Although a substantial number of plays written by black and Asian writers were staged during the first half of the twentieth century, there has been little systematic analysis of how such work has contributed to the growing infrastructure of what was to later become a thriving culture of black and Asian theatre in Britain. This chapter explores the cultural networks of the period that produced theatre in order to present alternative views to those of empire, and the common thread of which was the struggle for civil and national rights and independence. Charting the background to productions put on by pioneering organisations such as the Indian Art and Dramatic Society (1912), this chapter examines the varied and complex context from which these early performances emerged and their impact at the time. Within this framework, the chapter evaluates the contributions of individual writers, whether the better-known, such as Una Marson and C. L. R. James from the Caribbean, or the lesser-known, such as Dusé Mohamed Ali and Henry Francis Downing, members of the Pan-African movement, Niranjan Pal from India, and the Irish-Indian novelist and playwright Aubrey Menen.