David Hare, writing in his introduction to Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak House (1920) at the turn of the millennium, discusses the consequences of public underfunding on the repertoire of plays presented at regional playhouses. According to Hare, while Anton Chekhov and Oscar Wilde remained popular, ‘the most eminent victim of this enforced shake-down has been the problematic figure of Bernard Shaw’. Once immensely popular with playhouses outside London, Shaw's drama was, at the time in which Hare was writing, and still is, rarely revived in regional theatres.

Although Shaw is largely absent from the stages of these playhouses, his influence, alongside a number of other individuals pursuing modernist agendas at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, is evident in the policies and practices shaping these theatres. As this chapter will demonstrate, the emphasis on variety and innovation, improvements in acting and staging practices, and decentralisation that continue to inform the activities of regional theatre in Britain is traceable to the early years of the repertory movement and reflected in Shaw's close collaborations with the initiatives that emerged in this period. Shaw's involvement with the movement also influences the ways in which this aspect of British theatre history is contextualised and discussed. Shaw and other collaborators failed to resolve a series of tensions that continue to remain problematic for regional theatres. The British regional repertory movement officially began in 1908 when Annie Horniman, a wealthy heiress and patron of the theatre, established the first of such companies after purchasing the Gaiety Theatre in Manchester. In 1894, having recently inherited a large sum of money from her grandfather and organised and funded the rituals of the Golden Dawn, Horniman sponsored a season of drama at the Avenue Theatre, London, which included Shaw's Arms and the Man; this was the first performance of Shavian drama outside the circle of private societies. Horniman continued her support for the stage through her financial backing of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin on which she spent ￡13,000 and which she then allowed the Irish Players to use for free. Later, due to disagreements over the emphasis on national drama, Horniman separated from the Abbey. However, as James Moran argues, Horniman's later establishment of the repertory seasons at the Manchester Gaiety Theatre was largely influenced by her experiences in Dublin.