Theatre of the United Kingdom rise of satire in 1960s Britain. The Chichester Festival Theatre was Britain's first modern thrust stage theatre. It was inspired by the Festival Theatre of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival launched by Tyrone Guthrie in the Canadian city of Stratford, Ontario. The inaugural Artistic Director of the Chichester Festival was Sir Laurence Olivier, and it was at Chichester that the first National Theatre company was formed. Chichester's productions would transfer to the National Theatre's base at the Old Vic in London. The Theatres Act 1968 abolished the system of censorship of the stage that had existed in Great Britain since 1737.
Val May Peterhouse, Cambridge before studying at the London Old Vic Theatre School under Michel Saint-Denis. His national service was in the Royal Navy. Val May's first professional engagement was in 1950, when he directed Jean Cocteau's "The Typewriter" at the Watergate Theatre in London. He spent three years at the Dundee Repertory Theatre as assistant to the artistic director and became artistic director of the Ipswich Theatre in 1953. From 1957 to 1961 he was artistic director of the Nottingham Playhouse. May directed the London Old Vic's production of "Richard II" in 1959. Also in 1959, the Nottingham company's production of