legoland, but what is most striking, reading her study, is how thoroughly the world it explores has vanished, not always regrettably. As she points out, what happened at Bournville was not exactly amateur theatre: all these thousands of people were performing, albeit out of hours, in their roles as employees. Cadbury's clearly provided them with wonderful facilities for making theatre, but at the same time it conscripted their leisure in order to project a utopian, PR-friendly vision of happy, unalienated collective endeavour. This excellent, richly researched study shows how playing was really part of their work.' Michael Dobson, The Times Literary Supplement

Author Information

Catherine Hindson is Professor of Theatre History at the University of Bristol and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Her research focuses on how theatre helps us understand societies past, and incorporates topics including celebrity, heritage, ghosts, and well-being. She has previously published two books, Female Performance Practices on the fin-de-siècle stages of London and Paris (2007) and London's West End Actresses and the Origins of Celebrity Culture, 1880–1920 (2016), the latter of which was shortlisted for the Society for Theatre Research's Book Prize.

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