While the combination of economic depression, catastrophic unemployment in once buoyant industrial areas, and the advent of cinema and radio meant that mass audiences for professional theatre greatly reduced in the period between the wars, non-industrial, amateur theatre-making in all kinds of communities and for a myriad of different purposes flourished. Thousands more British citizens made theatre for themselves than were prepared to attend externally provided professional theatre, which was either inaccessible or irrelevant to their lives. The phenomenon can be observed throughout all the nations, and it was particularly significant in areas where metropolitan dominance and economic constraints had made the growth of an autonomous, home-grown, professional theatre culture difficult to sustain. However, just as the effects of the depression were not all pervasive, so the provenance and development of different models of amateur theatre varied considerably.

The huge numbers involved and the diversity of the phenomenon have tended to exacerbate an historiographic tension about how amateur theatre is to be integrated into the historical record. On the whole professional theatre scholars have been reluctant to explore non-professional theatre, which conforms neither to favoured political nor aesthetic preferences. In the case of Wales, the fact that the overwhelming majority of theatre was conducted by a widespread network of small amateur groups led, until comparatively recently, to the assumption that there was no ‘real’ theatre in Wales before the more sustained growth of professional practice from the 1960s onwards.